Category Archives: sex

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I was institutionalized for doing something that broke societies rules.  Suicide is just another taboo.  I have been suicidal for as long as I have memory of knowing that my life could end.  When I found out about the concept of death my response was, “That sounds great, sign me up.”  Relief from thinking and feeling and being me.

Fast forward, I’m not actively suicidal this week (yay!) but I have my days.  I move on to other taboos.  It is not irrational for me to fear reprisal for breaking taboos.  It is not irrational for me to think that people might harm me and do considerable damage to my long-term emotional health in the name of getting me to conform.  It has already happened.  Given that I am now an adult married to someone who is enthusiastic about my taboo breaking I am much less likely to get into a situation where I can be harmed for my taboo breaking.  So magically I am supposed to be able to stop that bone deep fear.  Now it is magically irrational and I should stop feeling that way.

If anyone has a pill that can do that, I’ll buy it.  I don’t exactly enjoy the fact that my heart has been racing almost continually for the past 24-ish hours.  I don’t enjoy the feeling that I am one ill-timed grab from my child away from beating my head against the concrete floor because I need something that powerful to overcome the intensity of my feelings.  I need something that can break through the screaming in my head.  I’m smiling.  I’m interacting with the kids a little, but mostly I’m just sitting and staring into space in between trying to figure out chores.  I timed it this morning and if I get up and start moving fairly quickly I can get all my daily/weekly chores done on Monday by 9am.  Not bad.  Now if only I knew what I wanted to do with the day.

We are going to go sign Shanna up for swim lessons today.  And we will go to the park.  But it’s almost 11 and I’m still scared and sad.  It’s hard to be around.  People don’t want to pussyfoot.  I understand.  It is a lot of work.  I don’t like doing the work I require either.  It seems kind of ridiculous to need this kind of extensive negotiations and fuss about boundaries.  It would be so much easier if I could just not fear irrational things.  It would be so much more fun for everyone if I could just be ok with however they behave because they don’t mean anything.

This is what this crazy girl looks like.  I will tell you up front, “Hey once you cross this line into this other category in my brain you can’t be around my kids any more.”  That isn’t about anyone else or their behavior.  I would think that the way to potentially soften that boundary would be to rigorously follow it for a very long time without the slightest deviation to prove that you understand that this is a real boundary and very serious for me.  I’m sad.  I guess I did fail.  I thought I was communicating clearly and I didn’t.

This is why I am not interested in polyamory.  All of a sudden I am supposed to emotionally caretake for more people.  I can’t take care of myself.  If you want to stand near me emotionally you have to have a very thick wall between you and me.  You have to understand that sometimes I am going to freak the fuck out and that doesn’t mean you did something wrong it means I was triggered.  You have to be a willow tree that is flexible with the winds of my moods but isn’t really affected.  Noah is my mate because Noah can hold me while I sob and cry and am hysterical and he doesn’t take it personally.  I can scream at him on the internet and talk about all the most intimate parts of our life and relationship and he knows that at the end of the day I cannot change him.  He just is.  He decides his behavior based on his best guess at my mood because some days things go well and some days they don’t.  But it’s not his fault.  It’s not about him.  When I am angry about something that Noah has done, part of it is his acceptance of responsibility.

Noah has raped me.  That’s a boundary violation beyond all others in an intimate partnership.  I know that he can do that to me.  It’s not an irrational fear.  It’s a healthy respect.  At this point I have to simply trust that he will never do that to me again.  Do you know why I trust him enough?  Because he rigorously, fanatically, slavishly observes my boundaries.  If I tell him he can’t say the word “the” to me today he will do it.  He will say: “I think that is an irrational boundary and I am not thrilled about it, but I will endeavor to follow your rule.”  And then he would.  He would make this overnight weird work around in his vocabulary.  Because even though it’s irrational and weird and makes his life hard… I’m worth that.  This would be why I can relax boundaries over time and we can take turns being the one who gets the most focus.  I trust him.

Other people don’t understand my boundaries.  They think it is about them.  They think they are threatening.  They think they are the problem.  That’s not it.  This is just what the crazy train looks like.  I make ridiculous demands.  Outrageous demands.  But I spell them out in advance and give people the opportunity to say yes or no.  The awesome part is when people say they understand and my demands are reasonable… until I follow up.  Then I’m doing something… I don’t know.  Mean?

It’s probably the stunt cock comment.  I have rewritten this section over and over.  I think there are two kinds of people.  For the purpose of this explanation I am going to call them bonders and non-bonders.  Just for this conversation.  When bonders have sexual contact it increases their feeling of wanting to spend time together.  When non-bonders have sexual contact they continue to want to decide if spending time together is wanted based on completely unrelated factors.

I kept myself distracted this morning doing chores until I ran out of “needs to be done today” that felt unstressful and I ran out of physical energy.  Then I sat down and realized how fast my heart was racing and I wanted to puke and I started shaking… because I have to get up today and go register Shanna in swim classes.  I have to do that.  I am freaked out because today I am not going to be able to take both kids with me, watch them, keep them safe, get information about the classes (not everything is on their website), wait through whatever lines we incur, stay calm even if Shanna acts out, try to remain calm as Calli beats the shit out of the back of my neck while I stand in line, have a coherent conversation with another adult while I am completely overwhelmed by noise (this is a pool building–they are loud), and I’m already having massive panic attacks and hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

I can’t date anyone.  I don’t have a spare five minutes in my day to give a shit if someone is upset about what kind of time I can or can’t give to them.  Fuck anyone else’s needs.  I did not sign on for anyone else’s fucking needs.  I said that I wanted to be a dirty whore and step out on my life.  Dirty whores are not sensitive and new agey.  I said I wanted a stunt cock who would be nice to me.  Apparently I don’t actually know what that demographic looks like.  Noah tells me a lot that the only way to get good at things is to try and fail a whole bunch of times.

This is why crazy people look like drama.  I have in my head the interaction I want to have.  The kind of relationship.  That wasn’t it.  I probably need to hunt outside the poly community.  Hrm.  But then I will be dealing with men who are cheating.  Shit.

What does it actually look like?  Well, I want someone who understands that it isn’t personal, I don’t want my lovers over at my house socializing with my kids.  It makes me have feelings I don’t like.  So I correctly identify the cause of the fuss and I try to eliminate it.  If I invite you to a big party at my house where there will be 30+ people and I won’t be interacting with you much… that’s different.  But I want my kids to meet my lovers as distant people in a vague community of people they gradually get more exposure to as they age.  My lovers aren’t invited over for dinner.  My lovers don’t get to ask about toys. That makes the pit of my stomach claw and retch.  It’s not personal.  It’s not a rejection of anyone in particular.  It’s not that any of them are bad people.  I don’t think Tom is a bad person but I honestly don’t want him hanging out with my kids.  That’s not something you are supposed to admit out loud.

I don’t want people around my kids who cause me to feel more unstable.  I have to monitor and manage my moods.  That is a simple and literal fact of my life.  It will always be true.  I have to minimize my stress.  The obvious solution here is that I should simply be monogamous because then I don’t have to worry about meeting other peoples needs.  Ugh.  That’s not really going to work long term.  I want to have that part of me off existing.  But really, I can’t date.  I can’t be responsible for someone else’s happiness.  I just can’t.  I am not able to provide that for anyone.  I have nothing left to give.

This morning I had to go wake Sarah up to help with the kids because I desperately needed to smoke and write.  When I started this I wasn’t able to stop crying any more.  My stupid momentary frustrations were adding up.  Shanna hasn’t done anything wrong.  But she did throw crumbs all over the garage after I asked her to not bring food out of the dining room.  We have serious problems with bugs.  I am in a constant battle to confine food to the kitchen because otherwise I have ant infestations that send me into horrifying panic attacks.  And I have to keep my mouth shut and not obviously react and clean up the fucking ants no matter how I fucking feel because I am the fucking mom and I have to shut the fuck up and just do it.  So you know that overdosing thing when I was 15?  Yeah.  Ants.  That was my hallucination.  I constantly fight ants in this house.  It is this low level of stress thing for me that I can’t seem to get rid of.  It keeps my stomach hurting.  I find ants in my bed.  That honest to god scares the shit out of me and not screaming hysterically constantly is a heroic act.  I have learned to master that phobia.  But it’s really hard and it takes a lot out of me.

