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Good information to have, and why dating me is not a lot of fun.

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Shortie was not grounded for 4 days. Only 4 days. Then she took a packet of ramen noodles and a couple of packets of instant oatmeal and decorated the lounge. Sigh. I was talking to her about this today and she said that she feels like she got grounded on purpose. Even though it sucks to be limited in what she is allowed to do, I stay within a meter of her the whole dang day. She wants that kind of contact with me so much that being grounded is better than not being grounded.

You know what? I can work with that. If she is aware that this acting out is a cry for attention then I can handle that. I’m proud of her. That’s intense emotional work for an 8 year old.

Our life is hard because she used to spend 4-6 hours a day intensely interacting with Noah and now the other three of us are having trouble with increasing our hours. I have her in activities! Don’t tell me to add more fucking activities, ok? I am ferrying her around to as much stuff as my crappy crippled body can manage. I have no ability to do more. Would it be better for her to go to school? It would be if A) the kids wouldn’t beat her and if B) the school didn’t punish her for getting beaten and reporting it. We’ve tried school here with the older kids. I don’t need to put my last kid through that delightful formative experience.

Instead she has asked to be stapled to my butt going forward. She doesn’t want to be grounded but she doesn’t completely want to be not-grounded either. She wants more attention and connection and being in the same room even when that is slightly annoying. Ok. I will find a way to manage this even though it is hard.

I am reflecting a lot on the ways in which my most recent attempt to onboard a new person failed. I assume that a huge part of the failure is on me. What can I control next time to make things go better? I can’t control everything.

It is going to be hard for people that I genuinely need to have 12 months of building a relationship with you before you get to integrate with my life. I know that other people want that stuff to happen faster and I really don’t give a shit. If you aren’t willing to invest a year into getting to know me one on one then I don’t think you have the patience or ability to integrate with my life. Dealing with my actual children is far more difficult than dealing with a courting period. I promise. My children are not easy people to build a relationship with but we are likely to remain closer than average as time goes on. My 18 year old is not in a hurry to move out. He likes our life. He wants to keep doing this with us. He had about two weeks when he was 14 where he tearfully talked about “Maybe I will move out when I am 16 since YOU DON’T LIKE ME ANYWAY.” Noah and I spent a lot of time very submissively talking about how much we liked him and we didn’t want him to go and that passed quickly. Otherwise he is as convinced at 18 as he was at 8 that he is probably going to live with me forever, or at worst move out in his 30’s. My 15 year old kid is somewhat interested in pursuing jobs that travel and using our house as a home base to come back to. They want to explore but they don’t want to go.

Dating me means understanding how polysaturated I am from the beginning. My children occupy a huge piece of my heart and mind. They are my vocational focus for this life. They are my reason for staying alive. Having a happy family is the single thing I care about most in this life. Noah and I both sacrificed a lot to build this. And we are very happy together. My kids think I’m amazing. I think my kids are amazing. We are all very defensive of each other. We understand that we are all intense, challenging humans and not everyone is going to respond well to us. None of us are willing to listen to people badmouth the folk in our family. If you try you quickly get an icy reception. My son hates a few people in town for talking about how domineering I am. I think my earnestness can easily sound domineering and I can’t appeal to everyone. It’s not a big deal to me. He is fucking furious that they stated those opinions out loud. It’s fine to have them, but sharing them at a group social event went over his line. Ok.

We are a unit. We are a pod. We come as a package deal in a way I have never experienced as a person dating. I think it must be intimidating as hell to try to find a place in our tight knit little crew. You have to come in with curiosity, an open heart, and very few demands. You can’t date me if you are not exceedingly patient. I am difficult and my kids are difficult and combined we are orders of magnitude more difficult than someone else would be.

When I was young I believed people who instantly told me they loved me and would be there for me “forever”. I now know that when people say that in the first few weeks it is wise to carefully not invest too much in the dynamic because it probably isn’t going to last. Anyone who instantly professes how much they will do for me is going to have expectations I can’t meet. This happens over and over and over again. They aren’t in love with me. They are in love with an uncomplicated, undemanding, totally unrelated to me projection they have made up.

I think my kids show a really extreme amount of maturity and wisdom when they say “Spend a year figuring out the relationship, then you can begin integration.”

