Resilience

It's been a while since I posted. Some of it is that I've been busy, some of it is that I've been sick when I haven't been busy, and I guess a bigger part of it is that I haven't been in much of a writing space lately.

I guess I've gotten out of the habit, and I'm not sure that's a good thing. I tend not to write as much when things are going moderately well, and I was kind of in the habit of coming to this blog when I was really trying to sort things out.

I guess I would come here most often when I was trying to shore up my life. I would write about things, trying to figure things out, trying to hold myself together. And I've needed less of that in a lot of ways. I'm coming up on a full year since the worst of the depression ended. I think this is probably the longest stretch I've gone without having that lurking depression inside of me. I would never say it's gone forever, but I'm feeling pretty confident that I'm able to handle it.

Because here's the thing: I do still get depressed. I've even come close to being suicidal, although it's kind of like I built a staircase out of that deep, dark pit, and while I might drop down into it, it doesn't take long for me to find the way out again. Which is pretty damn amazing, you know? To have the depression come up, in response to things that objectively suck in my life, and then to be able to find the path to not being suicidal any more.


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I've been thinking a lot over the past week or two about doing something for the It Gets Better Project. (For those of you who don't know, it's a community response to the number of recent suicides by kids who were being bullied for being queer.)

Mostly, though, I've been defending the project to people who are absolutely livid that someone is saying "It gets better." I guess the people who object to that are still really caught up in their own pain, and can't see how important it is for someone to be able to believe that things get better. The people I've seen who object to it don't seem to believe that things *do* get better, I guess. And so they're angry that the problem of bullying isn't solved immediately. They're maybe jealous of people who *did* find a way to make things better. And, with some of them, it seems as though they think the people who are living better lives now got there by luck or magic or something, and they feel cheated that they (the ones who are currently unhappy) didn't get that magic.

All I know is, one of the things that helped me through some of the worst times was the fact that there was always at least some part of me that refused to stop believing in the possibility of things getting better. Sometimes, it was a very small piece of a very quiet part of my system. But it was always there. It thwarted my suicide attempts. It kept me going to therapy even when most of me was absolutely certain that nothing would get better, ever, at all.

It took me almost eighteen years of therapy to get to a point where I felt better. Objectively, I have to admit, I didn't start feeling really bad until my external circumstances *were* better. When I was still being abused, I was pretty damn certain that there was better, and I did what I had to in order to live to get there. Hell, I did what I had to so that the future I got to would be a place I wanted to live. And that SUUUUUCCCCCKKKKKKED. Just to be clear. I wanted to leave home when I was eleven. I knew it was horrible. I knew it was bad for me. And I also knew that, since I didn't have anywhere to go, anywhere safe to live, that leaving home would mean that I was going to close off a lot of options for myself. Options I wanted to have, like being able to go to school. So I made a deal with myself: live through these next seven years, and then you can leave home. So it was seven years more of abuse, choosing over and over to stay, since I didn't have anywhere I could run away to. I mean, I could have lived on the streets. Hell, it's probably even the case that, had I said something to some of my friends, they would have helped me. But I didn't know that then, so it didn't seem like an option.

Anyhow. I got through those seven years by holding onto the belief that it would get better. That I could leave the abuse behind me, and that things would be BETTER.

And they were, on the outside. I can still remember that first year away from home. Have you ever done the thing where you press your arms against the sides of a doorway, as hard as you can, for a minute or so, and then step out, and your arms just float up, without you making an effort? It was like that. I could just float through things. Everything seemed easy, everything seemed perfect.

And then the nightmares started, and the flashbacks. And I started having all of those horrible feelings coming up, the ones from when I was being abused. I felt like I was a horrible, worthless, disgusting person. I felt like a fraud. I felt like if people found out about me, they would despise me. I felt like people were about to reject me. And so on. And I could look around at my life, and see that everything outside of me was great, and so it seemed like the logical conclusion was that I was the one who had something wrong with me. The problems were inside of me, and there was no escape. And that is when I got suicidal.

I'm just kind of rambling now, still trying to work out what it is that I want to say for the It Gets Better Project. Because what I want to say is, even when the outside circumstances have improved, you might not feel better yet. And that is realistic, and human, and it DOES NOT MEAN YOU'RE NOT GOING TO FEEL BETTER. It just means you need to keep working on it.

What I want to say is, you have to do a lot of work for it to get better. It's not just going to happen for you. You have to find ways to be around people who are supportive. You have to find ways to accept yourself. You have to find your own way into being safe, and you have to make some hard choices along the way.

What I want to say is, you have to keep going. Even when it seems like you're never going to make it, you have to stay alive anyways.

What I want to say is, those of us who have survived have a responsibility to help those who are still being hurt. We need to do what we can, both to make things better, AND to give hope to the ones who are still struggling. There are a lot of different ways to do that, but being as honest as we can, and speaking up as much as we are able, is one of the ways.

I'm still thinking this through, but I wanted to write something down for now.

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been a while

i haven't posted in a while. partly it's because i've been having bad fibro, and i still don't have a good desk chair, so i get tired pretty fast when i sit at my desk. partly, it's because the parts who have been out lately haven't been as interested in writing, or if one part wants to write something, someone else has another idea of what to write about and then there's conflict, so nothing gets written.

or maybe it's that the parts who have mainly been out aren't ones who have been on the blog much so they don't feel as comfortable writing? not sure.

i miss the things i used to do, and by that i mean things i was doing just a few months ago.

in terms of an update, we wound up thinking about the reasons s. had for not taking our insurance any more, and they made sense. and also, we figured that if she's willing to see us for a copay that is less than half what she was getting from the insurance company, odds are she isn't actually trying to get rid of us. so on the up side, we'll still be seeing her for therapy. on the down side, that's $200 a month we have to spend now that we didn't have to spend before. but there is another positive: i applied for food stamps, and they are giving me... $200 a month. so it works out even, pretty much. so that's good.

one thing happening is that parts have been struggling with memories and being triggered. one thing we've realized is that the triggers from present stuff are especially powerful because we don't actually remember the stuff that made it triggering. not sure if that makes sense. i explained it to w like this: let's say i went to the circus, watched a bunch of clowns, and then got stepped on by an elephant. but i blocked out being stepped on by the elephant, and just remembered how painful it was. so now, every time i see clowns, i'm afraid of the pain of being stepped on by an elephant. so clowns are what's scary. but really, the problem was the elephant.

so i kind of think if i can get to the point where i remember the elephant, then the clowns won't be nearly as upsetting.

the problem is, it's hard to stop blocking out memories. it's one of those things i have done for so long, and it's such a habit to keep myself from remembering things. and i have a lot of fears about remembering things, too. and i used to get such positive responses from NOT remembering, and it's hard to let go of that. plus, there's the fear that i'm making it up.

i guess that's something to think about. intellectually, i don't really believe the false memory people are right. they just come across as people who are trying to keep things hidden, and who are trying to keep people from finding out about bad things.

but at the same time, i can think of a bunch of things that i used to think were just nightmares i had, and then someone in my family will describe something that happened, and it's like... oh. that wasn't a nightmare. that really *happened* pretty much exactly as it did in the recurring nightmare.

so it seems like i would then be more willing to believe the *other* "nightmares" i have that are like those are also true. but in a lot of ways, i don't want them to be true. but at the same time, maybe realizing they are true is the only way to reduce their power. on the OTHER hand, realizing the things i now know are true are true hasn't reduced their power. those things are still upsetting for me.

so that's part of what's going on, at least right now.

