21st November, 2015. 12:28 pm.

So recently my partner (A) spent a week living with mebin my room, to see if living together is a viable option.

Because he has not been living with me until this point, there are some states of me that he had not yet seen. Among them: the panic attack. Im not saying the kind where I just have to close my eyes and breathe for a bit, I'm talking full-on uses up all my internal resources, if 1 tiny extra stressor is added, I break down and cry and acream for a couple of hours kind. It shuts me down and i cant think or breathe or do really anything until ive exhausted myself with venting. It doesn't happen all that often anymore, but it happened during that week. Things between us will never be the same.

Ive kinda always had this philosophy that anyone I date is going to have to be able to deal with me when my brain is making my life hard. Mostly thats not judging me or looking down on me when I can't get as many things done in a day as the average person, or when I'm falling asleep every two hours. Passive stuff. But sometimes it's dealing with stuff like this, where there is actual inconvenience and stress put on my partner, and my ability to communicate is nearly nil and my ability to rationalize and meta myself out of the dark places is nonexistent. In short, all my brain short-circuts and I lose control.

I've always held that anyone I date would be able to deal with that, and it wouldn't change how they feel about me, and also that I should do my best to show as many sides of myself as I can to my partners. Im thinking maybe that I'm wrong about that. I think there are some things that you just shouldn't share with people. Because the people who want to really grok the sludge you have to crawl through sometimes are people who want power over you, or people who want to "save" you. And I'll tell you a thing: even when I have my head buried under a pillow, screaming because everything is wrong and I just want the pain to stop, im still not a victim. Or a damsel in distress. I don't need saving. I'll save myself, just give me a sec. My panic attacks aren't something you can talk out, or kiss away and make everything better. The only thing you can do is batten the hatches and either leave me to my storm, or put your arms around me and ride it out with me. While my brain is screaming lies at me, leaving me alone if I care about you and you're already there feels like abandonment, which means that I can't trust you to be there for me. Psychologically, the nicest choice for me is if you choose to stay, and just hold me until the storm passes.

Of course, my partner chose the nice option, because he is smart and emotionally sensitive. The problem, of course, being that he is very emotionally sensitive and an air nomad style mind, which means his natural response to emotional uproar is avoidance, which he fought for me specifically to be with me during my dark time, for which I am grateful and kind of flabbergasted. This also means he doesn't really have shields to keep my emotional tempest out of him. He doesn't instinctively ground and center. Which means him staying near me cost him. I tried to tell him to go away if it was too painful, but I don't think he listened. (Someone trying to stay, but not being strong enough to do so is something my heart understands a lot better than someone not trying to begin with.) I think he lost some of the feeling of safety that I had been giving him, now that he knows something of the depth of the instability I am trying to heal in myself. I mourn that lost piece.

So, I don't think I should have shown him that part. I am learning the importance of permanent internal structures that allow for intimacy without overshare, and I think that this is a section of myself that I want to label "private." and never share with anyone who could be hurt by it. There are some things you should only share with your therapist and your art.

It all comes back to what kind of person I want to be, and what kind of person I want to attract. I keep getting closer. A is the first person I have ever dated that I could actually see myself spending the rest of my life with. That's obviously not going to happen, and I would never try to hold him somewhere he didn't freely want to be, but it indicates good things. Because I don't want a master or a white knight to save me. I want someone who treats me like a person. Who acknowledges that I have goals and strengths that are different from theirs, and does not fail to value me because of that. I don't think I'm going to get that if I let my love(s) see my darkness when it takes me over.

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16th September, 2015. 1:22 pm. Mistakes were made, let's not forget.

A long long time ago, my best friend and I liked the same guy and instead of letting her have him, I agreed to go halvsies on him with her.

Just before they broke up a year later, he was talking to me and he said (and this is as verbatim as memory will let me be), "If one of you breaks up with me, I'm probably going to break up with the other one. Together, you have everything I need, but apart, you just don't have enough value to keep me." This should have been my first warning. He recanted this statement later, but I think it was always in the back of his mind, especially after poly and Dom gave him the tools he needed to try to enforce his arrogance. That and another quote he said around the same time (which I remember less clearly), " I mean, no one should owe another person sex, but once she's agreed to a relationship, what am I supposed to do?" or something like that.  Both of those add up to things: entitlement. Arrogance. I'm better than you. You are only as good as what you can give me.  That was the first year. And I get it: if you experience sexual needs, and you are bound to one partner, it seems like there's no outlet for your sex drive. But there are always options: masturbation, poly, cheating, or leaving the person whose needs clearly don't match up with your own.