Yes, I prefer talking into the void over sending anyone emails. Even though I don’t get comments. I wonder if you know how scathing you sounded when you asked me why I prefer this. I prefer this because then I don’t have to wonder if someone is going to respond in a positive way or a negative way. I don’t have to carefully anticipate what kind of topics this person can handle. I don’t have to try and proactively deal with insecurity. I am kind of brutal and harsh while I talk to myself. I try not to soften the edges much. I feel how I feel and I don’t need to apologise for it.

I will not consent to having a relationship where someone expects me to write a bunch of messages to them. I don’t want to. It hurts my hands. I don’t get as much out of it as you do. It drains me. It makes me feel like I can’t handle doing the things I’m supposed to be doing with my time.

Two years ago Noah and I were talking about poly. We were doing so because I was infatuated with a guy I’ve known since I was a teenager. We had a holiday together. On the other social media site I called him Travel Boyfriend. We never kissed or had sex but it was emotionally intense. Right before Noah died I decided it wasn’t a good thing to pursue and I ended the courtship.

With Travel Boyfriend, Pretty Lady, and Good Trouble (a random pick up from a swinger website), all of them were pushy about meeting my kids. They wanted to integrate faster than I was comfortable with. In all three cases pushiness about the kids was a big factor in why I ultimately broke it off. If you can’t respect that my kids asked for a year I don’t trust you to ever treat my kids with respect. I don’t believe you care about them as humans. You are thinking of them as pieces to move around the board to suit your whims. Every single one of them was pushy because “they wanted to help me”. It doesn’t help me to make me feel anxious and like people aren’t respecting boundaries. That’s a hindrance to good mental health. That isn’t help; that is interference.

My son made the comment that he doesn’t care how many people I go have relationships with, he cares that only people who have both staying power and respect get to come into our house.

Personally I think I need to make it much more clear way faster that if people want to read about me, the Archive exists. I will not be typing my history to people in emails. No. I don’t want to. I find it distressing. I will talk about stuff in a room with you but I won’t write it down for you in an email. I find that specific framing of inflicting my writing on an individual to be highly distressing. Part of how I make peace with writing things down is people have to opt in to reading it. Emailing people isn’t the same opt in experience.

It doesn’t have to be rational. It doesn’t have to be what would make other people comfortable. I’m not existing the way I have for over a quarter of a century because of you. I am like this because it works for me. If it doesn’t work for you that is completely ok. I won’t hate you because we aren’t compatible. I am not compatible with nearly everyone. I am compatible with very rare souls.

I am having a bit of a hard time here. I know a lot of people. I feel emotionally connected to 6, maybe 7 adults in this town if you squint and include EC in that total. That’s a low rate of connection vs how many I know for me. In the past I was used to feeling emotionally close to a much higher number of people. I can tell that I feel deeply bothered by my inability to spend the kind of time with people that would lead to such closeness.

I wanted it with Pretty Lady but I wanted to wait and develop it in the room and that made her feel abandoned and ignored. I feel so flat most of the time. I’m really struggling with the amount of cheer and patience my day job requires. I don’t have good cheer most of the time when I’m alone in a room. I just have apathy and ennui and burn out. Writing emails when I feel like this is fucking exhausting. It makes me feel like I’d rather carve on my legs with scalpel for entertainment.

That’s not a standard way for humans to feel. I’m the aberration. This being true about me is going to make me hard to date. I don’t have to want to make people feel bad to effectively do it.

I need to have relationships build in the room. I can’t have these long torrid email things these days. I genuinely can’t. I want to build stable interactions. I want to choose people over and over because being in a room with them is better than being in a room alone. The thing is, I really like being in a room alone. I am fucking awesome.

I want to date people. I want to have serious, long-term, interesting relationships with lots of room for growth. I’m willing to wait and be picky and see who comes along. I’m not in a rush. If someone is in a rush they are not for me. I’m not offended by that or upset. It is what it is. We all have to be free to go our own speed. I move at a glacial pace. I have to. I have a lot going on. I can’t inflict sudden drastic change on my life. Nothing is stable enough for that.

I keep feeling surprised that Gentleman keeps hanging on. I keep expecting him to get sick of my bullshit and stop coming over. Instead he leans in a little more. He waited 12 fucking months to meet my kids. He had to go through the process. No one else is going to be so fucking special they get to leap from the process. If you want to believe that you deserve better than to go through our process then you won’t fit with my family. Sorry.

