Posted on by histrionicabutterfly · 4 Comments

Reciprocity

Okay, keep in mind that i’m at a place in my therapy where every breath i take and every experience i have and every feeling i feel is new and weird.
I’m very weepy and feeling sorry for myself. So yeah, i think all the pertinent preamble is out of the way:

Today i realised that i am alone, and i don’t want to be, but i haven’t found where i belong in the real world.
I’ve done so much work to strip away all the fear and the artifice. To know who i am and figure out what i want.

I knew i was a mess of protections and pretenses, and the way i found to get around all of them was to become a hermit out here on our farm. That was when i discovered i was kind of introverted, something that shocked the hell outta me.
Between honouring that and having the newfound sense to stay away from people i was only friends with due my former high risk lifestyle, i only had a few friends.

Another thing i found out about myself is that, most of the time, i prefer to listen rather than talk. Maybe it was because after all the years i’d spent being extroverted, i needed some rest. Regardless of the reason though, i became the listening friend. I also found i was content to sit on the sidelines and watch things. I had no desire to be the centre of attention – the rowdier things got, the further i retreated.

After being this way for some years, it started to sort of seep into my consciousness that there was some disparity in the give and take in some of my friendships, particularly in the emotional area. I put it down to me vacillating between oversharing and not saying anything, but eventually i realised it was more than that.

With respect to “real life” friendships (and by that i mean not my friends online) it became clear that most of them didn’t know me, and maybe didn’t care to. Our friendship was about them and their life and their experiences. Whenever i tried to steer the conversation to what was going on in my life and how i was feeling about stuff, it was painfully obvious that they were scarcely listening. They were waiting for a moment when they could break in and get back to talking about themselves.
So i did more housecleaning, and i had just a couple of friends left, only 1 of whom i would say i was close to, but 2 or 3 i thought i could build more intimacy with if i tried. Once i felt ready.

Cue COVID.

I’ve been very careful to follow protocols, although i must be honest and tell you that there were 3 or 4 times when my mental issues got the better of me and i interacted with my 1 close friend without observing recommended masking, washing, distancing hygiene. She was fine with it, as she does not strictly follow them anyway. She probably kept me from going straight off the rails, and i’ll always be grateful. As i should be. Fortunately, we’re both virus-free, as are our housemates.

This pandemic afforded me the opportunity to focus pretty much exclusively on myself and my health. I’ve made good strides forward and met a number of significant goals. I’m living a much more present and mindful life. I’ve been standing up for myself and asking for what i want, in instances and with people that i would not have before. This level of isolation for this length of time has allowed me to embrace who i am as a person, but now i’d like to take myself out for a trial run.

It’s become abundantly clear that my local area isn’t where i’m likely to find what i’m looking for. It’s beautiful to look at, and the familiarity of my surroundings has given me a sense of safety and comfort. But that sense of being protected from harm is surface, at best. Seeing the same flora and fauna and geographical features as i’ve always seen does not mean i’m safe and okay. I’ve healed and matured enough that i know my hyper-focused need for those things had its roots in trauma. I can now take proper care of myself, including risk assessment and setting myself up for successful outcomes in my daily activities and interactions.

And while i’m not arrogant enough to think that there is no one here for me, i have been pushed to the breaking point with regards to what’s going on around me. I’m disillusioned and despondent and enraged and verging on misanthropy. Experience with and knowledge of myself as a person tells me that that will soften over time. However right now i am in it, and i honestly have no desire to be over it just yet.
I’m sickened and disgusted by almost everyone’s behaviour.
This includes people that i love and am committed to and will continue to be in relationship with after this is over.

Please understand that while i look like an adult, in significant ways i am new to being one. I’ve been there intellectually for some time, but emotionally i have felt and processed things as a child. A child doing her level best to be a good adult, but a child nonetheless. I am a mass of contradictions and stages of development, because i have lived my life as pieces of a person.

I am the shards of glass in a broken mirror; the ones that are still stuck together in your bedroom, from when you were checking yourself before you went out to a fancy dinner, and OH SHIT IS THAT A ZIT?! and you leaned in closer to see, and twisted on your high heels that you suck at walking in but wear because they’re so pretty, and you fell into your own reflection and smacked the mirror with your big damn cement forehead that’s more like a fivehead and… Great. Is it 7yrs bad luck if the mirror is cracked but doesn’t scatter on the floor? and Nevermind the zit now, because i cut my head on the mirror and i’m bleeding…
(This great mental picture/metaphor brought to you by life as a klutz.)

As i practise these new life skills and try to be a contributing member of society, i’m finding real life experience with how doing so requires interaction and relationships with people in my actual physical vicinity. I have a wonderful group of cherished friends that have been and will continue to be a beautiful, wonderful source of connection and support.
But… They are internet peoples and they are all thousands of kilometres away.
And i am alone and very lonely.

I don’t have a circle or tribe or peer group to return to once the world opens back up.
I need to build one. Find one. Knock on some doors and ask for entry. Wave on the sidelines and hope for a welcome sign in return.

I need to talk to someone for a very long time without being interrupted. And then i need them to talk back and have responses to what i said that keep the spotlight on me and what i’ve said and what i’m going through. I am becoming desperate for someone to know me –to really deeply and truly KNOW ME— and i will tell you the truth here and say that i don’t think i have anyone in my life that does. I’ve split myself open because i had to in order to survive and be who i want to be, but i don’t have anyone who will look at my guts spilled out on the table, turn and look me in the eye, really LOOK at me, and say something salient and savvy that convinces me to my core that they’ve listened and heard me, and then offer to help me stuff all my viscera back in their proper place.

When i was a child my mother called me “Chatty Cathy.” Chatty Cathy was a doll that talked when you pulled a string, but the name became a part of her generation’s lexicon, meaning a girl who talked too much. I did talk a lot. I have always had a large and animated personality. One of the things that helped me get healthy was getting very quiet though. Cutting down on the outside talk helped me to hear my inside talk. Listening to other people talk about themselves helped me learn to control the constant chatter that goes on in my brain. I’m not sure i can explain this so it makes sense but, being raised to be used by others made me so sick and twisted inside that i was actually hopelessly self-focused. I was unable to think about anything but my own survival, even though my conscious understanding of myself and any of my inner workings had been hobbled by childhood brainwashing and abuse.

Through the healing process i found myself bristling at any hint of me being very talkative. These last few years i can tell you that it simply isn’t true anymore. I pour my heart out here on my blog. I show who i am on social media and with my treasured group of internet friends, but i don’t have that kind of intimacy with anyone with whom i currently share physical location.
I don’t talk too much, in fact, i’ve become rather quiet.
I am somewhat quiet, it turns out.
But i am still, in my DNA, 10lbs of personality stuffed into a 5lb sack.

My problem is, i need some people to be around while i am living a more genuine life and letting my true self show. Not partner, not kids, but bosom buddies and lifelong pals. I see this in movies and on television. I’m fascinated by true crime stories, and when a woman disappears or is tragically taken, i’m riveted to her girlfriends talking about how awesome she was, and their fond tales of all of their adventures together. It especially makes my heart clench up when they relate how they were there for each other; one of them would be having a tough time and the rest of them would rush in and share space with them.
How they knew something was wrong because they talked every day and suddenly didn’t hear from her.

I’m scared and ashamed to type it out on the screen, but i think i want that for myself.*
I want friendship with equality and equity.
And quality, too.
I’m not expecting it to show up on my doorstep. I don’t hold with the idea that i can manifest it – that “if you build it, they will come,” mentality. I’m also not blaming anyone, including myself, for not having this in my life.
I have proven a rather lousy friend in the past. I was unavailable and unreliable, in various ways and most of the time. I knew nothing about boundaries, either to keep or to respect. I’m sure i’ve come across as fake to some, and they were on the right track, although it was unconscious and unintentional.

I’m tired of being alone and feeling this lonely. I’m champing at the bit, ready to put myself out there and get more of what i want out of life. I’m honouring myself and respecting the process, and in doing so have found that i can be quiet and introspective and introverted. In sitting with that and soaking up all the healing it’s brought me, i now feel able to embrace the vivacious and outgoing part of me. I’m not ashamed to be this big and intense personality that is not for everyone.
It’s weird and topsy-turvy.
But that’s me.

I feel better getting this out of me and sharing it.
Thanks for being here and reading.
Love and Peace,
~H~

*Except for the part where they are missing and presumed dead. Sounds like i’m being glib here, but i’m not. Nothing about this post is lighthearted.

IMAGE: Luís Eusébio

Posted on by histrionicabutterfly · 3 Comments

Home, Bones & Unexpected Boons

I haven’t posted in a while, obviously. I fell. I was in the hospital for a bit. I was strongly advised to stay longer, but i know from experience that the care and support i receive at home is far better medicine. I may expand on what happened at some point, but not today. Today i want to write about yesterday. Literally.*

She lifts her skirt up to her knees
Walks through the garden rows with her bare feet,
laughing
And i never learned to count my blessings
I choose instead to dwell in my disasters
~Ray LaMontagne, Empty

I’m having to reset and redefine some boundaries at my Little Crooked House. It isn’t easy, although it’s easier than it once was. There’s no need for details, suffice to say that parenting adult children is different, and requires patience and time to make the appropriate adjustments. Fortunately, i’m adept at tweaking my life to get more of what i want out of it, and less of what i don’t. Yesterday i “laid down the law” as we used to say, and then left with my husband to help him with a job. I figured it would give all of us time to cool off and private space to process.

