P is for Purification

It doesn't, in this moment, matter where it comes from.  Whether it is the stereotypical Slavic melancholy I inherited from my mother, who inherited it from hers, which is tangled up in the ancestor work I am doing with that line.  Whether it is situations that are hard right now, and my exhaustion.  Whether it is the kink in my neurochemistry that predisposes me to it.  Whether it is all these things.

I pour myself a drink.  I cannot figure out how to alleviate the pain that matters, so I settle for something that I know will loosen my trapezius, release the muscle tension that is sending ripples of pain down my arm.  I do not have the power to fix what I suspect is stress tangled up with habits of depression, possibly tweaked a little harder by the spellwork I am doing, trying to untangle threads of suffering.

The drink is good.  The proportions may be a bit off, but they're off in a direction I like, a limey sweetness that balances the alcohol.  I drink it slowly, enjoying it as much as I am able, much like I enjoyed the relief I bought with an afternoon of some of my favorite music, which bought me enough space to dance with the children for a little while, Little Foot taking my hands and spinning and stomping with glee, suggesting that she took joy in the same music that sustains me; the younger child, who I need a nick for, clutching her bottle in both hands and bouncing up and down on the side of our dance floor.  My collarbone pops; my medical self-indulgence is working.

I finish the drink, take the cup to the kitchen, pause, and partially fill it with water.  I breathe, reaching for clarity - purify me, make me true - and pour the pain into the cup, whispering the prayers.  "From You, all things emerge ... even this."  Even this.

Even this pain is holy.  Even this.

As I drink the water, I comment to a friend that the alcohol loosens inhibitions.  Because I want to cry.

I do not cry easily, though this is less tight a complex than it used to be.  The lessons taught by brutality are not easily unlearnt.

I take the cup of water from the ancestor shrine, pick it up to partake of its magic, and the same impulse to prayer comes to me.  I silently repeat "I am pure, I am pure, I am pure."  The verbal prayer, so familiar, cannot wrest itself free; the silence is overwhelming, the ritual consumed by the simple outpouring of pain.  Myself, my grandmother, the thread between us that encompasses my mother perhaps.  I crush the heavy pewter cup against my chest, silently trying to grasp the prayer through the roaring sound of the rushing, wrenching, agonising feelings.

I refill the cup, return it to its place, whisper "For your ka" to the closed doors of the shrine.

The water runs hot, not cool like an offering.  I step into the shower, start to wash my hair, lean my head against the coolness of the tile, and sob, just a little.

I know that I am crying, not because the sound of the water would obscure the sound - not like the time I could only cry in the rain, away from everyone else, protected by isolation and a weather through which nobody would follow - but because the water itself allows the pain to flow, releases the clenched and twisted muscles, frees the energies that bind me.

Your purification is the purification of Heru
Your purification is the purification of Set
Your purification is the purification of Djehwty
Your purification is the purification of Dwn-Anwy
Your purification is the purification of your ka
Your purification is the purification of your purification
And this purification of yours
Is also
Among your brethren
The gods.

- Pyramid Text 36

Non-Ranty Mamablogging

It's hard for me to figure out how to write about this whole motherhood gig, because I'm pretty much convinced that the stuff I can't turn into some kind of political rant or interesting bit of introspection about the nature of my personal reality will be boring to the entire rest of the universe so why write it? Which tends to bias me towards only writing about stressors, because stressors are for blogging.

I don't think that's entirely well-balanced, so I want to fix it.

Here's Little Foot, vigorously waving a toy lion made for her by Vieva, who appears occasionally in the comments here. (Little Foot's a Leo. This was pretty much the logic under which the animal was chosen.)

She really loves her lion. It is one of her two favorite current toys (the other being a small fish with a jinglebell in it gotten off Etsy). If she's lying on on the floor and presented with the lion, her face will light up, she will grab it by two limbs, and then (usually) roll onto her side as if she's attempting to bodyslam it and gurgle happily. Up until she flings it up over her shoulder and then fusses because oh noes the lion it has ceased to exist.

