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I both feel over peopled and deeply lonely

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I’m really struggling with how much I can’t say anymore because there is no one to say it to. Noah has been the safe container I lived in for so long. I feel like no one else will ever want to know very much about me if they have to live with the consequences. I know I have long term readers, it’s the in person time where people can’t handle me.

I’m dating a nice man. He’s never going to obsessively study me. He’s never going to be dedicated to me. He’s on his own life path and we share time when it works. I am really not complaining about him. I simply notice all the things that are absent in my life. Things I will never ask him for. These are not his children. He does not share my delight that such creatures came from us. I miss having Noah to talk to when I have a concern.

Shortie is 7. It’s an age with intense disequilibrium. It’s not personal. It’s developmental. I miss having another adult around to go “Oh holy shit doing this for the third time is so hard.” August and September were rough. She’s already calming down and doing better. I handled it how I handle such challenges. She had to be someone’s buddy at all times for a while. She did not have the ability to have self control so other people had to stand there patiently having control for her. It’s not the easiest of times but it worked how I wanted it to the previous times. Now I’m just following a well worn path.

Someone went to social services and reported me for beating her. In fact, this person claimed that Eldest Child, Middle Child, and I competitively bruise her for entertainment. This was a pretty extreme claim. No ambiguity like “I think they are too rough with her.” No, we competitively bruise her. That’s a Big McFlippen Deal. Luckily the social worker was convinced that the claim was malicious within a few minutes. It helps that the other half of the claim was that I am too mentally unwell to feed my children. When she entered the house I was making chicken cordon bleu, fried potatoes, Brussels sprouts, and there was a large salad with a variety of vegetables. Food is our culture in a way that is kind of extreme. Being accused of not feeding my children hurts. It’s wildly untrue. I have so much food in my house it’s a job to manage rotating through all of it before it spoils. I’m an obsessive prepper. We usually have 2-3 months worth of food on hand and I rotate through it. She said I don’t feed my children.

I am having a hard time with the idea that I should ask for help from people. It feels like a fraught and dangerous experience.

I stopped having people come stay with us because I am not able to provide the level of service people expect. And I’m too hard to help. I don’t know how to perform failing appropriately so that I inspire someone to want to help me. It’s not fair to say any of this, because there are several people who help me in an ongoing way. Following Jenny continues to be one of the most important decisions of my life. I don’t see her all the time, we both have a lot going on. She has been tremendous help over and over again this year. I would be in a very rough spot without her. A few new friends have done a lot more than I would have expected. As usual I’m surprised by who has staying power and who does not.

I am a lot less surprised by the people who have mostly fallen off. I’m not taking it overly personally. They will be friendly when I have more spoons. I am pragmatic. If I get to the point of feeling like I can produce a lot of work for other people they will tolerate me willingly.

I feel like I have nothing to offer at this point. I feel deeply inadequate to the task of doing the work to be part of community. I feel really bad about that. I don’t think it is permanent but it is the stage I am in.

I asked for a year to be intensely selfish. It’s been a mixed bag. That’s fair. The only person who ever signed up for meeting my needs is gone. I will probably get less support after this time of grief. I have to be planning around having less support. I am really grateful for the people who are helping me get through this time. 7 is one of the very hardest ages for me, I can say as the parent of a 17 year old and a 15 year old. I handle all the later stuff way better. We are going to have another gnarly year around 11/12. After that things have been a lot easier. I work hard at being less and less of a figure to rebel against. I am here to facilitate and assist, not drive your life. I’m happy to let people make mistakes without interference.

Except for the ways that I’m not and for those moments we have the buddy system. I need buddies. I have a lady I’m paying to come in one day a week and she directs us through maintaining the house. It’s awesome. I have a friend who is body doubling with me one day a week. I have a friend who is taking Shortie out once a week to give me a break. My kids all go to classes that happen every week or two.

We are witnessed out in the community. If my children were ill fed or being beaten folks would notice. I do this on purpose. I know that we are living an unorthodox life. I feel less able to defend it without Noah to stand beside me yet I really like my older children. I feel like they are going to have very happy adulthoods and they will find ways to be part of community and relationships. It’s always hard to have faith that such an end goal is possible during the harder stages. I still have faith.

When my baby is pushing every button but still smiles in a sunny way because they know I will forgive them for being difficult. I have earned their faith in me. That is the part that matters.

I am struggling with feeling like I used Noah to get the life I wanted and then abandoned him spiritually. He had a very hard time last year discussing future poly. I feel so bad that the last year of his life was so stressful between us.

I mean, we were also closer and getting along really well. Our connection felt deep and lifelong and impossible to step away from. I felt seen and possessed and obsessed over. My brain felt full of him. Now there is so much space. I feel unobserved. I feel unworthy of being seen.

I miss feeling like the most fascinating woman in the world.

I feel onerous and difficult and bothersome and unworthy. It astounds me that my children want my company so much. We try to rest on Sundays. We do a lot every day. We need a day of doing as little as humanly possible. I like that they come in to do shifts with me. They all want individual time. There is also collective snuggling. We are still a happy pod by and large.

There is this big hole in our lives. There is so much we all want to share and the container that we used to use is gone. I feel like I am going to feel empty going forward. I will but I won’t. My children are right in their self assurance that a lot of my life will revolve around them. It’s feeling hard. I feel like very little of myself remains outside the parent container. Maybe it will someday.

I don’t want to feel afraid. Being afraid makes one hateful, small, and ungenerous.

I will never have tech bro money again. I will be fine. I will keep the house. I will be able to feed anyone I want to feed down the line. I’m not going to have the kind of personal wealth Noah wanted us to have as retired people. This is ok. It works for my self conception.

I don’t feel confident about much right now. I know that my life is going to shrink in ways that would freak Noah out. He wasn’t ok with doing more with less. He was built for growth and expansion. I will contract now and regain something more like a proper shape for me.

I bought a power washer. My driveway looks like someone else lives here. My garden is looking super tidy. I need to scrub the decking a bit more before I’m done. The apartment patio still needs to be done. We are close after 3.5 long days of work. We’ve really let the walkways get into a proper state. They were unsafe. As I do the labour to clean them and make them safe for walking I think about what being the provider means.

From now on, everything that must be done I must do. There is no one else to look to. I can delegate, but I have to initiate all of it. I’m the adult. I’m the home owner. I am the one who has to direct everything. I am the responsible party. It’s feeling like so much.

I feel sad and alone even though my life is busy and full of people. I miss Noah enveloping me with his arms and his overwhelming personality. He was so much that he made me have to keep expanding to keep up with him. Now that time is over.

Even though I feel weird, I’m going to talk about him.

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I have been writing about this so prolifically in the walled garden that it is weird to figure out where to start but I feel like I should. Only talking about this on a password protected site feels too close to dishonesty.

I only managed 2 months of abstinence after Noah died. I’ve only had one period of abstinence that was longer that wasn’t medically necessary since I was 16. I don’t do so hot with abstinence. It ramps up all of my mood difficulties. It makes me very physically jittery and my anxiety spikes through the roof. I don’t feel ok physically if I am not having sex more often than most people consider normal. I’ve gotten very comfortable with the language of hypersexuality for myself.

I went looking on a swinger website, which seems to be the hopping place for casual sexual encounters for the local area. A pal from the munch recommended it. One fella made it to almost three months before his personal life shifted and he can’t have sex with me anymore. I wish him and his girlfriend many happy years of monogamy now that they have gotten to that level together. I have had a few people last a handful of times but I ended things with all of them for one reason or another. There is another one I’ve seen a few times and I need to officially end it. I’m not one for ghosting. I like clear openings and endings.

There is someone approaching three months. Due to a whole cascade of events he’s actually going to be the person staying with me after my surgery on the 8th. I have to stay overnight near the hospital in case of issues. For various reasons the surgery is happening a hundred miles away from where I live. A friend is staying with me for 5.5 weeks to help with the kids. Then I have arranged local people helping with the kids after that.

