Posted on by histrionicabutterfly

Dear Diary: She Fell

To make a small change to Gimli’s heartbreaking words to Eowyn after an Orc riding a Warg bests Aragorn… I was cast off the cliff by my own angry and ugly rider.

I have another place where i write about my marriage, but what i will say here is that i have been very intentionally earning my way out of it for many years. I wanted to make sure i left no stone unturned; one, because i wanted it to work, and two, because i wanted to be certain that if i did leave, i could be confident that i’d done everything possible to make it work.

I was fully confident and prepared to go. I had a place to live and several potential jobs. I was going to hock my jewelry to pay the first month’s rent. I was halfway out the door. And then my husband’s kidney disease turns out to have progressed more quickly than his nephrologist had thought it would, and i… cannot leave.

I didn’t want to leave, so much as i had to. It was time; i had done everything i could do, but one person can’t hold two together. At least i couldn’t, not without it costing more than i was willing to pay any longer. The fear and sadness over leaving had been overcome by my need to feel better — to be relieved of the burdens i’ve carried for too long.

*sigh*

But now he is ill, quite ill in fact, and i can’t, won’t leave. He’s still my best friend and favourite person, and he supported me through the sickest time of my life. I owe him, and i want to pay. So, i have to figure out how to take care of this man and stand by him, all while considering the marriage part of our relationship over.

It was too much at first, and i fell. I thought i’d mostly gotten myself back under control the last time i wrote, but the rider and his beast rode hard and knocked me down again. This time there was madness, and i descended into self-harming behaviours (which i will not discuss). I deactivated social media and turned inward, focusing only on negotiating my way to détente… I’ve lost a significant amount of control over my system and figured it was the best i could hope for.

Last weekend both my husband and son were out working. I have never been afraid to be alone, usually, i welcome it. However, when i’m this unstable it’s cause for concern. I’ve been known to disappear from the house for days.

I was sitting in my usual chair, watching crap on telly that i hoped would distract me from my inner turmoil. It wasn’t working too well. I turned it off and attempted to soothe my system some other way. Reaching out with my thoughts to engage some of them, to offer hope and comfort that things would get better.

And then i heard it and my blood ran cold.
I heard a voice, and it wasn’t me, and it wasn’t inside my head — it came from somewhere outside me. But i was alone in the house. I grabbed weapons and my phone and checked everywhere. There was no one. I slid a little then and receded to the back of my brain as someone else took the face and called my husband. He offered concern and some gentle suggestions as to what it might be. The little Bit that he was talking to wasn’t having it though and quickly got off the phone.

I put the television back on and tried to placate the rush of little ones that were afraid.

And then i heard it again.
This time when i heard it, i recognised it. Or i thought i did. Some weird kind of gut feeling about who it was. He’s been dead so long i couldn’t possibly remember what he sounded like, but i believed it was my uncle.

Now, before i go any further, 2 things:

– I am an atheist, and by that i mean that have not been convinced that any god or gods exist, nor anything considered supernatural or paranormal, e.g. ghosts, reincarnation, angels, psychic abilities, etc.
– I am not schizophrenic. I would have been diagnosed a long time ago. I have various diagnoses and none of them is that one.

I have heard a voice speak to me one other time. I was alone then too, and it came from outside me. I was a new mother, living in my own apartment; just me and my baby. I was changing him on the living room carpet when i heard a voice coming from the kitchen. It told me something that my mother used to do to me when i was a baby. It was disgusting and horrible. It made me run to the bathroom and throw up. It matched a terrible dream i’d had since i was a child, and it was the beginning of me realising that some of my dreams were pointing to actual events.

This wasn’t the same voice, but it was the same type of experience. When he spoke again i wasn’t afraid, just like i wasn’t all those years ago. He told me that everything was going to be okay and he was going to help take care of me. It calmed me, and not just me, the constant yammering in my brain instantly softened and slowed.

I know both voices are mine — even though i heard them in another room. I don’t know how my brain has done it, but i know absolutely that it did, just as i know the people that live in my brain are ALL me. I don’t know why it’s only happened twice, i don’t why these particular times and for these particular reasons, but it doesn’t matter. Both voices helped me in their own way.

From that experience i was able to ask for some things that i need to continue forward in this current iteration of my married relationship with my best friend. He wants very much to convince me that he can give me what i want, and i guess he gets the opportunity because i won’t leave until he is well. We have separate rooms, but we continue on much as we have — there is no rancor.

I haven’t heard my uncle’s voice since that day, and i don’t expect to. I feel like i have a part of my own brain caring for me and watching over me. It makes perfect sense to me that i would make it him, as he was my favourite person in the world until the world took him from me.

I know this is weird shit. I don’t pretend to understand it. What i have learned is that my brain is a fantastical place, and my superpower is imagination. I’ve used it to save my life since i was a baby, and it’s still doing its job. We’ll see where we go from here. I’m hoping for more control and less chaos. Whatever comes, i am never alone, because i make companions. Sometimes it’s a problem, but sometimes, it’s strangely comforting.


I’m hanging in there.
Hope you are, too.
Love and Peace,
~H~

IMAGE: Christof Görs

Posted on by histrionicabutterfly

Farthest Away

It’s like in the great stories Mr. Frodo.
The ones that really mattered.
Full of darkness and danger they were,
and sometimes you didn’t want to know the end.
Because how could the end be happy.
How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad happened.
But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow.
Even darkness must pass.
~ The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien

Yesterday felt like hitting a wall.

I feel like Samwise Gamgee when he says, “If I take one more step, I’ll be the farthest away from home I’ve ever been.”

Everything i’m doing feels like the first time i’ve ever done it. It’s a strange business i’m up to, here. My system is all still with me, still functional. I hear them and feel them in my brain, although their voices are quieter and there is a restlessness that’s missing. Normally, they flutter about like nervous birds, like anxious, insipid Victorian women in an Austen story. They’ve always got the vapours; mad as hops, they are. They’re scared and broken children trying to avoid rejection and pain. The floor is lava.

Wow, writing about that took me away for a solid 20 minutes. Interesting. My mind slid from the screen and the keyboard, and turned inward. I went up and sat with them for a spell. We were all quiet. My thoughts were soft and mild. I don’t know if this will make any kind of sense to any reader, but i’m bound to try and the descriptions sit well with me. It was like a silent palaver over what i’m about to write. I believe i have the stamp of approval. Heh.

I don’t pay much attention to other people who are multiples. My childhood programming is maybe too strong, yet. I have a visceral disgust reaction and i immediately distrust them. It was clever of my primary abusers to instill that in me, as it kept me isolated and away from information that might have helped me get away from them.

I share that to preface that i don’t actually know much about how other people with a DID diagnosis experience their multiplicity. If it’s like what is portrayed in movies and television, then we won’t have much to commiserate over. I suspect that it’s not, though. I’ve read a number of articles written by people like me objecting to the existing tropes one finds in media.
I’m no serial killer. I do have a violent part in my system, but they just break things – not people.