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hating being crazy

today is one of those days where i am really HATING being crazy. really hating it.

instead of watching the inauguration, i had therapy. things kind of went downhill from there. i mean, just spending my day having therapy is bad enough in the usual run of things. other people have jobs, do useful things in the world, do things for other people, and so much of my time is taken up by coping with the fact that i am crazy.

and today, it was the inauguration of the first african-american president. this is amazing. i am thrilled. and yet... the tears i had today were not tears of joy, and it was the stupid, all-about-me feelings that i hate having, but don't have the force of will to keep from coming.

why was i crying?

i was reading an email, and someone was writing about how wonderful this is for little biracial children, how they can look to the white house, and see that anything is possible. and the tears came, because here i am... i had so much potential. when i was a kid, teachers would say that i could become the first black, and the first female president. they really believed i had that much potential.

as i got older, i realized i didn't want to go into politics, but i definitely still had that potential. i really believed that i could do anything i set out to do. and for 20 years, for maybe even 30 years, i was able to make that be true. hard work, intelligence, luck. whatever combination of things, it was working. i was demonstrating how much i could do, in spite of handicaps.

it was about overcoming. that's kind of how i made peace with the things i couldn't control: i focused on overcoming them. sure, we were poor when i was growing up, but that was something that didn't have to be permanent, that didn't have to say anything about who i was as a person. same with me being biracial, or female, or anything else.

i guess i thought that by getting past it, by achieving what i wanted in spite of the things that made it hard, that kind of erased the negatives.

and then... it feels like it all got thrown off by me going crazy. everything else, i managed to handle. i even dodged the bullet several times with going crazy. i can think of times where it came so close, and i managed to get past it, and keep going on.

so this last time... damn, it sucks. it's like i lost all of the things i was trying to do, which means, deep down, that it feels like i lost my chance not to be the person that the bad stuff happened to. because that's what the accomplishment was about. it was about proving to the world, or maybe more, proving to myself that just because i was black, or poor... just because i was abused during my childhood, it didn't mean i couldn't have a good life as an adult.

it's not about being black, or poor, really. certainly, those are things i can talk about with people, so i can tell they aren't the things i have trouble with. but i guess that i believed that if i just did enough, achieved enough, overcame enough, i could erase the abuse. make it like it didn't matter, didn't count, didn't really happen.

and then being crazy came along, and proved I really couldn't just ignore it. I couldn't really just act like it hadn't happen or didn't matter. And I'm furious about that.

But maybe mostly, I'm furious with myself over that. It was my job to make it as though it had never happened. It feels like that was the only way my life could work, the life I wanted to have. If I could act like it didn't matter that I was abused, that it was all in the past.

It's not even, not exactly, that I wanted to pretend it hadn't happened. I just wanted to have a life where it didn't matter that it had happened to me. Where I could deal with it, once a week, in a tidy therapy session. Where I could be a good advocate for children, make sure I did everything I could so it wouldn't happen to other children, and leave it at that.

I didn't want to walk around covered with scars. I didn't want to have to have it be this crippling thing that's making it hard for me to even make it through the day, with shockingly little expected of me.

I certainly didn't want it to take away from sharing joy with so many other people in this country, this historic moment that I feel is getting tainted by things that happened half a lifetime ago.

And that's part of what really makes me angry. That here I am, sixteen and a half years after leaving home, and I'm still reeling from the things that happened. It's not fair. I'm furious at my mind, for not being able to find a better way out, for interfering with my ability to cope. I'm furious with myself, for not being able to maintain the discipline that would have let me keep going on.

I want to be able to feel happy, and all I'm getting is sadness and anger. It sucks, and it isn't fair.

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thinking

i'm up late tonight for several reasons. the reason i'm *still* up is that we went grocery shopping last friday and didn't wind up cooking some chickens that were on sale really cheap (like 49 cents a pound cheap!) and rather than risk them going bad, w and i decided it made the most sense to go ahead and cook them tonight. and since i don't have to get up as early as she does, i'm the one doing the cooking.

we got home late, which caused the whole chicken discussion to happen at 10:30, because of our flaky couples' therapist, who rescheduled our appointment from 6 to 7. that alone wouldn't have gotten us home late, except that i was having serious panic and couldn't get onto the train. we tried... waited for at least three trains, and i just couldn't manage it. so w eventually suggested that we take a cab instead. on the one hand, this was a good idea. if i'm panicking to the point of being suicidal over getting on the train it really doesn't make sense to get on the train. on the other hand...

i feel really ashamed of the fact that i get suicidal over things like being in crowds. i mean, there isn't a good reason for it. i'm not actually in danger. i feel like i should just make myself cope. i feel like i should be *able* to cope. and i can't. there are things i can do. i pop rescue remedy like it's going out of style. i listen to music, i read, i do things to do healthy dissociation so that i'm able to get past the panic and get onto the train. i do a lot of positive self-talk: i remind myself that the train is safe, that it's ok for people to be on the same section as me, that it's not dangerous to have people stand near me. that i won't get hurt just because someone is standing in the same section where i am waiting. that it's not an aggressive thing for them to be doing. that they probably aren't even noticing me.

but really. normal people don't have to feel proud of themselves just because they managed to get onto the train. normal people don't freak out when someone else starts walking on the same sidewalk where they are walking. and i *know* that i used to manage all of that all right. but then i remember the times when i couldn't, like the times i wound up freaking out on planes because i didn't have a window seat, or all of the little things i've done for years to reduce anxiety.

see, the downside of dissociating less is that when i start to feel panic, i actually feel it. over the years, i've gotten less good at automatic dissociation.

and it's frustrating. i know that when i was growing up, i dealt with all kinds of things that were objectively way more stressful. and they didn't send me into suicidal... not exactly depression. it's panic to the point where death seems like a way better option, where it feels like there's absolutely no other way out.

someone inside had a good analogy for it, how i tip over so easily into feeling suicidal. it's like there's a cup, where things that need to be coped with are drops or splashes of water, and when the cup overflows, suicidal feelings spill out. for me, the cup is really small. on a good day, i can cope with whatever comes. but if the cup is getting filled up with things, even something pretty minor will make it overflow.

the good thing is, therapy over the past couple of years has gotten me to a point where the suicidal feelings don't last as long. it used to take longer for me to tip over into "suicidal," but then it would last for months. now, it doesn't take much at all, but it's over in hours or days. i suppose that's a good thing.

i just wish i could get to a point where i didn't tip over into suicidal at all.

and i guess another good thing is this is one more thing for me to think about at the times when i feel guilty for applying for social security: normal people, people who are coping well, don't actually have to struggle against suicidal feelings just to get onto the train, or to drive down the street.

it's not weakness, laziness, or any of that that is making me not be able to do the things i need to get done. if i could stop these feelings, i really *would* stop them. but i can't do it on willpower. and i don't need to be ashamed for my failure to stifle the feelings that make it so hard for me to do daily tasks.

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memories and monsters

had an interesting conversation (does it count as a conversation if it's all in my own head?) with the part who was out in therapy yesterday. not quite sure who it is. maybe one of the nonnys, but not completely sure. i think she's probably eight or nine, just based on the images i get when she thinks about things.

anyhow, she'd been talking with my therapist about how it is really dangerous to play, and how it's like there is a certain number of times you can play when nothing will happen, and you never know how many times that is, but if you play one too many times, then it will make the bad thing happen. same with not remembering all of the little things they do to keep safe.

her logic as to why things haven't been as bad since i left home is that maybe they just got better at being able to be careful, and if they *stop* being careful, then the bad things will happen.

after therapy, i was trying to get a sense of what exactly they mean, when they worry about "bad things." and this one gave me some interesting information. i don't think that they actually experienced the abuse directly. from the perspective of some of these parts--the ones who are super careful about following lots of "rules" and stuff like that--what they experience is this:

they miss some particular step or magic thing or make some kind of mistake. then they feel dread and fear about what is going to happen. then they "wake up" in pain, or they have more "nightmares."

and the thing is? i have fibromyalgia. i wake up in pain a LOT of the time. so now i'm trying to explain to them the difference between how i wake up in a lot of pain now, and it's not the same as when they were little. i point out that i *don't* wake up with bruises i don't know the origins of, that kind of thing. but... it's hard to explain the difference, because to them, it seems pretty similar.

what's funny is, they don't seem fazed by pain if they know where it's coming from. i was weirded out yesterday because i seemed to have a blister that i didn't remember, and then all the kids told me where it came from, and they didn't mind that at all.

and the nightmares... if all they remember is "nightmares," how can i explain that the things that happened when they were little weren't the same? that *those* things actually were happening, but the terrors they have *now* of nightmares are memories, and not actual "monsters."

but at least now i have more of a sense of why they are so nervous.