I have been calling this person Gentleman because he has an incredibly proper way about him. Some of it is me misreading his accent as being more posh than it is. A lot more of it is because of the knee jerk intensity he has towards a lot of behaviours I would consider improper. He’s intensely respectful. Every time I have expected him to be unpleasant or rude or cutting he has instead startled with shock and been incredibly kind and supportive instead. He probably doesn’t think of himself as a proper gentleman by the standards of his country. He is what I was brought up to think of as a gentleman.

He has achingly polite manners a lot of the time. He is deeply considerate. He accepts things about me that I’ve had to fight over all my life. Not in a “go limp with resignation” sort of way, he accepts me calmly and without fuss. It’s just true. I feel guilty every time I assume something negative and he comes back entirely positive or neutral.

I feel safe and comfortable with him. I’m scared he is going to turn and run every time I cry. I’m not always managing to be a fun toy. He doesn’t have a lot of expectations about me. I feel bad that I flinch as much as I do. It feels unfair. I am sad every time I know I am tense because Noah would have been upset.

I love Noah and I will until the day I die. It is also true that we were both intensely traumatised people. We had massive gangrenous wounds that had to be accounted for all day every day. We were together all day every day. I see all the ways he accommodated me and I see all the ways I accommodated him. I see the ways we were fairly abusive with each other at various points in our marriage. I’m not rewriting my marriage in the rear view. I saw all of this and wrote about it as it was happening. I talked about us screaming at each other. I talked about name calling when it happened. I talked about hitting when it happened.

I am not rewriting the story. I am seeing it come to a close and I am trying to assess the physical damage I will get to live with in the cells of my body because I shaped myself around Noah in ways that were not always healthy. I loved my marriage and I would have stayed forever. I thought he was worth the cost I paid. I would have been willing to pay twice what he cost me. He was good for me in so many ways. I don’t think I would be ok right now if I hadn’t had him. Noah gave me a home.

We both wrote quite a bit over the years about how we both believed that I would not have been capable of accepting anyone less abusive. I needed who and what Noah was.

If I had known how short our timeline was I may have made some different choices. If I had known what the timeline was then I made bad choices. I didn’t though. I was planning around 30 or 40 or 50 years together. I don’t think I made bad choices considering what I expected to have to carry. I would be ok with being a lot more burnt out in trade for giving Noah a better last year of his life. 2024 sucked. There were high points but mostly it was a brutal year from start to close.

I would have made different choices if I knew that was the last time I would have with Noah. I miss him so much that I feel like I will explode with pain. It’s been five months and I wouldn’t say I feel better. I am having more positive emotions. The lows are still pretty terrible and they are happening most days.

This is part of what I am scared to share with a new partner. I cry a lot. I always have, that’s been true for 40 years. I have always had a lot of reason to cry. This feels like it wants to swamp me the way Uncle Bob’s death did but I don’t have the structure in my life to support that much going off the rails. So I am not. I’m holding my shit together. I sneak off and I cry for some time almost every day. Some days are too busy and by the end of it I am jittery like I’ve just downed a six pack of Jolt. I cry to let the stress out of my body because it is better than almost every other way of coping.

I am having big feelings about the way I am crying with Gentleman. I have cried with him a number of times now. That’s not normal for me. Usually I hide. It is not safe to cry in front of people most of the time. I hate that I mostly could not let Noah touch me when I cried because I was really overwhelmed. It didn’t feel safe. There were too many times when I was hurting very badly and he hurt me more. He wanted to be my safe person. He would work at it really hard. Then something would happen and I would make him mad and he would hurt me again. He was always really upset that I couldn’t drop the flinch response. He didn’t want me to act like he hurt me.

I didn’t want him to flinch away from me either. Sometimes he did when I was angry and my tongue ran away with me.

He was the least bad bad guy I could find and we spent decades being deeply and overwhelmingly obsessed with each other. Sure, there were issues. It’s weird calling any of it abuse because so much of it was explicitly consented to. Even though he was allowed to treat me any way he saw fit he had to live with the consequences. Even if I said I would never leave and he could do anything he wanted to me that didn’t change the fact that I flinched really hard sometimes.

He was my white trash prince with all the violence and anger that indicates. He was also one of the kindest people I’ve ever known in my whole life. With every passing year his violence towards me was more calculated and surgical. He wanted to hurt me to shape me to be more pleasing to him. I was willing to follow anywhere he lead.

I don’t think I can have a relationship with a bad guy again. I’ve had a few encounters since I started dating. A few of these men have been deeply problematic. I’m not going to recount the wild stories right now. That’s not the point.

The point of this essay is I am having a very hard time accepting the way I am sinking into this relationship with Gentleman because he is so easy to be around. Instead of flinching I keep finding that instead I am softening. I usually start crying because I am trying to communicate about somewhere that I am worried about us developing a problem. Every time he hugs me and waits for me to be done and we move forward without there being a problem.

The fact that I want to trust him as much as I do makes me wary. That feels dangerous. He would like to be more helpful to me. He’s that flavour of man. I like doing homey care taker things for him and he’d like to do pieces of them for me. So far I am flinching away because it would bring about possible contact with the kids and it is too soon. I like arbitrary time lines. Why? Because they give me structure and purpose. Because the first 9 whole months of our relationship will overlap with the first year my kids have had to live without their father.

It feels respectful to wait.

It also feels compassionate to myself to allow someone to comfort me. Of course I only want to accept that from someone I’m having sex with. Duh. That’s my way. I have always bonded to people through sex. That’s been a big pattern. My kinky friends think I am demented because I consciously and deliberately went looking for vanilla sex. I was not looking for a pervert. I don’t need to have my boundaries pushed right now. I need the gap between my boundaries and my partner’s to be vast with me far in the lead. I need it.

I need to stop looking for bad guys.

I have stopped looking for bad guys. When a couple have wandered into my life I turned them around and pushed them right back out. Instead I am picking to double down on the people who make me feel safe. If I don’t feel safe I don’t come back. It’s really weird in my body.

I felt comfortable with Noah. I felt known. I felt accepted. I felt loved. I felt adored. I felt worshiped. Sometimes I felt safe; sometimes I didn’t. He never signed on to being my protector. It was explicit. We did the best we could by one another. In most ways I still feel absolutely convinced that he was better than I deserved.

I’m listening to a lot of songs that have been big parts of my personal soundtrack through this life. The Day Before You. The First Cut is the Deepest. I feel like my brain is trying to resort every part of my memory. There is now an end to the story arc with Noah. The songs that he sang to me with passion and fondness and tenderness cut like a knife. There’s a bunch of Irish songs that fucking wreck me. Shortie keeps asking me to play them. Noah had such a beautiful voice. He sang me to sleep or read me to sleep or talked me to sleep for two decades.

If I include the time we were engaged Noah and I lived together for just under 19 years. I lived with my cat Puff for longer than 19 years. There’s my kids; we’ll see how long they stay. My current cats have been in my house for 5.5 years. My mom’s longest stretch with me was 5 years; she also had a 3 year stretch. All the foster homes were crammed into the 10 years in the middle. I had a boyfriend I lived with for 3 years. I never made it longer than 2 years in Auntie’s house and my mom was there with me. The fostering without mom never lasted longer than a month.

I’m scared. I notice this all the time. I’m pretty terrified of being vulnerable. I am going to be. I’m exhausted all the dang time lately. I do need to start being more careful with my diet again but it’s not mostly that. Mostly I’m deeply burned out and depressed and I’m swimming through an ocean of grief. We are coping but I’m not at the top of my game. A lot more than usual is falling through the cracks. I can’t be more effective or efficient. I don’t have it to give. I’m seriously operating beyond capacity every day. I feel awful. I’m disabled and I’m doing my best to be two parents. I am getting mixed results shall I say.

I don’t feel like I have a choice. I’m aware of all the things I’m not getting done that other people manage. I feel like a loser pretty much every minute. I’m exhausted all the forking time. I feel like I don’t have a brain. I have started avoiding phone calls like they are electrical shocks.