Despite blogging a lot about being a multiple, i’m very private about some of the details. It’s like, i’ll have you over for lunch, but we won’t be eating in the bathroom, you know? Some things aren’t for sharing. I’ve also kept some things to myself because my system is fear-based. My precious Bits N’ Pieces don’t trust anyone but me, and that took years of hard work and patience. I didn’t write about some stuff because it would have been seen as a betrayal. I needed to prove myself worthy to be the caregiver for this passel of messed up mutants.

Again, that’s a preamble, to this: From what i’ve gathered about other multiples, i am somewhat different. While i do experience hard switches (that’s where i’m not aware of what’s happening or what has happened, once i’m back in control), i’ve never not been aware of the people that live in my brain… I’d assumed that that was how everyone’s brain worked.

The constant chatter and commentary, the different voices, each voice having its own “feel” and some sort of mental picture attached to it… I’ve referred to them as my Peanut Gallery since i was a very small child.
Only i didn’t understand that they were split off parts of me.
I didn’t know that they held information that i did not have.
They knew things i didn’t.

Once i (finally!) began considering the possibility that i had Multiple Personality Disorder (what DID was called at the time), i learned that my brain functioned in some different ways from most. I was shocked to learn that people experience moments when their brain is silent. And my Peanut Gallery is a lot more fleshed out and separate than the voices most people hear in their heads. Plus, mine aren’t the voices of people i know or have known. I asked tonnes of questions about others’ thoughts and inner commentary, and the more they talked the more clear it was that i was different.

Between speaking with non-multiples, and my limited experience with others like me, it would seem i’m unique in some ways. I’d have to wade into association with other multiples to test it though, and i’m definitely not interested in that – at least for the time being. (Yes, my reaction to other multiples really is that strong. It’s something i still don’t have much control over.)

From what i’ve gathered the lines are more thickly drawn, the boundaries more tangible. For them there’s more switching (loss of time) and less sliding (what i call being somewhat aware, but not in control). Most multiples seem not to share thought-space with their alters, whereas mine are accessible to me almost all the time. I can put out feelers, mentally speaking, and find them up there, hanging out in a part of my brain-aether. I can have conversations with most of them, although i had to work at that with quite a few. Some i can only feel at certain times, some i’ve never heard, i only feel. Some won’t speak to me, and some won’t speak to anyone, and some don’t speak at all. Yet there is a coexistence between us, and a sharing of thought-space and the passage of time that i haven’t heard shared from others with DID. It could be a common trait, i don’t know.

I’m not integrated, not by the current definition used in the field.*

At first i railed against integration. It was anathema to me. I saw it as murder.
Now, i just don’t think it’s the right word, as the meaning doesn’t entirely fit.
All of this is nebulous and esoteric though, and that’s okay with me.
It has to be, because so little is known. Studies are hard to set up and not many meet the standards set by their fellow research psychologists and psychiatrists. And some of those don’t stand up to rigorous examination.
I don’t know if much of what i think or what i’ve done or how i’ve coped could stand up to proper scientific scrutiny, so i move forward based on results. It’s the best i’ve got.

All of this to get back to my original point. (Sorry, i’m scattered today.)

I’m experiencing life with the lowest level of dissociation, ever. It’s strange. I have an emotion and my first reaction is panic, because it feels intense. Say my husband does something i find irritating. The irritation floods my upper body: my face squinches up, and my arms and fingers feel warm and tingly; i’m literally wringing my hands. My chest feels a weight settle on it, and my heart feels as if an anxious hand is squeezing it like a stress ball. My inclination is to make some snappish comment at my husband – when i feel panicky i react like a stray dog that’s been cornered, i.e. i bark and i might bite.

If i’m present enough to realise what’s happening, i consciously note it, and then remind myself of what i’m currently going through. This is a process, and i can move through this feeling without being prickly. Can i let it go? Do i want to, or would i feel better if i addressed it? Then i tap into appropriate coping and communication skills accordingly. Sometimes i react before i’m fully present and in a mindful state. Then i apologise, process what happened, and make amends if necessary.

Maybe i’m watching a true crime documentary and someone has lost a loved one. Man, i thought i cared before… These days it’s not uncommon for me to actually shed tears. Empathy courses through me and again, i feel panicky. It’s during times like this that depression and pessimism can slide in and colour everything i see and inform every thought i have. When this happens i talk to myself gently, as one would to a child, because that’s exactly what i’m dealing with – the kids that live in my brain are relating to the violence and loss and pain in the (true) story, and it’s my job to hold their hand and talk them through it. And when they’ve (i’ve) calmed some, i tell them (me) that it’s not for us to take all that on. That’s someone else’s life and story and it’s for them and their support system and their familial/cultural/societal/political circles and structures to handle the tragedy and its aftermath. I’m bearing witness but it is not my job to fix it. I cannot mete out justice, and it’s neither possible nor appropriate for me to absorb their pain.

Just a couple of examples, but hopefully i’ve given some idea of what my days are like.
It all feels like a lot, yet i’m not overwhelmed. I feel settled inside, somehow. I understand that this is a part of the process. This is a part of my path that i must walk through to get where i want to go – and it makes perfect sense to me and i’m okay with it. I’m handling life in real time, somewhat clumsily, but that will change as i become more accustomed to this new level of consciousness and functionality.

Samwise took that step; away from familiarity, away from family, away from everything he’d ever known. He stepped away from the cozening touch of the everyday, and became part of a grand adventure that, if not for him, could have brought about the end of everything good and right in the world.

A new day will come, and when the sun shines, it’ll shine out the clearer. I know now folks in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going because they were holding on to something. That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for.
~ The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien

I don’t know what the heck this post is, or if it’ll help anyone, but it seemed determined to come out of me… And so there you have it.
It’s weird.
Life is weird, and so am i.
Cool beans.

Love and Peace,
~H~

*Integration is a tricky subject for me. I’m working on a post about it, but it’s not ready. For now, this is all i have to share.

IMAGE: Stefano Marinelli

Posted on by histrionicabutterfly · 2 Comments

The Drop

I’ve got the key to my castle in the air, but whether I can unlock the door remains to be seen.
~ Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

After my dear Ms T (i talk about my therapist so much, let’s give her a name) checks in with my current state, she goes over how i was switched and hung up on her during our last phone session. She asks me who i thought it might be that swatted the Little who was talking to her away, and then yelled at her and hung up.
She doesn’t usually ask me who was in the face in my absence.

For one, i often have no idea, and for another, none of us are inclined to give their names. We do so exceedingly rarely, and it tends to be delivered with not a little hostility. Even when i’m talking with my husband, who knows them all, i’ll use their role/job, rather than their names. It makes something twist up inside me to use their proper names. Like guitar feedback – and not the cool Jesus-and-Mary-Chain kind. It’s more like when your 12yr old is jamming with his friends in your garage.

I tell her i don’t know.
She asks me if i’d be willing to share with her what popped into my head when she asked me. I told her, but no name, only her role. I won’t be sharing either here, but i will say she is the #1 in the system: most developed, most power, most functional… most like me.

