Content note: discussion of suicide, brief reference to incest, hell I don’t know what else. I write rough shit in with my nice shit.

The other day I was talking to one of my old friends/lovers. He is going through some difficulties in his marriage. Pieces of it feel like echoes of stuff that I have dealt with in my marriage and it was fascinating to me how I felt about his description of being on his side of similar-but-not-the-same challenges. Then he said that he had been talking to one of his (adult) children about mutual coaching of one another towards being better/happier people and he shared that they have a mutual agreement/understanding that if “this” waves hands broadly gets too hard they will both understand and completely forgive if the other has to check out.

The first time I remember specifically thinking that I wanted to die was when I was 7 after a sexual assault followed by a beating by my mother–she didn’t know about the rape. She just knew I was running through the Texas trailer park screaming profanity at the top of my lungs as I tried to get those boys to leave me alone. She was going to teach me a lesson–I was going to stop having a potty mouth.

I swear so fucking much. I know people judge me for it. I don’t give a flying fuck and you can kiss my fucking ass. I have earned the right to speak as I want. I have paid for these words with beatings and blood.

But that’s not the story today. A couple of years ago I realized I had not wanted to die in…. I wasn’t exactly sure. I know I was suicidal well into my early 30’s but somewhere in my mid-30’s I did a bunch of very intensive trauma therapy (including MDMA with a therapist) and then I stopped tracking it and I didn’t notice the precise timing of the shift. But I don’t want to die anymore. I want to live.

But when my friend mentioned that he has this agreement with his children I lost it. I started ugly crying. I had to go hide in the bathroom and run the shower so my kid wouldn’t freak out. I don’t get to commit suicide. I made a commitment when I had kids that I would not take that path. Well, aside from really extreme cancer or super aggressive dementia where I am going to be gone really soon no matter what I have no right to shorten my life. That’s the deal.

Amusingly my friend proved that he has never been a blog reader because when I talked to him about this crying session later in the day he was kind of surprised. He didn’t understand why it was this intense for me. My grandmother (maternal), father, and brother all committed suicide. Suicide is a god damn family tradition. Suicide has been there as the comforting exit for my whole life. I have attempted several times with the in-patient experience that goes with being caught before you finish. So to be slapped in the face all of a sudden with “I do not have an out available to me” was pretty jarring and shocking for my system. When random people/strangers talk about their relationship with the concept of suicide I don’t take it very personally but this is my friend. This is someone who has been inside me and he is someone who has been clear for going on 20 years now that he is very sad that he was not a candidate for co-parenting with me because he loves me very much. So the idea of his possible loss is personal.

I was thinking about this partly because @SkinS mentioned that starting from scratch increases in exercise/fitness are interesting topics sometimes. I don’t particularly exercise because I care about how I look or because it increases the number of people willing to fuck me; if someone won’t fuck me happily when I’m fat I am not interested in fucking them when I am fit. But I have a bunch of stupid health complications. I have to dance along a tightrope–if I manage to maintain a high level of fitness I can decrease how much pain I am in and I can control my IBS and both of these factors dramatically improve my mental health and make me easier to live with. I have to be careful not to over-train or be casual/cocky about how I wear this meat sack because if I get injured I get into this shitty cycle of hurting myself over and over and over and it tends to take 6 months or a year or more before I can do any kind of exercise without more damage. Which makes my body hurt. Which makes me overindulge in comfort foods that are bad for my intestinal tract. Which makes me kinda a raging bitch.

I’m not over here trying to make my kids or husband think “Did she really live a long time or did it just feel like a long time?“

I made a commitment to live as long as I can so that I can be there for these three people in the ways no one is there for me. I don’t actually get to decide what I get to have in terms of time but I have an obligation to monitor my health with vigor and evaluate choices and actions in terms of “is this going to help or hurt my ability to fulfill the promise I made?”

I think about that promise in so many ways. It is one of the reasons I am shoring up a house big enough for my children to share as adults with everyone having adequate private space. I put a 100 year roof on this bitch. I put in fruit and nut trees and I am doing what I can to set up a regenerative food forest. A lot of what I build and make is designed to last long enough for them to be ok after me.

They might stay. They might leave. I don’t get to have any control over that. I don’t want control over that. But I want them to have a home that they can come back to. The weight of the promise I made feels so encompassing and overwhelming that I feel like it is a weight that will swamp me.

Hell. I really have to take it seriously that I have to keep having a good sex life because otherwise I will be one nasty old biddy. I need to keep up my friendships because they fill up my bucket and I can’t pour with an empty bucket. The older I get the more I think finding a balance is necessary for me to be able to sustain the stamina necessary for fulfilling this promise. I want to be here and be physically and mentally well so I can continue to be capable of giving what I promised to give.

It’s all tied up. Wanting to know better and do better in many places in my life are all about trying to deserve a place in their lives in years to come. I don’t understand why it is as important to me to have a specific kinky life and a kinky self that I keep very specifically and deliberately under wraps but it is. I need to feel in myself that I am a complicated person with clearly defined boundaries. I don’t make many jokes about my sex life. I don’t give details beyond “I had a lot of fun and dated a lot of people before I got married because I wanted to figure out who I was and what I liked. It worked. I like who I am and I am happy in my marriage.” That’s the whole damn story.

Well, every so often they will figure out that of course some old friend is someone I dated. Once, years ago they had a conversation that went something like “What do you mean x is someone mom dated?” “Dude, probably every person who comes to the Christmas party is someone mom dated. Well… or dad.” It wasn’t literally true but it sticks in my mind as “Oh wow, that’s what they’ve picked up. Ok.”

The boundaries are important. “If you ever decide to go read my blog I strongly suggest browsing by tags so you don’t see things you really will wish you could bleach your eyes after seeing. But really you will be happier if you don’t read my blog.” So far they believe me. And thus I carry on feeling like I am managing to enact boundaries. After multiple generations of incest I have broken the family tradition. I figured out how to be from my family and still appropriate. It’s a miracle.

So I put a lot of focus on thinking about exercise and I talk about it. I am not worried about my waist line or my weight or my BMI but I am worried about how my heart reacts to stress tests and I do better with a much higher level of exercise. I worry about whether or not I will be exhausted and hurting all the time. I worry about my ability to be patient and kind and gentle. I worry about being strong enough to do all the things. Other than my husband I don’t have anyone who will rescue me if I have a problem.

I didn’t have people who loved me and brought me up with attention and encouragement. But I have to give that. Sometimes the weight of it feels like it will drown me. Sometimes out of the blue I am reminded that no matter how hard this gets I have to just get stronger and keep doing it. No, I won’t get help. No, I won’t have anyone I can call. Instead I have to find ways to build that for myself. I say I build the things I build for the kids. But really it is for me. What I am building is going to perpetuate itself for at least as long as I will live. Even if I fuck up a lot on money stuff I will be ok. I will be able to supplement myself with things that build my body up and help me feel better.

I am not going to say I “feel well”. I could list all the joints that are screaming right now but they don’t matter. I feel a lot better than I did. I will continue to make progress… until my next injury. Hopefully this time I will be smart enough to be more patient through the first recovery because being taken down for half a year is awful. Yes, yes, yes, maybe you can work through injuries without being a raging cunt but I can’t. And it is not fair for me to inflict that on folks.

At this point I should declare this circle of thought complete and go find that nice old dude in the house and ask him to bang me before I go to sleep. I would like the chemical high.