Ten Years Ago/digging through journals

I was looking for a poem I had written, to post on my other blog, and found the journal where I had written it. I decided to read the journal part while I was browsing.

And, oh. Wow. Apparently, I really do have DID. And, apparently, I knew it ten years ago. How could I block that out of my mind?!! I had run across a different journal where I was writing about DID very hypothetically, and I thought that was the only place. But, no. Not only that, but somehow, even in the same journal, I could keep myself from noticing that I was dealing with DID, and use entire sections of the spiral notebook to write about other things, with no knowledge that there was stuff about me having DID in the same notebook.

I'll put a couple of excerpts behind the cut. Oh, and another thing. Looking at them now, I can see my handwriting shifting, and I recognize which parts were writing, even though I didn't know or acknowledge those parts at the time. I'll change colors where the handwriting changes.

7 Sept ‘97

Amazing how sleepy I get, as soon as I open up my journal. I guess I really don’t want to have to be dealing with any of the issues that I need to journal about. It’s one thing to make up a fictional survivor monologue and tell it to people in a play. It’s another thing to talk more directly about real things that actually happened to you. And I have a hard time believing that I’m really out of it, that there’s something to be out of, that I deserve to not be treated like I was…

And yet, there are people who know me now in ways that people haven’t known me before, and they still seem to like me well enough. And I’ve gone through more than a year now without the reputation of being someone who doesn’t like to be touched, and no one has chosen to do anything harmful to me.

I keep waiting for it to get easier, but it doesn’t. It can get easier for me to accept the difficult things, but the parts that are hard just seem to continue being hard. I wonder if I will ever get to the point where the DID isn’t so overwhelmingly a part of who I am… I keep waiting for a part that I can control and stop. For a point where I can be in charge. I’m afraid to let go for fear that I’ll never regain control. I’m afraid that if I let myself be a little weak & forgiving, I will never work hard and get things done again.

14 September, '97.
It seems like I spend so much of my life waiting. For the bus. For stuff to pick up at work. For the energy to do anything. To get better. I guess I just get frustrated with the zen of things. With the need to relax, and just let things happen in their own time. Patience is not one of my stronger virtues.

I guess it's partly that it's dangerous for me to live in the present. So much of my life, my survival depended on my ability to ignore the present and prepare for the future. And since then, my primary experience with living in the present has been tied to a sense of despair that things will get better--or maybe it hasn't been living in the present. Maybe I was just living in the past.

It's really hard for me to know who I am. When I'm talking about myself, it's as though I'm not even there, like it's a person I'm reading about. Somewhere, under all of this, I must be a real person, with feelings & all of the things people have.

And it's funny to write this way, now that I think of it, because I am more a real person than I have been at any point in my life that I can remember.

5 September '97 (ed. note: I think I meant October--it's between other entries for October, anyway) Ouch. Here it is again. I can't wait until a time in my life when it's over.

It's so hard to resist the temptation to turn to metaphors: Hansel & Gretel, after the woods. Even when it all works out at the end--even when people end up lots better in the end... Is it really better to be materially better because the people you needed to trust threw you into the forest to manage your own survival?

I am just so tired of feeling like I don't own my body. Of feeling like the only way to be safe is to leave it, and hope that nothing really bad happens while I'm not in it. It really sucks. Especially because I don't think it's a good coping skill for the life I have now. People aren't trying to hurt me anymore, and I wish I could hold onto the body for long enough to get better.

25 Feb 98 I HATE this. It's like being a kid again. There are all of these things that need to be done for me to be safe, but I don't know what they are, or how to do them.

Maybe being a kid is the key to my mood swings. I'm relatively calm & happy all day, but when I have to come home, and worse, when I have to go to bed, things fall apart. Or checking to see who's here, feeling safer if there is someone... Shit, panic attack...

I am so desperate. It feels like I'm two or three people... like I get to be confident and smart and attractive when I'm at work, but when I'm alone or at home, I'm this ugly little slug, that people either avoid or step on and destroy.

I feel so trapped. I like the positive feelings I get when I can do well on things, but it feels like I'm just setting myself up to be hurt. As though... I don't know, as though by doing well, that's just going to make the other side of my life more hellish and awful. As though if I spend energy doing well at school, I'm just going to get pounded on when I get home, so I won't get above myself. That is so stupid--that never happened. I also feel like if I tell, nothing will be true, no one will believe me. As though I am making all of this up to get attention. So I don't feel like it's okay to talk to anyone, because if I'm just doing this to get attention, I don't deserve it.

I feel so stupid, and worthless, and lazy, and powerless. Like I can't move, like there's nothing I can do to feel safe. Like there are a million things I need to do, and I can't figure out how to prioritize.

I am so tired of taking care of myself. Of paying my bills and feeding her & washing her clothes, & making appointments & she isn't worth it, & she doesn't deserve it, and I don't like her, and I wish she had never been born. I hate her. All she does is ask for things and nag. I don't want her. If she wants something, she should take care of herself.

Oh, fun. The uncensored diaries of J. See how she shockingly refers to herself in the third person.