I feel guilty for trying to construct a self that will move forward. I feel guilty because I feel like I am abandoning Noah. I’m not. I’m acting like the internet: I am routing around damage to keep going. I don’t get to stop. Maybe not ever. I am going to have to slow down a lot. I have less to give without Noah coping with all the awful parts of adulting. It’s funny because he thought I coped with the awful parts of adulting for him.

We’ve been doing a lot of talking in my house about the difference between codependence and conscious interdependence.

We’ve been doing a lot of talking in general. All of us are struggling without Noah around to talk at for hours a day. We have spent so much time together as a family and every single day is a reminder that our future looks nothing like our past. It’s really weird when I notice somewhere that I am not being difficult or blowing up in a way I commonly would because I’m not reacting to Noah. I’m not trying to head something off before it bugs him. I’m not trying to manage my emotional range for his benefit.

I didn’t expect that losing Noah means I get to soften. I don’t have to be defensive of the things he wants me to be defensive of. I can relax and not look to him to see how I’m allowed to feel. Our rhetoric was that he was watching me. I watched him too. A lot of the way he learned to control his affect and mannerism was because he was trying to not trigger me. I did the same kind of thing but it didn’t make me softer and kinder. It made me sad and wounded. I don’t want to feel like I am healing from Noah but in some ways I clearly am.

He is very much the best relationship of my life. There were still very hard parts. I’m not sure what my future looks like but it’s not going to look like my past. I won’t be going back to the day before Noah. I am not who I was. I like being Krissy Gibbs so much more than I ever liked being Krissy Archer. I am looking forward to when I will have been Krissy Gibbs longer. 6 years and 3 months to go. I’m so sad Noah won’t be with me.

I would not have accomplished 1/4 of what I did without him. He was always able to believe in me when I couldn’t believe in myself. Including believing that if he insisted hard enough I would somehow become monogamous in my spirit. There is no way to count the hundreds of hours we spent doing hypnosis and NLP actively trying to get me to only think of Noah.

This is how I know I am not a computer. I cannot be programmed. I cannot conform no matter how much I would like to. I am different. I would like to be able to comply and make people happen but I don’t have it to give. I’m feeling really bad about that lately. “Lately”. I have always felt bad about this. At this point I suspect that most of the disappointment for my failure to be shaped like cookie dough is only in my head. Other folks are fairly cheerful about taking me as they find me.

Other people do not look at me the way Noah did. They don’t look at me and see so much potential, if only I would stop doing _______________. For years I have struggled with how much I felt like I had to be the motor for all of us. I had to push people to get up and start chores and fucking leave the house sometimes. Noah was a cave troll. His children enjoy being such as well.

I feel like my motor has come to a stop. For a while I was hunting for sex and that gave me a huge boost of energy. Now I’m too weary to muster the energy to go end things with the last one I added. I am struggling with finding the unmitigated good from the sex with Gentleman because I am so anxious about fucking everything up. It’s pretty ridiculous of me, yet also predictable. He’s really happy to spend time with me. He takes all the opportunities he gets. He would like more. I don’t need to feel anxious. It’s silly. I’m being silly. I’m the one holding the brakes and I’m doing it for really good reasons. I’m doing it to create a safe container for my children to mourn in.

Noah was such a good father. It is going to be important for me to keep my mouth shut about the ways I’m processing Noah as a mixed figure in my life. They need Saint Noah and I need to let them have him that way. I also need to acknowledge for myself that he was a human. He was a human I loved with my whole soul. I would have stayed forever. I was comfortable with the ways we hurt each other. It was home. It was the safest home I have ever had. It was the home in which we both felt the most loved we ever felt in our lives. We were broken together and I’m not sorry.

Noah took in a feral stray and turned me into a pampered and well tended pet. He made me believe I don’t deserve to suffer the maximum amount every day of my life. That counts for a lot. Maybe someday I will even forgive myself for not being monogamous. I’m not. It’s not in my nature.

Maybe someday I will have a life in which I don’t feel like being this thing is the reason that I am irredeemably bad.

Maybe someday.

Limbo is the worst

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27 days of waking up without Noah. I haven’t managed to get the kids in school yet. Over the weekend someone sent me an email telling me where I need to get the process started, 11 days after my first email. I think the schools are in the middle of big tests? Not an easy time to integrate a high needs home educated kid.

Do you know how hard I worked for the life that is ending? I spent 10 year preparing to be a teacher before I had kids. Then I spent 16.5 years home educating/being home. I was part of a partnership and we worked together like we were made for each other. Now I am a solo parent and my need to go to school.

I’m holding on by a thin thread right now. The trial is hanging out in the back of my head making me crazy every day. I can’t “educate” on top of barely staying alive right now. My brain won’t cooperate. I can’t focus on them and be entertaining and fun and light so they remember the material. I will scream at them to hurry up and then they’ll remember nothing.

I said we need to finish this year and go through all of next school year and if it isn’t working out I’ll pull Shortie and we can figure out home education together. She will be my only one and we can be more adventurous at her speed without the older “I’m too cool to play” kids along. I’m not getting rid of home ed materials for two years. I’ll decide that in two years when I decide about the house. Exactly two years from *today* there is a note on my calendar.

Ha, the day before my cunt sister turns 58. How can such a waste of skin and cells be here and Noah is not? There is no fair in this life. Wanna know something funny? When my Uncle died the cunt came to me and asked, “Has anyone close to you ever died before?”

Like our brother and father had not both committed suicide like 10 years earlier. Like we hadn’t had a whole series of family friends die. Today I think I know what she meant. Noah’s death hurts more than every other death put together time a million. This feels so much more painful than everything that has ever happened to me. Because this, for the first fucking time, is the death of my hope. I held on to hope by my fingernails all these years. If I worked hard enough my life would get better. I worked so hard.

My life will be better than it is today, someday. I won’t be awaiting a trial. I won’t have as much to do that I hate.

My life will never be better than it was on 23 December, 2024. That was my last truly good day. I went with Noah and the two younger kids to hang with Bestie and her youngest. We rode the Santa VR ride and it was very silly and fun. It was just a day. Noah was hobbling around with crutches but so cheerful with it. He so seldom complained. When he complained I would jump like I’d been electrocuted to go figure out how I could fix something for him.

I was the complainer, not him.

I remember standing with him and watching the kids interact and play. We leaned our head together and he whispered, “We made those.” I said, “I know!” We grinned and nuzzled in for a hug while we watched.

No one will ever look at my children with overwhelming pride with me again. That feels so terrible. When Noah was alive I made a point to avoid “we” language as a parent. Rarely did I say “we think”. Now I just say, “We love you. We are so proud of you.” Now, yeah he’s a monolith of feelings that agree with mine. If you don’t think so, fuck off.

It is hard for people this cool to be children. They have too much sense of self and being controlled while a child sucks.

I am not in a good position mentally or emotionally to home educate. I may not ever be again. Over the years Noah has expanded his portfolio of parenting time to “cover” a lot of the roughly 15 hours we have awake children with high needs. He probably covered a good 6 hours a day with me completely checked out. Between volunteering for organisations in town, Vicki research, art projects, writing, and general body maintenance he insisted on me taking those hours. He wanted me to feel like I had an identity outside of us like he did in the Ruby world.

Now my time is going to be different. I will orient around the school year (that part is actually easy for me). I have never been great about getting up and out the door on time for school. I was publicly humiliated for my poor attendance in schools. I wonder why I didn’t come when every day I went I was hit.

I am not looking forward to the drumbeat of regulation. It is going to mandate that most of my odd habits and patterns be abandoned, at least for a few years. I suspect I have three years ahead of me of needing to walk Shortie. I think the year after that she would start insisting that she’s not a baby and she wants to go alone. It’s not a dangerous walk by any measure. Only one big road to cross and there’s a light.