There were six years of continual rape and gaslighting to make me feel like it was my fault. The last couple of years, I figured out that abuse was happening, but by them my image of reality was so skewed that I couldn't figure out if it we me or he who was the abuser. I eventually decided that it didn't matter and for both of our sanity, I needed to end it. It still boggles my brain how tightly he clung to me, especially after it became heart-shreddingly clear that we had oppositional needs. Even when our relationship devolved into nothing but him poking me, needing me to desire him for sex, and me refusing him and trying to interact with him in literally any other way; he still clung to me.  I broke up with him, and he persuaded me to get back together, even though nothing had changed and the resulting last few months of breakup were the same horrible the last 2 years had been.

And yes, it was rape. I see that now. When you tell someone repeatedly that sex hurts you, emotionally and physically, and there response is to try to mold you while you're in sub space into a slut (not just someone who desires sex. a slut, specifically.)  When the boundaries you discuss and the agreements you make while heads are cool and emotions are banked vanish like they were never there in the face of his desire.  When you break up with him and say you want to stop doing physical(sexual) stuff, but he cries and bleeds until you agree to phase it out slowly, rather than all at once.  When you actually try to phase it out and he screams at you about shutting him out of your life and that this lack of accessability is "what he's been dreading all along" and browbeats you into having more sex.  When you say "casual friends with benefits" and he hears "poly girlfriend" and blames you, not only for not having sex with him, but for his failure to get another girlfriend, because he "doesn't think you're ready for him to move on."  When you've been broken up for a year and wear a dress that he likes, and he gets you somewhere alone and tries to kiss you.  When you tell him you feel raped by him, and he asks you to "use less inflammatory language."  And you DO because your entire reality now consists of his pain and you would do anything for just one pain free breath of air. Yeah, that's rape.

However, I am NOT a rape victim. I have been raped, repeatedly for years, by someone I should have been able to trust, but I refuse to be a victim. I will process this, and use the anger that thinking about these circumstances engenders to set my boundaries and defend them. I will learn from my mistakes and make different ones next time. I will be clear in my desires and my boundaries and I will not allow anyone to push past them. I am going to therapy to see what else I can do to strengthen myself so this kind of thing does not happen again. I refuse to be a victim.

Current mood: resolute.

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19th December, 2014. 8:40 am. Emotions and Their Actions

So, here's some things I've noticed that I do when I am feeling emotions. Just so you know.

If I'm-

Frustrated: I get shouty and snappish. It may look like I'm in a towering rage, but it's gone as quickly as it comes. I'm trying to get better at not snapping at people who are unrelated to what I'm frustrated about. Working on it.

Angry: If I'm actually in a towering rage, I get very quiet. The quieter I am, the more trouble I am having interacting with you. I may also smile, especially if I'm in public at the time. I don't know why. It's not a happy smile, but people have been confused into thinking I was having a good time before.

Scared: I swear. People don't believe me on this until they hear it. Most of my friends have never heard me swear.

Excited: I do a little foot jiggle dance. You may have noticed.

Happy: I make noises; sometimes a thrumming, sometimes purring, sometimes I just sing. I also sing if there's something in the song that is relevant to what I'm feeling. When I'm feeling less verbal, song can help me express emotions.

Low energy/Low battery: My eyes get unfocused and I'm very short with people, not because I don't care, but because I can't just then. If someone tries to force me to care before I can recharge, I get defensive and will attack if provoked. If I need to do something even though I have insufficient energy for it, I will put on music and dance to do what I need to do. Sometimes when I can't walk, I can dance.

In pain (physical): I will do a thing that sounds like swearing, but is actually nonsense syllables. Sometimes I also swear in feathers or food.

In pain (emotional): I will seclude myself, regardless of social conventions or politeness, until I have dealt with it enough to exist again. I have recently discovered that I actually can take comfort in other people, but it will take a lot of time and trust for you to see me cry from my own pain. I can cry for you, or for the pain of the world in general. I cry as a pressure release valve on other emotions like happiness, and a feeling of safety. Sharing my pain is more intimate and scarier than those. I do not do it lightly or easily.

You haven't met most of these yet. This is just fair warning/ a key for future reference.

Current mood: contemplative.