Hubby is considered an “essential worker” during this pandemic, and his work cannot be done from home. In fact, it involves working in other people’s homes, directly. I haven’t been anywhere since this all began. I’ve stated it before, but i’m happy to repeat the fact that i am an introvert, and perfectly content to hermit away on our farm. I say it often – in fact i’m sure some are tired of hearing it. I won’t be stopping any time soon however, because for me it’s nothing short of a revelation. As i slowly stripped away all the artifice and chipped away at my facade, no one was more shocked than i to find a private homebody lurking underneath. So much of the outgoingness, the ebullience, gregariousness, and ohsomuch charm, was a construct of either my abusers to hide their acts, or of mine to protect myself from any further harm.

So, take my preferred insular life, add in my current level of anxiety, which is burgeoning towards full blown panic, and know that this adds up to no small level of trepidation to leave my home and head into the big city. He leaves me in the relative safety of his work van, to talk to his boss in the office and find out where he’ll be sent and what he’ll be doing. I sit and fret, as i do… Will there be people there, will they be the type who want to hover and watch us work? Even worse, what if they wanna yack? I don’t want to do that most of all, but not for the reason you may imagine. I hate it because it comes so easily to me. I’m a multiple, and i can, and WILL, shift swiftly into Little Miss Conversation. My current therapy involves trying NOT to switch. I’m trying to stay in the face (the one in control of my system) and feel my emotions and physical sensations in the moment, present and mindful. I’m learning not to dissociate. Engaging with people i don’t know is one of the times when i’m the most dissociative, and as this is extremely difficult for me not to do, i like to take it slowly, one teeny tiny baby step at a time.

He gets sent to a small community that i once lived in when i was 18, in an area of my province where i lived for a number of years in a number of different places. There are tiny and sprawling acreages, plus farms and ranches of all sizes. There are mansions and cottages, trailers, and barnsbarnsbarns. There are rolling hills, lush expanses of the greenest grasses, and the most beautiful copses and vast forests of dozens of varieties of trees. And everywhere you look there is wildlife: so many kinds of birds, horses of all colourings and persuasions, and my favourite – cows. I can tell just by looking what breed they are, and in this area of my province you see dozens. I open the window and i can smell the wildflowers, the greenery, and yes, the cow shit.

We pull into a small acreage that has clearly been there a long time. The house is a modest bungalow, and has a lot of years on it. It’s no Martha Stewart model of genteel upper class living. There are wild grasses and flowers in patches of varying sizes, everywhere i look. There are neatly stacked cords of wood and i can smell them. There’s a garden with small, well-built-but-not-fancy greenhouses, covered in an almost opaque poly, but i can tell there are tomatoes and peppers in there. There are handmade birdfeeders, more than 20, maybe more than 30; some are hanging in trees, some are sitting on top of handpainted logs. They are different heights and all the feeders are different sizes, made obviously to appeal to various birds. When i step onto the porch, i hear a sound like a bee on steroids – it’s a hummingbird. There are a number of feeders and i see at least a half dozen come for a sweet sip of sugar water while i’m there. They’re incredible to me, entrancing.

The inside of the house is just as i’d hoped. A retired couple lives there, and it’s not fancy. It’s cozy and homey and has an old grouchy cat and an old, shy dog. There are well-tended houseplants and crocheted throws and embroidery in antique frames. The carpeting needs replacing and the window frames are in need of repair/replacement. Most of the windows have bird stickers on them, the kind my grandma used to keep the birdies from flying into them and hurting themselves. Every room is handpainted and decorated, and the bed in the master bedroom might be as big as queen-size, but perhaps not. I can see the shapes of the heads that lay there on the 2 pillows. The plumbing in both bathrooms has seen better days.

It’s perfect. The only way you’d get me out of that house and away from that land is feet first.

The owner is there, but he and his buddy are out in the garage making sausage. He’s friendly, but not bothersome. He invites us to explore the property and make ourselves at home. During breaks where i cannot help my husband, i do. There’s a creek, because of course there is. When we leave he gives us some of his homemade sausages.

The drive home is over an hour. Unlike the drive in, i don’t have the music playing. I’m looking at all the houses, all the land, talking to my husband animatedly. I’m talking about ranches my stepfather worked on and people i knew and telling him which ones are the Herefords, the Charolais, which ones are the Red Angus and which ones are actually Salers (they look similar). I’m telling him the best place to go for beef jerky. I describe where we’d get so much snow we’d need chains, and where we got so much dust i’d sweep 3X a day and it still wasn’t enough. We’re ogling the houses with lovely architecture, and laughing at all the new McMansions.

That’s when it hits me, like a blast of sparkling rainbow joy, right in my heart. It explodes like a musical firework, and spreads through my whole body. My throat clenches up tight and the tears flow.

I’ve heard/read lots of stories about people who are genuinely in love with where they live and/or where they came from. This area is not where i live, nor is it where i came from.
I visited here many times during my growing up years, but only lived here for a while. And i was living with my parents, my siblings, and still dealing with daily abuse.
But it doesn’t matter.
I love this place.
I mean love, down deep in the marrow of my bones.

There are some places in the city that i grew up in, that are spoilt for me. Places where so much abuse, so much evil was done to me that i can’t not dissociate when i’m there. One son and his family live in an area that i cannot get to without being driven there by someone else. I don’t drive, but i can navigate around the city very well using maps and GPS and public transit. I can’t get to my grandchildren’s home on my own, and even when i’m assisted, it’s better if they come to my Little Crooked House out on the farm, because i worry what seeing me dissociated or switched might do to them, and our relationship. Even though my son and DIL assure me it’s not obvious, that i don’t appear to be different to my girls, the anxiety and stress can make the days after fraught with potential for self-destructive behaviours, and a cavalcade of other parts that try to come forward and must be managed, as they can, and often have, placed me in grave peril.

I live with my husband on land that’s been in his family for over 100yrs. It’s home and i’m so grateful to live there. We have lots of green, and a lake constantly visited by great birds like ducks, geese, pelicans, and swans. We have hawks and eagles. We have both Mule and Whitetail deer. We have coyotes that sing to us at night, and Great-Horned and Snowy owls that hoot us Hello in the morning. We have cows and horses. Our ditches are filled with wild roses and spring brings crocuses of the prettiest purples. A local beekeeper keeps everything pollinated and the air hums with happy, busy buzzing. Our property is ringed with maple trees, and in late May and early June our dozens of lilac bushes fill the air with their unparalleled fragrance. I intend to live out my days with the man of my dreams, enjoying a land and a lifestyle that i’d never even considered. I grew up amongst my country’s most impoverished, and it had never occurred to me that it would be any other way for me.

All of that, yes.
And still, these lush valleys and rolling foothills that we drive through after work as we head back to a place that i’m astounded and privileged to call home – make my blood fairly sing. Make me feel electric pink and blue. Make my skin alive with wonder. Make my heart swell with a joy that i cannot explain. It surges through me and makes me feel like i am in it as it is in me.

And that is why i share this piece with you today.
Because i realised –and it bound up and mended old wounds in a way i don’t yet fully fathom– that they couldn’t take everything from me.
She couldn’t ruin everything.
There are precious things she took that i will never have again…
But she couldn’t take everything.
They hammered and pounded and pecked at me a bite at a time.
But my heart still beats and my blood still flows and they could not consume me.
My ability to experience beauty and feel joy and be a part of the Universe remains.
Intact and vital and travelling through ALL with a fierce and beautiful power.

This therapy that i’ve been at for almost 2yrs now, is the most gruelling, the most demanding, the most constant and inescapable personal work that i have ever done…

And for this day alone i would start back at the beginning and do it all again.

So take heart, dear ones who suffer and despair, for your toiling is not in vain.
I am certain of it.
Hang on.

I know you give because you want to
Don’t you think it’s time you learn to let yourself receive?
~ Ray LaMontagne, Born To Love You

*Now 2 days ago, but whatever. Heh.

Posted on by histrionicabutterfly

Bring It!

So, i think shame is my driving emotion, and one of my core issues is rejection.

It isn’t hard to see how the 2 things would be intertwined in anyone’s life – they’re certainly tightly wound together in mine.
Last Friday night they slammed into each other and almost brought the house down. My Little Crooked House, the house of cards i’ve built around me to handle the state of the world at this moment, and perhaps, even my house. My brain is a house where a lot of people live, you see. I’m the landlord, the property manager, and the onsite handyman for all of it. I own a lot of real estate up here. Occasionally, i have found a bit of space that i don’t, but i’m a keen negotiator, and so far all my offers to buy have been accepted. I’m quite the land baron, doncha know. My offers were generous, and the rent, low.

I’m going to talk about sex today. My life as a sexual being was heavily impacted by my upbringing –i mean, duh!– but i don’t write about it specifically. One, it’s deeply personal, not just for me, but for a lot of people. Another reason is that, if i started talking about sex on my blog, it would likely change the tone here and take things in a different direction. That’s something i’m not currently interested in, nor am i properly equipped to deal with its attendant baggage and potential pitfalls. This piece is more about what i learned in a situation that involved sex. A lot of things in this piece might seem double entendre, but unless i make the joke, no innuendo is intended. I’m mostly talking about emotional intimacy, the sexual kind is merely the vehicle driving me to my destination, ya dig?