I will not be able to get into hyperfocus and do one huge project at a time. I am going to have to carefully slice up my day. I think I should spend 2-4 hours a day exercising. That sounds like a lot, but walking Shortie to school will take ~1 hr/day. Cycling to and from town to run other errands will fill close to 45 minutes. A 2 hour minimum is not a lot more than existing for me. I need to get back to taking several yoga classes a week. I should rock climb a couple of times a week–I need the strength in my shoulders desperately. I should start taking weight training seriously. I should cycle on longer routes sometimes just for training–my buddy who lives on the Black Isle can’t drive right now so I need to get over to see her. It’s really easy for a visit to a friend who is mildly out of town to require 3 hours of exercise. Also, gardening.

I am going to be a body in motion. I can’t keep sitting still near Noah. There is no Noah to stay with. There is no Noah to chase me up the hill saying I’d better move faster because he wants athletic sex, thank you. He was working out a lot and he was getting so fit. I loved our life so much. I loved him so much. He was the source of all the joy and good luck and happiness in my life. It all came through him. Yes, I love my kids–but he gave them to me.

I’m starting to get low key upset that everyone but me is having visions/dreams/think they hear him auditory hallucinations. I’m not seeing him. My only dream was trying to dig an enormous tick out of my thigh with just my fingernails. It was not a fun dream.

I am scared that something is coming that I’m going to have to deal with and I would not have been able to get the job done if I was happy. It is only because I am a miserable, lonely motherfucker that I will be able to be of real value. I’m afraid that is going to become my conditional state for entry to the social contract. I don’t like being the “There but for the grace of God go I” person. I hate being inspiration porn. Sometimes people have said things like, “I was really upset about X happening but then I thought of your life and I didn’t feel ok being upset anymore.” Don’t fucking do that. Don’t do that to me and don’t do that to you. We each have our own scale. They aren’t transferable. You bear shit I can’t.

Right now from where I’m sitting, there is the high probability I will keep the house. My kids want to be able to come and go. I want the garden. If the kids are gone I will invite lots of guests over. I’ll do things. I’ll make things. I will be part of a community and it will be lovely.

I will always feel unseen and lonely in my soul. My Perfect Witness to my life has died. Now it all feels like grains of sand running out a hole in the side of a timer. Never again will this unit mark time along with everyone else. Minutes, and later hours and days will vanish and not really exist.

This is my new pain level 10. This is worse than being picked up by your pectoral muscles before being shaken like a dog shakes his toys.

Dad is leaving today and I will miss him terribly. He has been a wonderful companion and helper during this first stage. He is a fantastic Grandpa. He is a completely stress-free house guest. I continue to treasure this friendship. We became friends in 2000. I’m really glad that I have been able to keep him in my life.

Pam’s giant mountain of a man is going home tomorrow. He’s really nice. It’s been incredibly heart warming seeing the two of them be so gloriously in love. Pam is here for another 11 days. I really freaking hope we can get school sorted in that time. I’m also hoping to be done talking to governments, legal people, and financial people. Set it up, knock it down.

I am not going to carry a bunch of work from cleaning up my old job as Noah’s wife forward into my new life. I need to finish and move on. I need to find a rhythm I can keep like a drumbeat.

I need to be the mother I needed to have when my life went sideways and there was a tremendous amount of overwhelming change and pain happening in my life.

Do you know what I watched Noah learn how to do? Take a deep breathe, channel his inner chaos and power into a think he could squeeze smaller with his fingers, then he pushed it down into the center mass of his power to rejoin all of its friends to be recalled later. He wasn’t “stuffing his feelings” he was controlling when it was useful to use them. He was choosing who to share them with. He was choosing when to share them.

That’s a lot of how he managed to have such great mentor energy with every fucking person in the Ruby community. He had a lot to give and he was humble about offering it. I am going to have to take on a lot of Noah’s steadying role. It’s going to be hard. I am used to being allowed to be impulsive to a noticeable degree because I made him be the adult. (He was impulsive in his ways, too. I did adult, too.)

I just don’t know what my safe place to let them out will look like yet. It feels like an endless pool of pain and I am kicking as hard as I can but I can’t keep my face fully above the water line.

Time to go kiss people awake.

What does the future hold?

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The last few months have dramatically not gone to plan on many levels. Everything has ended up being way harder. In a way that makes me feel sad. In a way it almost feels like a relief. I’ve been waiting for the results of the last round of “My efforts towards the first wave of people have either flamed out or settled into a secure relationship”. I now feel more secure and confident about where I should and shouldn’t be putting energy. I learned who actually likes me and who likes me if I can lie really well all the time and care about their feelings instead of my own.

It’s ok. That’s normal human stuff. I’m not angry about it, just resigned. I’ve been saying since I moved here that some attempts at relationships would work out but most would not. It’s turning out to be true. I’m not shocked or upset.

I am in need of resting and regrouping. I am desperately in need of a chance to refocus on the parts that matter the most. The only people who are likely to show up for me in my old age live in this house. It’s simply, literally, true. I’ve been looking outside my house a lot over the past few years in ways that have put me in a tough spot.

Heck, even reopening the conversation about polyamory. I am patting Past Me on the back for saying, “Let’s start talking about this when we have no chance of either of us going out on a date with someone anytime soon.” Yes, I have a lover-in-waiting but from the very first day there has been the understanding that if it turns out this would be a bad thing for my marriage we won’t do it at all. I’m pretty certain it won’t harm my marriage. What might it turn into?

I think I am going to have an old friend I love very much I see sometimes. It’s difficult trying to figure out what is the best path forward for all concerned. I would respond more to stated wishes of the folks involved if they were more willing to state them. Instead I am just flying blind.

I’m thinking about the series of steps relationships usually have for me: getting past the first date, 3 weeks, 3 months, 6 months, 9 months, and a handful have morphed and changed over much longer periods. In terms of roughly the number of people I have dated: 78% only get one date, 10% made it to 3 weeks, 5% made it to 3 months, 2% made it to 6 months, 2% made it to 9 months, 2-3% make it more than a year. I’m counting the ending point only. I break up with ~95% of the people I date by 6 months. That’s fucking dramatic.

I’m 3.5 months into courting Travel Boyfriend and I’m having a lot of feelings. I wouldn’t say we are dating yet, not really. But we are courting to see if there is the possibility of a relationship there that could be good for both of us. Noah is being patient and understanding and supportive.

Most humans take on jobs, tasks, and relationships without really understanding how hard they will turn out to be in advance. This is the human “normal” as a way to approach the future. If we knew how bad it would be we wouldn’t try. So in a way this hubris is important and great and absolutely necessary for the species. The trouble is, when you sign on for something not knowing how hard it will be you sometimes get yourself into a situation where you can’t finish something and other people suffer. That is part of life. That failure is part of life. I feel like it is the kind of thing where people learn their own limits through trial and error, mostly.

I have failed a lot of times. I am pretty clear about a lot of the scope of my limits.

I am a human with a lot of limits. I have to respect those.

I am very nervous about aspects of this relationship with Travel Boyfriend. The very best role I can play in his life is to push him through fixing the stuff that stands between him and seeming like someone who would be a really great primary partner for anyone. There are specific aspects of his life that make it pretty impossible for him to find what he says he wants to have. Every single one of those things could be changed with conscious effort. If he actually wants what he says he wants. They are things that would be hard to change completely on his own. They are things that are significant enough that it’s hard to get buy in from a stranger that the payoff off for the work will be worth the effort. Every relationship is a crapshoot. Everyone is operating at a deficit these days. Who has the energy to help other people work through their shit?

Amusingly I’m writing this while listening to the song that played in the strip club the first time he ever saw me with my shirt off. I was 18. It was a friend’s birthday. I was pulled up on stage by the dancers. I had awkward tights and shorts on under my skirt so I didn’t try to remove my bottoms. I was fine with the ladies taking my top off.

I have to stop and think about our old Theatre Director. (That’s now his official nickname.) I don’t think I have written about this much over here. After I moved to Scotland Theatre Director ended up back in Texas providing hospice care to his parents. He helped them die. I knew he was a bad alcoholic. Before either of his parents died he and I talked about how he really didn’t know what he was going to do when his folks died. He’d have to leave the house and go somewhere and that was a big question mark. I told him that when he had to leave he could come stay with me for 6 months on a visitor visa.