My life has been full of people coming and going. It has hurt my kids. They have learned how to protect themselves from my endless searching for new connections. They know that most people flame out in the first year. Hell, most people flame out in the first three months. I have stats. Sometimes people make it to several years of friendship before things go south. I’ve had a few long term intense friendships end with fireworks. I try not to do that anymore. It hasn’t happened in a long time. I’m a lot more cautious about not stress testing relationships anymore. I keep my messy bits more private. Now that I don’t have Noah to talk to about any of it I don’t know that I will ever talk to anyone about my harshest pieces. I don’t think it will ever feel appropriate. I don’t think I will ever feel safe enough.

If you feel entitled to know stuff about me, you can read the Archive. Otherwise I’ll say what I say in the room and no you don’t get to be pissy about expecting me to write you emails. I can’t be doing that. I am not able. If you think you are more inconvenienced than I am by the ways I am disabled let me fucking set you straight.

I am grateful that Gentleman spent the night last night. I managed to get almost 10 hours of sleep. That’s a miracle. I’ve been struggling with insufficient sleep for weeks.

I feel deeply inadequate and unworthy of love today. Which is funny because I went to the park for a birthday party of a little person in our community. Many of the folks there like me just fine. We aren’t close friends but we are community and that’s great. We’ve been doing stuff together for years now. I behaved. I was good. I did what I was supposed to do. I interacted how I was supposed to.

I did it while feeling like I barely know these people and I’m scared of all the things I can’t/shouldn’t say to them. I did it while feeling physically weary to the point I needed to sit down almost the whole time I was there. I did it while feeling exhausted by the knowledge that I choose actively to live in this place as an alien invader and that’s complicated.

I got cursed out by some guy on the way home. He wishes all the fuckers like me would leave and not come back. I don’t look like a local. They can tell at a distance. Fair enough. In a field of gorse I sprout up like a redwood tree. I take up wayyy too much energetic space. This is true.

It is weird feeling exhausted by the strain of trying to integrate more fully into this life in town. I need to do more with my kids around people here and it sounds so terribly exhausting. People are so loud and pushy and difficult. Being out is hard and draining. It’s supposed to be “good for me” but it leaves me feeling wrecked.

I wish I felt less like an invasive species that no one ever wanted to have planted here.

Love and loss

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One of the attractive parts of poly is knowing that you get to share a divided self in the appropriate containers. I have found a delightful man who wants to explore topping in ways I find absurdly fun. I have found a delightful woman who is keen to explore submission.

I win!

I appreciate the way that both of these humans are interested in getting to know me and figuring out what a long term thing can mean. I don’t feel used or exploited. I feel like I am going to get as good as I give in both of these containers. That’s lovely.

I got to explain to Gentleman yesterday about some of the ways I have struggled with relationships in the past. I don’t like when I feel like someone is treating me like a service provider only they don’t even pay me. And yet some folks who have sort of done that have actually turned into long term valued friends that I will prioritise going to see at any opportunity. I am a complex creature.

Right now I am trying to ease into poly with two people who have zero experience doing anything like this. I feel like it is incredibly important that I keep my pace slow and careful. I can see long term healthy ways that both Gentleman and Pretty Lady are folks that have the capacity to be stable partners. I’ve watched some folks have a lot of churn in their romantic lives. I’ve watched some folks have really stable poly situations that last decades. I’m moving slowly and carefully because I have my eye on the long run.

I am mindful that when I choose to date people who are 10 or 20 years older than me, when I’m already past middle age, that I am signing on to a situation that will involve mutual care in the not too dim future.

I have to admit that given how young Noah died it feels slightly insane to want to love people that much older than me. It feels like courting more pain. Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. Noah was a major risk taker. In very particular ways the two folks I am interested in aligning my life with at this stage are very energetic folks who don’t take risks very often. Maybe that will be more stable?

In the long run I am incredibly happy about how I handled Travel Boyfriend. I’m glad I didn’t give a shit about his impulsive desire to spin up a relationship instantly. I’m glad I forced a waiting period before we saw each other because then he could disappoint me without me having to experience life collateral damage as a result. I am going to move slowly with Pretty Lady like I have with Gentleman. I feel like I have done an A+ job on integrating Gentleman slowly. His inclusion in my life is gradual and in tiny increments with lots of scaffolding.