The rest of the time she manages to drop the lion on her face and then flips out because it's eating my face it's eating my face get it off get it off get it off!

She also grabs the corners of blankets and often winds up pulling them over her face, which leads to what I call an Object Permanence Crisis: "The cosmos has ceased to be, for I cannot see it! Alert! Alert!" I am perhaps not as sympathetic to this as I ought to be, I merely free her from the predations of the reality-annihilating spit rag.

I am reasonably confident that we have done horrible things to her sleep cycles, as they have settled in at this point to semi-conform to mine, and I keep really weird hours. She does, however, willingly sleep something like five hours at a go almost every night, which is pretty good for not quite four months old. She's a little fussy lately, we think because she's contemplating the possibility of teething part time when she remembers to, but not terribly so, and she rarely cries all that much - though the last few days she's frequently woken up from a sound sleep going from zero to howling, and I suspect babynightmares.

Much like the family has one night a week for dinner prep obligations, we've divided things up so one of each weeknight one of the parents is on primary baby duty, which means they handle diapers and so on as much as is possible. This is a great system, and I highly recommend that anyone thinking of having a baby accumulate as many allomothers as they can handle, because the level of sanity this enables is amazing.

Today, the other half of the family returned from Thanksgiving away from home, due to complexities of compromise and family obligation; Little Foot went down for a nap after nursing at about 11:30, giving me two hours in which I could put together a perfect little family dinner to welcome them home with. This worked out brilliantly, and she didn't wake up until they got back, which meant other people got to deal with the next diaper.

I'll not deny that doing the full-time daytime parent thing is very hard for me. I'm a pretty extreme introvert, and an infant is, of course, demanding and in my personal space a huge chunk of the time. The help I can get from the rest of the family is critical to my ongoing stability and competence as a mum.

But I'm becoming increasingly convinced that post-partum depression rates have a lot to do with support structures. I'm aware that my long-term history with clinical depression makes me really high risk, and there have been times that I've felt the stresses pushing on the edges of toppling over into a depressive state. But I haven't been there yet. (I suspect, if it happens, it'll be when the other half of the family moves back into their house after they finish their renovations, because having the people around both for company and babyassistance is a big deal.) And part of not having been there is being able to say "Hey, could someone get me out from under the baby for a bit?" before I hit some kind of internal meltdown crisis point. It's leaving me feeling increasingly militant about the need for real social support structures for mothers, and that if the sort of feminism I'd been exposed to had been, say, the stuff from Mothers for Women's Lib and blogs I've found from there I might have a much less bitter relationship with the word "feminist" these days, as opposed to the reflexive comparisons between being a stay-at-home parent and the 1950s with their subtextual suggestion that there's a necessary equivalence. (I saw an instance of this yesterday. But this is supposed to be a non-ranty post, not another "Oh look, I get to be a brainwashed pawn of the patriarchy, Donna Reed style!" post.)

Anyway, out of the politicalised bits. I love watching Little Foot work on figuring out the world. We got her a bouncy seat to set her down in at times, and then we got a toybar for it. At first, she flailed her hands vaguely and was stunned when things moved. And then, slowly, over time, she moved to deliberate manipulations: that bead will slide from side to side, that flower spins. (A bit after that, she got bored with it, so I took it off the seat for a while and now she's willing to play with it again.) The process of cognitive development is amazing.

For example - this was something my liege noticed - I have one of those hawk silhouette decal things intended to keep birds from flying into windows stuck to my bathroom mirror, because I'm a weirdo. For a while, when we brought Sad Baby in there to dampen a wipe to change her diaper, she would stare at the decal and Fall Silent, because of the primitive mammal reflex that goes SHIT DEATH FROM ABOVE at raptor silhouettes. Now she looks at the baby in the mirror (or the parent in the mirror) instead.