Eventually he did come after everything finished years later. He stayed in the studio. He had a lot of identity wrapped up in being “that guy”. That guy you know who you can always call because he knows how to fix the problem. Time and grief and trauma and addiction were all weighing very heavily on him. He felt the weight of the failures in his life very keenly. It went about as well as such an experience is going to go.

I worry a lot about people writing checks they can’t cash. I worry about doing it. It’s not that I only worry about people handing them to me. I worry about the balance I get in return for how much effort I am putting out. There’s no fair here. I have already written a lot of big checks. How much do I really have left in my budget? What is realistic?

I am incredibly lucky that Noah has been unemployed right now. I have needed a lot of support and he’s been able to provide it. That means I haven’t asked local people for help. That’s what makes people feel like neighbours. I really can’t. I don’t feel like I’ve done a great job at making friends. People say that I can ask for help. But I can’t. I would much rather wither clean away than ask for help from people who have not demonstrated a desire for my company.

I do asks things of my Bestie in town. She is carrying a very heavy load though and I don’t do a lot to make hers easier. We are doing the best we can through this phase of life together. She is the sister of my heart and I followed her across the sea and I do not regret that. I am lying when I say that I can only depend on the people under this roof. Bestie has been a fair and foul weather friend for 30+ years.

When Theatre Director was here what he really needed me to do was participate in a facade where he “helped” me do projects that I could do on my own. The trouble was, I can’t do those things alone. He wasn’t actually able to help very much. That got me into some bad spots with my body and he expected me to ignore my pain to assuage his ego. That was not a thing I could do. That really hurt emotionally on top of the physical pain. Theatre Director was not able to assess “This project is too physically difficult for us and we should not do it.” When I said that he did not want to believe me.

The kindest thing I can do is try to understand when other people are trying to write checks they can’t cash and give them the pretense of belief. Meanwhile I must mentally put the claim into the “this is a pie crust promise” bucket in my head. I’m not very good at this. I have to consciously fight my inner fury about being clearly lied to.

It is hard that people don’t know they are lying. They mean it when they say it. They don’t know what they are promising and they don’t mean what they actually express most of the time. So much of the casual discourse people have in life is full of casual half-truth promises that have no intention behind them. That’s hard. I got hard dumped as a friend this week. It is stinging a bit. Ah well. Move on.

It is scary trusting someone enough to put time and energy into them. I don’t know how much this is social anxiety rebound from how much social time I had in June, how much is PTSD avoidance after the sexual assault, how much is surgery recovery, how much is (fill in the blank).

I just know that right now I feel absolutely terrified of risk. I have a lot to lose. If I don’t do the next few years right I will regret it forever. When I hit the end of surgery recovery I have to start doing a level of support work my kids aren’t used to. They are choosing tasks that are frankly obscene and in order to make it possible I am going to support them like they took on something that hard.

The thing is, doing it myself is faster and fucking easier and they have learned the skills. They will be able to get their cleaning deposits back someday. It’s time for them to focus away on other skills. I’ve always said this would come.

Hell, if the kids notice that with proper negotiations and exchanges of kinds of work I can be a lot easier to live with maybe they will do their chores more promptly in the future when we renegotiate? It’s a dream.

If I can understand clearly where someone’s limits are then I can understand with compassion where they are making pie crust promises. My life is going to require a lot of that very specific compassion of me over the next couple of years no matter what I do.

So what do I do? I complicate my life extra with something ambiguous and with a high potential to hurt a lot. I am scared this might end up in the loss of a dear old friend because one or the other of us does something unforgivable. It could happen. It wouldn’t be the first time in my life it went either direction.

The most likely outcome is a few fun holidays and then wishing him well on the rest of his life. Sure, it is having a really melodramatic long lead in and everything. I am too old to make rash decisions based on sex. I can’t withstand a lot more casual damage. I need to act like I am fragile. I need a melodramatically long and involved courting process before it is a good idea for me to give someone the opportunity to hurt me. My body is fragile. Someone needs quite an education before touching me is a good idea. There is a lot to communicate if someone is going to have enough information to make safe choices with me.

Over the next few years I think my dating opportunities will be few and far between. I think I will have very little to give and a lot of needs that I will be blatantly ignoring because I don’t have the ability to take the risks required to fill those needs. Making friends requires social rejection. I am bound and determined that I am going to know most folks in town before I ever go out on a date. I don’t want to date strangers ever again. I’ve had some success, but look at those numbers.

That’s a lot of fucking failures.

Are they all failures? Were any of them failures? Or did they just run their course and we moved on? I like to say that the great part of dating a lot of different people is you learn a lot about what kinds of things you can and can’t compromise on and that’s very useful.

Noah and I courted for six months then eloped. We weren’t dating when he showed up out of the blue and asked me to marry him. It’s a longer story but not for now.

How to measure time with someone I have loved for 25 years? TB is a very good friend. It feels more important than ever to make sure I don’t hurt someone negligently by being selfish and short sighted. Trying to figure out what is the most good for the least amount of cost is hard. There are so many variables out of my control.

Maybe I should just thank my lucky stars that TB waited this long to start getting his shit together because I get a chance to have a short term positive relationship that ends when it is a natural time to grow past it. It won’t be a failure. If the point going in is that it is going to end fairly soon then I can grab all the good I can for the amount of cost I can bear. I will have to be realistic to myself about my priorities. I am going to have to be realistic about how much rejection I can handle. I am, predictably, feeling it as a wave of rejection right now.

I have a lot of people counting on me and I can’t let them down. That means I need to limit the things I add to my life that hurt me. That’s complicated.

Find gratitude: flood edition

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In five years this will be the kind of story we tell as a group and we will cackle. Heck, by three hours after it happened I had already started laughing in that “Holy fucking shit of course this happened this week” sort of way. Ok this is kind of a long story.

We ran out of oil last week. Apparently our tank is set just a little bit lower than the boiler so even when it looks like there is still oil… that doesn’t mean there is enough pressure to get to the house and the water and heat will go out. It took us a few days of messing about with calling plumbers and waiting for them to not show up before we called the joiner-man-of-all-work who has done all of the other work for us. Turns out he has a buddy who works on our type of boiler! He was there 15 minutes later. I’m sure he was shaking his head over how silly we are but I can live with that. Put a call into the oil company: oh whoops. It is after 5 on a Friday. They won’t hear the message till start of business on Monday. Ok. First thing Monday we get an email saying they put in a work order. It can take up to a week before oil is delivered once the work order is put in. Noah calls them and explains our situation. They put a star next to our order to hopefully put us near the top of the priority list. But it’s Wednesday and no idea when the oil will arrive.

This sucks particularly hard because our tenant is Muslim and he should be taking showers and going to Mosque every day right now. Freezing showers are not his idea of a good time. I don’t blame him. I told him not to pay rent on May 1st because this whole situation is our fault and it’s negatively impacting their life to a severe degree and just oh good grief. I feel so bad for negatively impacting their lives right now.

Tuesday was pretty good in the main. Youngest Child and I went for a carefully socially distanced play date with her two little same-age friends at the park. It was nice. Then lunch was tasty. Eldest Child asked me to go for a hike after lunch and we went up the hill into the woods. Youngest enjoyed being in the shoulder-carrier for a lot of the trip up the hill because she was tired. Freakin kids.

EC told me a lot about the characters in the new-to-her anime she is currently obsessed with. What she likes and doesn’t like about them: apparently the best character is a teacher who she says reminds her of me. Every child in the class is traumatized but very prepared for life! Hm. We talked a lot about different things that are coming up for her. We talked about how different people have different skills/talents/things to teach you and it’s ok that you drift back and forth appreciating people more and less at different stages that’s fine. She said something… I don’t remember exactly what. She has this hero worship of me thing lately and it’s frankly quite bizarre. She really wants to grow up and be like me because I am so awesome and I always know the right thing to do. I told her I worry that I haven’t let her fuck up enough. Then I said that I don’t always do the right thing. She scoffed.