So Shanna didn’t do anything terrible or wrong or bad.  But I asked her to please keep the food on the linoleum.  She ran, giggling, and threw herself on the big ugly chair clutching the last of the delicious cinnamon raisin bread a dear friend gave me for my birthday.  We’ve been hoarding it out to savor it.  When she got up I noticed that she had smeared the bread and crumbs all over the chair seat, back, arms, in the seams, and all over the floor.  I had sudden images of ants.  The ants that are going to crawl on me next time I sit in that chair.  And then I have to calmly ask my wonderful sweet baby girl to take the rest of the bread back to the kitchen, you can see how there are crumbs everywhere.  If we spread crumbs we will get ants.  Have you noticed the ants we have in the dining room?  I want to keep all the food in there please, thanks.  Then I got to clean it up.  While I was in the garage cleaning up that spill Shanna decided that this is a great time to practice pouring.

Do you really want me to continue?  It’s not that a little water spilled is that bad.  It’s that there were crumbs all over the floor from the bread and now it’s a soggy mess.  It’s that it’s on the table, multiple chairs, and the floor.  It’s that she took containers out of the thrift store box to play with and now I have to dry them off and put them back in the box.  I should probably also hurry up and take it out to the van because HOLYFUCKINGSHIT will she just empty it in the next five minutes if I don’t.  And I need to stay calm.  And smile.  And be enthusiastic about her exploring the world.  And teach her how to clean up after herself–which is way the fuck harder to be patient while doing when I am in the middle of a panic attack.

Do you know what a panic attack feels like?  It feels like a heart attack.  And that’s been happening for over 24 hours now.  I’m not seeing a doctor because dude, I am probably doing this because I am going to see a doctor and I am freaked the fuck out.  For me to go talk to a doctor about the extent of my acting out and self-harm and transgressive behavior is for me to risk commitment.  I would not be able to tell a doctor with a straight face that I am not suicidal.  Because even though I haven’t thought about it this week… the minute someone asks me about it I will crumble and admit that yes I really kind of wish I could be selfish enough because this fucking hurts and I am so very very tired.

But I woke Sarah up.  Because I was getting to the point where keeping the mask on was resulting in me spontaneously crying.  Because when I’m that frustrated and I’m not allowed to show anger at all I start crying.  My sister used to taunt me with it.  Soon I have to go nurse Calli.  She is obviously getting done with me having a break.  It’s time to go let her nurse to sleep.

Yes I want a fucking stunt cock who keeps his messy emotional shit away from me.  I have nothing to fucking give anyone.

Just another day

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My shrink doesn’t think I should find stronger anxiety meds.  As I was leaving her office today I asked her about her opinion about what I should tell a doctor.  What part of my current shit is the most physical in origin and what is likely the best thing to do about it.  She thinks I should talk to the doctor about my stomach hurting and probably something for sleep.  As much as the smoking isn’t great for my lungs she thinks that having to go spend thirty minutes away from the kids is better than taking stronger meds so I can endure more pressure.  She may have a point.  As much as I have this inner resistance to it, I kind of think I may need to make a schedule for us and stick to it.  We could all use the predictability.  I need to have breaks from the kids most days.  Luckily, we now have a Sarah.

Is it really nerdy that I am going to make a big graph and highlight things and move them around?  I need to figure out something though.  I hate smoking.  It feels shitty.  I want to not need it.  Plan A right now on getting my shit together involves ridiculously scheduling my life so that I can try to find a way to balance my moods.  It feels like a New Shiny Neurosis.  If I want to stay off meds I need some way of reacting to my bio-chemical stress loads.  I don’t know another way.  What do I need in order to feel like I can stay calm.  I feel very weird about the fact that my therapist considers marijuana significantly superior to other potential anti-anxieties for me.  I suspect it is partially because of my ridiculous conflict around what I’m doing.  I won’t use it if I have to drive.  I am very careful about proper supervision of the kids, etc.  If I had pills that I could use when I was out I would probably end up trapped somewhere feeling unable to drive and get hysterical.  I suppose this way I always make it home because I don’t bring pot out of my house.  I’ve tried bringing it with me a few times and I never have the nerve to sneak off and use it.  It’s pretty funny.  Even if I am sitting amongst a group of people passing a pipe… I just can’t bring myself to smoke in front of people.  I have problems.

Today I told my therapist about the second time I broke my arm.  I was 12.  I had to call my mom at work to come home and take me to the hospital.  She worked 90 miles away in City of Industry.  She screamed at me a lot about how I had better not be lying.  I was scared shitless my arm wasn’t actually broken.  I had to endure a lot of pain before I was willing to call her and ask for help in the first place, but I didn’t have other options.  It was broken.  And to put the icing on the cake when I went back for the actual cast I told her I wasn’t feeling well.  She told me I was a hypochondriac and a whiner.  I vomited on the floor in the waiting room.  The hospital staff was really nice to me as I sobbed my apologies for making a mess.  My mom yanked me by my unbroken arm away and told me how disgusting I was for making the mess.  Sometimes I wonder if I am more fucked up by my mother or my father.

Now as an adult I get why my mom was so harsh with me.  She was walking a tightrope financially and she truly couldn’t take time off frivolously.  I was sick a lot (I’ve had stomach problems since I was a child) and Tommy needed a lot of time off.  His care would have been a full time job.  It was for more than one person, actually.  It’s interesting thinking about my mother now that I have children.  When I think of the things my mother didn’t know about me… I wonder what things I will miss in my children.  I’m absolutely confident that I am already a better mother than my mom though.  That’s kind of a weird thing.  I have already provided my children with more stability, security, attention, and kindness than my mother showed me.  In less than six months Shanna will have lived in this house longer than I have ever lived anywhere else.  This house, this life that I am building with my family… this is the only stability I’ve ever had.

Every time I move I mostly change friends groups.  I change everything about my life.  And I have done it every 3-18 months from age 3 till I was 19 years old.  Then I stayed at Tom’s for three years before moving around several times in two years before moving here.  I’m getting the feeling this is my forever home.  We may add a second story some day.  I’m trying to meet most of the neighbors on our street.  I am floating the idea past all of them for a block party.  So far everyone has indicated that they would try to come.  For better or for worse this is where my children will grow up.  These people will be their community.  I get a lot of say in how that works.  I want a Leave it to Beaver style community where everyone knows everyones business.  I guess I had better start meeting people and learning their business then.  It’s frightening to consider.  They will see me go through stages.

I am having trouble with this whole 5% thing.  I can’t shake the feeling that it is bad.  Like I should be culled from the herd for daring to deviate.  I’m trying to decide how and where I will deviate from the norms in my home and in my community because it isn’t fair for me to alienate people.  My children have to live here.  I am weird.  I know it.  The thing is, why am I so convinced that everyone will hate me?  Yeah, yeah… polarizing figure.  I’ve mellowed with age.  I’m a lot easier to be an acquaintance with.  I think.  It’s really hard to go meet my neighbors but Shanna thinks it is easy.  I’m trying to remember that part of me that sees every person as a potential friend instead of a potential judge.  Most people don’t care enough about me to bother to judge me.

In completely other news, Sarah is preserving food for winter.  I have succeeded in my way of being a provider for my family.  I win.  At the rate these tomato plants are going we might be able to eat a tomato based dish (pasta, chili, stew, etc) a week for almost a year.  That’s really cool.  We haven’t really gotten to eat much of the other veggies I’ve grown.  I think the cabbage is too tough to eat now, but I watched the full growth cycle and that has value.  It was neat to see these plants emerge.  I feel like as a science experiment it was a fabulously productive summer.  I failed on most of it in terms of providing food (with the huge exception of the tomatoes), but that’s what I was supposed to do.  I was learning what to do and not do.  I have to learn at some point.