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27th November, 2014. 1:42 am. Health and Safety

( Caution: Squeeing. You have been warned.Collapse )

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7th November, 2014. 12:26 pm. Ok, Let's start over: What happened

In your world:
This is what I've heard from you: I arrived, and requested entrance into a building I knew to be mostly empty (and thusly, private). You took this breach of stated rules as implied consent, and began acting on your desires. When not confronted with a solid, verbal no, you believed that this was my intention and that I was inviting your behaviour. You warned me that the barrier had been breached and recieved no difinitive response from me, so you took that as a go ahead. Later, I invited you into a further private space (the tardis room). You warned me again that I needed to not trust you in such a space, and again got no response, so you assumed a yes and went forward. Is this correct?


In my world:
So, I got to game a few minutes early, saw you, and asked to come in to a Google office building, a public space with lots of cameras and potential for randomly encountered people. I looked at you reprovingly when you said you were going to pounce me, because you know 1) public spaces has never been a turn on for me and 2) I had previously stated several times that I am no longer interested in doing romantic/sexual things with you. (I only asked you to the shiburi workshop because you are literally the only person I know who I have any kink experience with, and I thought you would respect my boundaries. When you started actually pouncing me, I physically resisted several times, but was not able to give you a verbal no, a thing I have always had trouble with, which you also know. You overrode all of my resistance and continued kissing and trying to kiss me. I pulled away from you as soon as I had an excuse to (the nametag). Then we went into our usual gaming room, which is so public one wall is nothing but a big window. I pulled up a chair to watch anime with you (you know, like friends do) and you pulled me onto your lap instead. I figured you thought you were recovered enough that we could cuddle without problems, since you mentioned in previous conversations that you had been able to separate out sex and physical contact. Other people came, and gaming things happened. Then I saw the tardis room was open and got excited, and you said it might be dangerous, which I took in the sci-fi "to boldly go where no man has gone before" kind of way, not a warning that a person I trust was premeditating how he was going to try to get past my barriers and blame it on me. So we went, and danced in the tardis room, which was awesome, and then you tried to force my chin up so you could kiss me, which was not awesome. I stepped away from you and went to leave the room, and you jokingly protested. I tried to jokingly protest my treatment in the same manner, which hurt you, but got us out of that situation. At no time did I give consent to the things you did to me.

I think I get it though. You're in pain. You're not over me yet, and you're having a rougher time of it, because I did the breaking, rather than you. I'm not completely over you yet either. I am sorry that you heard mixed signals from me, and will endeavor to be more clear in the future.

I think also (and this one is just speculation), that you are doing a thing that everyone does at least once in their life. You are discovering you can have social power. Like any new skill, it takes practice, and there comes with that discovery a time of douchebaggery. This doesn't excuse your behaviour, but it does make it more understandable. You just have to remember that what you want is not the way, the truth, and the light. Other people want other things, sometimes counter to your desires. Think about it?

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2nd November, 2014. 11:27 pm. The Loss of a Friend

So, G and I went very quickly from strangers to dating, which I'll admit is a pattern with me, and one I am attempting to break currently, taking my time with both of my most recent suitors. We dated for 6 years, and were friends with benefits for another (approximately? I don't actually remember when we broke up the last time). When I realized that he didn't understand at the emotional level what fwbs are, and was treating me like a poly girlfriend, we had to have yet another breakup, even though we were no longer actually dating. At this time, I expressed that I no longer wanted to be romantic with him, and that the "benefits" portion was off. The "friends" portion I would hold unless it seemed like, after we were done healing, I could see if we were still hurting each other with our continued interaction (him trying to fulfil his love=acceptance=sex search routine, and me being emotionally exhausted by his demands on my body and his abuse and pain that cycled through every time I denied him.)

We are not healed yet.

Both of us have ongoing medical problems which inhibit our judgement at times. Both of us are still recovering from the breakup, I think. Pheremones are still such that it feels good to touch one another.

And yet. I am uncertain if we will ever be so healed that we could be friends. I am unsure that he even wants to be friends with me in a platonic way. He has threatened me with that very uncertainty in the past.

It is a failing of mine that I never know when to stop trying. I only stop when I am too drained or too hurt to exist. This causes me to linger for months over relationships that should have ended months before, and friendships where the other party has turned abusive or made it clear that they do not care about me. I am not sure what I hope to gain from these delays, since the only consequence my brain can come up with is "I'll lose their friendship," which doesn't really seem like a bad thing in this context. Perhaps it's because I was a quitter when I was little, always taking the easy path, and I have a desire to prove to myself that I can keep going when the going gets tough. I don't know.