So don’t worry… Nothing any more TMI than usual.
Heh.

As an adult, i never gave much thought to getting married. I was busy surviving, and also enjoying having a personal space that wasn’t being constantly violated. I liked being on my own, and alone. It relaxed me a little. (As much as i’m ever “relaxed”. It is getting better, though. Work in progress and all that.) When i fell in love for the first time, parts of my personality came into play that lie mostly dormant. By that i mean, i was born to serve the needs of my mother, and i was raised to be a person to be used, worked, consumed.

I’m not well educated. I’m not great at research. And while psychology is a science, it isn’t a hard one. The psychiatrist who treated my bipolar disorder once said that it’s so soft, it’s mushy. This is to preface my thinking on this matter. I don’t know if it’s correct, i’m not at all sure it could stand up to scientific scrutiny or even be tested. I just think it’s a possibility, and it helps me deal with the wreckage that childhood abuse has caused in my life. All of this to say, i think 1 of the positives that came from being a multiple, is that i’m hella good at compartmentalisation. I think it enabled me to take aspects of my personality that i was born with, ones that i couldn’t display, and hide them away in little pockets of my brain. Qualities like confident, bold, brash, assured.

These qualities have popped up a few times over the years. They come out of nowhere and disappear again. When my mother’s relationship with the man i called Daddy ended, she moved away and i was no longer being passed around for a paycheque or as a party favour. My need for my system dropped drastically. Switching almost ceased entirely, although i still slid around on the daily. I remember people approaching me for sex. By that time, memories i had of being raped i thought were dreams, and details were murky. Sometimes i would be approached by local boys who assumed the fat girl would be grateful for their attention and just offer myself up. And sometimes, those who had enjoyed access to my body previously***, would come back for more. I rebuffed them all. It’s my guess that being a multiple enabled me to do that. I couldn’t say No before, but when we moved away, i could, and as soon as i was able to – i did. I stopped having those dreams-that-were-actually-memories for many years. They didn’t return until i was sexually assaulted again. And although i’ve been sexually assaulted a number of times as an adult, unlike when i was a child, i was in the face and fought each of them however i could.*

Wow, it’s like every paragraph is a preface for the next one. Is that how grownups write? Because i’m usually all over the place. You know, like i am right here. Heh.

This brings me back to that part in the beginning where i mentioned falling in love. Prior to him, i’d never been in love. My first relationship i thought i was in love, but once we broke up i quickly realised it was obsession. After her, i only chose partners that i wasn’t deeply attached to. I stumbled across him using a dating service. I’d never met anyone as kind and smart as he was. One day i looked at him and made up my mind i wanted him for good. We’ve been together ever since, coming up on 25yrs. Amd those pocket traits came in handy with all of my relationships, but especially with him.

Once i got him though, it triggered issues that created years of chaos and struggle for both of us. I wasn’t the only one with issues, and i wasn’t the only one who’d survived childhood trauma.

His story is not for me to tell, but i do have his permission to touch on this, and to write briefly that we’ve stumbled and faltered in our efforts to find our way to intimacy with each other, emotionally and otherwise. This last couple of years we’ve both gotten to a place where we wanted to focus more effort on us, as a couple. And as i’ve grown in this last round of therapy, i’ve been better able to share myself and give him more access to me as a friend, a lover, and a partner. So too, as i’m mending my mind/body connection, i’m learning who i am, and have been able to better define what i want and what i like –and here’s the big one– to ask for it.

I learned to be ashamed of my body, and as i moved through what happened to me and my system was fully functional again, i felt shame because who would want to be with crazy, gross me? I’d gained and lost hundreds of pounds, and my body showed it, and i was always going to be a bit of a cuckoobird. I told myself i’d tricked my poor husband into being with me. See there? I felt guilty, and then shame crept in because even though i’d convicted myself of bad actions, i still didn’t want to let him go and still craved deep connection with him.**

He’s had a bit of therapy, and then there’s me… Between us, we’ve been able to get some serious and significant work done, particularly over the last 6mos or so. We’re walking through all of this together, closer than we’ve ever been before, and in love again for the first time in, well, too long. Stupid, beautiful love. So some of those pocket traits aren’t so pockety anymore, and i boldly and somewhat brashly, asked for, ah, some. Nuff said here, right? I believed that asking out loud with my words might address some of the body shame i still carry, and maybe the shame that plagues me over going after him like a steamroller at our beginning.

I didn’t anticipate the anxiety. By afternoon i was tightly wound, and by the time he got home, i was fit to split. He was glad to see me, and was looking forward to later. (Oh god, the teenagers that live in my brain are cringing and eyerolling like mad, heh-heh-heh.) The brain chatter settled somewhat, and we had a nice supper and were watching some telly. And then… nothing. My husband works hard, long hours, and has extra duties as his boss sits in isolation, post-holiday. He sat on the couch and petered out. (Brain snorts ensue!) I, genius that i am, had a couple of cocktails in me to calm my jitters and hopefully shut the Peanut Gallery up. It worked until shame crept in… And then the shit hit the fan.

A shifting in my brain, a click. A spark of rage lit a fire in my belly. I knew i was in trouble but i was already fading, receding into the back side of my brain (M-O-O-N, that spells MOON!) and it was all i could do to get my ass to bed.
I recently retired my tongue as a sword, and so with a brief admonishment to my more laconic and caustic bits to mind their Ps and Qs, i went to sleep. When my husband came to bed, i started switching.

I woke up angry. Went to pee and my husband was sleeping on the couch. Weird, the bedroom door wasn’t locked, which is something my system sometimes does when they get mad at him. Great, is he mad at me, then? I decide to get something to eat and go back to my room and write. When he wakes, he comes in and asks me what’s wrong. I ask him to fill me in on what happened after i went to bed, which is when i learn i was switching. He also informs me that no one would engage him, because they said they weren’t allowed to talk to him. Well, something positive, at least. But i’m still angry, and i know i’m angry because i’m hurt, and i think shame is keeping my mouth closed, but NO! It isn’t! Shame is just an emotion that’s letting me know i’m craving connection with this man. It’s fear keeping my mouth shut. FEAR OF REJECTION.

In words still a bit on the terse side, i relate what caused me to go to bed early. He immediately apologises, and gently reminds me how tired he  is after work, but that his plans hadn’t changed. The brittleness inside me disappears, and i tell him my thoughts turned extreme, i began catastrophising, i could feel anger bubbling up and was becoming dissociated. I tell him i went to bed, rather than angry-walk. He says he understands, and as we stand to leave the bedroom (we have 2 children at home, so we try to keep our relationship stuffs there), he grasps my elbows, smiles (oh his smile makes me melt) at me, and makes sure we’re still on for later.
You betcher sweet bippy, baby.

Today, as i analyse and write about it, i see the rejection at play. In fact, it was the star of the show. Shame shone the light on my need for connection, but it was fear that was informing my actions. I was afraid he didn’t want me. I am afraid i don’t deserve him. I feel tremendous guilt over everything i’ve put him through, and shame points that out, as well. Because i still want him for my own, forspecial. And i don’t just want him to be mine, i want him to want me for his, too. I want these connections with him, and in the light of day, i know he does, because i can see it all over him, every day.

70s pop psychology had this concept someone called, “playing old tapes”, and in this case, i think it fits. Asking for what i wanted didn’t occur to me as a child; i’d have known better than to ask, anyway. Asking the other day triggered old home movies and old sad songs in my brain, of how i was only ever wanted for what i could do, or would allow – no one ever really wanted ME, specifically. The more the tapes played, the more i expected him to reject me. Who could want me? I’m afraid of losing him, even though more and more of me believes he’ll never leave me. I’ve lost so much, so many.

Fear of rejection and fear of loss and afraid to be alone, but afraid to be connected.

Shame tells me i need to connect, fear asks me, But what if he doesn’t want to connect with you? I’m not afraid of fear. I’ve dealt with it in all its forms and at all its intensities, the entirety of my life. I confront my fears, these days. I look it straight in the face and say, Yo! What’s up? I’m here to listen and learn from whatever it shines a light on.
Fear is just a feeling trying to tell me something – just like shame. So as i write this, i’m thinking that fear wasn’t keeping my mouth shut any more than shame was. It’s rejection, period, that kept my mouth closed. Fear was just blowing the whistle on it, which i think a subtle, but important, difference.
Being afraid never killed me, and neither has shame. I see them now as helpers, not harmers.

Bring ’em on, then. Whenever, wherever.
I’m ready.

Steep learning curve right now. Fear is reminding me that historically, i fall into a deep crevasse after that. But i’m already down the rabbit hole… Do i meet the Mad Hatter, or do i go full popsicle? Stop confusing me! Damn metaphors, being all contradictish.

Enjoy your Sunday, if you’re reading the day i post this.

Love and Peace,
~H~

*One of them required me to freeze, but i was fighting for the safety of the other woman in the car with me. It was the best course of action, as she was spared.

**See the previous few posts for what i’ve been learning about shame in my life.

***Added after posting: I didn’t know at the time that these people had raped me in the past. All i knew was they were trying to be sexual with me, and i wasn’t having it. It was only when i dove into an ocean full of crazy that started around 2006, did i realise they’d abused me with impunity in the past. Some of them brushed it off and made light of the interaction. Others were right pissed off and pushed harder and/or came at me over and over again. I don’t know if all of them knew i’m a multiple, but i know some did.