What followed is a bit on the hazy side, which is what happens when Ms T hits on something close to someone in my system. What i mean is, i tend to stay on track with my therapy sessions unless someone else who lives in my brain is triggered. If that happens, i feel myself getting pulled back, and i know someone is trying to pass me along the way, to get in the face. It’s like in a scary movie when the woman finally realises it’s the person she’s with, that she’s trusted the most, that’s killing everyone. When the camera pulls back for a long and wide shot – who knows, maybe i’m even wearing the same expression of dawning horror. /jk

It’s one way to describe how it initially feels during all the levels of dissociation that occur for me, as a multiple. First, there’s the initial receding, and then the numb and floaty feeling that comes with basic dissociation. I’m in a dopey, dreamy state here. Then there’s what i call sliding, where i’m not quite switched, but parts of my system are in the face, and i’m watching what’s happening without being able to affect my own actions. It’s a little like being the new baby at a family gathering – i get tossed around a bit. A full switch is where i can feel a violent pull back. It’d be like if the ocean of space inside my brain where all of them manifest were a pregnant woman. I feel a hard tug, right where my baby’s joined to me. I can share this weird analogy because my first son shot out of me like a football. The doctors weren’t anticipating a first timer to be done in 4hrs, so they were on the other side of the room, talking.

My doc said, OMG, the baby’s head is crowning! and ran over to catch. She did, but the fact that the umbilical cord was wrapped around my son’s neck and shoulders might have helped. I felt a pull on the inside so hard and strange; i could almost hear the boi-yoi-YOING! sound. Like if we were joined by a bungee cord.
You’re welcome for that image.
I’m saying switching comes from the baby-feeding belly-tube of my momma-brain.
K, i’m done. RLY.
Heh.

Back to my hazy recollection of my therapist and i discussing who flicked the wee one away and took her place.
I’ve been working on cutting down on the amount of time between her questions and my answers. There’s pressure to keep my mouth shut from many directions, but i have enough power to push up against it harder than before, i think. Like the football player in training pushing that sled just a little further each time.
I have a leftover impression of pressing myself to speak the answer as soon as i have it.
I’m not a fan of speaking without thought. It’s been my personal experience (so, not necessarily yours) that that can lead to a lack of proper skepticism. I’ve also seen the practise used overwhelmingly by those to whom i’d never go for help/healing.
I’m referring to practitioners of pop psychology (subjective), and to the religious (objective), and i mean no offense.
This is just life as me, making the best choices i can based on who i am, my life experiences, and what i want.
Your mileage will vary.

Having some trouble getting to my point today.
There’s a bit of a kerfuffle going on in this old noggin since that session 4days ago.
I’ll stop writing cute analogies, and just write what i know. It’ll be choppy, without my typical smooth transitions.
You may snort here.

This part of my system we talked about is basically my Number One. She’s task-driven, intimidating, sarcastic, grouchy, gruff and take charge. She’s the most protective over me, and when pushed, her words are nothing short of caustic. As i’ve written about though, she and i have both retired our ninjamouth ways. Still, i would have described her as one tough customer.

And then Ms T asks if it’s occurred to me that she’s probably somewhere around 6yrs old.
I remember it feeling a bit like looking down at a glass floor when you’re standing in a tower. It felt like i was going to slide back further (fall), but i didn’t.
I looked down and i saw HER, and i saw that she is a child.
And then it was like a drop tower at an amusement park.
I saw that they are all children, regardless of the age they affect.
They were all born when i was very small; how could they be anything but? They’re reflections of whatever age they claim to be; merely a manifestation of what i thought a rebellious teenager or provocative twentysomething or kind uncle or hardworking mother would be like.

I’m the only real grownup who lives in my brain.
All of the rest of me are children.

I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship.

Happy Sunday,
~H~

Posted on by histrionicabutterfly · 6 Comments

Baby, I’m On Fire

I set myself on fire last week. Yes, literally.

This last 2wks i’ve been either slidey* or outright switched. I’ve required near constant supervision, lest i leave, or get up to other sorts of destructive behaviours. Unfortunately, after 5 or 6yrs of no interventions, the police and ambulance were called to determine if i was a danger to myself or others. Although it was determined i was definitely not a threat to others, i did a small stint in the hospital, where i received good care. The doctor offered (or perhaps urged, heh) that i stay longer for more assistance, but i was allowed to leave when it was clear i have family/friend/therapist support at home. He prescribed some medications to help ease my anxiety, and they’ve helped.

I saw my therapist and she always calms me. She helps me see my path more clearly and refocus, but unfortunately, she’s a real, live human, with other clients, a family and a life of her own, and thusly i cannot carry her with me wherever i go.

If you’re a regular reader, you know that this stage of my therapy involves learning to feel my feelings without dissociating. I’m not looking for perfection. I’m not looking for “integration” (i’m not even sure what that word means with regards to multiples), but i am looking for a higher level of day-to-day functionality, and a greater degree of healing.

To put it a little more clearly, when i was abused as a child, my brain severed the connections between my thoughts, my emotions, and my physical sensations, in order to survive trauma so great that i simply had no ability to understand, let alone process it. Without connection, without the means to apprehend what had happened/was happening to me, some of those thoughts and emotions, even some moments frozen in time in my mind, developed their own personalities, from flat and static, to a couple who’re more fully rounded than some people i’ve known. (That was snarky i know, but i’m leaving it, because it’s true. Pfft.)

Continuing on then, i leave the safety and support of my counsellor’s office, and step out into a world that is currently full of triggers. I’ve lived my life either not noticing, or quickly dissociating from these things. I had to, or i simply wouldn’t’ve been able to function at all. I would’ve been stuck in trauma-response, unable to work, to have relationships, to care for myself or others, in other words, to participate in what it means to be alive. I myself would’ve been frozen in time.
The gazelle that freezes when she sees the tiger.

The ability to dissociate not only saved my life growing up, it allowed me to be somewhat effective as an adult. However, as time passed i could see it was only minimally helpful, and in certain cases quite harmful. I wanted more from life, especially once i had children.

I learned to live my life as a multiple, the insight into how my brain works making my life easier and better than it had ever been before… Until a little over a year ago. I was living a reasonably happy and successful life, when i suddenly crashed. It wasn’t like my Thelma&Louise crashes of the past, thankfully. (I play both parts, just fyi.) But i wanted to party, which is something i don’t much care for now, and i felt that old childhood imperative that my abusers had programmed into me to GO HOME; a place that doesn’t exist anymore, and would be beyond dangerous for me if it did.

I had the sense to get my ass back into therapy. When i asked her what i was doing wrong, she said, “Not a thing. You are taking such good care of your brain that your body is now wanting that same care and attention.”
My body is tired of being numbed out and alone. It wants to rejoin my brain. It wants me to listen to it as diligently and lovingly as i did my brain.
And i want to. I know it’s the good and right thing to do for me, but it is a haaaard thing.
It is perhaps, the hardest thing i’ve done in my life, to date.

I stay in my body and feel my emotions and physical sensations, while knowing what i know — that i was repeatedly traumatised from birth, until my mother died when i was in my early 20s.