When she sees me for the first time in a while - and some values of 'a while' are 'five minutes' - her face lights up with joy and she kicks enthusiastically two or three times with the sheer exuberance of it all. And I wonder, sometimes, if I have ever before had in my life someone so unreservedly happy to see me. There are times it makes me think of the stereotypical imaginary teenaged girl who has a baby 'so someone will love her unconditionally', and, weirdly, being a mother has given me more sympathy for that half-myth than I ever thought possible, even while it gives me an ironclad, hardcore, "Oh no no no no, hon, you don't have any idea what you're getting into."

I look at the world and I try to find ways to protect my child from parts of it, to introduce it to her so she can navigate it without taking grievous harm, to show her how to be strong and secure. I know that nobody escapes childhood unscathed, but I pray every day that she escapes it unmaimed.

More politically flavored post later, riffing some on these links assembled by Elf of Dreamwidth. I've been reading more and more of what gets called "mommyblogs" lately, for obvious reasons. (Psst, Mamacrow, you have a parenting blog somewhere, right?)

I leave you on this note:

Enter Little Foot

WARNING: The following post contains descriptions of a reasonably difficult labor and delivery. If this is liable to distress you, just scroll down to the photo. ;)



The contractions started at midnight on 31 July, but were spaced out at an hour and a half or two apart, fairly dull. In fact, early labor is pretty much entirely boring, as far as I can tell; just this sort of anticipatory waiting punctuated with the occasional contraction. I called my parents to chat, thereby weirding out my father. ("I don't think I've ever had a phone conversation with someone in labor before. I'm sure they happen, like, in the movies, but generally with the father, not the grandfather..." "Star Trek!" "RIGHT! Star Trek! ...still the father.")

Midwife arrived at about 1am on the first of August, after a day I'd spent feeling kind of at loose ends, really. I believe I was in the birth pool when she got there, I seem to remember floating there and hearing her voice say, "Yep, looks like labor." Various things happened over time. Mostly I tried to rest between contractions, though I got increasingly irritable by little things. (Like, "Do you want some [insert foodstuff here]?" "No." A little later. "Do you want some [different foodstuff]." "No." A little later. "Do you want some [food of some sort]?" "I WANT PEOPLE TO STOP ASKING ME!")

I didn't feel like labor was actually going anywhere. The midwife said I was doing fine, that things were progressing well. I was getting tired, mostly, and aggravated, and frustrated, and finally we did an inspection to see how dilated I was, and the water broke. Which was a fascinating sensation....

Contractions got worse. Working theory is this thing called "back labor", generally caused by the baby position being unideal in a way that approximates agonising. This was not helped by the fact that, like my mother, I do not have normal-duration contractions (something like two minutes); mine ran to 4-5 minutes straight. And there was Stuff (subtype: green) in the waters. We first decided that the Stuff was not a risk to the baby, and then, a while later, found fresh meconium - perhaps caused by the stress of the long contractions.

After some discussion, discretion was declared the better part of valor, and we packed up and went to the hospital. There was ... mild drama, that I fortunately found out later; the hospital didn't want us. They spent a while trying to convince us that another hospital was closer than they were, but eventually relented before the information that our chosen pediatrician was on their staff.

How much of this has to do with an idiot midwife who only transports to hospital when things have already gone to hell in a handbasket and has afflicted that particular hospital twice (as opposed to what we did, which was say, "Hm, that looks like a handbasket; let's avoid it with caution") and how much has to do with local politics regarding midwifery I do not know; I suspect a fascinating combination of things.

Anyway, it was for the best that I was unaware that my condition and my child's health had been treated like some kind of hot potato as I limped up to Labor and Delivery; I might have killed something during a surge.