I told her that a few years ago I had a birthday party and I was feeling very hemmed in by being a parent and always giving and always having to project happiness I only kind of feel and I was tired of being responsible and an adult and… so I arranged that there would be a morning birthday party that was kid friendly then an adult part afterwards that would be very adult and involve taking drugs. It didn’t start out as a party that would involve drugs but it morphed into one over a couple of weeks of planning. Her eyes got a bit wide.

I told her that in the run up to this party someone that I loved dearly sent me a letter telling me that I was an evil drug pusher and I was ruining people’s lives and I was a very bad person for doing this. I explained that he was dealing with having a child in rehab and he was questioning his own life choices and feeling like he made some bad decisions and really he was yelling at his past self and trying to have me make better/different choices than he had made so I didn’t have so many regrets.

She said she was confused because I still talk to the guy and I talk about him in glowing terms and how can I feel love for someone who was so awful to me?

There is a difference between people who run you down and want you to feel bad because that is the sort of toxic relationships they have in general and people who love you very much where sometimes they have something very painful happen and they lash out with pain. There is a difference between a toxic user and being a human being in terrible pain. It can be hard to tell them apart; it’s about large patterns over many years and typical tendencies not one time things. It’s about believing the totality of what you see from a person and not thinking an outlier is the truth.

I told her that I sat on that email for a few days trying to deal with my own hurt and when I responded I told him that I understand that he is in great pain and he is taking it out on me. I told him that I forgive him and when he is ready to talk to me again I will be waiting. It took about five years. We spoke again and he apologized and I tried to be gracious: goodness knows I have done more than my share of lashing out in pain. I love him and he has been really good to me before and since that one explosion of pain.

We all deserve grace. Human beings make mistakes, most especially when we are hurting and we feel like we have hurt other people through our ignorance or unintentional mistakes. If we want grace we have to give grace.

People are my religion. I believe in you. I believe that you can change and grow and be better. I believe I can change and grow and be better. I want to do that together. We learn the most from our biggest mistakes. We learn from the big mistakes of our friends. If we want to have connection and love we have to see and accept people for the totality of their humanity.

She clutched my hand and leaned her head on my shoulder and told me that she feels very lucky to have me as a mom. My heart soared.

Then we watched YC a little ahead of us on the trail pull down her britches in the middle of the path and pee all over her clothes. It was… hilarious. I did not give her a ride down the hill. She had to walk.

When we got to the bottom after our 5 mile hike EC and I both discussed how much we would like to have ice cream. She said she would deal with cleaning up YC while I rode my bike into town and got some of the good gelato. Noah was making dinner. Middle Child was doing online classes.

I enjoyed listening to Hamilton on the way to and from town and I cried thinking about how hard life is and relationships are so painful. I’m so impressed by the nuance given to Aaron Burr in the story. I was thinking a lot about my mom. I wish that grief could get less intense.

Then… I got home. From the road I could hear an annoying beeping. I prayed that it was coming from my neighbors property and not my house. No such luck. When I walked in the smoke detectors were screaming. It was hard to tell exactly what was wrong; my first guess was Noah burned something while cooking. I looked around and no such luck. There was no smoke. Instead there was water pouring through the light fixtures and smoke detector. It was splashing all over the computer table and floor and I could see it coming from the upstairs. Everyone in my house was screaming at me trying to explain what was going on. I tripped on YC as she darted back and forth screaming and adding to the general sense of disorder and she decided that the absolute worst part of the day was me stepping on her. I did not apologize. I think I screamed that everyone was in so much trouble.

I then decided that the right thing to do was turn off the master power to the whole damn house and I will deal with everything else once the deafening fucking noise was gone. I asked Noah if he had told our tenant what was going on (she was downstairs with her tiny baby listening to all this). Of course he hadn’t so I went and gave her a brief explanation so that she wasn’t concerned while ignorant. I promised I would handle it as fast as possible.

I went in my room and called the wonderful handy-man-of-all-work and said I needed him to talk me through something but I don’t need him to show up. Luckily he pretty much agreed with all of what I was proposing and we made a few jokes about how maybe it would be best to chain the 3 year old to a tree in the yard for a while.

I came out and went to the electrical panel and started doing a little bit of sifting through what could be turned back on and what needed to be left off indefinitely. This allowed me to run an extension cord from the studio to the kitchen with a dehumidifier and a space heater running. There was a lot of confusion and talking over each other and in the process I was not so kind and I told YC that she did this and I was very angry about it.

But after I stuck buckets and pots under the drips (other people thought just putting a towel under the flowing water was good enough… yeah no) and moved computers and had EC move all of the freezer foods out to the deep freeze in the shed and we had dinner and sat down to just… stare off into space that’s when I started laughing.

EC asked what kind of trouble she was in. I said the kind where I’m really mad for an hour or two then I get over it because shit happens. When you have kids… these things are going to happen. It is utterly unavoidable.

I know exactly what happened. YC turned on the shower sprayer attached to the bathtub and sent the water everywhere. She had a great time. The upstairs bathroom is not well sealed at the base of the wall meeting the floor. The water went around the edges and got down through the air space in between floors and then went looking for any hole it could find to come down. The walls and ceiling aren’t soft at all and by this morning it is dried out and fine. I know there isn’t any other leak and the paint job is fine.

This reaffirms my belief that I would like to have every bathroom in my house fully sealed into being a wet room as time and money allows. Shit happens.

Nobody is in trouble today. We had banana bread and ice cream last night. And by we I mean everyone except for the kid who ate about 4 slices of banana bread earlier in the day because holy cheese that was your dessert for the day. Noah decided that he is done messing about with trying to find contracting work that allows him to work part time. He is going back to full time work because when he works full time his income is absolutely obscene and all of the things we’d like to fix in the house could be fixed after a year or so of him working full time. If I am careful about how I do it I can probably get our savings goals to full completion in fiveish years and afford to do the remodel stuff that would give us more space to manage living here pretty much permanently no matter how many kids stay with us.

I woke up this morning and turned the breakers back on. Things are fine and other than some remaining clean up (laundry, scrubbing floors) it’s over.

My gratitude is this: I get to wake up in a safe house and fix my problems. I get to plan for the day when I will have the means in petty cash to fix all of this and every other problem that is going to erupt. I am more safe than I knew a person can be. Thank you Noah for picking the right hobby when you were 7. Thank you for asking me to marry you. Thank you for giving me this life.

When something breaks we can fix it. Almost no matter what it is. And in the long run… we will laugh about it.

In my next 20 years

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I realized this week that I had passed a major milestone. Sure, I went to Power Exchange and a few munches and Dore Alley in July but it was that second Saturday in August of 2000 that my life in the scene really began. That was where I met the people I consider my respected elders. That was where I made wonderful friends, many of whom I still know to this day. From the people at that party I went on to meet dozens of incredible people.

I am so lucky. I have been embraced and supported through relationships and life changes and growth. I have had my butt kicked and I have learned lessons and I have been given so much love.

I hope that in my next 20 years I can be worthy of the gifts I have been given. I have so much gratitude in my heart for the education I received at the hands of The Middle Aged Guard. At this point my elders are far flung and off doing a lot of different adventures. Some have passed away but their lessons are things I carry with me every day.

You will always live on in my heart. Thank you so much for everything.
With all my love, Krissy

16 days…

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16 days and 2 more international trips. First to Bangkok and then on to Inverness. Bangkok is because my partner has a business trip and we are going with him. Inverness is where we get to go home to.

Our visas all came through. We have the legal right to be in the UK for the next 5 years. If we stay in the country for enough days we will have the right to apply for leave to remain (basically a green card). If we stay in the country for enough days during leave to remain we have the right to apply for citizenship.

If Scottish independence succeeds… you bet your buttons that we are applying for citizenship. Hell yeah.

16 days till we get to go home to our big, beautiful house in the Highlands. I am so excited I can barely breathe. Our stuff is on a boat going over there now. (Thanks for the advice about how to label my boxes of porn.)