This was a difficult concept for me to grasp, so i can imagine that it may be for others, as well. I’ll provide an example to help explain:
One of my abusers would always jingle the change in his pocket. As an adult, i would often hear the sounds made by coins jingling together, and when i’d hear it i was bothered, unsettled somehow. But the memory of the man who did that was held by a part of me that i wasn’t personally connected to, and so the pain of what he did to me didn’t consciously affect me, it just left me with a vague sense of unease. The reason it upset me was kept from me by both the little girl bit that lives in my brain who remembered, and the part of my body that he had hurt, and while i’ve now connected to the girl who’s held that memory, i hadn’t yet connected to the pain that he’d caused in my body.

So now, today, when i hear change jingling, i remember the man and what he did, but i also feel the pain in my body: the terror making my heart beat faster, the violation of my genitals, the itch in my legs to run away. I don’t just remember, i feel it, and although this may not make sense, in a way it is for the first time.

This has been my life for the last few months. I’m triggered frequently, repeatedly, daily, and i sit with it and i remember and i feel it and i hang on for dear fucking life, until the connection has been made. My Bits N’ Pieces are being reconnected to my body and so am i.
I’ve lived my life playing dead so the bear won’t eat me, but the bear’s long gone and it’s time for me to rise up and join the living.

It’s terrifying, painful work, and i’m physically and psychically exhausted.

So last week, i get it in my head that i must purge the clutter in my house. I’m convinced that i’m drowning my entire family in hoard (i don’t come remotely close to such a diagnosis), and i’ve got to get it out of the house or everyone’s going to get sick and die. While my family’s been great at helping me with this (we’ve been slowly decluttering over the last few months), i had some angry, protective parts come out and start throwing out everything they could get their hands on, including some heavy items that i have no business lifting, given my current fibro flare and the osteopenia in my lumbar region.
Once their rage was spent, as is my system’s way, a little part came out to be a “good girl”, to try to assuage any hurt feelings the angry ones may have caused. She came out to help.

I was raised part urban, part rural, and i know how to use a burning barrel. It was my job as a kid to use it, and save us a trip or 3 to the dump.
But i didn’t know how to do that when i was 5.
She wanted to help, and there was some paper/cardboard trash that needed burning.
So she poured gasoline all over everything in the burning barrel and lit it with a little cigarette lighter.

I was slammed back into the face by her terror and pain and i heard the WOOF! as the fumes lit. I felt the fire kiss my face from my hairline to my top lip. The fire lingered a little longer on my right hand and danced about halfway to my elbow. It took a couple of seconds, no more, but it seemed longer. Every emotion was intensified by me having not been there before it happened.
Which has happened to me countless times, and it’s never not been scary.
To find myself in a completely different situation from the one i last remember, with no consciousness of the passage of time, where in fact it seems like 1 second one thing is happening, and the very next second i’m somewhere else entirely doing a completely unrelated thing… Well, i would imagine that would scare just about anyone.

I singed off a fair bit of my hairline, and most of my eyebrows and eyelashes. (Which i’ve spent time and money regrowing due to trichotillomania. /majoreyeroll) The tip of my nose got it pretty good, so i’ve referred to myself as Rudolph for the last week, heh. There’s a bit of scabbing on my upper lip, but not noticeable, i just feel it. It was my hand that got the worst of it, with significant blistering and lizardy feeling skin across my hand about a third of the way to my elbow, plus 2 second degree burns on my fingers, and a third degree on my thumb.
I’m sure we all realise this could have been much, much worse.

In this blog i share my day-to-days: adventures, misshaps, and ho-hums all, to help myself sort my shit out, to help foster understanding of those of us living with mental illness (like me), and those of us considered neuroatypical (also me). I also write to reach out to those like me, to let them know they aren’t alone, and to offer hope that they might too, find their way to a place of functionality and happiness that works for them.

My point with this post is quite specific, and of utmost importance for me to understand.

Sometimes, no matter how much work i’ve done or how far i’ve come, shit’s gonna happen. I’m not a danger to others – for instance, if i’d been around children, angries and littles wouldn’t have come out that day, only protectors.
But sometimes, sometimes my brain is just gonna do what my brain’s gonna do.
I am who i am, and i’m finally starting to like me. Not just accept, not just love, but i’m growing attached to me. I’m rather fond of myself. I’d hang out with someone exactly like me.
Crazy, broken, occasionally completely dysfunctional me.**
Yes, i’m working hard AF to get to what i consider to be a higher level of function – i’m seeking more happiness and more usefulness and just, i don’t know, more presence and availability to the world around me and the beings sharing space with me in it.

BUT

I’m absolutely fine and right and good already.

Love and Peace,
~H~

*What i call a dissociative state where i’m some level of conscious of what’s happening to and around me, but i’m unable to affect my own actions and have little to no agency – it’s sort of like watching myself on tv.
**I know some of these descriptors don’t work for everyone, but they do for me.

Posted on by histrionicabutterfly

Hush Little Baby

Baby mine, don’t you cry
Baby mine, dry your eyes
Rest your head close to my heart

Never to part, baby of mine

~ Baby of Mine, Dumbo(1941)

 

I mentioned a while back that i’m not good at self-soothing. It’s not a mystery why. A baby needs physical touch and affection in order to connect with the world outside of itself. Touch is also part of what teaches them they are individuals, once they begin to see themselves as separate from their primary caregiver.

What do we do with babies when they cry? We soothe them of course, primarily with touch. What might happen then, when a baby is assaulted? I’ll tell you what happened in my case — disconnection. My brain was unable to process what was happening, so it severed the connections between thought, emotion, and sensation. I had some traumatic experiences that made no sense without coming to terrible and devastating conclusions that i lacked any sophistication to reach. I was constantly in danger from the person i depended on to meet my most basic needs: water, food, shelter. I disconnected so often and for so long, that some of my thoughts, my emotions, and my sensations, began developing their own rudimentary personalities.

I made parts that were frozen and felt no pain. I made parts that ate the anger and kept it hidden. And i made parts that aligned themselves with my abusers; those that believed what was happening was normal, some that knew i was a bad girl and deserved punishment, and others that believed my mother was wonderful, and everything she did, by association. Then, when i got older, i began making parts to function in the world around me: parts that performed more normally for grandparents, playmates, teachers, caregivers, and always, parts for my ever-widening circle of abuse.

What happened when i had an unmet need, was my brain would provide a part that could cope. For instance, if i wasn’t being fed, i had a part my mother had taught to panhandle and shoplift for her, so i might use that part if i was alone in the house or could otherwise get away. When i was being abused there were any number of parts, depending on what type of abuse, and who was doling it out. Outside of the home and other abusers, i still felt a great deal of fear and anxiety. I was trying to fit in but i felt separate; i wanted love, acceptance, help… But it only ever came in rare, and small amounts.

Over time, my brain behaved like a well-oiled machine, and the end result was my feelings were never attended to in the way a child needs most — by soothing and care.