There was initial friction with the OB - he was hostile to our midwife coming in (see above paragraph) up until he sorted out that we had transferred as a precaution, not because I was about to detonate or something, and got a look at my prenatal medical records and saw that they were, in fact, competent. And that we weren't going to refuse all interventions like the filthy hippies we were, or something. I curled up on my side and listened to him talk with my lion (formerly referred to as legalhusband). Paperwork was wrangled. Every so often someone wanted me to lie on my back, which I find uncomfortable at the best of times, and which at that particular time was roughly like being drawn and quartered.

They put monitors on me, which I disliked, but wasn't really up for arguing about, and it didn't matter, I wasn't going anywhere. They put an IV in me, which I also disliked - I hate the damn things, though it was less bad than the one when I got my CAT scan, it just left my hand feeling bruised all to hell - but that enabled me to get some fucking painkillers, which at least removed me from the state of "Kill me now and extract the baby from my steaming corpse."

Forty hours of back labor are disrecommended, by the way. Which is about where I was by that time. Exhausting, unproductive, discouraging, and it fucking hurts.

After that, I floated on some narcotics, half-listening to paperwork wrangles and family support, waking up for only the most intense contractions and snarling for assistance getting through them, for about two and a half hours, at which point I was nearly fully dilated. They wanted me to hold back on pushing for a bit, and taught me some breath techniques for that, which were hard to focus on but manageable, more or less. Somewhere in there I got a second dose of the painkiller, and vehemently refused an epidural. (I was not allowed to sign a health care proxy giving medical decision-making power to the whole family because I was stoned, but I could consent to an epidural while stoned. I don't know, man, I didn't do it. I can sort of see the sense in it, but at the same time, if I'm not competent to consent, I'm not competent to fucking consent.)

After a bit, I stopped having the capacity to restrain my reactions to the surges, and we worked out a position for the actual labory bit, with the advice of the nurse on duty.

And my liege held me cradled against his shoulder, and my lion supported my leg so that I could work and helped me when my hip siezed every so often. And going through the experience between my husbands, held, supported, ... now, okay, I've hit the moodswingy bit of post-partum here, but it makes me all weepy, okay?

The doctor had mellowed out a bit and at one point said, "I see green hair!" Apparently the rest of the family chorused "It's a Muppet!" whereas I, on the floaty strange space of the labor, just driftingly thought, "Probably just more stained mucus" and carried right along with what I was doing.

Tearing during labor is like lines of fire. And nowhere near as horrifyingly squicky as being cut would have been.

I had to hold for an infinite while while they cleared air passages, and then there was a little more, and then the release, and another rush of fluid, and there was the other side. It was a strange, spent, empty space on the other side.

People were talking, bustle, I was following half-threads of conversation, bits and pieces. Eight pounds, fifteen ounces. I had two tears, a small one and a moderate one (I presume it wasn't huge, there was no drama about it, just a "... not so small..." sort of flavor). I needed to lie on my back, could I do that? It didn't hurt horribly. I could do it.

My liege was on my left. He had knelt for most of the seriously active part of labor, to hold me, and his knees were wrecked. My lion was on my right, stroking me when he could, when he wasn't needed to answer questions, or taking a few photos. The OB sprayed something almost hot on me, and started to stitch me up.

(Turns out lidocaine isn't effective on me for more than a couple of minutes. They sprayed me with it three times.)

They put pitocin in the drip to make me pass the placenta faster so they could do the stitches properly without the cord in the way. I barely noticed, still in the dreamspace of post-labor, still there. I had wanted to let the placenta empty its blood supply into the baby, and there was a part of me that was angry and frustrated at that failure, a distant, shouting, too-tired-to-speak part.

I wanted to hold her.

Eventually I could, hold her, hold her with all the agitated medical mess done with, feeling the flow of everything around me. Feeling in love with the universe, with my daughter, with my mates. Her skin was soft against my skin.



Do not offend the baby. She can kill you with her mind. See?

Some Things They Don't Mention About Pregnancy

In honor of me now being officially past my official due date and also past my personally calculated because dammit I know when I ovulated due date, my long-pondered "Things they don't tell you about pregnancy" post.