Posted on by histrionicabutterfly · 5 Comments

In My Cups

I’ve been avoiding writing about this for years. Over the last year or so though, i’ve mentioned it in a somewhat ancillary fashion. I think i’ve been testing the waters. If i’m going to share how my brain works and how i pursue the life i want, while juggling my particular set of issues, however, i would be remiss if i didn’t address it. It would be a lie by omission, and i do try to avoid those, here on my blog.

My addictive nature, and how that’s manifested in my life in general, and in my journey through mental illness and being neuroatypical particularly.

<insertdeepsighhere>

This will be a rough one for me.
I was raised to keep things hidden.
It was modeled for me that one doesn’t acknowledge one’s flaws, let alone talk about them. If one did, then various religions were the answer.

What i have learned though, is that people know anyway. Despite our best efforts, if we hang around with people for either long enough, or at the right moments – they’ll figure it out. (Not the biggest reason i became a hermit, but not a small one, either.) They may not know exactly what it is, but they’ll smell it on us. Something not quite right. Something’s gone off, and it’s rotting away inside.

For addiction, i have both nature and nurture. My mother ate her way up so high there was no scale at the time to weigh her. We’ve figured out ways in our current society to do so, but we’ve had to, because so many are afflicted with the problem. When my mom was super-morbidly obese, she was the fattest person anyone had ever seen in real life, everywhere we went. She’d always held food over me as a reward, and withheld it from me as punishment, and also due to neglect.

So i learned to comfort myself with food. I used it to numb out pain. It was a drug that filled me with a false and fleeting happiness. After a long and checkered history, i’ve learned enough about myself and nutrition to have found a way to handle my food issues.
Oh, but i have addictive behaviours, plural, and my relationship with food, eating, weight, and body image are well-documented in this blog already.

Food wasn’t the only thing that was used to control me as a child.
When you want her to like you, you start out with ice cream and candy.
When you want her to relax and lie still, you use alcohol and pills.

Abusers used pills, i was on pills to control my epilepsy, and when i was diagnosed with fibromyalgia as an adult, more pills. That was when i began using the non-prescription codeine to help me cope with the constant pain. By the time i was diagnosed bipolar, i was going through a 250 count bottle of the stuff in less than a week. At one point, i was on 6 different medications at the same time to try and regulate me, and oh, did i mention that i’d started drinking?

For years drinking wasn’t a problem. Then i had weight loss surgery, lost over 300lbs, and slammed into my first full blown mania. The weight loss got me lots of sexual attention and a job in the entertainment industry. More social interactions with me as the centre of everything than i’d had to deal with since my school and church years in plays and vocal performances. I was dealing with no impulse control and sexual and social anxiety through the roof. I didn’t want to eat because i was thin and i loved the way people were treating me… I worked mostly in bars, so i drank.

Between booze and the male gaze, my mania became so severe i lost my job. Mania didn’t just amp me up, either. Between it, the weight loss, and problematic drinking, my DID became a cyclone. And then came the years of psych wards, detox facilities, recovery centres, an actual mental hospital, and LOTS of religion.

As i’ve written before, none of it worked. Eventually, as my husband desperately searched for help for me, he found the therapist i’ve been working with ever since. I long ago laid down the pill-popping, but unfortunately, the drinking behaviours remain. Not the partying all the time kind of drinking, which is good. But when i fall down the rabbit hole – i drink. And there are many parts of my system who will naturally gravitate towards alcohol, because it’s familiar. It wasn’t just that it was a part of our regular life.
It’s that it helped, you see.

It’s easier to slide and switch around with alcohol. It greases the wheels, so to speak. And when, in that first real mania, my system decided to properly introduce themselves to me AND return to full duty, so too, did they return to alcohol. I could go without drinking for long periods of time, but then i would switch, and find myself drunk when i was back in the face. Or viciously hungover.

Sometimes in therapy, we touch on something and i know i’m going to drink over it. If i (specifically speaking) didn’t get some, i knew the issue was enough for me to switch, and then they’d just go get it anyway. There were times when someone or something would trigger me HARD, and i knew what was coming. Life would do what life does, and often become too much for me, and i’d fall down the rabbit hole. Crawling out always involves detoxing from a binge. I had to figure out a way to get, and maintain, some kind of control.

My therapist doesn’t really deal with addiction or bipolar stuffs, even. She focuses on my system, and helping me learn how to listen, address my issues, and build the kind of life i want. Problematic use of drugs, alcohol, food, sex, etc. is, let’s say rampant, with multiples. She deals with cause, rather than effects. When i first started seeing her, she would come to my house, because i couldn’t leave it. I’d have a mickey of something stuffed beside me on the couch, because i’d have needed a couple of nips to even be able to let her in the door, and i knew that after she left i’d have a couple more.

The more work i’ve done in therapy the better it’s gotten. I even stopped therapy for a few years because i thought i was done. When i found out i wasn’t, old behaviours began kicking in, like, i can’t control the face as well as i was, and this body work makes everyone want a drink.
Everyone.

I knew i had to figure out a new way to handle things during this time. I’m not going back to square 1. I know i won’t either, because my problem solving skills are rather fantastic. One of the first things i did is i stopped hiding the problem. My husband and my kids already knew, so be honest. Why have this undercurrent of tenseness for my boys, where i act like it’s not happening and they act like they don’t know that it is? Why make my husband complicit in the lie? These things aren’t healthy and they erode the trust and poison the relationships that i have with them, that i’ve worked so freaking hard to build.

Removing the hiddenness immediately calmed my impulsivity. My sons both accepted the behaviour and said it was okay. They understood, and both relayed to me that they’ve seen nothing but improvements in the way i’ve lived my life since my brain fell apart.

Hm. Maybe there’s something here for me to learn.

I told my BFF, and since the beginning of our friendship (it’s a couple of years old, now), she’s been nothing but supportive. I’ve never lied to her, and as our friendship’s grown and trust has built, i’ve let her in like i have never, ever let a friend in before. I can call her up and say, “I’m either gonna have a drink or 2, or i’m hittin’ the highway,” and she will come babysit me until my husband gets home.* I don’t bother hiding from her, because i know i don’t need to.

I’m seeing a pattern here…

I’m down the rabbit hole, right now. At first, i got drunk and stayed that way for a few days. The therapy i’m doing, plus this pandemic situation the world is in, summarily tossed me down there by the seat of my pants.
Down you go H, no choice.
But my kids kept loving me and telling me it was okay.
And my husband did things that he knows will maintain my connection to him.

Ah. I know where this is going.

So this time, my Angries didn’t come out and get belligerent. My highly sexualised parts didn’t come forward and demand more and more booze, until i was blacked out and became a parade of damaged Bits N’ Pieces that are very low functioning and can be quite troublesome (to put it mildly). In fact, i was able to slow down and even sober up for my therapy the other day. I’d been fine for a few days.

When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.
~Tao Te Ching

I was ready when i first met my therapist. She taught me a great many things and then i left, thinking i had moved on. It was not so. I simply wasn’t ready for the next lesson. I humbly returned when i realised the truth, and i’ve been learning ever since. These lessons are more painful than the previous ones, and yet, tired as i am, i see myself listening more readily and learning faster. Now it’s more like, When the student is ready, the lesson will come.

Two weeks ago i connected to my therapist in a way i’ve never connected to another human being ever. I shared grief and pain with her, not with words, but with sounds of suffering that i’ve kept buried deep, deep down inside me, at my most broken place. And i let her hold me through it – something i have never allowed before, in the dozen or more years we’ve been working together to help me.

CONNECTION. A mother’s love in her arms around me, in her voice as she soothed me, in her tears as she cried for me.

I strongly suspect that the other day on the phone with her, i learned my most important lesson yet. I told her that shame is my driving emotion. The one that controls me at every step. Every thought, every action is somewhat shame-driven. She responded that shame isn’t bad; shame is just an emotion, a feeling. She said it’s the body’s response to the human need for connection to another human.
I believe i was ready for this lesson.

Yesterday, i was chatting with my husband after supper, and it just came up out of me. I said, “I think shame is the reason i drink – the reason we all drink.** I think what i really want is to be connected to myself, to be alive so that i can truly connect to another person. To you, to our children, to my friends… ”

I was ashamed to want connection, too. The messages that i internalised as a child were that i was filthy and disgusting and not worthy.
But all the work i’ve done has been slowly taking down this deadly razor-wire that my mother and my upbringing built around me.
It’s going to take more work, but i’m going to listen to what shame is trying to tell me, and i’m going to keep disarming the landmines around me. I will be fully alive and interactive with other human beings. I will be living.

As for the booze, i don’t know. It’s just a symptom, as destructive as it can be, and i live with multiplicity, which means i cannot (at least as of yet) always control what i’m going to do. And that’s okay, today. Sometimes i drink to cope. But it’s nothing at all like it was, and i believe with my whole heart, that it’s possible that someday it won’t be a problem at all. Today i’m neither hungover, nor am i drunk. Tomorrow may be something different.

But i’ll handle it.

I have no wise pronouncements to make on addictive behaviours. I have no solutions save the one i’m working out for myself. I won’t be bashing any of the other ways to handle such issues, because i don’t find it helpful or productive. This is me, and my way only. I share for my own continued healing and growth, but also to maybe give others hope that they can find their own way, too.