I am learning that sometimes I need to stop having a conversation in text with Gentleman because I have so much hostility towards me in my brain that I can’t manage to hear/see/understand the correct tone. I don’t like getting butthurt when I don’t need to get butthurt. Some things I need to process with him verbally in person so I can see his body language and properly interpret his tone of voice. When we talk in person we don’t struggle to resolve conflict at all. Sometimes I’m misinterpreting stuff in text; I hear it more harshly than he intends and I hate that I do that. It’s a long term issue of mine and it totally is not his fault. This is a thing I struggle with. My internal narrative is pretty hostile towards me and it’s not because of anyone in my current life. I’m actually way better about this than I used to be! I’ve come a long way because Noah and my friends worked very hard to overwrite the hostile tapes in my head with their voices. With new people I still have to consciously overwrite my impulses/self talk and that’s hella annoying.

I feel so much hostility towards myself that I struggle with not projecting those feelings onto other people. It’s not fair at all and is a thing I will have to manage more carefully in the years to come. I confess that I got really lazy about demanding that Noah engage with that shit. I didn’t manage it all myself.

It feels really good to have earned Gentleman’s love. He is not scarred and broken in the ways I have traditionally tracked down like a blood hound. He feels comfortable and comforting and like a balm to my soul. When we are in a room together I can check and find out that his careful and reserved body language isn’t disgust/repulsion. It’s cultural. He’s not a grabby person. He takes a lot of encouragement before he feels entitled to be pushy. Luckily I am big on giving encouragement so this is going well for me. He gets way more pushy as the months pass and I am here for it. Our sex life continues to be over the top fantastic.

I must say for the record that my desire for novelty and difference is not about me feeling unsatisfied sexually. The more satisfied I am the more novelty I want. Sex is very addictive/additive for me. The more I have, the better it is, the more I want. Gentleman is a fantastic lover–he’s generous, attentive, and incredibly motivated towards getting me off. The orgasm gap functions differently in my life than it does for the average human. I have to really insist on time to adore him and focus on his pleasure. It’s a really fun balance. I like when I can get him to relax and lay back and let me do him for a while. Much fun is had. So much fun.

Knowing that I have the potential for a fun, glowy future with him makes me feel borderline insane for insisting on dating. I still need it. I will do my best to be respectful and careful. All the signs are there indicating that Pretty Lady is going to have big feelings really fast. I get that! I’ve had a crush on her for a long time already. She is already someone I have strong feelings of attachment for given our community associations. She hasn’t had a huge number of relationships and someone wanting her is pretty exciting and novel. Our emails are scorchingly hot.

The things I want to do with her are things I can’t/won’t do with Gentleman. He’s never going to be my buddy for Pride. This is ok. She wants parts of me that are not parts he wants. He is not motivated by submission and he is not a bottom. I accept this in him and it doesn’t bother me. I want to have people in my life also who are motivated by such things.

I like that she described me as more vivacious, energised, and emancipated on our last date. I feel like that. Even though, technically, this morning I’m feeling kind of rubbish. My body is being bitchy.

I like the way Polysecure tells you to find your reason for polyamory. For me the reason that I hold on to is that I need a larger range of loving people than most people do. I need it to feel whole. I need it to feel like I am fulfilling my purpose on this earth.

In many ways I think of relationships as keys that unlock potential. These don’t all have to be romantic but they work best for me when they are. Is romantic even the right word? I need intense emotional connection. Like with the Kids. I need those kind of intense emotional connections with people. The relationships I have with much younger folk allow me to feel like I am healing something for other people that I could not heal for myself. I could not fully deal with my own massive mother wounding. I have mostly spackled over the cracks and moved on. When I can turn to a younger person and give them the acceptance, the permission, and the guidance I didn’t receive I feel like I am completing a cycle. I feel like I am part of something bigger than myself. Yes, it’s great being with my actual children and being an actual mother. That’s a big deal. But the Kids are different.

I give the Kids what Vicki gave me. I find it hilarious just how many of the Kids I find are trans; either they are on the path to transition before I meet them or I meet them as eggs. Part of what I have to offer is my religious belief (thank you Ale) that gender diversity is one of the most basic aspects of humanity.