May not apply to all pregnancies. Some assembly required. Contents may settle during shipping.

(Next time I do this, I totally want a t-shirt that says 'Contents may settle during shipping.')

* I seem to have swallowed my spare change.

First-trimester symptom: everything tastes like metal. Everything. Breathing tastes like metal. Faded out a bit after a while, but still has reappearances, like right at the moment as I'm typing this.

* Where did my seasonal allergies go?

This, this is wonderful. The horrible head cold I had during the worst of the morning sickness was the most miserably sick I've been in my life, but an entire better part of a year in which the tree sex didn't make me feel like crap is amazing.

* My joint pain went away too.

For someone who lives with chronic low-level ache and what my midwife elegantly referred to as "loose hips", the six or so months free of that was really nice. Of course my bad hip started popping again at the end of month eight, as if to make sure I didn't get my hopes up too high, but one can't have everything.

* Pregnancy update websites are probably not written with me in mind.

I first realised this when every single one of them I read one week saw fit to inform me that really, the major body change I was likely to notice around here was my breasts getting bigger, and that this was the best and most thrilling part of being pregnant.

The one that said something about my pregnancy now having lasted longer than any of my high school relationships was a nice garnish. (Gods, I hope not. Legalhusband and I have been together since I was sixteen.)

On the other hand, the Vegetable of the Week game was an excellent way to pass time. How to play Vegetable of the Week: Google "pregnancy week #" and see what article of produce the fetus is the same size as now.

* It turns out that 95% of the weird shit that happens and freaks me out is a normal pregnancy symptom.

Increased rate of heart flutters, say.

Skin tags, too.

* Your hair and nails will grow like whoa.

The nails thing is the part that throws me - as someone who had low thyroxin most of her life and is barely used to fingernails growing at a particularly noticeable rate, having to cut my nails all the time is almost upsetting in its "this is not normal" way. And it's even more fun now that I can't reach my feet.

Also, "Hair grows like whoa"? Includes pubic.

* Pregnancy is weirdly and subtly racialised.

Being someone who's in lefty-natural childrearing circumstances, I'm occasionally struck by how white things are.

By going to baby supply stores and having, on the wall, images of lots of babies and toddlers - all white, most blue-eyed.

By having people seriously suggest that the nipple-darkening during pregnancy is so babies can visually track the food source better, never mind that sight doesn't develop that clearly for a bit, mammals track by scent, and dude, where are you getting this bonus contrast concept from if you can't think of anyone other than a white person as human?

I just wow.

* Trying to get a ballpark figure for an appropriate amount of weight gain during pregnancy from the internet is not a good idea.

Take all of the crazy, interfering, I-know-better-than-you stuff that gets directed at pregnant women.

Take all of the crazy, interfering, I-know-better-than-you stuff that gets thrown around about weight and health issues.

Combine.

Or hit yourself in the head with a brick a few times. It's faster, and just as informative.

* Moods are not unstable. Moods are turned up to eleven.

Instead of "cranky" I was achieving "kill it and devour its heart that its lifeblood might sustain my offspring."

Instead of "I don't want to deal with this" I was achieving "I need to go live in a cave and contemplate the hopelessness of human interaction."

* Childbirth classes with any sort of natural bent will spend at least a quarter of the time in class talking about how to protect yourself from hospitals.

This is epically fucked up. Completely, totally, epically fucked up. Legalhusband and I would leave our childbirth class every time, exchange glances, and then he'd say, "I'm so glad we're not planning on a hospital birth. I'm so glad we don't have to go through that."

And this ranges from stuff like the friend of mine who went in for a post-term ultrasound to doublecheck that everything was okay and had the administering nurse lie to her in an attempt to panic her into admitting herself to be induced immediately to horrifying shit like a woman having her baby taken away because she refused a C-section.