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unconditional love

ok. before i begin this post, i want to clearly say... generally, i am in favor of unfettered free speech (except spam--i DESPISE spam, and delete it). however. with this post, i'd like to request that people not leave any comments that are just to say things like "oh, poor you for having that experience" or anything like that. sometimes, sympathy is something i can't handle. if you feel you must, go ahead. but please don't feel obligated to say something, ok? thanks.

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I wish you hope, that keeps you looking toward tomorrow
and away from yesterday.
I wish you faith, in yourself and all humanity
and the belief that we will finally live as one.
I wish you joy, I wish you peace,
I wish you more than you will need.
I wish you unconditional love.

~~from Unconditional Love, by The Four Bitchin' Babes.

i started thinking about this post because of a conversation i had with w last night. even at the time, i knew i was asking kind of unfair questions. the kind of questions where, even though i wanted her to tell the truth, there was really only one truth that wasn't going to upset me.

you see, i asked her if, had she known how our lives would unfold, would she have chosen to be in a relationship with me. and she couldn't give me an unqualified yes. some of that is just w--she *thinks* too much about these questions, or she doesn't hear the question behind the one i ask. and i ask those questions, because i know she will give the automatic answer if i ask "do you love me? do you REALLY love me? do you love me unconditionally?" and i don't trust the automatic answer to be true. so i ask questions that have less automatic answers.

in my life, my experience of love has not been unconditional. growing up, i was taught that the path to being loved was fraught with danger. and to a child, or at least, to me as a child, love was the source of things like a reliable place to live, food, clothing, shelter. and, oh yeah, that emotional nurturing that is supposed to be so important.

but my experience of love was that it could be easily taken away. if i could not discern what the adults around me wanted, they would stop loving me. if i could not be good enough, or if i asked for things they were unwilling or unable to give, the love would be taken away. depending on the adult in question, that could mean that they would abuse me physically or emotionally, or it would mean that they just stopped noticing me.

and yet, in many ways, being noticed in a way i was told was loving could be equally dangerous. because sometimes, being noticed meant getting something perhaps intended as "positive" attention from people who really didn't consistently understand what it meant to be nurturing to a child, and how just because you're touching someone doesn't mean you're touching them... there. or in that way.

so i was not an especially cuddly child, to say the least. which also led to punishment, because if i couldn't accept nurturing love, the occasionally appropriate kind, the adults in my life would get furious. why was i rejecting them? why was i saying, with my body language, that i didn't appreciate their love? because that's what goes through the mind of a six month old, or a three year old, or even a ten year old. and because, clearly, being furious and raging is going to teach that child to accept nurturing when it's available.

there were adults in my life, people in my life who were not violent, who were not abusive in any way. but for my first five years, i didn't have any extended experience of that. so by the time i got to school, i understood the positive attention i got from teachers as being based entirely on my ability to be good--to learn quickly, to not ask for any extra effort, to help where it was needed without getting in the way. and let me tell you, it was much easier to follow the explicitly stated rules of school than it was to follow the invisible twisting path at home.

but here's the thing. you know how they say in trainings for people working with kids, that kids will seek out negative attention if they aren't able to get positive attention? that may be true for some kids. not so much for me. i didn't fully trust positive attention anyways, since i never could understand when positive attention was going to be safe. so i certainly avoided negative attention, and was fairly undemanding of other attention. if it seemed freely offered, i would take it. but i certainly didn't seek it out.

i learned not even to rely on family members who weren't abusive, because for whatever reasons, they tended to... well, to be unreliable. my father is a big example of this. i didn't meet him until i was eight. then, for the next 2 1/2 years, we wrote to each other, and i spent some vacations with him. and then he stopped writing, stopped having me to visit. he never really said why. he just stopped. for a lot of reasons, that just reinforced the message that there was something wrong with me, something that kept people from being able to care about me, to love me, to give me attention in ways that were safe.

yes, i had teachers. and i am grateful for them. but for the most part, teachers were something transitory. built into the relationship was that it was time-limited. it was a teacher's *job* to teach, and the would do it no matter how you behaved. when a teacher was kind, it still fell into my vision of what they were supposed to do.

looking back, with all the various times i can remember teachers going out of their way for me, it occurs to me that they actually cared about me, as a person, separate from what they were "required" to do. but it never once occurred to me, growing up, that a teacher would want to see me when they weren't being paid to do so. it never occurred to me to go back to see a teacher after i was no longer taking classes with them. because my baseline experience was that people only spent time with me when they felt they had to, that people only allowed me to be around so long as it benefitted them.

growing up, i somehow picked up the message that one's family is supposed to love a person unconditionally. and since it was pretty clear to me that my family did *not* love me unconditionally, i took away the lesson lots of kids in that situation do: that there was something about *me* that caused me to be less lovable. that this wasn't the fault of the people who were unable to love me, but something about me, as a person.

at some point in high school or college, i found out that my mother had had an abortion. (disclaimer: don't get me wrong. even with this particular experience, i am 100% pro-choice. people have every right in the world to determine for themselves what happens when they are pregnant.)

the thing is, my mother's story about how she had decided to have the abortion reinforced some really negative lessons i had already learned.

when i was a few months old, she divorced my father. and then she found out she was pregnant. i assume there were a lot of reasons she would have decided to have an abortion. i mean, being a single parent with three kids already, and not much money, having an abortion or giving the child up for adoption, would probably have been a good idea. had she decided to do this because she didn't think she could be a good parent, while it might have been kind of sad, i could see her point.

but the thing is, the reason she told me she had the abortion was because she was concerned the baby would be dark-skinned. my father is black, my mother (and the rest of my family) are white. she didn't feel she could go back and not have *me*, but the subtext as it came across to me was, "had i known what would happen, i wouldn't have chosen to have a biracial child."

i know there are parts who have often understood that the "wrong, unlovable" thing about me is the color of my skin. too "white" for my black father to want to have anything to do with me (or for the black kids in middle school not to beat me up for it); too "black" for my white (and rather racist) family to fully accept me. they coped with me by insisting i wasn't "really" black, but at the same time, my skin color came up pretty often. the conditions i understood for being loved required that i deny basic parts of who i am; and also that i not cause trouble, that i be hyper-good, simply because i was only loved on sufferance, and should i ever be difficult, i would be dangerously rejected.

and knowing that there had been the possibility that i would have had a sibling, someone who would have been my full-blooded sibling, who would have looked more like me, who would have been close to me in age... how much of the pain and loneliness and isolation i experienced growing up, how much of that might have been alleviated if my mother had chosen to carry the pregnancy to term, and have the child? at the same time, knowing what i know now... would i choose to subject someone else to what i grew up with? no. so i'm not going to say my mother shouldn't have had the abortion, because i can't see that it would have benefitted whichever soul eventually came to reside in that collection of cells.


okay, so where was i going with this post? oh, right.

so knowing all of this, knowing all of my experience of rejection, i was talking to w about my difficulty with trusting her. and i said, "it's really unfair to you, the fact that it's so hard for me to trust. because no matter how trustworthy you are, the hurdle you've got to get over to achieve my trust is set immensely high."

and w gave me the strangest look.