Random feedback question, oh those who read this blog: I tend to keep a window open and add to it for a few days.  Are more frequent little posts easier to read?  Would you like visual breaks so you know when I walk away and come back because it’s often a very different thought?  Do you not care because my verbal diarrhea is hard to follow anyway so it might as well be a huge blob?  Feedback welcome on that topic.  Solicited, even.

It’s my birthday now.  Noah made me breakfast and let me sleep in.  Him making me breakfast is actually an every single day thing.  That’s one of the things that makes me feel loved.  He gets up every day and thinks about how to feed me.  Food = love.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Mo’s post on submission.  It’s kind of funny because I don’t play much these days.  And I haven’t been in anything like a D/s or M/s relationship in eight years.  Not really.  It’s weird to think about because I don’t think people recognize how deeply ingrained my impulse towards service is.  I go clean my friends’ houses.  I always have.  I always feel like I must do physical labor for people I love.  Shared work is one of the quickest ways to bond with me.  I don’t bond well in party situations because I’m not one to relax while sitting in a room with people who have the ability to stop and stare at me.  They have to be distracted and looking somewhere else so that I don’t feel tense.

This is a problem mostly because I have this simultaneous issue that if I am the only one working I am a martyr and no one loves me.  This is a problem because I am much more bothered by visual disarray than anyone else in my house so I am constantly working and they truly can’t do that with me.  I am at an unhealthy place with my level of getting upset over doing house work.  I don’t like to feel taken for granted.  I need a lot of acknowledgment.  Even if I am the only one working, if I get frequent, sincere comments on my work I feel seen.

I think that I have been working in my head towards how to feel like my position in my family is one of submitting my work to the common betterment of my family.  That sounds really stupid and weird.  Ok, bear with me.  I “grew up” in a weird generation of perverts and I have all this bullshit about slave hearts going round and round in my head.  I miss the stillness I got in my head and in my heart when I was a slave.  I was able to shut off my background chatter of negative self talk and just work because that was my place and my job.  I was to facilitate Tom’s life.  It would be fair to think of it as dehumanizing me, or at least minimizing my importance in life.  I did everything with the specific goal of pleasing him.  It took enormous focus and energy.  I could lose myself in it.  I could stay present in the moment in a way that eludes me these days without enormous physical output.  Rototilling the yard keeps me in the same head space.  It’s probably what other people attain through meditation.  I can’t meditate for shit.  But I like bringing that calm focus into my work.

In the bdsm community you can spend a lot of time and money going to classes to help you learn how to cultivate a relationship where you can dictate the narrow limits of your life to allow you that kind of focus.  No matter what your side goals are: making money, buying a house, having kids… the only real goal is pleasing your Dominant/Master.  It’s a much more immediate thing to check up on.  Handy in the immediate feedback sense.  Easy to get obsessive with.  I was certainly obsessed.  I ate, slept, and breathed Tom’s happiness.  It is intriguing to think about that level of intensity.  I like to think that Noah is a great person to have an affair with.  When he turns the full power of his gaze on someone… it’s intoxicating.  I know some of his ex’s read this, you had better be nodding.

Noah is a crack boy.  He’s easy to get obsessed with.  Part of the reason is that it is always clear that there are big chunks of him that are simply not available to me.  I can never fully understand him no matter how many years I stare at him.  If someone is too available to me emotionally, I don’t pursue.  I have nothing to chase.  It’s terrible, but I don’t see a point in lying.  I like complicated people.  On the day Noah asked me to marry him he told me he also wanted me as his slave.  Neither of us really knew what that meant then.  I’m not sure I do either.  But I’m thinking about it.  I need an obsession.  I really do.

I have nothing to keep my brain from dwelling all day on how it is not fucking fair that by Shanna’s age I was giving out blow jobs to neighbor kids.  My parents were divorcing.  I had already been raped.  Very soon we were about to be homeless.  I think of those things and I look at my wonderful girl, who if anything is getting bored with how safe her life is, and I feel rage.  I’m burnt out though.  I’ve had all the rage my body can take for a while.  I desperately need a distraction that won’t fuck up my life.  My therapist is right that I should not try to get stronger meds so I can be more of a zombie all day long.  That’s not really the solution.

So I’ve been thinking about my wonderful husband.  I’ve been trying to deliberately think in terms of serving his life.  What would actually serve his life better.  It’s kind of funny that phrasing it in that way changes a lot of the discussion for me.  If I drop my set of living-life-expectations… it’s weird.  I should call a cleaning company tomorrow.  I should never dust again.  It makes his life worse because I don’t have the physical body load to do as much as I am doing and be in a good mood.  The reason I am so beat down is because I am trying harder and harder to take the shit work off of Noah because I need him in a good mood.  I need to make Noah happy.  I have to.  If I don’t I am failing at this life and Jesus H Christ I am the biggest piece of shit ever.  Not that he thinks that.  But as much as I love my friends, Noah is the only person on the planet I am going to see every day for the rest of my life.  Not my kids.  Not anyone else.  I want a happy marriage.  I really do.

So whereas we are not in a place where we can get the M/s thing to work right now I’m thinking about the future.  For the record I have changed some of my opinions.  I no longer go by Lenora, that was an in-the-closet-while-teaching thing.  How’s that for crossing the streams?

Anyway, I’ve been obsessing about Noah during my time off lately.  It seems the most benign and cheerful way for me to pass a little time while letting my body rest.  The last few years have been hard for him.  Any effort at all is pleasing.  I’ve already been reading more.  I’ve already read two books this week and I have a couple more I am working on.  He likes it when I am really on for verbal banter.  Oh man does that require more rest than I am getting.  It’s really nice for me to realize that some of the best things I can do to serve him and make him happier is eliminate as much work as possible from my life so I can sit around and read and pamper my body so that my interest in sex returns.  I’ve had a few glimmers lately and that’s been comforting.  But it’s not really back yet.  Next on my desk is Les Liasons Dangereuses and I really need to read The Prince again.  And I should probably review a rhetoric book because my arguing skills are shitty.  If I’m going to keep up with Noah I need to get crackin’.

How it becomes enough

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I have this user icon on a website.  It says: Everything is always okay in the end.  If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.  I have a doctors appointment for the 14th.  I need to get a physical and get a referral to a psychiatric doctor.  I need to get the manic cycles under control.  I did not sleep for over a week of June.  I also did not sleep on five nights in August.  On nights when I do sleep I often only get four hours of sleep.  This isn’t healthy.  I broke my manic cycle in a burst of body depletion at the party.  I don’t want to do that again in that way.  I don’t think it is awful that I did it.  It was actually wonderful.  I did get what I wanted out of it.  I know how it is enough.

I would like to have more tools for dealing with my anxiety and PTSD.  Refusing to ask for a doctors help is part of the bad message stuff from my family.  It’s ok that I need help sometimes.  Everyone does.  Cue defensive language.  The party was really great because my only goal was to let go of the anxiety and I not feel responsible for anyone and I not steer the bus.  I had a lot of post-party jitters and I ranted heavily at one of the participants about how I should have manipulated the situation more to control more about what other people experienced.  He was great about patting me on the head but mostly ignoring me.  The ritual portion of the evening went about as fantastically as it could have, actually… on reflection.  Over the course of the evening I had a really hard time staying in headspace.  I am horrified by how strong my anxiety was even though I had taken heroic measures to overcome it.  That is absolutely the limit of my ability to self medicate for my anxiety and it wasn’t enough.  I need to try something else.

Every single person in my house this weekend likes me.  Many of them love me.  I was able to move through that crowd and feel intense irritation from more than half of the people there.  That’s not rational.  That’s not real.  That’s me having trouble perceiving what people are freely offering out of love.  Which is not to say that I didn’t have fun!  I did.  I had a wonderful time and I metaphorically smacked myself in the ass and ignored my anxiety and interacted with people even though I felt anxious.  I wasn’t defensive.  I wasn’t aggressive.  When I started to try to control what people were saying/doing/thinking I tried to back off and just listen for a while instead of projecting onto other people.  It was a very conscious effort and that’s not something I can sustain.