They will lie. They will not talk about the risks of epidurals. They will insist on putting an IV shunt into your vein "just in case" and not mention that it's possible to refuse. They will pressure. This is why people hire doulas - when they can afford them - to help protect their families from the crushing stress and pressure. This is insane.

* Hospitals are insane. Did I mention?

If you had to go to a hospital to get a special blood test done to confirm that you were healthy enough to not have to go to a hospital for your delivery - consider the stressiness in the context of previous point please - what would you like to be hearing in the lab waiting room?

There was a television there, turned up too loud, of course, because this culture is sucktastic.

But what was playing on the television?

Medical programming, of course, it was the hospital.

What medical programming?

What would you put on?

What would you put on if you were a complete idiot?

How about a special on medical mysteries in which a family could not get treatment for their newborn's skeletal abnormality because the medical community wouldn't believe that it existed?

(Present in the waiting room: receptionist, three third-trimester women, and my liege, who had brought me there, looked at the television, and put in earplugs so he could study.)

* Heartburn can be bad enough to make you throw up.

'Nuff said.

* You will become a D&D dwarf.

The ability to detect the slightest of grades will suddenly appear. "This is an upslope." "Is it?" "Yes."

* Water is the best thing in the universe.

Go swimming. Take a bath. Get an inflatable tub that's deep enough to float the belly. It doesn't matter. Bathliness is next to godliness. I am totally composing this post in the tub.

I get in the water and all the pain and strain go away. And when I get out, I don't hurt for a while, because my muscles have had a chance to relax and unwind and rest a little, because water is totally supportive.

I am completely and totally convinced of the water ape period theory of human evolution. I found it convincing because of the whole, dude, where did our fur go thing, but experiencing pregnancy, and then experiencing pregnancy and water? Completely conclusive.

* How debilitating pregnancy is depends not merely on who you are, but random unknown factors that for all I know include the phase of the moon.

I went around and around on "Why can I climb the stairs without a problem today when I couldn't yesterday?" Damned if I know.

Pregnancy is hard physical labor, and the hard physical labor of it is completely invisible, so it's like an invisible disability only of course there's the giant belly so it's not invisible-invisible, it's just that it's implausible to people who haven't been there.

* No matter how crazy the experience makes you, everyone around you is crazier.

I've been in and out of tears. I've muttered about needing to be off my depression meds because of complications on SSRIs in the third trimester. I've wrestled with the fact that gestation takes all of my energy except enough to run the braingremlin that thinks I should be getting more done.

This is nothing compared to people around me.

In the birth class, the teacher told us that we should think about delegating someone to field all the "Is the baby there yet?" phone calls. To which one of my classmates said something to the effect of, "Who would do that?" I said, "Pregnancy makes people crazy. Not you. The people around you."

I went to a baseball game last Friday, minor league game 20 minutes from my house and probably 10 at the outside from the backup hospital. Was chatting with a woman with a toddler-in-stroller in the elevator back to the car.

"So when are you due?" she asked me.

"Monday."

My deadpan made her laugh nervously, and she said, "... cutting it a little close there, eh?"

Cutting it close? Is the baby going to erupt from me in a splash of drama during the seventh inning stretch? What?

* Relaxin feels so weird.

My pelvis is in, I think, four pieces, and every so often when I move it feels like it nearly falls apart. The muscles that are, of course, completely unused to holding my hips on are exhausted from the effort.

On the one hand, I'm glad it's all loose because it'll make it easier to expel the fishie. On the other hand, having my pubic bone pop near-audibly weirds me the fuck out.

* The belly is gyroscopic.

It does not like to change orientation. Rolling over in bed while nine months pregnant is a feat of athleticism worthy of a medal. The belly objects. If the process involves rolling over onto the back, there will be the moment of hazy, dizzy fatigue in which the vena cava is compressed which leaves one feeling like an upended box turtle. Begging for assistance at rolling over is embarassing but sometimes necessary.