"unfair for me?" she asked.

because, ok, sure, it's kind of difficult for me, too. but i guess i'm used to it. i'm used to not being able to trust that anyone will love me unconditionally. but w isn't. she has mostly known people who were able to give and receive unconditional love. and here she is, in a long-term relationship, kind of stuck with someone who is always braced for rejection.

so yeah, to me, it seems harder on her. because she isn't doing anything wrong. because she isn't the one who hurt me. and yet, she's the one who gets the fallout from all of the pain i grew up with. and i'm less able to be a good partner to her because of that. we won't even get into the fact that she thought she was getting into a relationship with an adult, and seems instead to have gotten stuck with this whole mess of teenagers and little kids, and the adults have now been gone for seven months, with no idea of when they will return. so to me, it seems like the one getting the really unfair part is w. (yeah, i know. it's something i'll discuss in therapy.)

i do wish for hope, and for the ability to look towards the future rather than the past. but sometimes, the past gets in the way, and makes it awfully hard to build up the faith that unconditional love is even a possibility.

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trust

so the new couples' therapist w and i are seeing who (knock wood!) appears to be working out for us, has talked about trust several times.

and i was thinking about this. she asked whether i trust w, and i can honestly say i trust w more than i trust anyone else in the world. and that's a collective answer. we all trust her more than we trust anyone else.

which isn't precisely to say we *trust* her, just that we trust her *more*. the therapist (e, we'll call her) asked me to rate it on a scale of one to ten, so i'd say, overall with w, it's about a four. although probably it's a bit higher, but i was doing an average, you know. so maybe a five.

but then, i'm never quite sure what people mean when they ask me about trust. i mean, i trust pretty much anyone i interact with routinely not to be physically abusive. more or less, at least. there are parts who don't feel that trust, but they're also the parts who aren't entirely certain that anything actually exists. so i'd say, of us who are out often enough to have a sense of reality, we trust the people we interact with routinely not to be physically abusive.

i trust that when i buy canned food, the contents of the can will be what is marked on the outside. i trust that when i use my debit card, they will only take out the amount of money they are supposed to. i trust coffee shops and restaurants to give me food that isn't poisoned. i trust people driving cars to have some basic awareness of following traffic laws.

so where is it that i'm not trusting people? i have trouble trusting that they will remember i exist when i'm not right there with them. i have trouble trusting that people will follow through on things they've said they would do for me. i have trouble trusting that i will be able to depend on anyone outside of myself.

i'm able to trust people *not* to do things pretty easily. i trust people in my life not to go calling my family and letting them know about the things i've told about. i trust people not to tell me that i'm lying. mostly, on that last one, because there is still a lot of fear around people not believing me. but mostly, i trust that people will believe me.

i trust most people not to go out of their way to hurt me.

but at the same time, i really *don't* trust most people (or any people) to go out of their way to help me, or even, to go out of their way for me at all. and i guess that's where the lack of trust comes in. i find it really difficult to believe that people will make much of an effort, or respond well if i ask that from them. and i don't have much faith that people will continue to want to be friends with me, or whatever, if i ask for too much. and since i don't know where the line is, what "too much" is, i try not to ask for anything that hasn't been expressly offered, and try to avoid asking for too much of that, either.

and i guess there are parts who don't feel safe allowing emotional vulnerability to show, so probably, it's either just a long-ingrained habit, or we don't really trust people to be safe with emotional vulnerability. i guess we don't really trust that people aren't going to be critical of us, and reinforce the negative messages that run in my/our head: that i'm just lazy and selfish and not trying hard enough or working hard enough or that i'm making all of this up. a little bit, we're starting to trust a few people, and it's not like we've had too many negative experiences like that for a while (well, there was the hospital and right after, but that was so *clearly* messed up....)

maybe it's that it doesn't feel safe to allow myself to rely on anyone else. much as i and a lot of other parts are desperate for help, it doesn't seem safe to believe that someone else will be willing to be there to help us cope. and so we close off and withdraw, because sometimes, coping is the only thing we can do, and figuring out how to cope and also be with people becomes impossible. i don't know. and i *do* know someone else has been waiting to do something else, and i've held on for a while, but i guess i need to be done now.

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moments of grace

one of the problems with having DID is that there is only one body, and all of those who want to do something that requires a body have to try to share it. that's a though to preface what may wind up being a really confused/confusing post, because even though i have things i want to write, i'm not 100% certain that i will be able to hear myself think through all the things the *others* are thinking, or that i will be the only one writing things down.

aimlessly finding an entry point to what i was thinking when i decided i wanted to write.... i (we? someone?) have noticed something. the more each of us in this system is able to differentiate ourselves from the others, the more we are able to integrate *ourselves*. which seems kind of backwards--achieving self-knowledge by separating more thoroughly from other parts who live in the same body? but hey, it's all in the name of greater mental health, right?

so, about me. recently, i got a "real" name, as opposed to something the others (or even i) used to refer to myself. my name is grace. i chose it in part because for a while, when i talked to our therapist, and she asked for a name, and i couldn't think of one, and she suggested just naming a color, and i knew for sure the color that fits me, the color pretty much all of us think of when we think of me... gray. anyhow, we were using the color gray to refer to me in therapy, but for a lot of reasons, particularly because of the reasons that i feel surrounded by grayness, i didn't want that to be my name, and the others in the system didn't, either.

so in part, the name "grace" is because it sounds pretty close to the word "gray."

but there's also the thought of moments of grace. i know how they feel, but i don't have words for them, not exactly. moments of grace... those points when because of something or someone or just random chance, when things get better. they don't last long, but i guess they don't need to. it's that feel of a spring wind in the middle of winter, that beam of light that reminds you that maybe the sun really is planning on coming back again. or it's that second when you look up, and there is a gorgeous moon, and you had forgotten how beautiful the world can be. or that morning when you bend over to put on your shoes, and find that for some reason, your back and hands aren't hurting so badly, and you can do this without pain. those moments that come out of nowhere, and then go right back into nowhere.

there's the religious thing, too. you are saved not by works, but by grace. like, no matter how much effort you put in, no matter how good you are, how well you follow the rules, it's something else that saves you. or it doesn't. and there have been a lot of times in my life where it's been pretty clear that i've gone solely by grace. because it's not like anything else was stepping in to save me, some of those times.

i wouldn't say i'm christian, and i know there are parts who are, and i know there are parts who are pretty badly scarred by our particular experience of christianity, and i know there are parts who just happen to have a more... broad sense of religion. but anyhow, christianity is my first language for religious things, so i'll talk about those moments of grace, with the warning that i don't mean it in a precisely christian way. i mean, it was by the grace of god that i was led to all those fantasy books that opened up my mind about what religion could be, and allowed me to reconcile my own experiences with the religion i was raised with.


okay, another transition. i'm not particularly good with transitions. it's one of those writing things i can't really manage.

for years, well before JA was diagnosed with DID, before any of us had even heard of dissociation, the others still had a name for me. that was "the hopeless one." because, well, that's a very noticeable part of who i am. i know it frustrates some of the others, because they find that things work out better when they can behave as though the positive outcome is going to be there. but oh well. sometimes, things can feel pretty darned hopeless.

the other name for me was "the suicidal one." i wasn't suicidal to begin with. heck, i was even pretty hopeful. i had a plan, and it seemed like such a good plan. i was going to put really strong protections around the part of my mind that was my *self*, and stick it out at home until i turned 18, and then i would leave, escape cleanly, and go to college, and live my happy, successful, fulfilled life. i would get therapy and neatly process through all the stuff that i knew had been problematic when i was growing up. and everything was gonna be ok.

maybe my mistake was not starting therapy as soon as i left home, but that didn't seem like the hugely important part, not to anyone who was out, at least. not that we knew about each other, except how we kind of did. i mean, we're all really used to kind of watching ourselves go around in the world, commenting on it, trying to figure out what's happening.

i can remember some of college, and most of it, the parts where it wasn't clearly me in charge, were weird. "hm, here i go, acting like a college student. i wonder how i know how to do all these things," i'd think. but i was used to that.