My wonderful lifelong best friend has been there for 10 years. She is setting aside furniture, dishes, linens, and as many other things as she can spare to help us adjust and find a place.

We are going to be Scottish. I am so excited.

And I have my own bedroom on a separate floor of the house from my kids so I have space for noisy sex. I have a room in the back yard that was sound proofed for a drum kit so I can scream all I want and no one will hear me.

I can’t wait!!

16 days. Just keep swimming. We are in Portland for five more days. I have plans with friends most of those days.

I will miss all the USians. Thank you for the influence you have been on my life. Thank you for your friendship and companionship. Thank you for your teaching and for your love.

Thank you for everything. I will think of you.

Falling in place.

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We got the house we wanted in Scotland. The previous owners are thrilled about how we want to add art to the space. (They cancelled showings with other families to accept our offer.)

And there is a sound proof room at the back of the property. I will finally be able to scream at my house without bothering neighbors or my kids. (They built it for a drum set.)

I am really excited. Next: finishing the visa process. The solicitor we are working with says he has never seen a more likely easy acceptance. Noah’s work history really is staggeringly impressive.

I am meeting nice kinky people so that I have friends other than my life long vanilla best friend.

Before we land in Scotland permanently I am getting to be blessed by touching base with some of the people who have inspired me since I was a teenager. I am in such a fantastic and lucky phase of life.

Did I mention that there is a self contained apartment so people can come visit us and have their own bedroom/living room/kitchen? If I love you and you know it you are always welcome.

We will be in Portland for a while next week. We will need to make a trip to California in August to close accounts and ship our stuff.

This is happening.

This is what you’re for.

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I don’t think that many people have their earliest memories of their parent involve their parent telling them that they exist to have people put things inside their body… but I’m not alone. I’ve talked to a fair number of people in my incest cohort and I’ll talk to more. I’m not alone. I’ve learned a lot from my cohort. I’ve learned that my father’s play book was not his alone.

There are a lot of really messed up people in this world. They hurt other people. I’m not saying that “all people who are abused grow up to abuse”… that’s patently untrue. It’s something like 80% of people who are abused do not grow up to hurt anyone. Most of us realize that hurting other people (nonconsensually) is a problem and we try to avoid doing it. But it’s a journey.

I was what folks euphemistically call a child predator. What that meant is I pushed for sex with other children who were really not ready. I sexually assaulted and raped people before I was 10 because I had no concept in my mind that people might even want to say no to what I was doing.

I found the bdsm community at 18. I am so grateful to you all.

I was sexually assaulted by people in the scene. Some of them fairly “big names”. Folks that people trusted. I also had some of the healthiest relationships of my entire life because of the scene. I learned from people who could clearly articulate their boundaries and limits and interests.

I am so inspired by those of you who know yourselves and you know what you like and don’t like. I’m better than I was but I’m still not where I want to get.

I’ve been in and around the bdsm community for going on 18 years now. I started out being uhhh… highly reactive. I would scream and rant and flail at people who crossed my boundaries because I didn’t have a less reactive way to deal with that. Thank you to all the kind people who recognized that I was a traumatized fucked up kid and you were patient with me. I remember the long kind explanations I used to get about why my reaction wouldn’t get me what I wanted in a given situation.

Even though it didn’t seem like it at the time… I was listening.

You have to understand that I was coming from a background where most of the “advice” I had been given up to that point was designed to make me easier to abuse. Most of the advice I had been given up to that point in my life was working towards lowering my sense of self esteem and self worth so I wouldn’t complain as people hurt me very badly.

I wasn’t in a good place to accept advice.

But many of you persevered. You kept talking to me. You recognized that I was a scared, feral animal. Thank you.

I’m still working through layers of sexual dysfunction. I’m still trying to get to the point where I have positive emotional and physical reactions to warning signs in my body. It’s very hard. I still want to dissociate and shut down and just wait for it to be over.

It’s still a slow process. I hate myself for how long it is taking and I know that 18 years of damage will take a lot more than 18 years to completely unravel because life just isn’t fucking fair. But I’ve come a long way.

Yesterday I managed to stop sex that was hurting me. I haven’t managed to do that all that many times in my entire life. Usually when it hurts like that I just dissociate and wait for it to be over. Yesterday I managed to have an internal emotional reaction where I decided I didn’t want to be hurt like that and I spoke up. It’s a huge deal for me.

It’s funny how I can negotiate that I don’t like floggers–I like to be hit with hands and single tails and canes… but I really struggle with saying “Sometimes my cunt doesn’t want to cooperate and you damage me when we try to have sex and I really shouldn’t have sex under those circumstances.”

Even though my husband is a pretty damn good man who will stop on a dime if told to. It isn’t that he doesn’t care. It’s that I struggle with thinking I am worth defending.

I know what I am for in the marrow of my bones. I was made to be hurt by sex. I was told so from when I was a toddler.

But maybe that was just one more lie from a flaming monster.

Maybe someday I will feel like I am made for something else.

Checking in

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Thank you for the phone calls. I really appreciate my friends. I’m trying to keep a more firm line in how much I talk about my shit with Shanna standing nearby. The last couple of times I have really unloaded about what was in my head repeatedly in a day she woke up with night terrors. Today I had the one outburst at my mom on the phone outside in the yard. Then I had one ~15 crying thing immediately following. Then I was calm the whole rest of the day. And Shanna didn’t have a night terror. That, to me, means I erred on the correct side of freaking out. I did a lot in the midst of my mom actively treating me like shit, but I did it outside and away from the kids. I did a little bit in the house with the kids nearby. Then I stopped. I was probably slower than average for the rest of the day, but I kept it together.

Mostly I did this because my friend, K, was due to come over in the morning anyway because she was coming over to babysit my kids while I went to therapy. Handy. Mostly at Jenny’s suggestion (Ack! Two Jennys! My brain is overloading and I will figure out that situation later.) I asked K to drive me down to therapy and they hung out in the park right across from the office. By the way, I’ve realized I’m going to have to do some work on my feelings around unsolicited advice. If I’m going to really do the blogging thing then I’m going to have to just deal with it. Oh man. That will make me twitchy.

And I’m up in the middle of the night trying to figure out what to think and feel about this latest development. I’m trying to decide how many cycles in my brain it gets to have. It doesn’t get as many as it wants right now. I have already decided I need a break from processing this kind of stuff right now and my mother does not have the right to override my decision making process. She doesn’t get to ruin my life anymore. I am on a semi-manic upswing right now. I am trying like hell to get upward momentum started. I can’t stop to obsess about this. Today I need to just get into my head that my mother is doing this to me because she is acting out the story in her head. She is not interested in doing the hard shitty work to break the cycles she has established. That’s not my problem. I am interested in doing that hard work. I am doing that work. Part of doing that work is stopping and telling the quiet, scared little girl inside me that she can’t actually hurt me anymore. Never again will she be allowed to send us to a monster. Tyra’s childhood was ruined too, but Shanna and Calli are escaping. My brother’s kids are escaping. One of my siblings absolutely continued the cycle but I have hope for Tyra. The way forward can’t be me staying up all night obsessing and it can’t be me feeling distracted and apathetic all day with the kids. That’s not acceptable. My life is good, wonderful, and I have all the possibilities in the world. I am not yet 30 years old. My life isn’t over yet. I get to grow up and be anyone I want to be.

Ok. I think I’m going to follow a few random paths for a while as I try to figure out which direction I want to grow in. But that’s ok. I have time.

PSA

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Today my friend Mollena has been sober for four years. I think that is amazing. That takes power and strength and dedication. I am deeply grateful for her friendship and it probably wouldn’t be where it is today if she had not finally taken the steps to attain sobriety. It’s such a big deal Mo, I love you.