This has everything to do with my toilet-epiphany to which i referred in my last post.
I’ll expound on that in the next couple of days, but i’m ending this one here.
I’m trying to keep my posts a bit shorter for the time being, so that i might have the energy to write through what’s currently happening, to take the time and care i require to heal from recent days, and prepare for those to come.

Thank you for being here, it helps.
Take care the best you can, and i will, too.

Love and Peace to All,
~H~

Posted on by histrionicabutterfly

North

Once again, i think it’s important to start with a warning:

If you are currently in a place where you’re easily upset or triggered by content, this may be a piece you’d like to skip, either until you’re better able to process, or even altogether.

If you are a multiple, this piece contains discussion of integration. Take care of yourself and your system. Think about it before proceeding. Talk to your p-doc or whomever is your mental health professional go-to.

**********

I used to be scared of
Letting someone in
But it gets so lonely
Being on my own
No one to talk to
And no one to hold me
I’m not always strong
Oh, I need you here
Are you listening?
Hear me
I’m cryin’ out
I’m ready now
Turn my world upside down
Find me
I’m lost inside the crowd
It’s getting loud
I need you to see
I’m screaming for you to please
Hear me
~Kelly Clarkson, Hear Me

I don’t know how to start this part.

I know i’m not a writer – i’m a talker. I’m a sharer. I don’t have much to share, but i do have experiences and thoughts about them that i think might help others who struggle as i do, so i share words. The problem is, i have so much trouble being physically around people that some of the more important words that i want to share never come out of my mouth. So i’ve tapped away on the keyboard for years, trying to find a way to say the things i’ve always wanted to say, to say the things that so need saying.

At first trying to find the right way to say it all was like learning to draw blood. Finding a vein was difficult, and once found, it was frightening to make that first stick. What if i failed to hit it, or the needle went all the way through, or the vein dried up before i got enough blood?
Now, i’m practically a phlebotomist, but am i tapped out?

Okay, that’s a lot of directions to give you for my location when you can probably see me standing here across the street, but i’m anxious about this, and so i’m babbling.
You see? Not a writer, but i have found my voice, out here in the ether. Some of the people who know me in real life AND read my blog, have confirmed that this is how i talk. A soup of ramblings, 50 cent words interspersed with random slang from various cultures and fairly drowning in qualifiers, salted liberally with profanity. My talking style highlighted on the page by run-on sentences and bracketed asides. When it seems as if i’m done OH LOOKEE! more punctuation that is not a period. Yep.

In all the early movie depictions of multiplicity that i’ve seen, the characters aren’t considered fixed or well until they’re integrated. In other words, no more scattered bits, no alters, no splits. Not even a cohesive unit or a workable system (i don’t think that was even considered back then). Nope. Seamless and smooth and all in one piece. I only knew of one person who’d refused to integrate. I’d read her book and she was on a daytime talk show once, where it was clear she was still quite troubled, and the undertone of the show that i picked up (which may not have been there, admittedly), was one of pity and sadness that she was not whole.
(Note: I didn’t put quotation marks around certain words in this paragraph, as i thought it might be distracting, because there’d be a LOT.)

Once i finally had a therapist i could work with, i found out right away that integration was not an option for me. I wouldn’t even consider it. I’d been in mental crisis due to bipolar mania and the resultant onslaught of people in my brain all wanting to know and be known and freaking out at the same time, and although they were wreaking havoc and had been doing so for years, i’d developed strong feelings for them. I knew that i loved them, and was grateful to them, and that i owed them my life, many times over. Integration, to me, was murder. It was anathema, so much so that i could never quite recall the word. I always had to search outside myself for it, be it googling, or describing what i meant to the person i was talking to, and asking if they knew.

I know she talked to me about it, and i know i told her no fucking way, but i can’t recall how the conversation or conversations went, or when they occurred.
And i know that at some point i was done seeing her. Did i tell her? Did we have a session or more where we talked about it and had some sort of exit interview?

Zero. Fucking. Clue.

Though i moved on without her, and our times together became like the dreams-that-weren’t-dreams of my childhood, she taught me things about how the brain of a multiple works, and how i might better be in the world and navigate it in order to achieve a higher level of functionality, thereby cutting down on chaos and freeing me to get more of what i wanted out of life. I learned how to stay present, in the face, and as i enjoyed more success at living life on life’s terms, i gained more trust from my precious Bits N’ Pieces, and being in control of myself became less difficult. Don’t mistake me though, things were by no means easy. There was a great deal less crisis and chaos, but every time i was with anyone outside my family i’d quickly dissociate and lose control of switches and slides. I had to admit that social situations were a minefield for me, and the only way i found to handle it was to stop altogether and just stay cocooned in my Little Crooked House for a couple of years.
My system trusted me, but weren’t much closer to trusting anyone else.

I spent those years at home, learning and practising how to manage my brain. How to tune in to my system, to listen and to comprehend what they were saying. To meet their needs by meeting mine, and vice versa.
I hermitted at my own personal Fortress of Solitude, where we all took our turns being Jor-El answering Kal-El’s questions, imparting our personal histories, sharing the strange flavours of a culture of one or the occasional melange of 2 or more. And me, ever parsing over it all.
Our crystalline shards, some razor-sharp, jagged, dazzlingly beautiful. Stories told in whispers, puffs of icy wind, pain sung like silver bells, tinkling like falling ice. The words land and bite into my skin,  glittering emerald frostfire that illuminates our haunted faces, and we who are able, see.

Like young Clark Kent, now armed with knowledge, i begin the long walk home, and like him, i don’t have a clue where i’m going.

Posted on by histrionicabutterfly

Keep On Keepin’ On

Once again, i think it’s important to start with a warning:

If you are currently in a place where you’re easily upset or triggered by content, this may be a piece you’d like to skip, either until you’re better able to process, or even altogether.

If you are a multiple, this piece contains the prelude to a discussion of integration. Take care of yourself and your system. Think about it before proceeding. Talk to your p-doc or whomever is your mental health professional go-to.

**********

It’s okay, you can take a condom
It’s okay, you can take a valtrex
And it’s okay, you can get an abortion
And then keep on keepin’ on
And then keep on keepin’ on
~ Vic Chesnutt, You Are Never Alone

I’ve written at length about my life experience with therapy, but a (semi) brief refresher course would be apropos.

I started therapy when i was around 6yrs old, when my mother sought treatment for my night terrors. After that, she began involving me in whatever new thing she was into, as she struggled with her own mental health. We chased a few pop psychology gurus including Werner Erhardt and EST, and Fritz Perls and Gestalt. She jumped on every bandwagon and read every book. If you are unfamiliar with my story, let me be clear that, although she had her own issues that needed addressing, i don’t believe that’s why she walked those paths and broke bread with those people.
I don’t think she ever put any serious work into becoming a better, healthier person. It is my opinion that these places were rich with easy targets for her to use, and the icing on the cake was that they also vastly increased her arsenal of weapons with which to manipulate people. And this is what i may have subconsciously took in – her absolute derision of anyone seeking healing or enlightenment through psychology. They were beneath her.