Just hang on. It’s the place where i started all this, and it’s where i return as often as needed.

Love and Peace,
~H~

*For those who are new to my blog, i run when i’m stressed or triggered. We live on a farm, and i’ll hit the highway and hitchhike into the city, where i am in immediate danger due to switching. I haven’t hitchhiked in a few years now, but i’ll still angry walk for many kilometres, in any weather, and have been in fairly desperate need of rescue a few times, just due to that.

**We means me and all my parts. My system.

Posted on by histrionicabutterfly · 2 Comments

Cottage Cheese and Chocolate Granola

Yesterday’s blog post was about my therapy session a few hours before (over the phone), which ended up being about shame.
What my therapist said, was that feeling shame was my body’s response to the need for human connection. It rocked my world and i’ve been thinking about it off and on for the last day.
I was up at 5am, getting hubby’s breakfast and lunch made, when i asked him if he’d like some cottage cheese and toast. He said Sure, that’d be nice for a change!
So, i’m dishing it up and i see there isn’t as much left as i thought. I instantly felt shame for 2 reasons. One, because he was looking forward to it, but also because of last night.
I thought good therapy and being sober would equal a decent night’s sleep. Nope.
I barely slept a wink. I’ve dealt with insomnia and sleep issues my entire life. From childhood night terrors, to being unable to reach the restorative, D-level of sleep due to fibromyalgia, to all the chronic sleep issues that can come along with Bipolar Disorder and DID.I usually have good sleep hygiene, but i’ve let it slip a little as my daily allotment of spoons has dwindled. I tried the 4-7-8 yogic breathing. I tried a body check-in, with tensing and relaxing each muscle group. Nothing worked, so finally i got up, as my frustration and anxiety were too high to sleep at that point. I would have been restless, and might disturb my husband.When i went to play a game on my notebook i noticed i was hungry. I’m dealing with a new development in the way i handle stress. For the first time in my life i don’t eat to cope, in fact, i lose my appetite. Yesterday i didn’t eat much, and last night i had a very small meal with not much protein.
So of course, i had a small dish of cottage cheese.
I didn’t know how low we were because i did it by the moonlight coming in from the window.

The shame was intense.
As i mentioned it wasn’t just that he was expecting some, it was that i had eaten it.
Let’s start with how my mother used food as both punishment and reward. I was starved so regularly that i couldn’t stop myself from sneaking food if it was available – even knowing if i got caught i’d be dressed down verbally and beaten, and probably be starved again.
How about being the fat kid in every class from grade 2 to 12? (Yes, it’s possible to be overweight AND be starved and/or poorly nourished.) I won’t go into all the messages i internalised from that experience, but every one of them was shame-based.

It felt like an onslaught.
I didn’t respond immediately. It can be a gift of being dissociative that i often get some time to realise and process before i react. Also because i’ve done a metric eff tonne of therapy.
I problem solved and included a bowl of chocolate granola (a rare treat) to make up his calorie/protein needs.

I walked into the living room, where he was having his first coffee and watching the news. As soon as i saw his face i knew exactly what i needed.
I said, “Hey, i gave you some chocolate granola too, because there wasn’t as much cottage cheese left as i thought.”

Thumbs up.
“Cool!”

I walked back into the kitchen to pack his lunch, and it was obvious i felt different.
The shame was gone.
I felt intense shame because i needed to connect with my husband and know that it was okay that there was less cottage cheese. It wasn’t a big deal, his reaction told me so. I felt my connection to him. I felt him wanting to be connected to me. Shame says, My work is done here, i’m going home!

How’s that for instant results?
<insertgrinhere>

Love and Peace,
~H~

Posted on by histrionicabutterfly

1 Day in the Life of a Crazy Woman

Where i buy a turkey sandwich, but don’t eat it.

Last week i went to see my plastic surgeon. When you lose over 300lbs, you generally need some work done, and i did. I’ve had double brachioplasty, abdominoplasty, double mastopexy and breast implants. I began having tearing pain in 1 breast, and the beginnings of the same pain in the other. As my surgery was 15yrs ago, i went to see if the implants were the problem.
It was a dicey situation for me to walk into, loaded with potential triggers. I thought hard about it and tried my best to prepare. Being topless in front of someone who isn’t my husband, who’s looking at me critically and touching me… I knew it would be difficult, and i’d be dealing with a strong desire to dissociate.

It was hard, and then some. What i didn’t anticipate was that there was nothing wrong with my implants, which left waiting for a mammogram. Great. So something could be wrong with my boobs, like, my real boobs? Fantastic.
There was no way for me to not be alone after the appointment, so i’d invited myself over to my son’s house to visit my DIL and my grandchildren. I figured the bus might be another hurdle still, but doable. I got to their neighbourhood without a single hitch, and then shit happened, as shit do.

I’m on the bus, heading up the hill, and i start feeling nauseated. I know this part of the city well, and i realise i’ve failed to anticipate the real trouble. I’ve spent countless hours in this area’s local park. Waiting for abusers to pick me up and abuse me.
The dissociation happens as soon as the realisation hits, and i can’t stop it.

My body wants to run back down the hill. Get away, go downtown. The library is a haven, and i wonder when it closes. Evening comes early on my side of the equator, so dusk has fallen, and is rapidly becoming nighttime. The air is thick with moisture, and the streetlights illuminate the fog, creating little clouds every 30m or so. I’m wearing knee-high suede boots, because they’re fashionable, and because i’ve only just lost enough weight that my calves can fit any. Yes, i wear them every chance i get, and no, they don’t keep my feet warm at all.

I know the house is only a couple of blocks away, so i should be able to find it. I head up another hill, off the main road, and into the maze of suburbia. In less than 2 blocks i’m scattered, anxiety has started squeezing my heart in its icy hand, and the fog surrounding me seeps into my brain. I find a map on my phone, but it’s too late. I look at it without understanding. I try to zero in on the street names, but i can’t focus. The names bounce around in my head, echoing off bone, passing through each other like string theory. I’m in a cold, foamy sea of yellow roads and names that start with “C”. I’m treading water but i can’t feel my feet and my legs are fast becoming numb…

I startle and quickly look up and around me.
I don’t know where i am.
My feet are blocks of ice and i have snotsicles.
I’ve lost time and wandered.

I call my daughter-in-law for directions, thinking her voice might ground me a bit, or at least force me into a more conscious state. I forget that she doesn’t drive either, and between the 2 of us, we’re not getting me there.
I’m fading in and out. I hear her voice in my ear and then it moves away from me.
My guts churn and my head feels floaty; it starts pounding mercilessly. It feels like my brain is swelling, filling the space like a balloon ready to burst. It presses down into my throat, pulsing, throbbing. My neck and the base of my skull feel like broken glass.

By the time she suggests my son come out to find me, hope is lost. I’ve taken that stumbling hitch-step from Anxiety Hill into Panicland. I feel an icy-hot rush flood my skin at the suggestion of seeing my son. I can’t allow him to see me like this.
I cannot allow my dear daughter or precious granddaughters to see me this way.

Trying to sound calm and blasé, knowing that i’m failing, i tell her i’m going to make my way to the strip mall on the main road. I can hear my scared Little voice quietly harmonising with my desperately false one, but i’m helpless to temper it. All i know is that i must get away from them. She and my son have seen far too much of my calamity as it is, and i committed myself long ago to testing their acceptance and forgiveness of me as little as possible.
I get off the phone and make my way to the string of shops below.

I know i’m close to mild frostbite, but i wander back and forth in front of the various businesses, unable to decide which one i should risk entering. I see a gas station, and think i could buy some gum and use the restroom to gather myself, but as i draw nearer i see it’s a kiosk. Damn.
I see a burger place decorated like a diner set back behind it, but as i walk towards it i see it’s take-away only. Blargh.
Heading back the way i came i see a Korean restaurant, which is a favourite cuisine, but there is 1 person sitting at a table, and that’s not enough to hide, so ixnay on the Ulgogi-bay.
The coffee shop i’d first come across has closed during my indecision. Fucksticks.
Subway sandwiches is open, and while it is cramped AF so not ideal, there are a handful of patrons inside, which might afford me some anonymity.

As i open the door to the restaurant, i close the door on myself.

I look up at blurred images of melting yellows and blacks. My feet are being jabbed with long needles, but instead of delivering anaesthetic it hits me like amyl nitrate – popping me into consciousness with a gasp of pain, immediately followed by panic.
I feel small and naked and my breath is getting away. There’s food and drink in front of me, and my phone is in my hand. Only a couple of my Bits N’ Pieces can use a cell phone, and they’re strictly helping parts, so when i check i see i’ve contacted Kurt.
That should help, but it doesn’t.
I’m too far along and it has me. Full anxiety attack. My chest feels expanded and tight, metallic. My heart is a bomb inside, and it’s going to blow. I need to manage this, but i can’t. I need help, but i can’t think.
I’m scurrying around inside my brain, bumping into thoughts and parts. My emotions jangling, like cymbals crashing, filling my ears, my eyes too wide, one set of fingernails biting into my palm, the other white-knuckling my phone.
My phone.
MY PHONE.

I have a group of friends that i met nearly 20yrs ago on a fansite/message board, and we’ve remained close long after the page’s demise. They’ve stuck with me through all my crazy, supported and encouraged me, held my hand when i was lost and held me up when i was so low i had to look up to see dirt.
We have our own texting group on the phone.
I reach out as sobs are bubbling up and ask if anyone’s there.