* Sharp tearing pain in the foot is something that happens to a certain fraction of women in the third trimester.

It's caused by the normal pregnancy edema, and trying to talk to medical professionals about it appears to lead to flailing panic and lack of any clue of what to do. Also, it hurts like fucking hell.

* There will come a point at which the belly gets in the way of everything.

By everything, I mean everything.

I mean I can't pee without the belly getting in the way, it wants to exist in the same space as my thighs unless I take my clothes off so I can move the thighs out of the way. (Lately I've been taking my clothes off a lot.) And trying to pee on the diagnostic stick at my regular medical checkups? HAH. It took me a couple of sessions to be able to consistently find the piss.

For a while getting places by crawling worked better (especially steep staircases, like the one at my liege's house). Now ... the belly is in the way.


I'm sure I'm missing a few things, but that will do for a nice overview.

Scenes from a Life, Trauma Ward Edition

The fingers of my left hand grip the edge of the sink because my balance rocks back and forth with the sobs; I am trying to brush my teeth, a process rendered notably more complicated by the way the crying keeps bringing up washes of bile for me to strangle on.

I hear his voice in the hall, asking me what's wrong, asking me if I'm all right, and I don't have enough leftover breath after the tears to make any voluntary sounds. I spit into the sink, still clutching it for stability. There is a tap at the door; eventually it opens and he winds an arm around me, holding me as I sniffle into his shoulder.

Another round of bile comes up; I turn and spit it into the sink. "Is that blood?" he asks, concerned. I cough. "Yes. I'm pregnant. My gums bleed." The bleeding doesn't have anything to do with the trigger, it's just normal, unremarkable. The tears are something else. He holds the hair back from my face in case I have something else to spit up.

I cling to him a little longer, and then lurch out of the bathroom. "Since I'm awake..." he gestures into the bathroom, and I nod and crawl into bed, slowly strip off my clothes and fling them into the closet where I'll need to sort them into the laundry later, and take a sip of water from one of the mugs there. Then the nausea comes again in earnest, bringing with it panic: the bathroom is still shut. I grab the other mug, the empty one that needs to go down to be washed, and throw up in that.

When he gets out of the loo, I lurch back, dump the contents of the mug into the toilet, rinse it out. "We need to remember that," I mumble as I slump back into the bed. He holds me a while, I forget how long, whether there was any talking, any explaining of the ripped-open space in me, the way I was thrown back to old thoughts, old patterns, back to fighting for the mental space to actually blame the one who tried to rape me for the assault rather than letting the responsibility dissolve in a wind of excuses.

"Do you want me to take the mug downstairs?" I shrug. "It's on the bathroom, uh. Thing." "I'll rinse it out." "I did that, it just needs to go down." He takes it down and, I presume, puts it in the dishwasher; I curl up in a kind of null space and snivel.

He settles back next to me, strokes my skin gently. We talk, curled up together; the cat climbs up on the bed, walks up the length of my body, wanders off again. His questions bring me out of shaking trauma reaction and into analysis, taking apart my responses, working through where it came from; making me realise what, precisely, triggered my meltdown, what bit of damage needs washing clean and sewing up so it can mend a little. I track it back, thinking of all the ways I have blamed myself for the assault, the ways I made excuses for my attacker, the ways I let him off the hook, cut the slack: remembered that every time I've told a part of that story, every single person has been harsher about him than I have ever been willing to be. I remember that I have never been able to forgive myself for being fourteen, for not knowing how to take up the responsibility to police some dumb boy's penis and thus being - in that defective image - entirely to blame for the consequences of his erection.

I remember identifying the colonists in my mind, and the way that lanced the rotten wound, oozing out pus and blood, and I can feel its ragged edges and know that it has still not healed. It is an old wound, old and familiar and unscarred and suddenly torn deeper and sharper and bleeding fresh.

I am shaking, spent, wracked with pain and memory; even my own room, my own space, does not manage to give me shelter.