Then there was the indoctrination i’d received since birth that i’m never to talk about what happens in our home. Ever. And i was a good girl who did as she was told. Even when teachers or school psychologists, members of the church, friends of the family, or mandated social workers would occasionally smell something off and ask me questions varying from vague to pointed – i said nothing. Years later, when i was a new mother and sought out an old and much-loved caregiver for insight, she related a story of a night i was dropped off at her home for an overnight. I had obviously been seriously beaten, and when she asked me about it, all i would say is that my mother had told me not to speak about it.

At one point i was taken from her and put into foster care, which cemented my brainwashing. Every visit home she’d fill my head with how all the caregivers and professionals around us were trying to take me away from her, how they were telling lies about her and trying to keep us apart; how my foster parents were trying to adopt me and i’d never see her again. I was too young to know that she’d made me both her mother and her spouse years before, so she was triggering me to come home and take care of her.
I carried that distrust and suspicion with me until i was 21yrs old, when my mother abandoned me at a shelter after an attempted rape by a family member, and a tiny, First Nations social worker convinced me by just telling her own story that i was a victim of child abuse.

Once i knew the truth i was set on figuring my shit out, and i knew i’d need help to do it, but i could never find the right person. I could work with someone for a while, but they’d either tell me after a couple of visits that i was fine, they’d hit a wall they couldn’t get over, or they’d suggest i was a multiple and i wouldn’t go back. There was a wonderful social worker through my church who was finally able to get me to accept the diagnosis, but the kind of therapy that she offered was filtered through our religion and that was never going to help me.

Since i was 21, i’ve probably seen at least a dozen therapists, and that’s not counting psychologists or psychiatrists i’ve seen through my medical doctor or when i was either staying voluntarily in various hospital units (i call them The Bin, with zero affection) and mental hospitals, or being forcibly committed. I’ve done various group therapies offered through different counselling groups and tried a lot of 12step groups, and courses and workbooks under the care of trained facilitators galore…

How funny -and here i mean both peculiar and haha- that i should finally find the right person in a little sleepy town i’d gone to hide in, who agreed to see me at my husband’s desperate request, at a women’s shelter on short notice?
I don’t remember anything about meeting her, just going to the shelter and i think she was in an office down the stairs? I may have seen her a couple of times there, but she incredibly, graciously offered to come to my home for sessions, which was wonderful, because i was taking off down the road all the time at that point. Maybe i told her these things or maybe she ascertained my level of fuckedupness and stooped down low to meet me where i was at, either way, she started coming and i actually let her in.

She did (or rather didn’t do) a number of things other than that, that no other therapist had ever (not) done before*:

– she didn’t ask for my life story;
– she didn’t ask to talk to my system or even ask for their names;
– she respected my request for no spirituality and talked about things from a science or experience perspective only.

She would sit on the big leather couch by the front door, and i would sit on the love seat, on the side farthest from her. The other thing she didn’t do, not even once, was push. Not to talk about anything, not to do anything, not even to think about anything, that i didn’t want to. Not ever.
I think it was over a year, and maybe even 2, before she could sit beside me.
And sometimes, i would even look into her eyes.

We’ll never know for sure of course, and i know i’d have kept trying as long as i could have, but i was spiralling down hard and fast and she helped me save my life. I may not have got that done in time without her.

One more thing she never pushed on me, though we discussed it: integration.

Here we go.

*Sorry to grammar people for that one. It hurts my brain a little too, but that’s how it came out, and i try not to edit this stuff.

Photo credit: Melancholy, Louis Jean François Lagrenée (c. 1785)

Posted on by histrionicabutterfly

Now

First, a reiteration of the most important bit from yesterday’s content warning:

If you are currently in a place where you’re easily upset or triggered by content, this may be a piece you’d like to skip, either until you’re better able to process, or even altogether.
If you are a multiple, this piece contains the prelude to a discussion of integration. Take care of yourself and your system. Think about it before proceeding. Talk to your p-doc or whomever is your mental health professional go-to.

**********

Yesterday, any way you made it was just fine
So you turned your days into night-time
Didn’t you know, you can’t make it without ever even trying? 
And something’s on your mind, isn’t it?
~ Karen Dalton, Something’s On Your Mind

After years of chaos and then the drudgery of therapy (it just is, for me), i felt freer and more happy than i had ever felt. I knew my system and how it worked, and they knew me and trusted me to be in charge and care for them. I organised things in my mind in a way that made sense to any part developed enough to be able to get there. I enjoyed a couple of years where, while there were still many difficulties, i was able to manage without the 3 big ones i’d worked hardest to avoid: police involvement, hospitalisation, and serious marital discord.

I turned my attention to my physical health then, as i live with some chronic conditions, and have struggled with weight and food since i was a child. I was morbidly obese in the early aughts, and had a gastric bypass which was very successful. Unfortunately, it also heralded my first severe mania. Medications, heavy drinking, along with lousy food choices and eating hygiene meant that around 1/4 of it came back on – when one starts out as big as i was, that is not insignificant. I spent the last 10yrs taking off and promptly putting back on, about 1/3 of that amount.

Over the years i did learn a lot about eating and food, and my relationship with them. I found a way for me to lose the weight i need to, and keep it off. I don’t talk numbers or details, because that can trigger obsession in me, but what i will share is that i stopped dieting, and made one small change to how, why, and what i ate at a time. So when i shifted my focus to my physical health, it was more about adding exercise in. Again, the details aren’t necessary, just know that my approach was the same as it had been to food; one small, manageable change at a time. I’m not looking for magic, or instant results. Slow, steady steps forward are what works best for me.

What happened was the same in my physical health as i had experienced with my mental health. It took time and patience and commitment, but small changes gradually built upon each other until the results were obvious and easy to demonstrate. I passed that 1/3 loss that i couldn’t seem to conquer before, and i was heading towards my goal, closer than i’d been in many years.
I added in more socialising.
And then i added in parttime work.
And then i began volunteering.

That was when my dreams got ugly.
That was when some voices stopped talking.
That is when i crashed.

I didn’t notice the missing voices, but some parts did, and there was panic. It flooded my body, feeling like it was filling in every space, like frost spreading on glass. Except from the neck up, which was suffused with hot blood, gushing in my ears, swelling my skin. I knew i was in trouble, but i couldn’t make out what was wrong. It was too loud, it was too many, and it was too much. I stopped sleeping. If i dropped off it was due to pure exhaustion, and then i’d only get a couple of hours before nightmares would set in, and i’d be forced to wake myself up.*

It took tragically little time for me to unravel. I stopped exercising, volunteering, working, socialising. I left the house as infrequently as possible, and i drank regularly, to quiet my brain and get some sleep (NOT RECOMMENDED, BTW). I started losing my control over the face. I was exhausted and overwhelmed and terrified – terrified of things going back to how they used to be.

Like finding myself walking towards the highway, trying to return “home”.

It started happening when i first became severely manic, and i would switch, hard and often. I kept wanting to go home, and hearing it in my brain. It felt like an imperative. Go home. Some younger bits crying for home, others saying more authoritatively.
GO HOME. GO HOME NOW.