but then i guess collective-i started getting flashbacks. definitely started getting a lot of body memories, which none of us had a name for, but that we knew were... something not about how the body was working, you know? something that felt phsyical, but wasn't, and went along with distinctly uncomfortable emotions.

oh, yeah, and there were a whole darned LOT of emotion-memories coming up. flooding with despair and unhappiness and all of that.

so my clever plan had some flaws, and i had absolutely NO idea what to do next. general advice: college counseling centers are not necessarily the place to go if you're highly functional but suffering from a fairly major nervous breakdown. so the counselor i saw somehow missed the nervous breakdown, and saw just this person who was a "little" unhappy (despite being TOLD by my friends--and i admitted it was true--that i hadn't eaten more than a few bites, if that, for about three or four months). so her advice? "decide to be more cheerful."

which, i admit, is advice i'd given myself in high school. to decide what my moods would be, and cause myself to feel that way. well, looking back, to create a part who had the traits that would let her feel that way. but given that the reason i was in counseling was that that had failed to work any more... i felt like i'd given it my best shot, like i'd done absolutely everything i could think to do, and nothing was helping. so that's around when i got completely suicidal.

not sure where i was going with that, but ok. oh, right, moments of grace, and the grace of god. so, by the grace of god, i do have parts who didn't ever want to die. so they are probably the reason that the majority of my suicide plans are things that would be likely to fail.

and it was sheer unadulterated grace from on high that i suffered no physical ill effects from the one time i overdosed except for a lingering gag reflex when presented with the particular brand of medicine. and maybe it's even grace from on high that no one found out about that particular incident until much later, because it meant that instead of getting stuck in a hospital, the other parts could show up and take over, and go on as though nothing had happened. which, given the results, might have been the best outcome for then.

anyhow. the other thing i meant to write about in this post is how, as we parts grow more distinct from each other, we also find our-individual-part-selves growing more integrated.

because it turns out, i'm not just, or only, despairing or suicidal. i never was *only* suicidal. i'm also one of the ones who loves to read. i like to do puzzles. i like to go for walks, or color. i loved to ride my bike.

a lot of the time i am present, but none of us were aware it was me, until we started working on being aware of who we were. and as each of us is able to say, "oh, that's me" or "oh, that's her" we're all learning that there is more to each of us, and always has been more, than the labels we first had.

not sure what my point is. and i know others had things they wanted to say, but i think by this point, we're all tired, or tired of writing, so that's all.

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Thinking

One of the main things I (Ellis) have been working on in therapy is accepting that there are times when I need to stop working, and be okay with not doing everything I feel ought to be done.

I know this is particularly one of my issues, because coping with too much to be done is why I came to be.

Nineteen years ago, I was fourteen years old. My foot was in a cast, because I had sprained it in gym. I was responsible for babysitting my younger siblings every day after school, while my mother took night classes. I was in charge of making sure they did their homework, got fed, took care of chores (or at least making sure the chores got done, which often enough meant that I was the one doing them), and got into bed on time. I was also responsible for keeping up with my own schoolwork, and doing well in school. (This last, at least, held a personal motivation, because I understood that if I did well in school for four more years, the reward was that I could have an all-expenses paid ticket *out* of my home.)

I was fourteen years old.

None of this was considered too difficult for me. If I couldn't manage to do all of that well, it was because I was lazy.

All my life, growing up, I was taught that I was lazy. In the face of all evidence, I believed I was lazy. Because, lots of times, I really wished I could be responsible for less. I wished I could just curl up somewhere and do absolutely nothing for a little bit.

I believed I was lazy because sometimes, the last thing I wanted to do was get dragged out of bed to hear about how I hadn't done enough that day.

I believed the problem was my laziness.

So, fast forward to my adult life. How can I possibly see anything I do now as difficult, if I was taught to believe that what I coped with at fourteen wasn't difficult?

I think part of my struggle with learning how to stop pushing myself is that it makes me feel like I'm being lazy, self-indulgent, selfish... it makes me feel like I'm weak. It also makes me feel disloyal to my mother, because she taught me that what I coped with at fourteen wasn't too hard for a fourteen year old to cope with.

And it also makes me scared. Because if I really am lazy, maybe if I don't push myself, I won't get anything done. And then I will be a failure, someone who waits for the world to solve all of my problems for me.

Intellectually, I know I do plenty. But emotionally, not so much. I'm working on this. Perhaps, a day hasn't been wasted if I don't spend eighteen hours pushing myself to get things done. Perhaps, it's enough to do just what I can, and to stop when I start to feel panicky. At least, I can consider this possibility.

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i ought to know better

i can't think why i did this. i found one of the lists of "incest aftereffects" and printed it out. then i marked down which ones i or my sisters have. not sure about all of them, because we don't talk about this stuff too much, but of the things i know, between us, we've got all but one of the 35 aftereffects listed.

probably means there was some incest going on.

hard to believe that. i mean, i know i have tons of symptoms. i know i have flashbacks that most likely point to having survived incest. i know there are things that trigger me that, again, most likely point to incest.

but i still can't really grasp that it happened. it's so hard to accept that something like that could happen, and no one would talk about it, and i wouldn't remember. i mean, i may not remember many specific incidents of abuse, but i was always aware that it was going on.

maybe it's that incest is more secretive. more hidden. happened to us separately, and not in front of each other. (well, not the physical side. the emotional incest was right out there in the open. or maybe lots of kids go on dates with their parents....)

i guess a lot of it is protective. it is easier for me to get through a lot of life by not remembering. but then, why do i keep on getting confronted with evidence?

i would say, "something would have shown when we were growing up." but then i look back, and realize the danger signs were loud and clear for anyone who might have been looking for them. but it's still hard to accept.

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looking at the pieces

it's easier when i can believe things didn't really happen. or at least i guess that's why i approach it that way. i can accept the individual pieces of the puzzle, to a greater or lesser degree. i can look, and say, "well, okay, yeah, *that* happened. and also *that*." but somehow, my mind shies away from putting the pieces together and dealing with the whole picture.

i can collect all of the pieces, and know that they add up to abuse, but it's so hard to accept that they do. i can look at my siblings and recognize that things probably were "that bad" because they certainly show signs of having gone through abuse; so why is it so hard to accept that perhaps i have DID because of abuse? mostly because i just can't deal with the enormity of what happened, i guess.



some pieces:

i know that my mother believed in spanking babies beginning around when they're six months old.

i know that my mother was more likely to spank, and to spank harder, when she was under stress.

i know that my mother got divorced from my father, and also had an abortion, when i was about six months old.

my mother says i was a "good baby" who could be put into my crib for hours at a time, and i wouldn't cry or fuss, even though i also didn't nap.

i know that my mother (at least some of the time, more when she was stressed) considered crying and fussing to be willfulness on the part of a baby, and would punish them for it.

my mother says that i "didn't like to be cuddled" when i was a baby, and would just hold myself stiff and unresponsive when she tried to cuddle with me.

i know my next-older sister, who was in grade school when i was born, resented me being born. i know her response to resentment was often physical violence.



i have all of those pieces, and yet, my mind shies away from acknowledging that anything bad happened. i can't really bring myself to put together the picture, even though i have some strong suspicions about what it means. and there are different parts of this puzzle. pieces that point to ongoing sexual abuse. pieces that suggest i was more physically abused than i remember.


at the same time, i can't imagine how i would live my life if i had to cope with the enormity of what happened. how could i go through each day, or talk to the people i talk to, or any of that, if i accept that my past was traumatic?

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Back again

There's a lot to blog about, and perhaps we'll get to it, or perhaps we won't. I don't know. Lots of parts, the littles especially, were worried about blogging while on the road, so we didn't do much of it.

But now we're back, so maybe we'll get some writing done.