They are.
They hop on in response to my need, and proceed to talk me off the ledge.
Helpmehelpmehelpmeplease. I’m trying not to cry but i’m crying. I’m crying alone at a table in a Subway restaurant.
Look down, they say, Look down and no one will see.
It’sokayyou’reokayeverything’sgoingtobeokay. Okay?
Okay.
Can you see 5 things? I say Yes, and whisper them out.
Name 4 sensations, 3 sounds, 2 smells…
I keep my eyes down, and smash the iwonderiftheycanhearmewho’slookingatme that comes and almost derails me.
Do you know any breathing techniques?
Yes! I can 4-7-8.
My no-yoga ass 4-7-8s its little heart out.
Quietly.
In a little curvy Subway chair that cups my rump and thighs and attaches to the table and another chair in 1 big piece.
They continue to text me and say good and kind and right things until the door tinkles open and gives me my husband. His warm and gently smiling face washes over me like a beam of sun and his strong hand knits through my shaking one as he guides me through the watercolour people and into his work van. It’s warm and purring inside, dark and quiet and safe. Safe metal box. Safe space.

I breathe into my collapse. My grateful release of sobs. Panic stops its painful squeezing and my body discharges into the night.

My mother would pick me up from the babysitter’s after work. When she turned left off Northmount before 14th Street, i knew. Sometimes, a man would already be there, waiting. On many occasions though, she would just drop me off in the parking lot of the park, where i would wait.
Wait for a man who was coming to hurt me.
Winter and weekends were the worst.
Weekdays they were usually prompt, but weekends seemed at times to take hours, and our winters are very cold.
My babysitter was the next suburb over, and my grandparents, the one on the other side. A few times i panicked and tried to find them, wandering the streets up and down, looking for help and safety, but never finding it.
Those times my mother would find me, get me into the car, and hit me all the way home. I’d run straight to my room, hoping she was too tired for anything else besides denying me food.

As my husband drove me home i was an earthquake in my seat. My thighs quivered helplessly, my knees knocked together, my shoulders shook, my body heaved and my guts writhed, nausea snaking its way into my mouth. I sobbed and retched as my body discharged and discharged, until i went completely rigid. I arched up against the seatbelt, as if in the grips of a seizure, and then everything let go and i fell back, limp and exhausted.

The panic was gone, and with it went the fear and embarrassment, too. And i wasn’t just emotionally spent, i was calm. I felt noticeably lighter. I felt relief. I felt clearheaded.
As we drove the 50 or so minutes home, i looked back upon what’d happened and i didn’t see failure. I saw success – i felt successful. I was less amorphous in my body; my thoughts and sensations felt firm, solid, like they carried physical weight. My head and my limbs weren’t trying to rise and float away from me, i could feel where they attached to my neck and torso. I was a human being, individual, and contained in 1 whole piece.

All this trying, all this trytrytry, try more, try again, wait and try harder, try different, try her, him, this, that, them. This struggle. This work.
It’s all brought me here.
My brain is afraid and it runs and hides.
My body hurts and it curls up tight like a fist and tries to make the pain disappear.
But all this struggle, all this work, all this freaking TIME i’ve put in, to figure out where i’m broken and put myself back together has brought me here.

Today i have a kit full of tools and a phone full of support.
I still slide and switch and freak right the fuck out, but today i can figure out why. I dig around in my bag and pull out something that helps. There are dozens –yes, DOZENS– of people who will love me and help me through it. The crises that inevitably come are not beyond my ability to cope. I’m no longer left drowning in wreckage, wretched and lost in the aftermath.

This is life as me.
It’s changing and it’s good.
And that’s storytime for today.
Be well readers, friends.

Love and Peace to You All,
~H~

Posted on by histrionicabutterfly · 2 Comments

The Path to Welcome

You can build a mansion but you just can’t live in
You’re the fastest runner but you’re not allowed to win
Some break the rules
And live to count the cost
The insecurity is the thing that won’t get lost
~ No One Is To Blame, Howard Jones

I want/need to talk about family, but i have to do it cautiously. As i’ve stated before, identifying certain people who are still living might seem like an invitation to share their thoughts and feelings. They might feel justified or even obligated to share their opinions about me, with me. I’m not interested and they are not welcome here, and so i tread with care.

They’re sick with secrets, tainted with criminals who’ve not been held to account. Their crimes have been covered up and excused by those around them, with not even an apology to those they’ve harmed, because their god forgives them.

It can take me a while to get there, but once i’m done, no one cuts dead weight like a dissociative. I still have deep love for some of them, but it’s not my job to reach/fix them. It’s my educated guess that they don’t think they need any anyway, and if they did, they certainly wouldn’t be coming to me. You see:
I asked for what i got.
I made a big deal out of nothing.
[The abusers] have been through a lot – what about them?
[Other victims] have gotten past it. Just let it go – get over it already!
Everyone knows i’m a liar.
I’m not even really related.

I thought i’d found acceptance there, and it did start out being an experience of family that i was desperately missing. It wasn’t long though, before the cracks started showing, and the sick bled through onto me. I was already up to my eyeballs in abuse, so i didn’t recognise it as bad, it was just the way things were. If i was looking for confirmation that my upbringing was normal (i was fully indoctrinated, so i wasn’t), the way this family worked confirmed it all.

My connection to this family is truly sick and twisted, as my mother played the long game with them when they were children. She reconnected with them years later, tapping into the power she’d wielded over them then to revictimise those of her choosing when they were almost and barely adults. She scooped one out of the nest and made babies with him.
She lost all her remaining friends when she did, and spent the rest of her years eating herself up to super-morbid obesity and cranking out children. Her mask had slipped and so she became mostly a shut-in. She sat down in front of the television around 1980, and rarely got up to do much of anything except beat us and get more food, until her death less than a decade later. The house was a pigsty, the children that came after me were skeletally thin, and she just kept getting fatter.

I tried my best to help the others, but i was ill-equipped and dealing with my own abuse. When i finally got out on my own, i didn’t give them much thought. I didn’t give anything much thought, as i didn’t know how to think. I didn’t know i was abused, and i didn’t understand that my siblings were still stuck there, living in trauma. I didn’t know that subconsciously, i was relieved to be away. I didn’t mark the lessening of stress and anxiety, i didn’t feel the softening in my guts, and i didn’t notice that i never went home or called or wrote.

Years later, when i’d awakened to the truth of how i was raised, i convicted myself of the crime of abandoning my siblings. I beat myself with guilt while drowning in shame. I tried to help but i still didn’t know how. I didn’t have enough information; i lacked the emotional connection necessary to reach them, and i think they did, too. We’d been raised with the divide-and-conquer mentality. We’d been taught to scapegoat. And they’d been filled with stories of my blacksheepness, probably from the moment i left home.

I had children and got married and began the agonising process of falling completely and utterly apart. We were all so broken and so much damage had been done. We all coped in our own ways with varying levels of success, but the scapegoating remained. My parents had always visited the harshest abuse upon the oldest child. When i left, it fell to the next. The trend continued after my mother’s death; as each one of us ran, the rage and the blame would be visited on the oldest of those who remained, until there was only one.

In my mind, things were going to be fine because my mother was dead, but they weren’t. And i tried to help, but providing food and shelter wasn’t enough. I was spiraling down, and i didn’t give much thought to them or what they needed. I often used them as babysitters and housekeepers, to my shame. I thought i was doing well because i wasn’t beating them, but i was still using them, as my mother had modeled so well for me. They were breaking down as well, filled with anger and pain and so many unmet needs.
Despite being more than a decade older, i wasn’t parent material. I could barely care for my own children, and my siblings were high needs.
As i became less and less functional, it became easier to scapegoat me – and they most certainly did.

Eventually, i gained enough insight, inner strength, and self-love to walk away. I did my best and it wasn’t enough, but it wasn’t for lack of caring or trying. I’d been a child then too, and there came a point where i had enough of being treated like just another parent who’d failed them. That point came when it was made clear to me that i was only a half-sister. Then i was told not to speak ill of my mother. My gears started cranking hard, and i brought it to my therapist.
As we picked over it all, i gleaned some shiny nuggets that i put in my pocket for later.
Like, i’d never been thanked for any of my efforts. Like, i only ever heard about the ways i’d done them wrong. Like, i wouldn’t be invited to certain family events.
One day i was taken aside and told my kids were awful people.
Shortly after that i learned that my husband and i were terrible parents.

So i decided to stop trying to win acceptance and approval. I stopped calling and inviting. We all did. There was never any big blow up, or serious discussion. No one threw down a gauntlet or made any grand pronouncement or even slammed a door on their way out. I was just done, and i guess they were, too. It’s sad, and it still hurts when i think about it, but the relief was immediate. The pressure release inside me was palpable. I will never not love them, but i won’t participate in my own scapegoating any longer. I won’t pretend everything’s fine and i won’t keep family secrets. I won’t be an emotional punching bag.

The line of responsibility is difficult to draw, so i don’t bother. I blame them and i don’t. They’re grownups but they were kids. It’s their business to deal with their shit or not, as they will. It’s not my job to fix them, or mend fences. It would be terribly unwise for me to expose my soft underbelly, because they will kick a dog when it’s down.
It’s prudent for me to love and want the best for them from over here.
It’s easier and safer.