I loved my party.  I had a great time.  It felt so good to connect with people who love me so much.  I’m going to have to rest a lot to recover from this though.  And my anxiety isn’t lower despite that much love present in one place?  I need some help.  That’s how it becomes enough.  Because life is what it is.  If I am a gaping maw of need I have to figure out how to deal with it on my own.  I cannot ask for any more of the people in my life than they already give.  I am very supported.  This is about me and the chemicals in my brain.  This is about a lot of years of being abused.

Everything is always okay in the end.  If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.  I’m spending a lot of my current anxious cycles thinking about how the ritual worked for me and why I’m having so much internal pushback on wanting to present it properly to the world.  I feel very vulnerable about it and I’m struggling with it.  The obvious answer is to just not write about it, right?  If it causes me anxiety to think about writing about it then I shouldn’t do it.  There is no need to write about it.  The only problem is, this is being me.  The writing about it is as integral to the process as doing it.  I don’t know why, but it is.  Thus the current massive anxiety.  I don’t believe in the pit of my stomach that what I did was ok.  Do you know why?  Because like all things in life it was a mixed bag.

The sex was good, I’ll say that unreservedly.  I shouldn’t have tried to do that specific flavor of sex in a group environment.  I did it because I wanted to do it in front of other people… I don’t know… to prove that they would still love me and want to cuddle me when I am that person?  I think that one of the best parts was when a very sweet man told me in the morning that he is still interested in me.  It was this interesting validation.

I tried as hard as I could to engage in self-harming behavior.  Oh that’s melodramatic.  I tried to break taboos.  That’s more true.  I engaged in unprotected sex before having a medical procedure done to ensure my own sterility.  I think breaking that bit of my worry around extra-marital sex isn’t worth it again.  I don’t have space in my life for the extra processing time it requires.  It makes things more complicated.  By that I mean, I’ve sat here thinking for at least several minutes each day freaking the fuck out about a vasectomy failing and not knowing who the father is.  I’m not comfortable in my body right now.  I feel like I violated something sacred.  My baby machine is one user only, damnit.  That part of me feels monogamous and kind of freaked.  It’s not particularly rational and is not a negative reflection on any one else.  But that takes up space in my emotional life and I don’t have room to give it.  So I feel increased anxiety symptoms all the time because I would really love to start having a period again any second now.  That was a life lesson.  I like condoms.  I have to get better at condoms.  Practice.  Practice.  Practice.

I will probably be lame and buy a dollar store pregnancy test in three weeks just to end this cycle of worry.  And I’ve learned an important lesson.  I had fun.  I’m glad I did it.  I learned a lot.  That’s enough.

Can’t.Get.Out.Of.Head.

6 Replies

I’m not so good at this sleeping thing lately.  I’m thinking a great deal about my role models.  People who are alive, people who are dead, people who were dead before my birth and people who have lived only in the mind.  I spend a lot of time feeling like I should apologize for who I am and what I do.  Not because I really believe that I am wrong.  But because I feel like I do not have the right to make choices that differ from the people around me.  The thing is, everyone does things differently and that’s how it is supposed to work.


Ok, I’m beating around the bush.  A while back I had a conversation with a friend/former lover in which we both kind of nudged the other to test the waters.  Nothing came of it that day and that’s ok.  He brought up a really important point though.  He breaks condoms.  Due to a wide variety of factors (size, piercings) he has an above average number of breakages.  He *is* careful.  He has had multiple accidental pregnancies because of this.  Uhhh… my baby factory is closed.  After careful thought about how much I loathe everything about being on duty 24/7 for an infant I never want to have another child.  I love my children.  I’m fucking done.  So I’m thinking about permanent birth control.  Not in the next three months or anything, but I think it will be done soonish.  I want to never have to worry about that again.  The thought of pregnancy fills me with revulsion and horror.  I’m done.


I have then been thinking a lot about safer sex.  It’s complicated.  What does one mean by “safer” sex? Blah blah blah.  Near as I can see it there are a few reasons to use latex (or equivalent) over all contact between bits: disease, pregnancy, or show of good faith.  Most everyone is pretty loud about the disease one and I agree with it.  I have been pretty rigorous throughout most of my sluttery with barriers.  It’s important!  I drank that kool aid.  I think it’s a good flavor.  I’m going to deal with that pregnancy bit forever.  Then there’s the good faith bit, and that’s tricky.


If you are a slut you are supposed to tow the party line about doing it safely at all times in all ways.  SSC is based on that. used as a battering ram by people who claim that is what it means.  What an awesome history piece.  The opening of the RACK definition mentions my historical associations.  I guess I was ignorant.  It’s interesting how often that is coming up lately, my ignorance.  Anyway.  I’m avoiding again.


I’m thinking about how I feel about unprotected sex with people other than my husband.  I haven’t done it.  This is still hypothetical in the future.  I’ll tell you that the sticking point is the word husband.  I have been told that baby making sex is husband sex and at this point unprotected sex = baby making sex.  I’m a big fan of two forms of birth control.  If I am sterile and a guy is sterile then pregnancy is such a low possibility that I’m willing to risk it.  I’ll say that flat out.  I’m brave enough to trust two surgical operations.  Then comes disease risk.  Unless you believe that diseases manifest out of nowhere, there are ways to ensure that people are not carrying diseases.  It’s really simple actually.  You just go down to your local clinic before engaging in activities and voila!  


But oh man.  Then there is that party line.  I probably don’t mean it in the way you think.  However you think it.  I worry about not representing the “right kind” of promiscuous sex.  I’m pretty defensive about my behavior and all.  I worry that sex with Noah will feel less special.  I don’t honestly think it will.  I’m pretty base about such things.  I’m pretty darn sure that I will think it is hotter than the sun to come home after sex with someone else.  Uhm.  Yeah.  I actually really like that idea.  I think that idea is so fucking hot that I am going to take a break to masturbate.  I’ll be in my bunk.


Thanks to the internet I know that lots of other people feel the same way.  Either that or one person has been very prolific at writing stories.  This is a fairly basic biological urge.  Evolution programmed me to think this is hot.  Why should I carry shame for enjoying it?  Seriously.  At this point it is still hypothetical and I already feel guilty.  Ridiculous.  I’m a smart girl.  I want to lead a long and healthy life.  I promise you, oh internet, if I sleep with someone without using a condom I will do my preparation work.  I will ensure that the person in question is not a disease risk and I will prevent pregnancy at all costs.  And then I will decide if it will add more drama to my life to use or not use a condom.


It’s fairly reasonable to ask why I don’t just default to using condoms because that’s a good idea and all.  There are some downsides to being raped repeatedly throughout your childhood.  And bodies were designed to glide on other bodies, not on a piece of rubber.  Condoms hurt and I am at a point in my life where adding any more pain to my body is repugnant.  I have had tearing and resultant burning for over a week with each time I’ve used a condom recently.  It’s almost enough to make it not worth having the sex.  Dilemma.  


I’ve been thinking a lot about my position as a sexual outlaw.  I use that mockingly because I have never done sex work and I’m pretty sure it is considered part of the deal.  But I break laws with sex.  I have sex in public places.  I am always very disappointed when I have a partner who isn’t up for it.  I suspect that one of Noah’s biggest appeals is that he really and truly is up for doing anything and everything I want from him sexually.  That’s useful.  But there are parts of unlawful sex he cannot help me with by definition.  


The thing is they are crimes because if someone accidentally finds us then we have harmed those people by engaging in the act we are engaging in.  Which makes what we are doing dirty.  You know that scared nervous feeling you get when you make out with someone just out of sight of people?  Doesn’t everyone do that at some point when they are young?  Ok, the geek boys will smack me and shout that not everyone spends time making out when they are young.  Whatever.  I can’t explain exhibitionism but I presume I don’t have to.  If what I am doing is perfectly fine behind closed doors then it is probably more exciting for me to do it in public.  It’s a wiring thing.


So yeah.  Unprotected sex.  Public sex.  Taboo sex.  I really miss the part of me that is willing to take very calculated risks with self confidence.  I take fairly big risks.  Kind of.  Not really.  I take risks that sound really bad but aren’t once you listen to the details.  I’m very logical about the risks I take.  Which is kind of hilarious.  “Don’t knock rationalizations. I don’t know anyone who could get through the day without two or three juicy rationalizations. They’re more important than sex.”  But what happens when my rationalizations are trying to make it so I can have sex?