In general, I believe that one of the things I offer humans of all stripes in Scotland is my fervent acceptance of and devotion to people getting to transition. Even when I don’t “understand”. Even when I privately occasionally have a cunty thought that isn’t perfect because I am a shitty human being. I don’t have to understand. I don’t have to agree. I don’t have to agree with someone’s motives. I will die on this hill. Gender diversity is a human right. I encountered my first transgender person before I had two digits in age. Several friends in high school transitioned. At my first munch, at 18, I met two trans women who would shape my adult life in overwhelming and comprehensive ways. My friends group has always been 1/4+ trans despite the usual percentage in the population being closer to 1%.

I feel like part of what I can give Pretty Lady is also tied to what I learned from Vicki but it’s different. I feel like part of what I can offer her is the belief that by consuming her as prey I can make her more whole. She longs for being possessed. I can work with that. Vicki taught by example that predators are an important part of the eco system.

I’m not talking about serial rapists/massively abusive predators. I am talking about people in the bdsm community who seek out people who want to be consumed. I am talking about tops and dominants and masters and sadists who look for people who need to be used, possessed, forced, and beaten. There is something special in this dyadic meeting. We need one another because alone we are broken and out of sync with what society needs.

I think there are reasons that of all the people I’ve met since I moved here 6.5 years ago this was the one that I went “Her. Her. I want to ask her out.” Noah could see why I was intrigued. Not enough to get in trouble with her. I hoped to earn the right to ask her out after the Indenture. I am grateful I don’t have to wait so long. I’ll be honest and say she isn’t a spring chicken and I’m glad we will have these years to be festive before she needs ever increasing gentleness and support. I would have been up for just the support in the long run but I’m selfish. I’m glad we get to pay into the fun bucket first.

Sometimes, I will admit, I feel a little bit like a wandering prophet. Let me tell you what love and acceptance of diversity has to offer you. Let me tell you about gender diversity and human variance. Can I share with you the glory that can be found on the edges of the bell curve? I am from Queer Mecca and I’m here to share with you stories about how you can be loved and accepted even when you are different from the majority of the population.

I remain grateful that it is not up to me to decide who is redeemable and who is not. I can’t promise that I would make unselfish choices. I think it is a good thing my father is dead. I think it is a good thing that Bad Timing is in prison and likely to stay there for the rest of his life. There are people so bad that humanity has a right to say stop and I am glad that I am not the one who decides who those people are. I do not have faith in my own fairness.

What I do have faith in is my ability to fall in love with excellent humans.

It may be rough on everyone that mostly what I want is to go forward bouncing off of people and moving forward on my own. I am deeply uncertain how far I will go in binding my life to anyone. I will share time, resources, attention, support, and adventures.

There is a part of me that needs to know that I trudge on forward with the certainty that at the most terrifying and painful parts of my life I will feel alone. I may not always be alone. My children were in the house when Noah died but I am the one who failed to use CPR effectively enough to keep him alive until the ambulance came. I failed him all by myself.

I wasn’t alone very long. Bestie came for me as she has done since we were teenagers when she came for my brother and father’s suicides. I wasn’t alone for any of the big deaths. For most of the other ones I have sought community and support.

But I feel alone. No one is in your soul with you. I need to be able to live with my soul. I need to know that I am going to feel alone no matter how many people I love or how many adventure buddies I pick up. I feel the need to know that no one is leaning on me too heavily.

Just like even though Noah tried terribly hard to isolate me and prevent me from having support other than him I held on to my network of people. The people who came in relays last year. It turned out I didn’t want a full year of support but people were willing.

I am not alone in this life. I am loved in vast and deep and broad ways by a shocking number of humans spread across the globe. I am happy when people hold my hand and walk with me for a time, but I always return to walking alone. I have since I was very small. It’s like the way my first book is chaotic and hectic and full of so much change that it feels hard to wrap your brain around. That was my life and I moved through it alone with the speed of a bullet train. Noah held my hand for 20 years.

I am afraid of holding anyone’s hand too tightly. I need to love with an open hand. I need to be willing to let go and walk away with grace and ease if someone changes their mind. I cannot grasp. I can’t clutch. I can’t need anyone too much. I must appreciate the bright shining moments in between being alone. They fuel me.