Painful to live in fear, isn’t it?
~ Leon Kowalski, Blade Runner

I must write about today, and i’ll try not to take days to get it up. My concern is that there is so much i want to say about it, that i’ll lose some important parts because i’m a shit typer on a crap keyboard and i’ll never be able to bash it out fast enough.

I saw my therapist today and it was an hour i hope i never forget. It may be one of the most impactful hours i’ve ever spent with her. When we sat down she immediately told me that she was weepy and sleepy, but she was fully capable of being present in our session. She’s done this before when she had personal issues, and i appreciate it. If i could already tell that something’s not quite right with her, the acknowledgement builds trust and esteem (in me, for both myself and her). It also gives me a heads up if i’m too fucked up at that moment to notice.

A client of hers died. They were a multiple, like me. She was telling me how good a person they were, and how well they’d been doing recently, and then her face crumpled and she was wet-eyed and finding it hard to speak. She was upset at how difficult it is for multiples to get proper treatment, how we’re the redheaded stepchildren (my words) of the DSM-V. How we’re often blacksheeped and scapegoated by our families, and mercilessly troped in art and media. DID can be devastating and debilitating, and she knows. She’s seen how we struggle to find help, to understand and to be understood, to find acceptance, to be extended grace and mercy.

She was moved to tears. For multiples. For me.
She was angry over the unwillingness of those in the psychological and medical profession to acknowledge us. She was angry at the doctor who bluntly told her, “we don’t read that chapter”. She spat out how, up until recently, multiples were forced to switch in front of a board in order to receive income support while they sought treatment. I knew that already, knowing a woman who’d had to perform her trauma in front of a bunch of strangers years ago. (When she came back to the face* she was under a table, shuddering and sobbing.) The fact that there’s no standard of education/training in how to deal with multiples, save from those who’ve made a point of trying to help/treat us.

She was pissed about it. She had angry tears.
She was hurting for us.
Someone was hurting for me.

It’s been hours since it happened, hours since i’ve been home, and hours since i started writing this. I’m sorry, but i’m not going to get this up today. I hope tomorrow, but i don’t know. This has hit me on such a deep level i’m having trouble accessing it. There are a lifetime’s worth of protections inside me, all designed to keep this intensity of emotion away from me. And i reflexively dissociate from feelings like this – i numb out. I float.

I don’t know how to feel or process her experiencing sadness and anger for me. That she mourns.
I’m not worth anyone’s time or attention, because i brought all my troubles on myself.
Because i’m a drama queen.
I’m a compulsive liar.
I’m a chaos addict.
I’m an attention hog.
I’m borderline, a narcissist, a psychopath, schizophrenic, schizo-affective.
It’s just bipolar. It’s just PTSD. (Yes, the word “just” has been used – to my face.)

The years of my adulthood spent knowing something was wrong with me and seeking help, but never getting enough. Never having that click of knowingness, that inner a-HA! It’s like putting together a puzzle without the box it came in. You’re not sure what you’re creating, but you’re determined and things are taking shape… And then you find that one puzzle piece that is close to the centre and joins that ring of wtf-is-this? pieces together and holy crap! it’s your face.
The early years of knowing i had a lot going for me if i could just get some help, some clarity, some tools, so i could get my feet underneath me and set to walking in some direction with some kind of intent. And then getting some of those things, but not being able to turn it into any lasting change of mindset, or molding of attitude, or definition of purpose. And the judgment and condemnation of self that always followed, beating me down, wearing me away; the slow erosion of aspirations and the wasting of ambition.

Perhaps the worst bit was running from the diagnosis. I was taught by my mother to bury and dismiss any obvious characteristics of being multiple. I learned from society’s awful tropes that multiplicity was dangerous, if not outright ridiculous. Then there was the mental health profession’s ham-handed bungling of treatment, or their opportunistic feeding upon us for notoriety and financial gain, or their cold (and, it seems to me, strangely angry) refutation of multiplicity, that set the capstone atop my own personal wall of denialism.

I sat there in her office and looked at her with her blotchy, squinchy face, dabbing at her eyes and blowing her nose, and i could see that she SEES the terrifying otherness that i’ve faced my whole life. She SEES the pain, the fear, the constant struggle, of trying to find help and acknowledgment from someone who should be able to help me, and getting nothing, or the wrong thing, or not nearly fucking enough.
She’s angry for me, and she hurts for me, and she mourns all my little deaths.

I DON’T FUCKING KNOW HOW TO PROCESS THIS.

I’m entering into the part of therapy that i thought would never be part of therapy with her.
Disclosing my story.
Sharing my parts.
I must take what was scattered and gather it to me. Connect the things that have been disconnected since i was a baby. And i know what i must do to be a new level of functional. I know what needs to happen to get closer to a real live Homo sapiens sapiens. I must feel the feelings while knowing what I know.
Once i understood from her that it was the necessary next step on my journey towards healing, health, and functionality, i hellahellahella didn’t want to, but i knew that i would. I also know that i will get through it and be better, not all better, but much. I know that i’ll be closer to all the things i seek, that some of those goals i had in my youth might yet be mine, and more easily too, having slogged my way through this boggy bit of the path that’s before me. Yes, i had no illusions and i knew i was gonna git ‘er done anyway.

But i now have something i never thought i could, something i’d forgotten i’d even wanted at one time.
To be seen in this way, to have my specific and personal struggle seen and acknowledged, and to see someone have the appropriate emotional response to it.

Righteous indignation.
She had it for that client, tragically lost, and she has it, FOR ME.
A part of me that has always been alone and stopped considering it would be otherwise a long time ago – suddenly is not. And doing this, this part that i’ve been dreading so hard that i can’t barely sleep/think/function, this part that has me so stressed i’m a switchy/slidey parade, a Bits N’ Pieces Sideshow (a Histrionica Production), well…

I actually believe i won’t be doing it alone. She will be with me. And i think that i think that she won’t ever hurt me. I mean, she’s told me and all of me that she won’t ever purposely hurt me, and if she ever did, it would be accidental and she would be sorry and do everything she could to make it right, but everyone hurts us and we expect it because why wouldn’t we because everyoneveryone does, but she hasn’t,
and we’re starting to maybe believe that maybe she won’t. She hasn’t so far, and no one has known us so long and not.

Quite an experience to live in fear, isn’t it?
~ Roy Batty, Blade Runner

This is all i can do, for now. I hope it made some sense. I may add to this, but i’m floating away a bit, so we’re stuck with this today. 2 days later, heh. It could have been longer or not at all, i suppose. Not bad.

* In my own personal multiple slang, being in the face means currently in control of the system. The person/part that the rest of the world is dealing with in that moment.

Image: … Like Tears In Rain, Vladimir Eisinhorn