So I’m up late at night thinking about how I can feel more comfortable in my skin with the decisions I make.  Even though I’m not making choices that would be right for other people, I’m making choices that are ok for me.  There isn’t a One Twue Way.  My personal religion seems to be formed around a bastardized notion of gnostic sin I got from Noah.  Something is only a sin if you are ashamed to talk about it.  He told me it was the basis for his open relationship with a previous partner (*wave*).  I’ve been thinking about it a lot.  


I’m thinking about the possibility of unprotected sex with men other than the one I am married to.  My husband (within certain parameters) is fine with it.  Why am I worried about breaking the sanctity of my marriage in this one more way?  Partially because I’ve been told quite clearly that it would be bad.  I would be bad.  That’s dirty.  I would be defiled.  Just go read a message board anywhere.  Oh man.  But I wouldn’t be.  That’s the thing.  No one would know unless I told them.  I would still be just me.  With upgrades.  I think this is what being an adult actually means.  I get to make decisions.  I get to make choices amongst a dizzying array of options.  I am not at the mercy of my fate.  I do not have to do what people “do” just because it is “done”.  


The trick is to do it and not feel shame.  The shame is poison.  If you feel shame about what you are doing you should not do it because shame gets into the water and the soil and the air and it is poison.  I feel shame because other people tell me that my choices are wrong.  “Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.”  Dr. Seuss told me that.  I worry because anxiety was taught to me.  I’m supposed to be afraid of what people think of my actions.


And here is where the fun part goes away: my sister raped my brother almost thirty years ago.  My sister allowed her husband to rape her son almost ten years ago.  My sister taught her daughter to perform oral sex on her son about ten years ago.  I have no idea what she has been up to since then.  It scares the shit out of me.  According to my brother he hasn’t told people that she did it.  Until me.  And I have told the whole damn internet.  My father spent decades raping his daughters and no one stopped him.


I am very good at putting on my public face and having my public persona.  But with the intense pressure to behave “appropriately” comes this simultaneous backlash of anger that makes me compulsively want to break rules.  I have broken some pretty big ones.  I stole borrowed my mom’s car when I was 15 before I had a license because I promised someone a ride and I couldn’t back down.  Want to know how I got caught?  I uhhh forgot to put my headlights on as I pulled out of a lighted parking garage after Rocky Horror.  And the registration was expired.  That incident is why I couldn’t get a license until I was 18.  You see, I gave my mother the money to pay the fines and she bounced the check.  Once you do that the fees go up and I was well aware my mother would just bounce the second check.  I had to put on the public face of not acknowledging the fact that my mother was literally stealing from me.


If I said anything about it I would endure a tirade of hysteria about how I blame everything on her even though she is the victim in life.  I see that pattern emerging for me with Shanna.  I don’t vocalize it, but I think it.  But I’m not the victim any more.  I now hold absolutely all of the cards.  I have all of the power.  Do I want to use my power for good or evil?


At this point in my life I am neither a victim nor a martyr.  I’ve made choices to end up where I am.  I’m pretty fucking thrilled with my life, actually.  I’m still slowly trying to sort through the house.  I’m not doing anything wrong.  I’m trying as hard as I can not to hurt people.  Sometimes that isn’t good enough and I’m sorry for that.  I really like fucking multiple people. I’m going to keep doing it.  I’m going to make my decisions about safer sex based on actual risks not perceived status around said decisions.  And I’m going to let go of feeling bad because I’m breaking this taboo.


And what is up with this shit about me feeling like I don’t get to consider myself a sexual outlaw because I’ve never been paid.  Oh man.  I spent years in a relationship that was pretty extreme trying to keep up with the bad asses.  But I’ve never liked actual pain all that much.  It’s kind of funny.  I want to be an edge player.  I don’t want to be in a lot of pain.  It’s a competitive thing.  I can cop to that.  Not many people eroticize things like being suspended 75′ off the ground.  I learned to orgasm only with permission and on command.  I have been hog tied in a bath tub and tied so I could barely breathe.  We did a lot of breath play.  I have been well hanged.  With pictures to prove it.  Because without pics it didn’t happen, right?


There is this idea in my head about absence of self without a consistent mirror.  That’s convoluted.  I don’t exist if I can’t see me in other people.  In other words, whatever group I am standing near I will try as hard as I can to conform.  When I notice that I am really different from the people around me I feel as though I was just publicly shamed.  Because there will be people who disapprove of me in any group.  There’s a lot to disapprove of, yo.  So I run away.  Because I cannot conform to the norms of any group I have ever been part of and I don’t know how to feel like it is ok to deviate from the norms.  I assume people dislike me despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.


So coming back to this idea of gnostic sin.  I’m very certain that I am not hurting anyone right now.  And if no one is getting hurt (physically or mentally) then I think the activity is ok.  I do not participate in any formal moral structure that judges any of my actions.  My only judge and jury is whether or not I can look at myself in the mirror.  Have I done right by the world.  Have I done my best to make this world a better, happier place?  Then I’m ok.  And there is no cookie anywhere in the world big enough to make me feel like I have the external validation I need.  I have to just accept that I am going to do what I am going to do and it’s ok.  In 100 years no one will remember or care.  So why not?


My body’s talking to me
It say,’Time for danger’

It says ‘I wanna commit a crime
Wanna be the cause of a fight
Wanna put on a tight skirt and flirt
With a stranger’

The problem is finding balance.  And the first towards balance is sleep.  Night.

Addiction

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As long as I feel ashamed of engaging in the behavior I am obsessed with it.  Either I can’t have any ever or I am bad, or I think about it all the time and I feel like it crosses over into other parts of my life.  I don’t know how to have balance.

That’s why this is so important to me.  I have to get over being ashamed of the things I want.  Because I want them and it is actually ok for me to want them.  Even though I am a mother.  Even though I am a mother it is ok for me to want ridiculous amounts of promiscuous sex.  I’m not hurting my family by wanting it.  If I started going out and pursuing it constantly and neglecting my family that would be a problem.  But I’m not doing anything that hurts my family when I occasionally in my time away from my kids have sex with another consenting adult.

This is why I want to let go of feeling this shame.  I just haven’t figured out how to do it yet.  It’s kind of complicated.  My father started raping me when I was a baby.  How do I ever feel ok about having these feelings?  How do they ever stop signaling that I must have wanted it and it was all an acceptable thing to do to me.

I kind of hate sex.

Sex is complicated

6 Replies

The super frank way I handle my sexuality is not appropriate for children.  The way I talk about it.  The way I pursue it.  Not. For. Children.  The way I handle my sexuality makes a fair number of adults extremely uncomfortable.  How do I raise kids who can have a more “normal” view of sexuality?  I don’t have a normal view of it.  Growing up it was pretty clear that my options were celibacy (my mom and mostly Aunt Vonnie–it was a running joke that she didn’t put out) or being the kind of whore who ruins my life regularly with toxic men (go Denise).

The idea of not knowing what sex is till 10 or so really weirds me out.  I don’t know what it will be like to grow up with children who are ignorant so long.  I taught my niece and nephew how to use condoms way before then because it was necessary information in our family.  And no one else would talk about diseases or contraception at all.  I have books on what age appropriate sexuality is, but it’s still a weird concept.

You see, because I’m the kind of person who wants to host sex parties.  Let me just take a moment to say that hosting a sex party is very complicated.  There are a few other layers of things going on that make everything way way way more complicated.  Because really what I want to do is have a woo woo sex magic ritual and that’s an even more specific kind of event.  That kind of event requires rather a lot of thinking, planning, discussion, etc.  But I have these little kids around.  At this point in time I’m aware that some day soon Shanna is going to turn around and ask me point blank what a sex magic ritual is.  As I sit and think about it right now I think my answer should be, “Sex is something you do once your body is physically mature and you want to.  Magic is a way of thinking about what you want really hard.  And a ritual is where you think really hard about something you want with other people helping you focus more on what you want so that you think about it harder than you can alone.”  That’s an ok answer, right?  Because I don’t believe there is any chance we will just stop talking about it at all.