Our bounty overfloweth

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The wonderful people who have been bringing us food have brought enough that at this point we are moving stuff to the freezer because there is no way we can go through it all fast enough. This is such a wonderful problem to have! We don’t need any fresh influx for at least four days. I’m going to be a little surprised if we are running low then. We are so incredibly lucky! The only thing I’m going to add is we need to pick up some super spicy Indian to go with the home made yogurt we were brought. The home made yogurt made with half and half. It’s so good it’s insane but it’s kind of overwhelming just by itself. 😀

I’m feeling so much love right now. 🙂

Adjusting is slow

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Hoo boy. All the people who said that going from 0-1 is way harder than 1-2 must not be talking about the first week. The first week with just Shanna was pretty damn blissful. We all hung out on the bed together and didn’t do much. We alternated who was napping and it was awesome. Uhm… it’s not like that this time. Shanna has So Much Energy. And keeping her from jumping on the bed (HELLO! Healing from internal wounds here!!!) is difficult. Other than that she’s just pushing boundaries slightly more than usual but really she’s not being out of line at all. So yeah. We aren’t as patient as we should be, but we are both working on it. She is quite in love with Calli. 🙂

Thank all the stars in the heaven for tandem nursing. Given how much the rest of me hurts I was about ready to flip my lid when my boobs started hurting last night because my milk came in. So I called my trusty, always hungry, toddler over. Insta-relief. (Yes, there is still plenty of milk for Calli.) Every minute of discomfort while nursing through pregnancy has already paid off. 🙂

We are trying to figure out a sleep schedule that will allow me to heal as quickly as possible. It’s a challenge. I have so much going on in my brain that it takes me forever to fall asleep, nearly an hour after each wake up when I can normally fall asleep in under five minutes, so that’s extra challenging.

I sorta went against orders and took a shower today. My stench was seriously bothering me. For those of you who are childfree, when you have a baby you then have basically hot flashes for a while as you sweat out a lot of the extra fluids you have been carrying around. This is not pretty. But a shower (ok, I sat in the tub with the shower nozzle on because I can’t stand and being submerged isn’t a great plan yet) felt decadent. Huzzah for hygiene.

We have a rather remarkable number of people bringing us food. I cannot express properly my gratitude. I think that I will karmically owe food to every newly delivered mother I ever hear about for the rest of my life. It feels really awesome.

Noah is the most amazing, supportive husband I can imagine having. He has earned so many brownie points that it will be decades before I return them all. I guess I’m going to have to stop whining about his night off. He’s earned several years worth of them recently.

I’m tired and my physical recovery is predictably slow. Walking to the bathroom is easier. Returning a plate to the kitchen is still a stretch and if you’ve seen how small my house is that’s pretty sad. I could not stand long enough to dry off after the shower. After not standing during the shower. Ugh. I’m not feeling patient with this. But it’s only been three days. I need to give myself a lot more time. I feel perkier while I am sitting in bed. Once I am vertical my bravado is revealed.

Calli is… mostly asleep really. 🙂 But she’s sweet and we are already fond of her. Yay hormones.

So sweet

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Last night I got to babble like mad at two wonderful people I don’t see often enough. That was really awesome. I really enjoy listening to smart, educated people going off at great lengths about their passions. It gives me this strange feeling of pride when I realize that people that smart want to be friends with me. 😀

And today I was given a surprise by the mom-group I’ve been hanging out with. It’s a banner made out of construction paper with inspirational sayings for birth. Things like:
Blessed be this birth
Strong and gentle all the way to pushing!
Each wave brings me closer to having my baby in my arms
I can & I am!
I can do anything for one minute
Settling; Surrendering; Letting Go
Courage; Faith; Patience
Pain is a wave… I let it wash over me and then it is gone
My baby is big but my vagina is HUGE!

I feel quite blessed that these women have joined my life. 🙂 I hung it up over the birth tub and I keep looking at it and feeling a sort of vague hug. As an adult, and especially as a mother, I feel a very different need for the camaraderie of women. As a child and teenager I strongly preferred men/boys. I like this evolution process.

This made my day

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(4:00:17 PM) friend: how you doing?
(4:00:55 PM) me: my nose is running like a faucet, I’m flippin hot (and not in any good way), if I stand up for more than about 3 minutes I’m super dizzy
(4:01:06 PM) friend: that sounds sick
(4:01:11 PM) me: But mostly I’m in good temper, which is rather surprising.
(4:01:29 PM) friend: you usually are whenever you’re doing what you think is right, and its hard

He went on from there, but that’s the bit that made me laugh in a cheerfully self-mocking way. 🙂

Oy.

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What I have done today:
Put our blankets and pillows in the car.
Eaten two meals.
Played on the internet.
Taken a bath.

And I can barely keep my eyes open. I’m totally wasted. Yeah, it’s time to go home. Luckily Jenny is in the air right now. I pick her up from the airport in ~3 hours and 40 minutes. She will get some time to stretch and then she will start the drive home. I owe her big time.

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Once again Shanna and I are heading off on an adventure! Thanks to a larger-than-expected tax return we can afford to go see my Sarah in Arizona again. This is very exciting because it means I can help Sarah unpack! I can be social *and* useful! That totally hits all my buttons of awesomeness. 😀 I looked into Amtrak instead of driving. The shortest trip would take 21 hours and Sarah would have to pick us up at 5am. That’s not a good way to make friends. 🙂 Definitely driving then.

I’ve gotten to see quite a few good friends recently. My life is pretty blessed.

Tired but happy

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Yesterday I had the privilege of watching Mollena win the International Ms. Leather contest. She was beautiful, poised, eloquent, and thought-provoking. I am biased, of course, but I really believe she was head and shoulders above the other contestants. (Although the cell phone fantasy was awesome.) I was really glad I kept my sorry, tired ass there long enough to see her win. I’m so proud of all the work she did. 🙂

My life fucking rocks.

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Let me count the reasons to be grateful towards the universe right now:

-Mo is coming to visit me today and she is going to help me do work! The only yardwork I will request of her is helping me get those @#%^#@ white rocks up. Then we will come inside and she will help me give the house the scrub down it has needed for months. She loves me *that* much. <3 -My cousin and her boyfriend are coming over on Tuesday. Her boyfriend is one of the most hard working people I have ever met in my life. He's going to help me get the rest of the yard work stuff done. I am so excited about this I could float off into the universe. I think that, unexpectedly, I am actually going to get my yard to a place where I am happy with it for the first time since I’ve lived here. That is so cool I can barely stand it.
-Taylor is coming over on Thursday and he will give me a massage. I’m going to be a happy pile of goo after that. And he will help me put the gate up in the side yard to keep Shanna out of the compost. 😀
-I am pretty sure I will have ALL of my projects done by Thursday and I can’t express how happy that makes me. I feel constantly unsettled and anxiety around projects not being done. It really affects my day to day happiness in negative ways. But I will get caught up! Dude! SO EXCITED!!!
-We have a babysitter for 10 hours on Saturday and we get to party hop! This will be thrilling.
-Good stuff with my aunt. It’s nice to have someone in my family sit down and listen to me. I needed that so much. My soul feels lighter.
-I have this wonderful, amazing, fabulous husband and hanging out with him is so awesome. 🙂
-Shanna continues to grow more individualistically person-like daily. It is so much fun to spend time with her. I really love watching her charm the pants off everyone she spends time around. 🙂 She is such a poster-child for reproduction that I giggle when avowed ‘not into kids’ people are all over her like white on rice. 😀
-I’m really excited about the upcoming camping/wedding/festivity in May. I think it will be super fun and really great.
-I’ve been getting out and being more energetic and it feels really nice. I’m less slug-like. 🙂 I’m even doing better about doing cooking and eating slightly better. I’m being good to my body and the tiny baby and I’m glad I can do that more now.
-For today I feel like the burdens in my life are all in perfect balance and thus there is the lightness of a feather upon my back. I don’t get here often but I really cherish it when I do. Thank whoever is watching for reprieves from hard. 🙂

ETA: and I totally forgot to mention that Alex volunteered to make a play kitchen for Shanna for her birthday. Maybe I should be less down on my chosen family. They are totally rocking lately. 😀