Anyway, G has been taking care of his mental issues some, which makes his personality stronger. He is exhibiting some alpha male tendencies, which worry me, but it also means he is emitting pheremones much more strongly. During the time we were together, I rearranged my entire insides so that his pheremones could work on me, so I could be physically attracted to him. It was hard to take down those walls. It is harder to put them back up, since I don't have help like I did to take them down. I find myself being overwhelmed easily by his presence, which makes it easy for him to take advantage of me, which he wants to do.

He has told me repeatedly over the last couple of months that he no longer wants to hear about my life, and he is no longer safe for me to be around. It is easy to remember when I am not near him. It is very hard to remember when in his presence.

On the other hand, there is a rapidly decreasing number of reasons for me to want to be in his presence, and a rapidly growing list of reasons why it's a bad idea. The only things that hold me to him now are a game and group of friends we share, an event later this month, and the stuff he still has at my house. One of those is easily solved, one I really want to go to but time will take care of, and one has me trapped. He cannot take one of his possessions out of my house until his truck is repaired, and that has been a long and arduous process. Since he has made it clear to me that he is not safe and has no desire to be safe in my presence, I no longer feel comfortable with him having both a key to my house and an excuse to go into it.

Now I am wondering: What do you call someone who you don't feel comfortable being around, who doesn't care about your life, and who causes you pain every time you interact? That doesn't sound like a friend to me.

He keeps asking for things and referring to things "in the interests of our friendship" and I have to ask: what friendship? In what way does our interaction in any way resemble a friendship? (Please help me out here, I'm really struggling with this one.) We have a group of friends in common. We have a history of past closeness, now firmly in the past. We have a lot of work on a now-dead relationship, some of which may feel wasted if we admit it's dead. We have some understanding of eachother's interior terrain. That last is the only thing I can think of that in any way puts the two of us in a category remotely resembling "friend." Anything else?

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20th October, 2014. 1:17 am. Things are good

Today, I woke up early and my mind was pretty clear, and my energy levels high. When depression hit, I remembered to take my fish oil, and walk in the sun, and I got better. I got enough alone time during the morning, with social plans in the evening, and when those plans fell through, I made new plans with other friends. I watched Dr. Who, and introduced it to a friend who liked it. Cuddles were had, and they were good. Then the cuddles left, and exercise was had, with deep, meandering talking, the likes of which I haven't had since highschool. I feel as if my soul has taken a deep, rejuvinating breath.

Today was a good day.

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12th September, 2014. 1:21 am. Loyalty

I have come to recognize that one of my heart's desires is loyalty. I want to find someone to be loyal to. It doesn't have to be a romantic relationship, though I have a hard time picturing it any other way, since I haven't really had a close platonic friend since middle school. I want someone who is worthy of my loyalty; who won't drain me beyond what I can give, who won't betray me. Someone who cares about me, and will allow me to care about them, but does not hinder me and does not feel hindered by me. I want someone I can spend energy on without fear, because I know that they will give me back energy in a way that I can understand it. I want someone who understands the way I express caring. I want someone to belong to or with or near or whatever. Someone I can run with. Metaphorically speaking; I suck at cardio. Somewhere to belong, I guess. But more than that. I want someone to defend and protect. Someone to give my loyalty to. I don't know how to explain it better than that.

I almost had it with G. Very close. Particularly for a few weeks in the middle there, it was so close I could cry. I think I did, actually. When he wasn't in a crisis state, and neither was I, I felt like we could stand back to back and take on the world. I could be weak in his presence, and he would catch me. I could be strong where he was weak, and care for him. But I am too independent, and self-involved and too limited for him, and he is too involved in his pain and chaotic self-improvement and control fetishes to have time to listen to me. So he had my love, and for a while my trust, but not my unquestioning loyalty.

That is what I want. People say they're looking for their fairytale prince charming, or their beautiful princess slut, well, I'm looking for a loyalty that I don't have to question or explain, that's so deep it need not be spoken aloud. It's probably a fairytale, and not an actual possible thing, but I'll look for it anyway.

Current mood: lonely.

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30th April, 2014. 2:52 am. Encounter

So, last Wednesday, I walked into my father's house for our designated family night experience.