"Could you take me down a little and hold me?"

He strokes my neck, gently. "I'm surprised you're not down a little already, after--"

After earlier, when he had told me that he was going to bed, fingers laced into my hair and sending me into half-dreamspace with a perfect touch, earlier when I had looked up into his eyes and told him, wonderingly, how gorgeous he is. Earlier, when he said he was too tired for anything now, but a few hours of sleep and he'd probably be happy with whatever inclinations I had.

Earlier, when I had anticipated crawling into bed for the love and comfort that I got, but without the raked-open heart needing emergency sutures, when I might have been able to bury my face in his chest and feel his hand on the back of my neck and just feel the joy of it. When it might have been possible to make love in the gentle warmth of the dark, rather than just cling and claw to presence, too fragile, too brittle, to be able to accept the comfort of anything other than the burying my face against his skin and shaking.

"There's been a bit of an emotional interruption," I say, trying to say it lightly, with that lilt of understatement, and failing.

Another future speared through with reality. Too much lost opportunity, too much lost time, with one thing and another; my distraction or his, my medical needs, his schoolwork, now this quaking betrayal of savage memories and old wounds. By this point, the birds are starting to greet the sun, a fact which I greet with bitter sarcasm that makes him smile gently and cradle me close. I will need to be awake in a few hours, at this point, and I cannot imagine sleeping well.

He held me, and I felt the tickling, teasing tears roll down my cheeks.

Scenes from a Life, Kink Edition

"This would probably make an even better photograph."

"Why's that?"

I have to think about it, my head pillowed on one of his thighs, my hand resting next to it. The other hand, with the dark rich red rope still wrapped around the wrist, curls around my waist.

He strokes my hair and shoulder while I think, and I arch my back a little against the length of his other thigh, shifting my legs a little to stop the knot from grinding into my ankle, an endeavour made more difficult by the thick band of hemp coiled around my knees.

It's an oddly domestic little picture, in my mind, viewed from the outside. One of his hands on top of my head, the other petting me, expanse of skin and several colours of rope, lounged in the great heap of pillows, this comfortable lazy-dreamy snuggle.

I finally say, "With my hands free, the choice of it all is much more obvious."

I close my eyes. It feels so good.

Scenes from a Life II

While snuggling:

"That was ... pretty much exactly what I needed."

"Glad to be of ... dominance."

Quiet Evening at Home

"Is there sour cream?"
"I think so. You'll have to go check."
"That means I'll have to get up."
"Walking is like that."
"I wanted to be certain of dip before I got up!"
"Nothing in life is certain."
"There is no sour cream in the fridge."
"Alas and alack."

"What do we want to do for dinner?"
"I think there's some chicken in the fridge. Uh, freezer."
"Yeah."
"Could you start it defrosting? I'll get sour cream on the way home."
"Okay. And my cheese?"
"I'll look."

"There's sour cream now. They didn't have the cheese."
"Well, that's dairy."

At which point we had some conversations about how we were doing in Tribal Wars and a bit of me eavesdropping on his World of Warcraft setup. And I commented about one of the pleasanter and more entertaining aspects of being a space alien; it's nice to have some every so often.

"Could you start some rice to go with this?"
"Sure."

"I've put some flavoring stuff in the rice."
"..."
"Did you hear me comment on the rice?"
"Yeah. Checking on the chicken."

"This is going to be kind of dry. We should maybe do something with it?"
"I can make a sauce?"
"That'd work."
"Any ideas?"
"There's just pepper on the chicken, so something that goes with whatever you did with the rice."
"I'll just do a basic cheese sauce, then."
"That sounds good."

"Sauce is done. Rice is still going. You want to wait?"
"Yeah."

Sounds of animated violence are drifting over the back of the couch now.

Just a quiet evening at home.

I've been seeing people commenting recently about running relationships on feminist principles, and have been vaguely sort of wondering what they mean by that. Ideology is hard. I should go check the rice.