And holy shit.  How do I feel about my child growing up knowing that her parents are into sex magic rituals?  No, she doesn’t have a clue what it is about now.  We aren’t graphic in the slightest.  We talk about people and emotions.  We don’t talk about sex acts.  Shanna is going to grow up hearing a very odd therapy sort of talk.  I mean, we sit around and talk about the people who are involved in the ritual and what their various potential levels of involvement could be (nothing graphic) and try to get a sense of what to expect.  A lot of what is going on here is that I can’t be in control of everything in the world.  But I can be in control of this very small setting on this one day.  I can be in control of who comes.  And that has been a rather fraught process.  I may have lost a friend over it and that makes me sad.  I have had to deal with the overwhelming guilt and shame that I went from in-my-head having a fairly ordinary party to these increasingly complicated layers of intention and want and overlapping needs.

I didn’t realize up front that I was doing a sex magic ritual.  It wasn’t until I did extensive negotiations with most of the people coming that I realized I was trying to set the stage for that.  I have only done sex magic explicitly with one person.  I think of him as my personal shaman.  Our relationship has gotten very complicated over the more than 10 years he has been in my life.  Some day I should send a thank you message to the woman who connected us.  Ok, done.  I kind of like reflecting when and where I walk away from writing in the blog to do other things.  I don’t know if it is ADD or what but I really can’t finish something in one go.  I just can’t.  I peck at everything.  I don’t think it is perfectionism because it’s not that I’m trying to be perfect.  I just have to think about the next step before I can have it.

I’m going to be a big judgy bastard.  I think there is a big difference between people who are sex positive and people who actively hunt a lot for new partners.  I know people who hunt.  I don’t like how they parent.  There.  I said it.  I like the children of monogamous households.  Which really this is selection bias.  I don’t know very many children who have grown up in poly households.  Very very few.  I know a few adults who were children in poly households.  They are neat.  But uhm… I like the children of monogamous parents because I feel more comfortable with the kinds of acting out they do. Which is to say that in the far less than 500 hours I have been around “children of poly households” in aggregate over my entire life I had feelings of discomfort and I blamed them on the kids.

And that is the kind of judgy bastard I am.  Ok, fine I’ll deconstruct this again.  Why do I have a problem with poly parents?  Because I think my sexuality is something that should always be on the side of a closed door from my children.  I do not flirt in front of my kids.  I cannot be a sexual person in front of my kids.  I cannot hunt.  I do not want my extra “partners” around my kids because I am uncomfortable having that energy around children.  I have felt really uncomfortable when I am dating someone and they want me to hang out around their children.  In almost every case (with one huge exception and I really respect him) there was more hand holding and hugging and PDA type behavior than I found appropriate.

Where is the line of what is ok to do in front of your kids?  Or even where in my house?  When I am interested in sex I want to have a lot of very heavy groping in my life.  It’s awesome and fun.  I am very uncomfortable with the prospect of trying to be secretive about it around my kids.  That’s not a good feeling for me.  I have been secretive about my sex life since I was two years old and I shouldn’t have had a sex life to be secretive about.

When I am otherwise doing well emotionally I get off on every part of being sneaky about sex.  I fucking love that I am the chick who sneaks off at parties.  And yet that is clearly acting out behavior and there are places I am not welcome because of it.  Awkward.  Shouldn’t I have to give up on that kind of acting out now that I have kids?  Large swaths of society thinks I am inappropriate for doing that.  I could even link to a very old blog post with a poll about it.  Fully 1/4 of my friends thinks that is not an ok thing to do.  And these are the people who are open minded enough to be friends with me in the first place.  Let’s not ignore that incredibly high bar here.

25% of my friends (who responded to that poll) disapprove of a very consistent part of my behavior.  That’s absolutely a high enough percentage to make me go into convulsions of shame.  Because that (to me) means if that was more of a general humanity sort of poll it means more like 80% of people will think I am disgusting.  Cue bad self talk tape I don’t want to play today.

Why do I feel I have to be celibate because I am a parent?  Oh let me see.  Maybe because the parts of my sexuality I enjoy the most are the parts that push the boundaries of what society considers acceptable.  Silent quickies on the couch are really shitty.  I’m fucking tired of them.  If that is all my god damn sex life is supposed to have for the rest of my life you can take this job and shove it.  Cue running away and engaging in acting out behavior.

But how did I act out?  I went to an adult only party.  Where people were already naked.  And heavily indicating that they like extra marital sex.  And I went to a former partner (who has loudly stated he is still interested) and I suggested running off because I hardly ever get to be in an environment where there are no children so I never enjoy sex.

I feel like a dirty disgusting whore.  And sometimes that is really hot and sometimes it makes me cry.  I feel so much shame for wanting sex the way I do.  I feel like I am obviously dirty.  I am contaminated.  I must be sick for wanting this the way I do.  And then I won’t let anyone touch me in any way because I feel like they will be made dirty by touching someone who wants sex the way I do.

So I kind of want to have a sex magic ritual.  I kind of feel like there might be some worthwhile emotional work to be done in this area.  Kinda.  And on one hand I feel like I should only be saying this to the very short list of people I feel comfortable engaging in this kind of party with.  But on the other hand, continuing to believe that I should be ashamed of talking about this part of my sex life is a lot of the point.  Let me restate: I have already lost a friend over this party.

Why do I feel like I have to be celibate to be a good mother?  Oh man.  Because being queer and kinky and poly means not only that I have sex with my husband (I feel ashamed of almost any touching around my kids so our marital sex is rather limited right now) and I occasionally sneak out in a way that I can completely hide from my kids and keep secret (limited primarily to heteronormative behavior because casual sex with women is way more complicated than I have time for, men can get it up on demand if you select carefully) but I am being flagrant to the world about things that I feel I have to hide.

The closet sucks.  I do talk about being queer, kind of, in front of my kids.  It really doesn’t come up.  I have friends who are queer, so obviously my children see examples of it.  But I don’t engage in any behavior that would look queer to them.  Kinky is something that I have put on hold 100% until my kids are older and can be left alone longer.  I don’t feel ok having that in my house and I get very little time off.  Poly?  Dating feels like the same thing.  I don’t want to take that much time away from my family.

It’s not that I don’t want these things in my life.  But I have massive issues around my kids seeing any of it because I feel ashamed.  It feels like I am supposed to.  When I make the decision to take people off the guest list because they do not feel safe enough to have a sex magic ritual in front of I lose friends.  It really really feels like I should be ashamed of having these things in my life.  If I am doing something at all, ever that some people won’t like then I am bad.

Why do I think I have to be celibate to be a mother?  Oh I don’t know.  Maybe because I can’t be satisfied with the limited shitty sex other people want me to have so it is easier to just shut the whole system off.  And just not be me.

About that slut thing

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I start and stop and start and stop.  How to talk about sex.  Is it the feeling?  Does every woman get that ache deep inside them that really just requires forceful stimulation?  Sometimes it feels almost painful, the wanting.  It has been a while since I felt like that.  That kind of desire has been unattainable for me.  Saying that out loud feels like an admission of failure.  Like I have lost my slut card.  Like I should be embarrassed that I have a hard time getting off.  Me?  Once upon a time that was a pretty laughable idea.  I lost that with the first pregnancy.  For a long time it was difficult to orgasm.  I didn’t always.  I know that’s “normal” in the sense that it is within the range of common experiences.  That’s not how my body worked.

I really love sex.  I know that’s a common obsession and all, but I think I have been a bit more enthusiastic than most.  For me having sex once a week feels like a Saharan drought.  And the more sex I have the more I want.  When I’m not fucking up my hormones or depressed.  I’d like to find out what life is like with no hormonal birth control in my system.  I remember feeling the kind of desire for sex that I read about in stupid romance novels.  So there.

I had some of that on Saturday.  There is a specific flavor of avaricious sexuality that really works for me.  Naked aggression in the service of voracious sexual appetite turns me on.  Men who want to get laid a lot have to learn how to play games.  Yes yes, we all try to pretend that if they are honest and up front about their emotions they’ll get what they won’t.  But it’s a big dirty awful lie.  Just ask my poor hen pecked husband.

