Living a dissociated life, one where my thoughts and actions/reactions were dictated by and crafted for my long dead mother, not only made for some bluntly applied and obtusely processed understanding of myself as a person, but also not a small amount of naiveté regarding anyone i cared about. What i mean is, multiplicity aside, i was so focused on who i’d been raised to be that i didn’t, couldn’t in fact, see who i actually was. The messages i’d received from my mother and other various abusers had full control of my perceptions, rendering me intellectually and emotionally blind to how i presented to the world around me.

I remember confessing to one of my teachers in grade 11, that he was my favourite. His reply caught me completely off guard. He said, “Really, H? Honestly, i can’t tell with you. Half the time i think you hate my guts.” I was gobsmacked. I adored him – how could he not know? How could he possibly think i hated him?

I obsessed over this exchange for weeks. I look back at this time and see that i was capable of deep introspection, i just didn’t need to because i’d been raised to parrot my abuser’s beliefs and opinions about life, the universe, and everything. That included my personality, my character, and my nature. I wasn’t supposed to know or examine myself. I wasn’t allowed to ask any philosophical questions. I was created to serve, and that meant toeing the party line. In this particular case, i couldn’t not ponder it and try to figure out what had happened and what he meant. My mother’s brainwashing worked for other people in other situations. She’d programmed me to fall apart, take the blame, and bend over backwards to fix whatever the problem was, when something came up with her. This unconscious practise bled into all relationships with anyone i cared about.

What i came up with was an awareness of how sarcastic i was in my daily interactions with everyone, and how other people might not always “get it,” and even if they did, they might not like/appreciate it. I saw that my sarcasm frequently drifted into the domain of “caustic.” I was deeply ashamed and immediately endeavoured to control my mouth better. My mother had informed me many times that i was obnoxious, and this interchange with my beloved teacher confirmed her pronouncements – especially when it came to what kind of person i was. She knew me better than i knew myself. I couldn’t hide anything from her.

You may now cough-mutter the word bullshit into your cupped hand.
Or heck, just say it flat out.
Truth is she told me whatever would keep me quiescent and malleable.
Thoroughly believing that i was an awful person that only she could love accomplished her ends nicely.

Today i’m still having to spend extra time and effort to figure out where the truth lies with regards to who i am as a person, and how i’m presenting to the world around me. I’ve had to work my hardest to understand and employ the difference between humility and humiliation. Seeing many times in my past when i was various levels of asshole with other people, many of whom i loved dearly, has been most humbling. I’ve had to yank myself out of the muddy moon-pie of moping and brooding over how terrible i was, over and over and over again. There was a payoff for me in marinating in my crappy behaviours, and it all led back to my mother.

She’d rant and rail at me over what a bad child i was, and sometimes i’d deny it, but i’d always come around to her opinions and admit to whatever she’d accused me of. Whether or not i’d done the thing or was what she accused me of being never mattered at the end. I would eventually break down and tell her whatever she wanted to hear. If she didn’t take me to her bosom and grant me her forgiveness, she’d at least dangle the possibility of it and stop yelling and lecturing me. There was a rush, a release, in her forgiveness. It was an old, bare bone tossed to a starving dog. Even if she just quit talking and sent me away, it felt like the relief that flooded me when the hitting stopped. I could stop cowering and take a breath.

NOTE: Man, this level of mania is making it mighty difficult to organise my thoughts into something cogent. I took a couple of hours for self care and light housekeeping. My thinking is less jumbled and i don’t feel quite so scattered.

I bring up the past to show where i’ve come from and to demonstrate how things work in my brain as a result. This is how i processed information i received from others; in short: if anything goes wrong, it must be my fault. I’ll add that there were times social cues sailed way over my head and i simply didn’t know that things had gone wrong. At other times i was certain i’d screwed up in some way, only to find out later that i had not. Being a multiple who was dissociated at the best of times did not make me great at reading people, with a part of my system always at the ready to properly handle any and all situations. Nope. Sometimes it helped, sometimes it hindered. Sometimes it all exploded in my face and i wasn’t even aware anything had happened that required my attention.
I’ve come to think i’m as much of a mixed bag as most of us.

Today i am living in bipolar mania. The therapy i’ve been through, with it’s attendant homework, deep thought, and intensive study, has allowed me to know myself, and through that, to view my presentation to others more accurately. Mania today means i’m extremely irritable and highly emotional. It means i’m emotive, and most of the people and situations around me cause me an intense and disproportionate amount of emotional response. Today i am coping by blogging, remaining sober, maintaining contact with healthy people, and heavily curtailing my intake of news and social media.
I’m also purging some restless, angsty thoughts and feelings via some rants about politics and current events. Everything has the potential to rile me up, so i’m dumping the things that i can, as quickly as i can, so that i save my energy for the important stuff. My circle of friends know about my particular set of challenges, and have a long and storied experience of my “cycle,” as it were. They’ll stick around for my histrionics and bluster if they can, or come back later once the storm clouds have cleared up a bit.

Today has been a rough day, quite honestly. I have some issues with some people i care for very much. I’m making some adjustments to how i live, and with whom i associate and to what level, in order to prepare for what may be coming. I know i can’t make any big decisions at the moment, because mania, but i can tweak things a bit to ease emotional intensity and lighten the mental burdens i’ve been carrying. I hope these changes will help bring about more of what i want in life. I guess we’ll see.
Well, I’LL see, and then i’ll blab (blog) about it. Maybe. Okay, probably. Hopefully?

Try to have as good a week as you can.
I’ve not much hope for myself to that end, but i’ll invest my efforts, regardless.

Love and Peace,
~H~

IMAGE: Robert Anasch