There was a sweeping pan shot of Asgard on the television, so I asked what he was watching.

He gave me that smirk/scoff that means "This should be obvious if you had half a brain" and sarcastically asked me "What do you think?"

I listed off a few things I could think of that might have a sweeping shot of Asgard in it, including the Thor movies, the Avengers (I didn't remember if we ever saw Asgard in it), or any of the special features from any of the dvds thereof(none of which I've seen except the little shorts that he's deliberately shown the family, but all of which he owns). Then I heatedly asked him not to talk down to me.

At which point he yelled at me "I just said one word and you're being emotionally vulnerable and it hurts me!"
(Because yelling at someone you believe is emotionally vulnerable is the BEST thing to do.)

After which, I was so enraged from the combination of the talking down to me, the lack of self-awareness that his own words showed, and his self-centeredness that I could no longer speak. So I left and didn't come back until my mother and her boyfriend arrived to act as a buffer. It was not mentioned again that night or any of the ensuing week.

Until, early the next wednesday I learn from my mother that my father believes I have verbally abused him.

I do not feel that anything I said or did constituted abuse, and I do feel abused and angered, both by his initial actions and by the fact that he decided to trash talk me behind my back to my mother, instead of talk to me like a reasonable human.

I am hoping that this post may spark a written form of the conversation that clearly needs to happen in a setting that promotes thought and dialogue, rather than yelling and hurt.

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28th February, 2014. 1:38 am. "Nice" or "Language Barriers"

So today, G and I had a conversation that explored the concept of "nice." Apparently, he says, there is an extreme cultural/sexual dimorphism in vocabulary here. It should be very obvious to anyone who has been to, heard about, or interacted with anyone from the US, that there are two cultures here: male and female.  They are designed to interact, but they are quite distinct and very different in many ways. For example, the word "nice," which has very different meanings in the two culture-languages. This is what I got from that conversation:

Male: Give the other person everything they want.

This is something a male does, not something he is.

This does not allow for the opinions, tastes, and desires of the person being nice. The only desires, needs and opinions that matter are those of the recipient of the niceness.

This does not imply submission, and does not feed into power hierarchy.

Males are generally not nice to each other, except perhaps if sex is involved. We are unsure on this point, because neither of us has much first-hand experience with gay mating rituals. Which brings up some interesting implications, but I want to stay focused for the moment.

Niceness is a mating ritual?

Males do not generally want to have people be nice to them.

It may not actually be possible to be completely nice to someone.

This is the reason behind the bitterness of so-called "nice guys" who are (the male definition of) nice to a girl, and get refused repeatedly without fail (if they are not actually misogynistic, and believe that any effort on their end should be rewarded with sex, and women are incapable of knowing what they want, which is also a thing, goes by the same name, and has some of the same symptoms). They are told that girls like it when you are nice to them, but they apply the wrong kind of nice, and don't have the charisma or social awareness to fill in the blanks.



Female: Be polite, make sure the other person is heard and feels cared for, and don't cause or encourage conflict.

Niceness is social, not mating behaviour, and a female can be nice to anyone, regardless of gender. Niceness does not feed directly into the power hierarchy; however, perception of niceness does. A female who is perceived to be nice can power-steal from an alpha female by being strategically nice to key elements in a social grouping. A female can get a reputation for being nice by sharing food or power. Actual nice females tend not to be alphas; they are not usually at the bottom of the pack either, at least not for very long.

Nice is a character trait OR an action. A female can be a nice person, who will go out of her way to make other peoples' lives easier. Or she can be nice to a person, usually for a limited duration, after which she has to go and rant/decompress from the effort.

This allows people to have opinions and desires of their own, though a completely nice person does not voice an opinion or desire that might cause another person discomfort or pain. Most people are not completely nice.

Perhaps it was the sharing of food/power or the smoothing the way for people that caused males to get the idea that giving females things was the way to be "nice" to them?



Applicable dictionary definitions (dictionary.com and merriam-webster.com):

: giving pleasure or joy : good and enjoyable

: attractive or of good quality

: kind, polite, and friendly

 (I would have added agender, hermaphrodite, etc meanings to the list, but I am not familiar enough with any societies where non-polarized genders have formed societies or languages appreciably different from the polarized ones to comment on them. I apologize for the lack of representation for these significant parts of humanity. Feel free to chime in if you belong to a non-polarized gender-culture. I would love to hear from you!)

Current mood: thoughtful.

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