During those difficult years of getting to know how i work and who else lives in my brain, i tried to go home countless times. I would leave my Little Crooked House and hitchhike into the city. Trying to get home. Revisiting old places and looking for people from my past. I would eventually find myself back in the face, usually in an untenable situation. I would get to a phone and call my husband. Sometimes it would be hours before he found me, as i’d be sliding all over the place. He also spent dozens upon dozens upon dozens of hours following me, trying to get me in the car, trying to keep me from hitting the highway in the first place. More than once i tried to jump out in traffic in the city. More than once i tried to walk in front of semis on the highway, parts of me holding my life hostage to try to get to some place i didn’t know. I did know what that word “home” meant to me as i looked back unblinking at my childhood. Pain. Fear. Alone. Anger and ugliness everywhere.
I tell you this because i started finding myself walking towards the city again.

I had learned to manage the walking by going for walks. Heh. Compromise and negotiation was and is key to managing my brain and the splitty pieces that live inside it with me. I love walking and i always have. So if someone inside wanted to go for a walk, i took them. When i set out to improve my fitness level, walking was the first thing i started doing regularly. My doggies were ecstatic and i truly enjoyed it. But walking turned dark when those voices did. I felt it in my feet, in my calves and my knees – this itch inside, a need to stretch, to go. To go home.

I’d find myself on the road, without the dogs, walking. I could feel it in my legs and hear it in my head that i was not going towards town, i was heading towards the city. I’d feel kind of floaty, like my head was a balloon, which means i’m sliding around, but not hard switching.

I was scared and i felt so defeated that, after all this work parts of me still wanted, and could still try to take me to this unknown and potentially harmful place.
I did the only thing i knew to do – i called my therapist and started seeing her again regularly.

Maybe another day you’ll want to feel another way, you can’t stop crying
You haven’t got a thing to say, you feel you want to run away
There’s no use trying, anyway
I’ve seen the writing on the wall
Who cannot maintain will always fall
Well, you know, you can’t make it without ever even trying

So next, let me tell you a little of my history with my therapist.

*See “lucid dreaming”.

Posted on by histrionicabutterfly

Then

I haven’t written in quite a long time. I always say i’m going to write through the tough times, but so far i’ve not been able to manage it. My brain gets so full when my people are stressed, it’s like chasing echoes, or trying to grab onto the mad wisps of dream smoke, upon awakening.
How am i supposed to fully realise my desire to help others by sharing how my brain works unless i can do this? The sigh that came from me just now felt like it rose up from the tips of my toes.

I’ll keep trying.

To that end, there may be some hope. I’m writing now, and i’m still not at all well. In fact i’m worse at this moment than i was when i stopped writing. Therein lies the reason for this warning:

I do not know you.
I do not have any magical formula or secret key to fix your life.
All i have is the desire and the will to find my own, and share it with you, because it is all and everything that i have to give.
Me. How my brain works. My journey towards a higher level of functionality in my world. Self-knowledge. Trial and error. Stubborn and steadfast, and always interminably slow.

Here is the second part of the warning, and it is most important:

I am not well right now, not mentally, or emotionally, or physically. I may not be making good decisions right now. I may look back and cringe/cry/curse. I’m not myself half the time, which in multiple speak, means that other, split parts of me are regularly in control of my body, and i have varying levels of awareness, from watching myself like i’m on tv, yet being unable to influence what’s happening, to no clue that i’ve been gone at all, until i find myself back in the face (my slang for back in control) again.

If you are currently in a place where you’re easily upset or triggered by content, this may be a piece you’d like to skip, either until you’re better able to process, or even altogether.
If you are a multiple, this piece contains the prelude to a discussion of integration. Take care of yourself and your system. Think about it before proceeding. Talk to your p-doc or whomever is your mental health professional go-to.

What follows now is the piece i was working on when i shut down. I’m working on more for tomorrow.
Yes, tomorrow, but we’ll see, won’t we?

**********

I know i always say this piece was hard to write. But this piece is hard to write.

It involves sharing some deeper, more intimate details of how my brain works, and that has filled me with anxiety and no small amount of shame. I’m anxious because i don’t know if i’m going to be able to communicate it well enough that anyone can understand, and i might just come off as kooky, or wholly unbelievable. Then there’s the shame part. I always struggle with shame when i’m sharing about my multiplicity. This is due in part to it being a controversial diagnosis, partly due to my own struggle in accepting it, and a lot because doing so is an undressing of the rawest kind. This is deeply personal and private. Getting to this point, where i have enough of a consensus to do so, was a difficult task.*

From the jump i’m fairly certain this won’t make much sense, but i’m forging ahead, because i’m committed to sharing who i am and how my brain works: for me, for my beloved Bits N’ Pieces, and for anyone who might find help or comfort in these pages filled with angsty blurts and hopeful gushing.

I struggled with my diagnosis for many years, running from any mental health professional who’d suggest it. I finally considered it because i’d been trained from birth to believe what any religious elder told me, and i’d sought counselling from a social worker who attended my church. She brought in a psychologist who was also a church member to backup her diagnosis. So i finally, seriously considered that i might be a multiple, because i was raised to be a good girl, to respect authority, and to respect religious authority above all.

I could see that i easily met all the criteria for MPD/DID, but it just seemed so ridiculous. There were a number of high profile cases that had been soundly debunked. There was also something about other multiples – i didn’t like them. None of them. In fact, it was an instantaneous and visceral dislike, except for one who became my very best friend (but that’s a story for another time). I also understood that my mother had gone out of her way to both encourage my multiplicity, and to indoctrinate and threaten me against acknowledging any of my more obvious symptoms to anyone, especially myself.

I found what i was looking for in my dreams. Answers, affirmation, and even confirmation, after a fashion.
My dreaming life has always been a significant part of my life. I suffered night terrors from the time i was a toddler, to the point where my mother took me to a specialist for treatment. I remember dreams from as far back as around 4yrs old, i think. My dreams are heavy with themes and motifs, and most fall into a few categories. As a child, the most common ones were of being hunted by something i sometimes couldn’t, sometimes wouldn’t see, of houses filled with death, and of being covered in bugs. There were other themes added as i became a teenager, more still as a young adult, and again since i accepted that i am more than one.

I’d pored over my dreams my whole life, trying to understand what they could tell me about myself. I knew they were different from my peers from an early age. There was a moment of stunning clarity when i realised that some of them were not dreams at all, but memories. The therapist my mother had sent me to when i was so little, taught me lucid dreaming, and part of that was to pinch myself, HARD, as a way to ground myself, to know i was okay, the idea being that a pinch in a dream is painless…

But in my dissociated state i’d begun pinching myself while being abused, and it did hurt. And when i acknowledged that there were pinch dreams that hurt, i was struck with how those dreams were so much more literal than the other ones. There was no need to interpret, there were no metaphors, no symbolism; it was all ugly and starkly, painfully clear, and yet blurry, fuzzy, with softened edges, unlike the dreams where my skin felt like i was covered in bees, and everything was in technicolor, with sensurround! TM

I was able to identify a feeling that came along with all these “dreams”, a putrid, stinking hopelessness, and panic so intense that it was like a vacuum that seemed to suck me inside of myself. It pulled me towards a black door in the middle of my body, the centre of the universe of my brain; the door beckoned me, it promised safety and relief.  It was a splotch covered in stars and i wasn’t afraid of it. I knew i could go there and everything would be okay.
I now think that’s the place i went while my people took care of me.