I don’t know what kind of shit this may stir up, if any. They may never give me a second thought. I’ve been estranged from them for so long now that i’m completely out of touch. And i’m at peace with that.
What i know is that i must clear away the wreckage of my past, to make room for potentially better things. I must deal with the pain of my old family relationships, so that i might better show up for the family i’m building today.
I need to make space for more.
I’m clearing a path to my door, and laying out the welcome mat.

Hello, won’t you come in and sit a spell.
Tell me who you are and i’ll believe you.

No one, no one, no one ever is to blame
No one ever is to blame
No one ever is to blame

Posted on by histrionicabutterfly

I Win

… it’s just a ride
It’s just a ride
And you’ve got the choice to get off anytime that you like
It’s just a ride
It’s just a ride
The alternative is nothingness
We might as well give it a try
The Ride, Amanda Palmer

I let him touch me.
Okay hey, i used to let anyone, everyone touch me. But that was by rote.
I am nothing if not a good girl.

Wait. I think that i might not actually be a good girl anymore.
Wait.
Holy shit.
I have believed for nearly the entirety of my life that to be good is all.
I was told to think that.
One day, not long enough ago, i realised they didn’t care what was good. “Good” was a dog whistle; merely a means of control. They would have what they wanted, regardless of the cost.

Oh wait.
I should specify.
Regardless of the cost to anyone save them.

It is not hard to know what good is, and it is sososo easy to not be good.
This seems to me a contradiction.

Wait, though. Hold on. I am a good girl, i was always a good girl.
First, i was good because their definition was all i knew, and i twisted and bent and remade myself to fit their requirements.
Not just for survival.
Not just because there was no other choice.
Because love.
Because goodness.

Then i had a baby, and i knew that they’d lied.
I didn’t know what good was. You would think it would be easy.
And okay, it kind of is.
But when you’re told that no is yes and wrong is right, and if you want something to eat and a bed to sleep in you need to subvert your intellect and your instincts or you will be alone and you will die…
You become the bestest girl ever.

But i had a baby and i looked at him and he set me free. He saved my life. I knew the things they’d told me were good and right were actually bad and wrong, but i had no template for goodness.

Religion failed.
Family failed.
Classes failed.
Books failed.

I tried and i tried and i tried so hard. If you are reading this i want you to know that, although i have failed my child in multiple and terrible ways – i loved him. I started working on being better because he came out of me and when i looked at him, i suddenly knew that i could be good.

And even if i couldn’t, that he was worth every effort.

I love Rupaul’s Drag Race, but when he asks for an “amen up in here”, while i understand the concept and believe it has merit, i cannot amen it, because it wasn’t until i had my wee baby boy that i wanted to love in the best way i could, and knew that there was work for me to do before i was able.

I could not love myself until i truly loved someone else.
And because he opened me up to want to love, and loving him never hurt me in the way that loving my progenitors did, i stumbled across an amazing, life-changing, just-for-me love one day.

And i had the sense, and the unmitigated gall, to pursue him without reservation.
I don’t know how. It is completely incongruous to the person i was raised to be.

But wait. I was raised, i know now, to be bad, evil, wrong… at the very least compliant.
Yet somehow, i am here, and i know what good is and i know that i am and i have finally, finally, let him touch me.

Think what you want, of course, and interpret it how you will, but i have figured out how to let him in and really touch me.

Things are tougher than they’ve been in years. There have been doctors and police and dangerous behaviours that i wished with my whole heart were long past. But i am who i am and i have done the absolute best i can with the cards i’ve been dealt.

He can now touch me, and i am not afraid.
I know how to be good; no one needs to tell me.
And if you think i’m not good, not only does it not matter, but my dear motherfucker – you are wrong.
And also, i’m not a girl anymore, i’m a woman.

I WIN.

NOTE: I’m sorry i stopped writing for so long. I’ve been struggling harder than i have in many years. But i knew it was coming, and i said so, didn’t i?
I’m back to writing through it, no matter what. I’m doing the best i can, and every day, my capacity gets a teensy, tiny bit bigger.

Thank you for sticking with me.

I hope what you read here is:
If i can get through it, maybe you can too.

Love Always,
~H~

Posted on by histrionicabutterfly · 2 Comments

Well, Ain’t That A Kick in the Head?

Mid-October 2016 is the last time i wrote about my physical pain at any length. It hasn’t gone away. In fact, it’s been steadily, yet thankfully slowly, building since back then. This new therapy has intensified my fibromyalgia pain, but it’s more than that. Sure, pain can be based in psychic trauma, and the stresses of day-to-day living can amp it up, but there’s more going on.

I’m just not dissociating as much.

I’ve done all this work and it’s brought me here. I know i refer to it in nearly every piece i write, but i’m not sorry for the repetition. It’s important, i think, to hammer it home for anyone reading my blog. It’s one of the most important things i want to get across. Not that this kind of thing takes a lot of work; this dealing with childhood abuse, and the way the brain and body copes with the devastation.

You already know that.

What i’m driving at is that it’s all work that we’re doing – this surviving it.
It’s all good work.

I hurt, and i had a dysfunctional and unsatisfying life and i wondered why.
I thought about it and i asked questions and took suggestions and tried things. And then i thought some more and i talked to people – professionals, friends, mentors, religious and lay folks, gurus, anybody… everybody. And then i thought some more. I pondered and i marinated, and i tried some more stuff and read books and went to lectures and joined groups and took courses, and i drew a smidge of wisdom from this and a pocketful of encouragement there and a wee cup of self-awareness from that, and i kept on going.
I picked up tiny jewels of truth here and there and i locked them up in a vault inside me, guarding them carefully, watching over them like treasure, like innocent babies who only had me to keep them safe.

All this movement, all this questing, all this work, all this surviving i did over the years, and yet i despaired a thousand times that i was getting nowhere, changing nothing, and learning little, fearing that i would be forever lost and broken and rudderless.

I kept looking back and seeing only the passage of time and my footprints.
Plus lots and lots of mess.
There were times i stopped. Sometimes frozen with fear, sometimes collapsed with exhaustion, sometimes consumed with rage, and many, many times weighed down to immobility by the cruel and crushing weight of my past.

But i learned to weather those tonic storms, to honour them, and as i’ve worked and persevered, i’ve drawn closer to the light.

There’s enough light now that i can look back and see, with emergent clarity, that nothing i did or did not do was in vain. All the mess was garbage that needed to be tossed: structures that needed to be torn down, toxic relationships that needed to be ended, hoarded memories that needed purging. The swamps filled with poison that i swam around in – it was poison that had washed out of ME, and i left it behind when i finally crawled out, cleansed. It was all good work.

Because i sought, because i wanted, because i tried, it all mattered.
Here, in this moment, i have both peace and confidence. I am, at last, at a place where i am no longer at the whim of unconscious and reflexive coping skills and protective actions that ceased being helpful long ago.
I am leaving behind my life in the land of the dead, and moving into the light, to live with the living. Yes, there are bits and pieces of me that are still afraid, but i’m not anymore.
I’m no longer stuck in a feedback loop, replaying the horrors of my past.

I’m in this current bit of business now because i want to be. I’ve done enough to manage and be okay, both for myself and my loved ones. But i want MORE. I want the next level, whatever it is that is more than just enough – and i suspect that is usefulness.

And to that end i am telling you, that i think, that as long as i keep seeking and wanting and trying, that nothing i have done or not done will be in vain.

**********

I was talking about physical pain. Right. Heh.

I was officially diagnosed with fibromyalgia in early ’98, after a car accident in August of the prior year. I tried many different treatments, all to little or no avail. I suffered tremendously – and then suddenly i didn’t. I mean, i still had pain, for sure, but it wasn’t like before. The intensity lessened and i was no longer consumed by it, every day, all day, where it even chased me into my dreams and i would moan and cry myself awake.

At first i thought it was a supplement i’d been given to try, but when that stuff was scientifically debunked, i stopped taking it and my symptoms did not intensify. I still had the occasional flareup, but my pain levels didn’t spike nearly as high as they had. I thought maybe i’d just become acclimated.
I watched other people with the diagnosis suffer far more, and i told myself i was fortunate to not’ve been afflicted as terribly as they.

This was shortly after my massive weight loss, the mania that followed, and the more conscious and chaotic experience of my multiplicity that quickly took hold of me whilst in that state.

It’s probably obvious where i’m going with this, but i’ll spell it out anyway.

As i’ve become sounder of mind and clearer of purpose, so has my pain become bigger and harder to ignore. I’ve tempered the voices in my head and adjusted their various volumes, only to have the confusion they brought replaced by so-called “fibro fog”, which happens when pain saps my energy and robs me of deep sleep.

I remember my doctor sending me to our city’s FMS specialist, for an official diagnosis. I don’t know if it’s still done this way, but one of the things he checked was my response to certain trigger points in my body. All but 2 of them were very tender.
The pain was terrific, sometimes all i knew. There were days i couldn’t move without tears. I gained a prodigious amount of weight. I slept my days away, yet never felt rested.

Then i had another baby and i needed to do better. So i had weight loss surgery, and well, i’ve already mentioned here what followed: thin begat bipolar mania begat dissociative chaos begat a parade of people who live in my brain coming out to experience life in the face and wreak not a small amount of havoc.
But my fibro had become easily manageable. I figured the weight loss had done it.

