Coping with memories

Writing the memories on the blog has helped. I've been getting fewer flashbacks, and the parts who hold memories are able to just let them out during the time I'm writing, rather than filling the edges between my thoughts with everything they're holding on to.

At the same time, though, writing things down is bringing up a lot of fears. Yesterday's post, in particular, triggered a whole lot of terror. In therapy today, I mentioned that. But I also realized the terror was about the act of writing, and not that it was bringing up too many memories.

Why should writing things down be so terrifying? I know it's something I cope with, and I've been working for a while at getting myself to the point where I can write things down. I do believe at this stage that I'll never be able to write my dissertation unless I can write down my own history first; or, at least, I won't be able to write concretely about anything specific, without having the writing be so indirect as to evade my points completely, unless I allow myself to write down the things that keep me from being clear. (I'm sure that I'm now so confusing as to be completely incomprehensible. Oh well.)

So, the fear. I know why I am afraid of writing. My... family would look through anything someone had written down. They would read it, use it as a way of getting to know a person's weak spots. I think, but I don't know for certain, but given how triggered I get with it, that there were also threats about things being written that might be... incriminating. So I learned early on how to write down what I felt in a way that other people couldn't really understand. And I learned to obscure my points, so that I could deny anything someone might say about what I'd been writing about.

The terror remains. I get the same fears about speaking, and have been working through those as well. It used to be, when I got too close to something, my voice went away entirely. The words simply would not come out, my mind would go away, there was nothing there. I was terrified.

What is the fear? Rationally, I know that the absolute worst that would happen if someone in my family found out I am writing this is that they would get angry, they might not speak to me. Emotionally? I am terrified. I sense people beating me, hurting me desperately badly. There is a maelstrom of violence swirling in my mind, parts of me are certain they will be killed and end up spending eternity in hell.

Sometimes, parts wonder if it's because I/we/they are telling lies. But then, the fears get more intense when I begin to talk about things I know for certain are true. And, rationally, who fears violent retribution for being found out to be a liar? Who can manufacture nightmares and flashbacks and all of the symptoms of being an abuse survivor without going through it? If I don't even watch movies that have violent content because they are too upsetting, then where do I get these constant images of violence, if not from my own experience? I don't even watch the news because it's too violent, I skim over newspaper articles, I do what I can to shield myself from the violence in the world.

I would say it came from working at the shelter, but I had these fears before I started doing that. The terror came before I went into therapy. So, rationally, I know that the place all of the fear is most likely to have come from is my own experience. It's just very hard to accept that it's true.



I tend to look at my life symbolically. It's easier to cope with, if I think about my life as a piece of literature to be analyzed. So here's a memory:

When I was eight or so, a friend of the family gave me a Baby Alive doll. I remember feeling weird, uncomfortable about it, because the doll was black. I was embarrassed to have a doll that wasn't white, to have tangible evidence of my difference. At the same time, I really liked that doll. It was brand new, and it was a good doll, not the cheap, easily breakable kinds of dolls we could usually afford.

One day, when I was at school, my brothers went into my room, found the powdered food that went with the doll, and poured it into her mouth. Then they put in water. They were just playing, but it ruined the doll (and used up all of the food, which I had been carefully hoarding so that I could extend the fun of feeding the doll). She was filled with hard lumps of food, filling up her mouth, clogging up her insides.

This was upsetting on basic principle, having my things ruined by younger kids. But there was more to it. It was also upsetting in its symbolism. That doll, more than any other I had ever had, represented me. And when I was about two, I experienced something very like what the doll went through. Even though the memory of what happened to me was only an occasional nightmare at that point, I am sure it contributed to how upset I was over the doll.

The "nightmare" I had was of floating up near the ceiling. I could see the edge of the stair railing, and a table. At the table were my mother, my stepfather, my two older sisters, and a child in a high chair. I couldn't really see the child in the high chair, just hear it crying and gagging. What I could see was my stepfather's back, as he leaned over the child, forcing more and more food into her mouth.

I was a teenager when I discovered that this nightmare was actually a memory. My mother was planning meals, and I said something about how much I despised meatloaf, but I didn't know why. One of my sisters was there, and brought up the time my stepfather forced so much food into me that I threw up, a solid lump of meatloaf sitting there on my high chair tray, looking almost exactly how it had before it was put into my mouth.

What is particularly telling about this is that it wasn't the force-feeding that seemed memorable. That was common, with my stepfather. It was the way that particular incident ended. The things my family acknowledges and talks about are the incidents where something out of the ordinary happened. And the more I look at why particular memories stand out, the more I am able to accept that what happened day-to-day was, in fact, traumatic.

I feel the need to add somewhat of a disclaimer. I have parts who are upset by the fact that what I am writing down is just the bad things that happened. And they are right--good things happened, too. I don't write these things to say that my family were all horrible people who never loved me and who are evil. I suppose a benefit of DID is that I am able to simultaneously hold on to the knowledge that members of my family did their best, and did love me as well as they could, and also to know that horrible things happened pretty much every day. I am grateful to that ability to exist in separate parts, because I do love my family, and I don't know how well I could sustain a relationship with them if I were not so able to forget all of the things that happened when I am with them in the present.