One thing that came about from this trip is that the visit with family was actually a good thing. For some people, this would mean, "not triggering" or something like that. And, honestly, nothing was so out of my experience and preparation that I couldn't cope with it.

But, really, what was helpful was this: my family was just like they were when I was growing up. And with many different parts observing, what became most clear is that they were both abusive and loving in this weird mixture where you can't really separate the good and the bad. So, in the end, we came to an agreement in our system here. We each should decide for ourselves how to interact with family. Those who don't want to don't have to, but those who want to can keep up a relationship.

Because it's really absolutely mixed together, and it's also really clear that the kinds of things I automatically do to protect myself around them keep me insulated from the worst of things.... So I'm not especially in emotional danger, and certainly not in physical danger. Thus, whatever relationship a part wants to have, that will work for that part, but there's no all or nothing solution.

I don't know if I'm making sense. I've been thinking about this for a while. Mostly, it's that those who doubted the abuse could tell that it had really happened (my siblings talking about it, my mother denying and minimizing things that, even at the level she admitted to, were just plain messed up; lack of body boundaries and weird interactions between people). And those who doubted the love could tell that was also there (harder to quantify, but it was there).

So mostly what I got out of that part of the visit was confirmation that the decisions I/we have made about coping with the family were the right ones. And we don't need to push for confrontation, because those responsible for stuff will deny it up and down--watched a couple of siblings going down that path.

I guess that's about it for right now.

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I am my mother's daughter

I see so much of her in me. Whether it was just the genetic luck of the draw, or whether I learned my behaviors from her, I don't know. I do know that none of my seven siblings has these particular traits, and she raised them as well.

What are the traits? I dismiss my pain; my first level of defense is to ignore it; second is to take an aspirin (or Aleve, usually). And then to ignore it. I take on more than I can handle, and then proceed to get it done (this ability has disintegrated over time, much to my dismay). I set high standards for myself, and don't really grasp the notion that doing less than my best is sometimes acceptable. I also don't grasp the notion that sometimes my best is less than perfection. I attribute my failures to not having worked hard enough, or long enough.

By themselves, I don't know that these traits would necessarily even be that bad. The problem is, there are more, less pleasant traits.

I get frustrated with other people's "laziness," and since I am a workaholic, anything less seems like sloth. I am more inclined to intellectualize than to empathize. I tend to think critique is better than praise (as in, taking the time to analyze how something was done, and figure out how it could be done better, rather than just saying, "Oh, good job."). And, given my high expectations for myself, I suppose it makes sense that it's incredibly difficult for me to ask for, or to accept help (but, because I'm only human, when I get overwhelmed, I need help. So then I feel angry and resentful that people aren't helping me.)

Worse, I notice more and more often how not just I, but quite a few of the other parts as well, am really classist. How I could have picked up that level of classism while growing up as poor as we were, I don't know. Well, okay, logic says that internalized oppressions tend to be more intense anyhow. But for all my knowledge of how class works, and all my beliefs, overall, that classism is bad, I still have a visceral dislike of people who display the behaviors associated with a particular class bracket (it cuts across race and gender).

Some people can look at an abusive parent and say, "I would NEVER do that. I COULD never do that." I look at my mother, and think, "I can see how she did that. I can see the factors that would put me into the position where I might do the same things."

I'm not saying she did the right things. Heck, even when I was a teenager, I didn't say that. One time, she asked me whether I thought she was a good mother. I responded that I thought she was a good person but not necessarily a good mother. Obviously, this was not the right answer.

And, honestly, I can see almost as many good things in her parenting as bad.

I sometimes wonder whether my ability to see where her behavior came from means I wasn't "really" abused. But you know what? Just because I can explain what happened, and because I can see she was not evil or malicious, doesn't mean I didn't get hurt.

Why was she physically abusive? First, there was the fact that she believed physical discipline was an appropriate tool. Ironically, for all her vociferous support of it, when she was parenting with enough resources, she didn't tend to use physical discipline. But she could justify its use, because she did believe it was okay.

She was abusive because she got overwhelmed. She had taken on too much, and didn't have appropriate sources of support. She lashed out because she had no other outlets. And what's even worse was, I know she looked for support. When I was a kid, her apparent choices for a partner were either my abusive, alcoholic stepfather, or no one at all. When she went to her church for advice, or her family, they told her she should find a way to support him so he didn't "have to" drink. When she went to a therapist, after leaving him, the therapist's response to hearing her lay out her situation was, "I have no idea how you can handle all of that." And left it at that.

So she had no support. She was overwhelmed. And so she would reach her boiling point and, inevitably, one of us kids would push her over the edge. She didn't know how to take care of her own emotional needs. She didn't know how to step back, or insist on receiving support. But she knew how to erupt.

I can even see how my mother could be emotionally incestuous with each oldest child in turn. She was lonely, overwhelmed, had no one to turn to. And then, here is this person who can listen, offer support, stand in for a partner.

I'm not saying it was right. I'm saying I can empathize.

But, I am my mother's daughter, and not my mother. I did not have my first child when I was eighteen. I did not have eight children by the time I was thirty-eight (given that I'm almost 33, with no children as yet, I think I can say this with confidence).

Instead of having babies, I went to college. Instead of being married three times, I spent years in therapy working through my childhood. Instead of behaving as though what I experienced wasn't abuse, I have accepted that people I love, and who love me, could do horrible things at the same time. I have worked on healing, and I have taken time to learn new ways to live. I may not be perfect, but I am a work in progress.

So I'll close with this quotation from an old Nike ad:

You do not have to be
your mother unless she is
who you want to be. You do not have
to be your mother's mother, or your
mother's mother's mother, or even
your grandmother's mother on your
father's side. You may inherit their
chins or their hips or their eyes, but
you are not destined to become the
women who came before you, you are
not destined to live their lives. So if
you inherit something, inherit their
strength. If you inherit something,
inherit their resilience. Because the only
person you are destined to become is
the person you decide to be.

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Dreams, part one: The Third Way

Usually, my dreams are random bits and pieces, the clutter of my subconscious. But every so often, I have a dream that is really coherent, and that seems likely to stick with me for life. They don't require a lot of analysis to understand them, because the meaning of them is really pretty clear.

This is one of those dreams. I had it when I was eight or nine years old.



Background:

We had been studying the book of Revelation in Sunday school. I remember sitting in the class, in the basement of the church. The teacher was describing all of the horrible things that would happen, and explaining how Godly Christians would suffer along with everyone else. She talked for a while about the Mark of the Beast, and how people wouldn't be able to buy anything or get anything without having it, but that having it meant going along with Satan, and thus, being sent to hell.

I asked whether God would really send people to hell simply because of getting the Mark of the Beast. My example was someone who was willing to sacrifice their own chance at salvation so they could take care of their children. The teacher sternly informed me that it didn't matter what your reasons, if you got the mark, you were damned, end of story. This simply didn't make sense to me, in the context of my believe that God is loving. The teacher said I was being disrespectful and too argumentative, and should accept that she knew what would happen.

So, a week or two later, while all of this was still stewing in my head, I had this dream:

The tribulation was happening. Horrible things were going on all over the world. Christians were suffering even more, because they couldn't pay for anything and didn't have anywhere safe to live, and no way of getting food. People were running around in terror.

Then I noticed there was a space ship. I started telling people, "You don't have to follow either the Antichrist or old Christian rules. God sent this space ship, and if you get on it, you can go to a new world. You just have to make the choice.

Everyone from my church denounced me as a tool of the Antichrist. The people who were following the Antichrist thought I was being silly and said what they were doing was too important. Only a very few people went with me on the spaceship.