Ok, the hotness.  There are approaches to women that work better than others.

The Slime Over: this is where you sidle over to stand next to one of those passive women who doesn’t tell people no and you start pushing.  You keep the conversation going and you escalate glacially slowly so that it always seems like saying “no” is an over reaction.  Obviously, this approach is not my favorite.  When I see this response my response is to want to slam the dear perv nearby in the nose with a newspaper and say “Bad dog”.

Then there is Cocky Bastard: you know you are hot shit.  The problem here is that you have to actually have an extensive resume (academic, work, social climbing) and that looks a lot like work.  And even once you have the right to think you are hot shit… you will still need to work on presentation.  Smug is hard to pull off right.

God’s Gift: just assume that regardless of accomplishments or not the woman you approach is thoroughly hot for you… and then play hard to get.  It gets me every time.  Bastard men.  I want to have to do some chasing.  But just a little.  I have low self esteem.  If you actually resist me I will walk away fast.

Lost Boys: these are the ones who read as nasty aggressive mean assholes to pretty much everyone in the whole wide world.  And in private they tell me about being raped as a child.  Or beaten.  Or… and they cry.  And I help them feel more whole again.  I give them love and acceptance around something deeply painful.  Then they go back to being nasty aggressive mean assholes to pretty much everyone in the whole wide world… except me.

These are the big ones.  These are my big “types” in my men.  I’m not sure when they became men.  That’s pretty recent.  I just can’t bring myself to look at Noah and call him a boy any more.  Even if he is biting his finger nail as I type.  He’s cute.  I have learned a lot about men in the last five years.  I have learned a lot about what it means to be a boy or a man.  I really like men.  I like people who are responsible and honorable and dependable.  It’s all entwined.  And I’m not really explaining the slut thing yet.  I’m really tired though and tomorrow I paint.  I need to go to bed.

Whiner be thy name. Or mine. Whatever.

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Tonight I went to one of those kind of events.  If you don’t know what that means then you probably don’t want to.  Err, how to discuss this in a global way.  Uhh. Hm.  Oh I don’t give a shit.  So I went to a party hoping to do some kind of sex play with someone but then I acted like a hostile bitter wallflower and I left feeling depressed.  There.  That is tonight’s stupid.  I’m not mad that Noah had some chutzpah and went and found play.  Go him.  He’s a fun sexy guy and I’m glad someone is noticing.  Because I’m not.  I don’t flirt with Noah and he doesn’t flirt with me.  He’s afraid to approach me because I am broken.  Because when I don’t want to have sex I say yes anyway and he feels like a rapist.  So he doesn’t ask very often.  And we only have sex when I initiate.  And it often feels kind of uncomfortably perfunctory.  I’m sad that this is who I am right now.

I’m sad that I feel no desire.  I’m sad that I exude disinterest because I honestly feel no interest.  And it’s not because of anyone else.  It’s just in me.  On the way back from the party Noah told me that I had this problem until about 18 months postpartum the first time.  So like 7 months to go.  I hope.  This is not my happy face.

I’m also experiencing some noticeable grief about my family.  Not only did Uncle Bob die but I actively took steps to kill off any chance of reconciliation.  I am now dead to them.  I feel like a big part of me died.  I love my family.I feel very loyal to my family.  I feel like a traitor. I feel like I should be shot for treason  Ok, that thought made the waterworks flood.  Yeah.  I hurt my mommy.  You aren’t supposed to do that.  Even the bible says to honor your mother and father.  I effectively killed my father and I just yelled about as loud as I could that my mother is a child abuser.  I don’t want to think that about my mommy.  I truly don’t.  Do you want to know what is making it feel real?  When I say things to Shanna in that tone of voice and I see her cringe.  I know that voice.  That’s my mom’s voice.  My mom didn’t hit me.  She didn’t have to.  She could make me feel like I was 3″ tall.  I feel that I am teetering on a precarious edge because at this point Shanna turns around and yells at me that it’s not ok to talk to her in that tone of voice so uhm, yeah.  She’s pretty clear that she’s not 3″ tall.  And go fucking her.

I feel like I’m 3″ tall.  I’ve been sniping at people lately.  I have no patience and I really want to hurt people who are close to me.  I’m doing it to absolutely everyone.  And I’m having an explosion of guilt and anxiety.  I feel tremendous social anxiety and I’m able to make the most positive situations seem like a tacit rejection of me.  That’s pretty ridiculous.  I’m really not rational.  I’m struggling with body issues.  My little sprint on wikipedia called it Eating disorder not otherwise specified which, to be fair I’m not actually looking for a label because I want one.  I was actually looking for a word and I never did find it.  So I have the self image of being a fat person.  I think it is one that I actively want to have.  I think I want it for a myriad of reasons.  I don’t think it is actually all that good for *me* to be fat because I have to be fairly sedentary to do it.  When I exercise I get smaller.  It’s usually pretty dramatic and given that exercise is good for everyone, blah blah blah… No really, if I’m currently heavy that means I am extremely sedentary.  And that’s not a healthy choice for me.  Not saying this is the truth for every body out there.

So uhm I’ve been binge eating since I noticed that I was getting “too thin”.  I have been feeling like I am eating a lot and my clothes are getting tighter.  I feel like I have some weird subconscious thing going on that I associate fat with happy and maybe if I’m eating pleasure signal inducing foods constantly I will like myself more.  Hasn’t worked yet but I keep trying.  Maybe I just haven’t done it right yet.  Anyway. The part that I get hung up enough on to avoid talking about my mother at all costs (see how I did that; I’m good) is: I weighed myself tonight at my friend’s house.  I am lighter than I’ve been since I got married.  I am certainly at what I consider a perfectly reasonable size.  But it’s freaking me out and I’m binge eating to try and not stay in these clothes.  It’s complicated.

But back to that mother thing.  Because yeah I’m going to have to figure out a healthy relationship with food and stop alternating between treating it like a punishment (through lack of it) and a reward (through excessive amounts of it).  Jesus I’m broken.  But I’ll deal with that bit another day.  Maybe.

Years ago I wrote a story for a writing class that detailed some of the biggest sexual assaults I experienced from non-family members.  Some.  I had my sister read it and her first response was that I couldn’t tell mom.  Mom wouldn’t be able to handle this.  It wasn’t fair for me to burden mom.  I went against orders (because I promise you that my sister considered them on that level) and I had my mom read it.  My mom was strangely sanguine.  Like, this definition: Anticipating the best; optimistic; not despondent; confident; full of hope.  By which I mean she apologized for not being there for me.  She cried about her weaknesses as a mother.  Then she went on to fairly casually talk about how we can move on now because the past is behind us.  WTF?!  (And I do actually say W- T- F.)  Yo!  Bitch!  It’s not that easy.  I don’t believe there is any reparation she could do for what her negligence did to me.  I really don’t.  That’s not about my overwhelming bitterness.  That’s about the fact that there is nothing in the world she could do to earn my trust.  And if I think you are a rattlesnake, well… you really aren’t someone I want near my home or my kids.  I don’t know what you might do.  That tears it and buries it.  (Where the heck do I get these expressions?)  Yeah.  No.  Which means I have to deal with the results of that on my end.  I have to deal with the loss of my mom.

It really sucks.  Just sayin’.  There is no way for her to be a person I can have a healthy relationship.  Ok, how can I go about the business of just being healthy instead of being fucked up now that I am removing the fucked up influences?  I’m not really sure.

Areas That Could Use Improvement:
-my overall disposition. I act like everything and everyone is an inconvenience.
-my relationship with food and my body.  Making choices other people disagree with is ok.  Making choices I don’t agree with because I am so uncomfortable in my skin… not so good.
-liking sex again.  That would be kind of nice.
-my tremendous social anxiety that is creating a brick wall between me and people who like me.
-my willingness to see myself as having worth.