My dreams that were not memories were so clear, with crisp edges and vibrant colours, but the feelings were fluffy, nebulous, bouncing around and occasionally brushing up against me.
The memories were seen through a sleeping fog, bathing me in a soft froth of imagery, but the feelings grabbed and held me captive with hard, bony fingers, and as i squirmed helplessly, they sliced away at me until all was bloody and ragged.

That was when i began the work of accepting what had happened to me as a child. I vomited it all up to my husband and a small, trusted group of blog friends. This was cathartic, and almost certainly necessary for me, but as soon as it was done i locked down the blog and was slammed with a hurricane of parts demanding to be heard, demanding face time, demanding my time, wanting random needs met and feelings assuaged and needing to know if they were safe and who the hell was going to take care of them? It was years of chaos.

I learned how to manage this onslaught by first acknowledging them, one by one, and then getting to know them by listening to them. Hours and hours and days and months and years of listening. I had to purposefully, mindfully, and with clear intentions, pull myself out of the dissociated, fugue-like fogginess i’d settled into through a lifetime of living with constant commentary and background chatter. I gave my head a shake, figuratively and literally, focused on my breathing and feeling myself inside my body: feet on the floor, hands on my thighs, butt in the chair, churning in my belly, mild headache, sweat under my arms, all of it, whatever it was, as long as it was real and tangible and ME. And then i’d listen. They started out, most of them, talking only to themselves (they knew i was listening, and i knew they knew), but eventually they began speaking and/or throwing feelings directly to me.

Well, at first it was AT me, but you know…
Patience is a dad-blasted virtue, i can tell you.

*Anyone who was against this, agreed that it was okay as long as any details occurring when they were in the face, would not be discussed, which has been honoured, with love and respect.

Posted on by histrionicabutterfly

Fear Is The Mind Killer

Content Warning: This piece contains references to integration, which may be triggering for some.

When routine bites hard
And ambitions are low
When resentment rides high
And emotions won’t grow
And we’re changing our ways
Taking different roads

Love, love will tear us apart again
~Love Will Tear Us Apart, Evelyn Evelyn

This next part must come now, or it won’t. I’m committed to talking about my multiplicity – a lot here, maybe sometimes a little outside the protective bubble of the etherosphere where i dwell. (Did you see what i did there? I like it. Also, my use of qualifiers seems to be directly proportional to my difficulty with the subject matter. I’ll try to edit as many out as i can before i post, heh.)
In my prior entry, i wrote about how i hadn’t been paying enough attention to the people that live in my brain, and how once i did, i recognised that something was terribly wrong.

A little background before i get into what’s happened:

There are some multiples for whom success is integration, and others for whom that isn’t even on the table as a possibility. I fall into the latter camp. It felt, on a visceral level, like that would be akin to murdering the people who’d saved my life. I set about carving out a functional and satisfying life for all of us, which was no small task, and in fact took me nearly a decade to achieve. My system works from the agreement amongst us that i am the head, and i am in charge. There’s really no other way for this to work, because i have an intellectual understanding that my people aren’t actually real – they were created by me in order to help me survive my upbringing.

You may well ask, If you know they aren’t real, then how would integration be murder?
I’m not quite sure if i have a reasonable answer, but what i can say is that it’s the way i’ve learned to live with how my brain works. This involves a constant tinkering to find a workable balance between thoughts and feelings, between imagination and reality, and on finding a way to live in and be a part of the world as much as possible, while still honouring and protecting the parts of me that are broken and delicate and deserve to be shielded from any more pain or ugliness. In living my life as if they are real – i’m healing myself.

Multiples are no different from anyone else in that we must all find or create our own path, no one’s journey through life is exactly like anyone else’s. I’ve sought healing and happiness through examining what happened to me and learning as much as i can about how i coped, and what that might say about me as a person (and what it might not). I’ve been intensely self-focused for nearly 20yrs now, and as with most of us who get exceptional at anything, i’d been managing my people well for enough time that i’d become complacent.

When i finally turned my eyes and ears inward, i discovered that some of my people were missing. I asked after them and was mostly met with stony silence. A couple of them yelled things at me, but it was name calling, not information. Those that i know would help me were being hidden from me, and i had to listen to cursing and condemnation before any cooperation was going to happen. I’m not going to describe what happened in any more detail than that, as it’s private and it’s weird, and frankly i’m not sure i can paint a word picture that would make enough sense to either of us for me to bother.

They were gone, and no one wanted to talk about it.
When i think things, as a multiple, it is as if i’m talking to other people (sometimes at, because no one is listening, heh). Usually there’s at least one response, and occasionally it’s many. There can also be other conversations already happening, or what i “say” can spur some side conversation, in other words 2 or more of my people want to talk to each other about what i just said. There’s often murmurs that follow, where i can catch a snippet or 2, but it’s more like a sussuration unless i consciously focus on it. This time, i’m wondering where a few of my people are, i’m thinking that i don’t remember hearing from them recently, and it happens just like BOOM! in a moment:

I know they’re gone.
I’m struck by the terrible, thick, unnatural (as in NEVER happens) silence.
I’m at once overwhelmed by their feelings of fear, and my legs are watery and my head is floaty and i’m hit with a violent wave of nausea.

I don’t know how long i sat there, but i know i must have been acting weird, because suddenly i was aware that my dogs were at me, one was pawing my face, and the other was sitting at my feet, staring directly at me, which isn’t like her. At this point, i get up and go back about my day. This is the beginning of a couple of weeks spent in a highly dissociative state. I sort of forget about what happened, but i’m also aware of it, like a dark figure, always present at the edge of my peripheral vision. I’m easily startled at the best of times, but now i’m jumping out of my skin fairly regularly. And i’m losing time, nearly every day.

I was able to keep to my regular schedule, which is no small point of pride, for me. Yet i was filled with foreboding, and felt menaced by something or someone, although i knew that it was just the way my brain was manifesting what was going on in my system. I tried to cope by becoming more functional, i exercised more and was more careful with my diet, and i tackled more chores around the house. The results of that were all good, except it didn’t help with my inner turmoil much, and i knew that if i didn’t deal with what had happened soon, i’d find myself in some manufactured chaos.

One night i got royally pissed off at something, which got the ball rolling, or rather it got my tongue wagging. I told my husband that i thought some of my Bits N’ Pieces were gone. And then i think i cried for a long time.

You cry out in your sleep
All my failings exposed
There’s a taste in my mouth
As desperation takes hold
Just that something so good
Just can’t function no more

Love, love will tear us apart again
END OF PART TWO