Obviously, there is more to the dream than the immediate context. It's emblematic of the way that I do usually try to see a third option when I'm presented with an either/or kind of choice. It's always seemed to me that there is more to the world than binary divisions. Of course, this isn't how I interpreted it at the time, at least not in these words. But I couldn't help but believe that the loving God I believed in would provide an option that didn't require quite so much suffering and despair as my Sunday School teachers predicted. In the context of that church, I did worry that there was something wrong with me, that perhaps my soul was tainted in some way so that I would rather go into space than suffer on Earth. But I wasn't willing to give up my belief in the third option, the one where people were accepted based on whether or not they chose to be saved, instead of whether they followed some rules that had been written down.

I could swear I've posted about how fairy tales and fantasy novels saved my life, but I can't find the post, so I won't put a link to it. Anyhow, I think they did help immensely in allowing me to continue to see myself as Christian, without having to force myself to believe the things that the church we attended insisted were required beliefs. I am so grateful that I was able to maintain the faith that I think I really was blessed to receive, rather than having it tarnished by the warped beliefs of my childhood religious training.

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Memory: early signs of DID

I've been thinking about this subject a lot, and I guess it counts as a memory.

It begins when I was fourteen. There was an incident that I don't feel like writing about right now, but it really triggered me badly (although I didn't know what a trigger was, I did know that it made me upset in ways that weren't wholly related to what had happened). I headed out of the apartment about half an hour earlier than I had planned to, and I remember thinking quite clearly, and in a mental voice that I hadn't heard before, "You're really going to need to get therapy as soon as you turn 18 and leave home." I think that's the birth of the part currently known as the Analyst.

Given how few options I had, I just went ahead and went on with my life. But the Analyst began to be there in the background, keeping track of things, figuring out why the adults in my life behaved as they did, figuring out strategies to make my own life different.

A few months later, we'd moved, and I pretty much hated the new school. The classes weren't challenging, and I didn't have a group of close friends to make things more lively. At this point, I discovered that I could make places inside my head to alleviate boredom. I had a place where, as I thought of it, "the part of me who would rather be asleep can curl up and go to sleep." As the next year or so passed, I also made places inside where my essential person-hood, in all its forms, could be safer. Looking back, knowing I have DID, it makes a lot more sense that there were quite a few different "safe places," because different parts wanted different things in a hiding space. And it helped various parts to be able to consciously remove themselves from situations that might not be triggering, but where they would not be the best part to be present.

Around the same time, I was also getting frustrated with the fact that I seemed to be forgetting things all the time, and losing track of conversations I was having. So, being the Star Trek fan that I was, I decided to make a "computer" in my brain to keep track of things I needed to know. This is where I kept information about my schedule, when assignments and such were due, all of the various bits and pieces of information that make up daily life. I also used it to get a 30-second replay, so that when I had spaced out in a conversation, I could repeat the last 30 seconds or so of what had been said. I used this "computer" to store information I learned, random facts I wanted to be able to retrieve easily, pretty much anything that was information, with very little (or no) emotional content.

By the next year, when I was fifteen, I had also discovered a lot of little "tricks" I could do by concentrating. I paid attention, and realized that I could think several distinct things at the same time. It's hard to describe what I mean; basically, I'd noticed that there's thinking that is articulated into words, and then just thinking that is the bit before that. I noticed I could do thinking-in-words about multiple things at the same time (such as memorizing my locker combination, running through a list of French verbs, and holding a conversation). And, in the nerdy way I had, I put this trick to good use by also realizing that I could write two different things at the same time (one with each hand).

I've been interrupted too many times while trying to write this, and totally lost my train of thought, so I'll leave it at this for now.

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Good things

This is Michelle. I am writing about some good things that happened, because my mommy was not a bad person she just sometimes didn't do a super good job, but lots of times, she did good things.

Like one good thing I remember is this. She used to bake very beautiful cakes for the school carnival. They were yummy and they looked very pretty, too. She did not get a store bought cake to send, she made it herself. And when they had the cake walk, where you walk around and when the music stops you land on a number, and if they pick that number, you get to choose a cake, her cake was always the very first one someone would pick. One year, one of us kids won the cake walk, and we took the cake she made, because we knew it was the yummiest one there. My mommy was a good baker.

And when I was in second grade, she made cupcakes for my pretend birthday at school. They were pretty and pink and they had roses inside of them, real rose petals. They were delicious. She brought those to school, and the kids liked them a lot.

And another time, after the rose show at school, she picked me up at school with the car. It was just her and me, and no little kids at all. I was seven. We went on some errands, and she gave me a special present. The special present was a book that she liked when she was little, and she thought I would like it too. It was the Secret Garden. I like that book a lot, and also the Little Princess. I do not like Little Lord Fauntleroy so well, but I like the other two books a lot because they are about girls.

My mommy also used to make me clothes. She sewed very nice clothes. I had a really good sailor dress, and it was made out of sail cloth, even. I went to the fabric store and picked out the cloth myself. And it had a tie with it. It was a very nice dress. Also, there were a lot of other dresses she made for me. I liked all of the different things she could make. She made me a dress like Little House on the Prairie, too, because she knew I liked those books a whole lot.

Another good thing my mommy did was we always had lots of paper and glue and crayons to use. We could use just as much paper or glue as we wanted, and it was okay if we made things and colored and drew. Also, we would go to the library and get lots of books, and it was okay if we read lots of books.

I know that sometimes she was not nice and she sometimes did things that hurt, but I think maybe that is because she had too many kids and nobody could help her, and she would forget a lot of the time that we were just little kids, and not grown ups, and we could not do all of the things she wanted. And sometimes, we would forget and do something that made her mad. But when she was not mad, she was very nice and she tried to take good care of us. I am writing about this because I do not want people to think she was not nice or good, because she was, but not all the time, just when she could be. She did lots of good things that I did not write about here, too.

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Old enough to know better

I don't know why this memory has stuck in my head for so long. I don't think I ever blanked it out completely, although there is very little emotional content in the memory.

It was a warm, sunny day in late spring. I was in the fifth grade. We were playing kickball at recess, and I reached up to catch the ball. I just missed it, and it bent the pinky on my left hand all the way back. It hurt, but most of the time, the pain wears off. But by the end of school, my finger was still hurting, and it had swollen up. I showed it to my mother when I got home, and she took me to the doctor, who said it was sprained and put it in a splint, and said to just be careful and try not to bump the finger or use it too much.

I had an orchestra recital at school in the evening. I played the violin. The piece we were playing was the first time we had to use all four fingers to get the right notes. I practiced enough that I could play, and just didn't use the bow for the notes that required using my pinky.

So, we got home. I guess my mother was stressed out and worried about time, and she'd had to go to the doctor with me instead of working on sewing for a customer that afternoon. Dinner was about ready, and she sent me out to find the younger kids, who were playing, and bring them home. It took me a while to find them, and then I made a mistake. I played with them and their friends for a few minutes before we came home. It was about twenty minutes or half an hour later when we got back.

My mother was furious, and called me into her sewing room. She had a tomato stake, one of the long, thin stakes she used in the garden. She told me to pull down my pants and lean over her sewing table. I reminded her about my sprained pinky, and she said it was my responsibility to make sure I kept it out of the way. She gave me a long, hard spanking. Mostly what I remember is trying not to move my pinky, and not to bump anything on the sewing table.

After that, and dinner, I walked to school by myself. I felt sad, not because of the spanking, but because no one was going to see the recital with me. I knew all of the other kids would have someone there, listening just for them. I cried while I walked to school, but I made sure I was done before I got close. I made myself act like I didn't mind having no one from my family come to watch the recital, and when people asked about it, I just said that my mother didn't have anyone to watch the little kids, and didn't want to bring them all to school in the evening. But my older sister was there, and could have taken care of the kids, or even could have gone to see the recital.

I guess the reason this all stayed in my head was so I could remember that I was old enough to know better. Old enough to not be so foolish as to get hurt and make someone take time to take me to the doctor. Old enough to know to come directly home, even if my mother didn't say that when she sent me out. Old enough to be able to concentrate on protecting a hurt finger and not moving anything on a table while getting spanked. And old enough not to expect someone to come see me play an instrument with a bunch of other ten year olds, all of whom played with the skill of average ten-year-olds, and not musical prodigies.