And you know, could I start providing my children with a more stimulating mental situation so that they can be properly socialized… right.  Not that I’m under. any. pressure.  I’m sure I’ll make a fabulous first impression with the local homeschooling community.  Ah shit.  I’m really afraid to get involved with the local homeschooling community right now because I’m afraid that people won’t want their children to socialize with my kids because I am broken and bad.  Like, this is seriously keeping me up at night.  Shanna asks about R a lot.  She asks when she can see him again.  She asks why she can’t see him any more.  I feel pretty shitty that the answer is I made R’s mom so uncomfortable that she won’t let him be friends with you.  I don’t want to fuck things up for my kids this early in life.  I want to wait until they are a little older.  I already had a best friend by Shanna’s age.  I feel like I am denying her some crucial life experience and isolating her unreasonably.  But she’s 3.  I haven’t ruined her life yet, right?

It’s a process

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I keep getting stuck on “I was raped””I was raped””I was raped””I was raped”.  Ok.  So what?  What does that mean?  Why is that the sticking point?  What is rape?  Why do I get to make rape jokes and no one else does?  Because every time a different survivor starts making the (really good) case for why rape jokes are never ok… I get my hackles up.  Hmm.  That’s interesting.  There is a lot of competition between my family members.  There is one victim at a time.  No one else is allowed to have needs while that one person is being the victim.  I would be lying if I said I never had my turn.  My family acknowledged, sometimes, that something happened to me.  Sorta.  Really what they acted like is that it was a shame I was such a precocious whore, but they’ll try not to hold it against me.

My body.  This frail shell that houses a tremendous spirit was violated.  Things were put in me.  Fingers.  Penises.  Tongues.  I was not allowed to have the sacred space of my own person.  My body was made to hurt.  I was taught to hate my body and use my body.  I struggle with dealing with my body.  I don’t mean, “Man, I think I’m ugly.”  I mean, my back and neck hurt very badly right now.  I just finished a massage.  He did help, but I still hurt quite a bit.  I have bruises all over.  I don’t know how or when I got them.  I don’t shower regularly.  When I am in a young place I have to be careful what clothes I wear because if something is even slightly uncomfortable it will send me into a rage.  Because something has happened to cause me pain again.  Kind of weird from a masochist.  I have food issues.  When I am young like this I eat about as much as Shanna.  And society thinks that is great.  I’m not sure.  I need to figure out the doctor situation.  I am so very uncomfortable working with anyone in that kind of authority.  They scare the ever-loving-shit out of me.  And I feel like a complete nutcase saying that.  I used to scoff at people who admitted they felt that way about doctors.  I didn’t feel that way.  But I also have never been able to see a doctor in a consistent, healthy way.  Hell, even my beloved midwife isn’t so happy with me these days.  I soured the end of that relationship, with help.  It feels like my body is more of a deficit than an asset in life.  It’s too much work and only brings me pain.

But I was taught to suck dick while my father held a gun to my head.  I had tears running down my face and snot dripping and mixing in with the semen and saliva.  I was nine.  Is it any wonder I like violent sex?  Is it any wonder that I want my lovers to hurt me in ways I frankly hate to prove that they love me?  I’m not even sure I am a masochist exactly.  It hurts and it is horrible and I want it to stop.  But I want to date people who want to do that to me.  I want to find people who literally get off on watching me suck their cock while I sob and cry and snot mixes in with the semen and saliva.  That’s pretty broken.  [Disclaimer!  Not all people who are into bdsm had horrific childhoods!  Do not use my case as an example of how no one who does this can be healthy!]  *ahem*

Do you know what is really awesome about dating men who get off on treating me that way?  When they don’t do it… they are making a special effort for me.  They are showing me that even though they are absolutely monstrous they care about me more than they care about getting off.  It’s pretty odd.  Because, if you do it right, bdsm involves a lot of communication.  I was shown porn, raped, molested, given graphic historic romance novels to read full of really kinky shit.  I was allowed to read those books when I was eight.  I was absolutely being primed to be ruled by my sex life.

That’s why my sister is a whore and my mom is celibate.  Those were presented as my options.  Which would you choose?  I have a high sex drive.  Pre-kids my sex life was shaped primarily about dealing with the demons in my head even though I usually didn’t tell my partners that.  That’s where Noah comes in.  I don’t know how to describe my experience of Noah.  I’m not even sure if I should try.  If I do it badly he looks like shit.  We are intense people.  But he isn’t shit.  He is wonderful.  And he loves me so much.

My husband married a tremendous pervert.  Now I kind of want to take it all back.  But that’s not how it works.  I don’t know what to do.  I don’t like being touched much.  Having someone touch me is scary.  I try to have sex even though it is hard.  We have to stop a lot.  We are definitely only having fluffy gentle bunny sex right now.  That’s not something I have much experience with.  Sometimes having gentle sex makes me cry.  Because I realize that is probably how most people learned about their bodies.  Other people mostly discovered sex as something kind of weird and awkward but fun.  I think.  I’m guessing.  I don’t know.  Mine was pain.  Because once I got past the point of being raped and I asked to have sex I was too young.  It hurt so much.  But that is what I was brought up to do.  So I did it.

Today is a hard day.  Today I have no defenses.  Today I feel sad and scared and like any minute now someone is going to turn around and hurt me.  Want to know how today has really gone?  I woke up at a normal time and did some writing.  Then everyone else woke up.  Noah decided that he just didn’t feel like cooking so we went to our local breakfast place.  Shanna was a bit moody and particular about things, but not that bad.  And when I made my boundaries clear she figured out how she could deal with her part of it.  (Yes, you can be sad about something.  No you may not scream in the van or in the restaurant because you are sad.  That hurts.)  We did ok with breakfast.  I was overly touchy and edgy but I didn’t blow up.  I didn’t let it escalate.  I said I couldn’t continue a chain of conversation instead of yelling or being nasty.  At home I had a massage and ate lunch.  There has been various talking to people in there.  But I had to tell Noah and Taylor that I was feeling young and I needed them to be careful with their tone of voice.  I had to say that.

Because I was raped.  I remember.  When I was very very young, must have been four or five, my father would pick me up and swing me through the air and I loved it and then he would lower me to his lap.  If I had pants on it was a little bit of rubbing and it felt good and I didn’t say anything.  If I had a dress on, which was basically all the time.  My mother describes me as refusing to wear pants.  She says, “Oh you were such a girl.  You wouldn’t wear pants at all.”  And when I wore a dress my father would support me on his leg with his hands on my hips.  I remember the feel of his knuckle shoving deep into my thigh as he tried to get the right angle.  It hurt and I would bite my lip.  If I cried out with the pain he would flick me in the head and tell me to stop whining.  Then he would go back to holding my hips.  Sometimes he would stay external and play with my clitoris.  I hope I don’t need to explain the basic human physiology of why that feels good.  That is where I learned about sex.  And I feel so very dirty.  Because I liked it.  Because I still like sex.

I think I like kinky sex because as long as someone is hurting me at the same time it’s ok for me to like it.  I have to have that trade or I don’t deserve it.

What is rape, anyway?  Is it just penis in vagina intercourse?  Do fingers count?  I say they do.  I say that when you are four and your father puts his finger inside your vagina and makes it hurt deep inside you and then punishes you for reacting to the pain you are raped.  And sometimes my body remembers.  Something I’m really glad about is since Calli was born sex doesn’t hurt as much any more.  I no longer get the tiny little tears all through my vagina during sex.  You see, when your father starts raping you that young you develop a lot of scar tissue.  A gynecologist who specialized in dysfunction once used a clear speculum and a flash light to show me the spider web of scar tissue all the way deep into my vagina.  That’s not normal.  Those little scars become little dotted lines that break over and over and over again.  But if you do deep enough massage you can break up scar tissue.  It’s possible that having kids healed that pain.

Before children I had physical discomfort with basically every sex act to a greater or lesser extent.  But I didn’t cry during sex.  I felt ok with myself because I dissociated away from that pain and I didn’t notice much.  It’s different now.  I’m trying so hard to not dissociate and sometimes it doesn’t feel worth it.  I’m tired of trying to force myself into a body that hurts this much.  But I have to because that is the only way to deal with this shit.  I thought that being a grown up was supposed to make this easier?