I spent years learning how my brain worked and how to coexist with my Bits N’ Pieces and live a decently functional life.
And i got there and thought i was done.
But i wasn’t satisfied after a while, and more than that, i became unsettled, my carefully constructed wa was rattled. I then did what i do — i thought about it and went looking for answers and for help finding them.
And what i found was that there was more work to do if i wanted, and i knew right away that i did.

This work involves being in my body and feeling my feelings -both emotions and physical sensations- while being present in my brain and listening to what it’s saying. My thoughts and my emotions and my sensations have been disconnected from each other since i was a baby enduring trauma.
I’m bringing myself back together, and the physical pain is a sign that it’s working.

Well, ain’t that a kick in the head?

It’s all coming back to me now. The pain, the insidiousness of it, the gaping maw of it. I see how it swallowed me whole back then, and i looked up hopelessly from the bottom of its belly as it slowly digested me.
This time ’round it’s different.
The pain is still incredible. I’ve woken to a painful throat from moaning in my sleep. Mornings are awful, the pain and the stiffness at times barely tolerable. I often wake as tired as i was when i fell asleep, or more. It’s advanced in severity over the years, quietly and unbeknownst to me. I can feel it seeping into the bones of my hands, like i’ve been in subzero temperatures with no gloves. I was recently diagnosed with osteopenia in my lumbar region, and i can feel the fibro ache radiating like an electric sun. I’m going in to see the doctor after a bunch of tests that were ordered because i’m now telling her about things i used to ignore, like chronic UTIs, like plummeting blood sugar, like maybe tennis elbow?

And friends, writing is a misery. I have little energy, and my brain is cloudy. I can’t find the words to formulate a cohesive sentence, and i get frustrated and tired out so quickly. Grrr. Argh.
But i’m learning too, and it’s not as hard as it once was. Because i’m in my body and feeling the pain, i can figure out where and how much i can push through it. I’m finding ways to still have the quality of life i desire, according to my current set of limitations. I’m being reasonable, and careful, and conscious. One of the most helpful things i’ve learned over the years is that small tweaks over time is what works best for me. Don’t push too hard or too fast, jumping in with both feet doesn’t tend to work well.

All the work i’ve done prior is coming into play. The small tweaks, the slow pace, the mindfulness, sharing my thoughts with a safe person, breathing, gentle self-talk, hygiene, and today, finishing a piece for my blog in spite of wicked pain. A piece that took many more days than i’d wish, but a thing that wouldn’t have been conceivable, let alone doable, all those years ago when fibromyalgia first made a meal out of me.

One more thing – i thought the urge to dissociate from this pain would be a constant battle, but amazingly, it’s not. Once again, i believe it’s all the work i’ve done that’s making this possible. I’ve been careful and diligent with the others who live with me in my brain. I’ve gotten to know them and addressed their concerns and met their needs as much as i’m able, thus winning their trust and earning their compliance and assistance. We’re as close to one mind as we’ve ever been, and so my desire has become theirs. My work, their work.

I’m not looking to suffer, i don’t think there’s anything redemptive or rewarding to be found in it, but it’s what some people do, every day. They learn to cope, to live, with suffering and pain, emotional and physical. They don’t leave their bodies, they don’t perform psychic surgery on themselves, they don’t play dead – they deal with it.

I want to be more like regular people, like normal people. Let me immediately follow that statement by saying a couple of things:

1) I don’t want to hear about What’s normal? Who’s normal?
While i grok the sentiment behind it, i know what i mean when i say that – to be just a little bit more like other people. You are of course, free to not want those things.
And,

2) I’m both mentally ill and neuroatypical, depending on your definitions, and while i’d love to ditch the Bipolar Disorder, that’s not how it works and i’m okay with that. Being a multiple is considered by some to be more neuroatypical than a disorder, and although i’m moving in a direction that some might call integration, i personally don’t see how my brain works in that regard as a “disorder”.
NOTE: I am not a professional, these are just the thoughts and feels of someone living with it, not someone who’s gone to school to understand and treat it.

I want to live as present a life as i can, including feeling pain, both physical and not.
…
…
…

Yeah, i’m still a bit crazy.
I like me this way.

IMAGE: Without Hope (1945), Frida Kahlo

Posted on by histrionicabutterfly

Friendship

I’ve developed a close friendship for the first time in many years. The kind of friend i check in with most days and hang out with every week.
She’s seen me switched, and had to deal with some of my shenanigans. It’s horribly embarrassing to me, but it’s also been good. She hasn’t walked away, and she hasn’t hurt me. I’ve lost some treasured friendships to bipolar disorder and multiplicity, and the way i coped was by keeping people at arm’s length, and hermitting in my Little Crooked House. I reached out to her for more friendship because i thought the cavalcade of crazy was pretty much over. Blargh.
She’s handled it better than anyone has, ever. Having a friend who accepts me exactly as i am is great, and having a friend who doesn’t treat me any differently after she’s seen my particular brand of cuckoo has been relaxing and healing and freeing. I’ve experienced the silent reaction (pretending the conversation never happened), the bullshit reaction (you are lying, that isn’t real), and the sideshow freak reaction (wow, how many alters do you have, what are their names, can i talk to one, what happened to make you that way).* Her reaction is relatively new. It’s a bit meh, and it’s nice.

Friendship has been a loaded issue my whole life. I’ve wanted connection, but the first half of my life i was running blind, and after that i pulled myself out of the race.
I’ve always been able to draw people in, i can make friends quickly and easily when i’m settled inside. Where i have trouble is building something deep and hanging on long term.

For the years since i accepted my diagnosis and began working on how to live with multiplicity, i’ve shouldered the blame for all my failed relationships.
I’m not easy to get to know.
It’s hard to get close to me.
I can be unreliable.
I’ve disappeared for weeks, even months, with no contact.
I can be histrionic and chaotic.
I can be emotionally unavailable, cold even.
I can be so focused on my own stuff, that i’m clueless about anyone else’s problems.

That’s not so much the case anymore, but back when i had a number of dear friends, those descriptors fit me rather well. I needed to know myself better in order to be able to function more effectively, and i studied it all, good, bad, or indifferent. I looked under every rock i found. It’s a tricky bit of business, trying to find the balance between being understandably broken because of how i was raised, and taking responsibility for the wreckage of my life. I wasn’t much of a success at life, beyond surviving. Don’t misunderstand me though, this is a balance thing, as i stated. I don’t believe in miracles, but the fact that i lived through my childhood and managed not to be a shitty human is as close to one as i’ve ever seen. I’m amazing, and i know it. I should either be far less functional and barely living, or a high-functioning, horrible person. But i’m not. I’m a likable, lovable woman who’s getting a little bit more awesome every day.

What i’m talking about here is an appropriate, adult level of personal responsibility.
And when it came to all the people i’ve lost, i took all the blame. I truly thought it was mine.

Recently, my new close girlfriend told me she’d been reading my blog, and bluntly stated that i’m too hard on myself. A couple of days later, someone who doesn’t know me but reads my blog offered up some similar commentary. I immediately bristled with my friend, but i noticed that i did, and so i went home and thought about it. By the time i received the second comment, i was more receptive, and more still when an online friend who’s known me for 15+yrs shared some lovely thoughts she had about my last piece. She also implied that i’m a harsh critic of my own work.

I’ve been pondering this for a week or 2 now, and i think it’s a valid criticism. I’m too critical of myself. (There’s a joke in there somewhere, but my current headache won’t let me find it. Pfft.) This is difficult for me to accept, as it runs contrary to my upbringing. I was the family scapegoat. I was bad, i was wrong, and i screwed it all up. My every move was scrutinised, and regularly and soundly criticised. I never met my mother’s expectations, nothing i did was good enough. There is constant chatter in my head from my Peanut Gallery, and someone is always picking at me: how i look, how i talk, how i cook, how i clean, how i write, how i mother, wife, friend… They sound like my mom.

I want to deal with this inner critic issue, but i have enough on my plate already. I do counter the voices quite often when the subject is how i look.

System: You look ridiculous in that outfit.
Me: I feel pretty, so it’s staying on.

I realise now that i don’t deal with the other stuff, though. I’ll try countering those voices where and when i can, but i won’t be pushing too hard right now. However, i do want to do one thing, it’s been percolating in my brain since that day in the car with my friend.

It’s not all my fault that i’ve lost the friends i’ve lost. Some of them naturally faded away, but a few were toxic to me in one way or another. The truth is they were shitty to me, and did me a favour by leaving. I was taught loyalty is all, and crappy treatment is to be expected. I didn’t see the behaviours until they were long gone, nevertheless i still saw the blame as mine.

But they used me, and i just loved them the best way i knew how, and when they weren’t getting enough from me to tolerate how sick i was getting, they left. I desperately needed help, and they left.

So there, i said it. I have a bowling ball in my belly and i feel like puking, but it’s out there. I may have sucked, but they also sucked.

There is my bit of growth for the day.
I’m not the bad guy, i’m the good guy. I also think i might be a pretty decent friend. It’s their loss, and they can kiss my pale, fallen ass.
Heh.

*I don’t particularly have a problem with any of these reactions. If it’s too much or you just don’t have the spoons to deal with my stuff, that’s okay, we can pretend i never said anything. I’m not lying, it is real, but i don’t blame you for thinking it’s a load of crap. I thought the same thing for most of my life. It’s cool to be curious, too. Feel free to ask me anything you’d like, just be aware that i might choose not to answer; some things i don’t share.