Not sure who is writing this.

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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.

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hiding

there is one who hides. she hides in places, like a closet. we remember what she saw, when she used to hide places. maybe she is not real, but we do remember what she saw. she saw a big shadow, it was a man. he went to a little girl in a bed. she was the size halfway down the bed. her head was at the top and her feet were at the middle. that is how big she was. it was at night. the one who hides was inside the closet. she saw the clothes over her head. she saw the shoes on the floor and some toys and some fuzz on the carpet. she looked. the man was still there. he was a nightmare bad dream kind of shadow man. the one who hides stayed inside of the closet.

nobody would see her in the closet. she was super secret safe and hiding in there. she kept looking, waiting for the bad dream to be over. she did not like to hide in the closet but she did not want the bad dream man to see her. she had to be invisible.

sometimes she would hide in other places like behind a chair. she saw things she did not like to see. loud noises happened over her head where she could not see. she would hide anyplace, but sometimes there was nowhere to hide. sometimes she just had to pretend to hide and try to be invisible.

that is one thing we remember.

this is another thing we remember.

it was christmas time. there was a big tree, way over my head, up to the ceiling. there were presents. one of the presents was for me. i could see my name on it. i knew how to spell my name even though i did not go to school yet i still knew how to spell. that was a super important present. it was round and soft and tall. i knew what it was. it was a sleeping bag. i wanted a sleeping bag. loud noises. there were people on the stairs. they were fighting. i looked around the door but then i went back and stopped looking. mommy fell down the stairs but the baby did not get hurt. mommy was holding the baby. it was bad. this night was the night before christmas.

because of that fight and how mommy fell down the stairs, we did not stay there that night. we went to grandma and grandpa's house. they did not live too far away. we went there and we took our presents. maybe santa claus would not find me? i got to open one present that night. i opened the important present. the sleeping bag. it is good i got a sleeping bag because i slept on the floor. i slept on the floor under a lamp. there were four lights on the lamp, in a stack. the lights were on a pole, and they were one, two, three, four, up the pole. i was next to grandpa's chair. my sleeping bag had jungle animals on it like zebras and tigers and elephants. inside it was green. it was new. it was an important present.

we did not stay away though. he came and said he was sorry and he would not do that again. we went back home sometime soon. then we were going to move very far away from everyone. my big sisters did not go with us. they went to a different house to live. i was the big one after that but i did not feel very big. i still felt little. but i was the biggest and i had to help.

i remember one other thing. this is a happy thing. when we moved to the new place there was snow. there was not snow at our old place, it did not get cold at that place except one time when i was very little we went up a mountain and there was snow and i played in the snow. i did not have mittens that time so i put socks on my hands instead and i played with the snow. i liked that. in the new place there was snow everywhere. it was very high. when we were going there, one time it snowed very much and we stayed at a motel and we watched tv all day or maybe more days. the snow got so high it was over the windows and it was dark in there.

then the snow was over and we could keep going to our new house. it was all by itself. and there was a hill of snow. i could take boxes from diapers and slide down the hill inside of them. it was like a sled but it did not cost money. that was a good way to play. then we moved to a different house. it was an apartment. there was a boy there and i played with him. we made a raft and we went onto a pond only it wasn't a pond it was a big puddle. we played there.

after that i was five. on the day i was five we moved again. we got on an airplane. it was a big airplane. it had stairs inside, an upstairs and a downstairs. we could not go upstairs, just downstairs. who was on that airplane with me was my mommy, and my baby sister and my baby brother. i do not remember where the man was. he went away for a while. i do not remember why. then we had to go to live somewhere else because we did not have money to pay for an apartment. but we did not have to throw everything away. we kept some things like my bunny and my sister's bunny that someone at church gave to us. one was pink and brown and one was purple and brown.

that is all i want to write. they say i am supposed to write my name but i do not want to. i do not want to have a name. they say i can say i am anonymous. that means that i am not writing my name.

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when I was five

These are some things that happened when I was five. I think about these things, cause they made some of the rules inside of me.

Here is one thing. I had a book. It was called The Best Nest. It was a good book and I liked to read it and look at the pictures. Then my sister got it. She colored all over the inside of it with her crayon. I was mad. I yelled at her. But then someone grown up saw me yell at her for coloring in my book, and they got mad at me. They said she was too little to know better. They said it was just a book, even though it was the single only book that was mine. So I got punished because I got mad. They said I was not supposed to get mad about a book. They said I was not allowed to feel mad. They did not say it was not ok to yell at my sister, even though I guess I knew that anyways, but I was super mad. They said I was not supposed to be one bit mad because it was only a book. But it was an important book for me. I did not like that at all. But I learned an important rule. The rule is, I am not allowed to ever get mad outside the body where someone can see it, because I am supposed to know better. I guess only a grown up or a very little kid is allowed to get mad, but not me. That is how it was in our house. I could not get mad because I wasn't big and my things didn't matter.

Lots of times if there are little kids in the house they ruin your things. They ruin your doll by playing with her food and pouring the food mix inside of her and then putting in water. They do this when you are at school, because they sneak into your room, and then the doll never works again and all the food is gone even though you were very careful and saved it up. But if you are eight years old, you are not allowed to cry or feel angry, because it is just a doll, even if it was your very own special doll that was bought new for you by someone.

Or they will dump out all of your perfume when they sneak into your room, even though you had been saving it and saving it, and then it will all be gone and your room will be stinky, and you can't get mad even though you had it very high up and put away, and someone little went in and climbed up on a chair to find it. Or when you are bigger, someone will get into your room when you are at school, and pour glue all over your puzzle, and ruin that. Or they will ruin lots of your things. But if a kid is littler than you, it is ok for them to do it, and you are not allowed to cry or feel angry.

I think now maybe that isn't fair, and maybe I should have gotten to feel angry, but they should have said it was not ok to yell at a little kid, because that is right, I should not have yelled. And they should have said it was ok to cry. They should not have said my things were not important, because they were important to me.


Here is another thing that made a rule. That rule is, you can't really be happy when something good happens. Like, my grandma and grandpa came for a visit. They decided to give me a treat, just me, because they did not want to take all of the kids with them. They went to a different town, to visit my uncle, and I got to go with them. My big sister was very mad at me. She wanted a special treat, and instead I got to have it. So she pinched me and hurt me and pulled my hair hard, and did other mean things. She said I was horrible and didn't deserve to get a treat. I still don't know why I got a special treat like that. It was the single only time I remember something like that happening, me getting something nice and nobody else at all. And it was nice. We even went to a restaurant and got to have hamburgers and french fries. It was Bob's Big Boy, and there was a statue in front with a boy holding a hamburger. I liked it super much, until my sister was even more mean when I got home. So I learned that you better not show how you like something, or even get something nice, because somebody is going to be mean and pinch you and hit you if you get something and they want it.


Here is another rule. I learned that you can not always tell the truth, if a grown up says something different is true. Like if you find a quarter in the back seat of the car, between the back and the cushion, and then someone tells you that you did not find it, you stole it. You should say sorry for stealing it. One time that happened to me. I found a quarter. I got in trouble for having a quarter. I got a very hard long spanking for telling a lie, because I said I did not steal it, I just found it. If I had just said I stole it, then the spanking would not be as long. I learned that lesson very well. I learned that I better just say what the grown up thinks is true, or else they will keep hitting harder and harder until I say they are right and I did a bad thing. Even if I did not do that bad thing, I should just say that I did, or else I will get in too much trouble. If you say you did a bad thing but you didn't then you still get punished, but you do not get punished so much and it is not half so bad as if you don't just say what the grown ups want you to say.

This is Teller writing, because the other parts are too scared to say these things themselves, but they want to write about those things, so I am writing their things they remember for them.

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