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

Posted on by histrionicabutterfly · 1 Comment

Sighs and Fuuuus and Triggers, Oh My!

Likely to be somewhat histrionic, and meander-y as fuck.
Oh yeah, and profane.

I am gonna talk about my multiplicity.
It is not fun or cool or romantic or even interesting to me anymore. Mostly it just is what it is, but there are times -like the last 2 1/2mos- when it sucks the sewage out of your drinking water.

Integration was never an option for me. Hell, i can’t usually even remember the word. It’s anathema to me and it’s death to them.
I’m not having any trouble remembering it lately, though. No fucking trouble at all.

Around 4yrs or so ago, my husband had had enough. It had been years of chaos, and in and out of The Bin and regular interaction with the police. Disappearing for hours and even days at a time, with neither of us having much if any idea at all as to what i’d been up to. He was the breadwinner and the only decent parent. And then he had more children than just our sons, to boot.

What happened is private, but when it happened i just knew he was done. He absolutely couldn’t take any more, and neither could our marriage. I was both scared and sorry to see him at the end of his patience, but in a way grateful, as it was the impetus i needed to begin the process of taking control of my brain and the way it works.

With the help of my counsellor, i’d been able to set up safe spaces where my people could hide/live/sleep/whatever. I now have a castle on a large property with some cabins and Hobbity-type dwellings for those who don’t mix well with others. In the castle is a great room with a massive, round table, and that is where we began negotiations.
There were alliances struck and allies made and factions with whom we reached at least, a detente.
Who wants to talk?
Who hates talking but still wants to be heard? Do you want to write, or would you prefer someone here to speak for you?
Who absolutely requires face time, and who wants to never be in the face again if they can at all avoid it?

It took a good, solid year of summiting to come up with a manifesto and a peace treaty that we’d all willingly sign up with and follow. The hardest part was for them to allow me time and space to prove i could be trusted and relied upon to be the head of this family: to provide, to guide, to protect, to serve, and also to punish or otherwise mete out consequences.
We revisited when required, and my position has not been questioned as my record is fucking exemplary.
But there is a thing going on in my life that has taken a great deal out of me. I’ve referenced it before, but it’s still personal and i’ll not share any details. Let it be sufficient to know that it has grown heavier and more burdensome over the years, and as i became healthier and more functional, it became less tolerable.

Enter my Bits N’ Pieces.

They’re just trying to help, of course. That’s all they’ve ever done. But as i grow and mature, their ways become less acceptable. I’m more capable and so the way they cope sometimes is not merely not okay – it’s causing damage. Not to anyone else yet, but it is hurtful to me. I’m stressed out, i’m dealing with feelings of failure, and fear of falling back into the kind of chaos that ruled most of my last 10+yrs.

I will not go back there. I refuse to live like that again.
I sat there at that round table. The head of it and yet not. THE face amongst a sea of many. Giving everyone a voice, a say, a place, because that is, unquestionably, the right thing to do.
Yet i find myself in a position of leadership over people that are not quite people. Most are not fully formed; some are only an emotion or a particular point in time or event, but every single one worthy of whatever they define as existence/life. However, i’m beginning to see stitches loosening and boundaries softening and this cannot happen. I need to be parent/boss/sovereign. Whatever.

Perhaps a bit histrionic, yes, but it’s only because you don’t live in my brain. You probably don’t share thought-space with other people who saved your life since before you could speak. People who constantly fill your brain with their conversation, whether talking to you, or to themselves, or to each other. Who make your life incredibly difficult but they made your life POSSIBLE. Over and over and so many times over. So many times that i feel like the shittiest person ever to be saying to them now, “You’ve gotta stop the shenanigans, or i’m gonna have to talk to her about my options as far as integration.”

The word that i can now remember because it’s become an option.
This is a shit of a day and i fucking hate me right now.
Some of them do, too.
Blah. Blargh. Pfft. Fuuuuuuuu,

~H~

Posted on by histrionicabutterfly

Spot Fires

NOTE: Although there is no graphic language or descriptions, i do allude to some child sexual abuse.

First things first. For those of you following along, i know i said i would be writing  “Monday to firetrucking Friday”. I want you to know that i am, but i didn’t know that a lot of what poured onto the page would be more than i felt appropriate to share. I’m forthright, even blunt, but some things are too personal and/or too dark. It’s been that way since my post on the 7th.
Personal and dark.

Six days, and I have eaten nothing. It is night. I am sitting in my chair. Ah, God! I wonder have any ever felt the horror of life that I have come to know? I am swathed in terror. I feel ever the burning of this dread growth. It has covered all my right arm and side, and is beginning to creep up my neck. To-morrow, it will eat into my face. I shall become a terrible mass of living corruption. There is no escape.
~The House on the Borderland, William Hope Hodgson

I have mentioned a number of times that i chose to surrender myself to the process of dealing with the abuse in my childhood. Whether it was a lot or a little, it was abundantly clear that, despite my best efforts, i was dissatisfied and unhappy with what i saw as a low level of functionality and an inability to avoid chaos. When at long last i accepted my diagnosis as a multiple, and further, disclosed my past of abuse to my husband, i purposely lowered myself into that cesspool and swam around in it for a number of years. I mourned and i raged, and when i decided it was enough, i climbed out and set about cleaning the muck off.

Getting out and washing away the filth and the stench took some effort. It changed me over the years, and one of the biggest changes was my abandonment of religion and the supernatural, and my embrace of skeptical thinking. I wanted to know what was real and what was not. I applied what i was learning about rational thinking to my memories of childhood. It is a primary value of mine to believe the most true things and the least false things that i can. To that end, i categorised memories according to what i might be certain of, what i could be reasonably certain of, and those of which i could not be reasonably certain. I read a lot of dry, pedantic articles on memories: how we store them, how reliable they are, and how trauma and dissociation can affect their reliability. What i learned from my studies is that i was confident of enough things to justify my perceived dysfunctionality to myself. It made sense to me that i was as fucked up as i was. The things that fell into the other 2 categories then, at that point, didn’t matter.

I set aside things that i was either reasonably certain of or not at all, and i took the memories that i’d always held and tempered them with newfound knowledge of how memory works. I looked for corroborating evidence. I analysed and evaluated everything, with as unbiased an eye as i could muster – which, being dissociative, is not insignificant. What i was left with more than satisfied my criteria for “understandably messed up”.
I was ready to move on, and so i let the other things be. I stopped trying to figure out if i was drugged or dreaming or misremembering. If it was real or imagined. I would know if i was able to, but circumstances made it unlikely in a lot of cases. And i didn’t need to know. I wanted to get on with the business of living.

I’ve been doing my best, and if you’ve been reading along, maybe you agree that i’m not doing half bad. Spring can be a tough season for me though, and i’d forgotten…

I’ve been blogging about this depression i’m dealing with – fighting, in fact. Yeah, i’m coping all right, but i’d like to punt it right out of my field of play, savvy? I don’t want to open my eyes in the morning and instantly feel my brain mantled by the heaviness of my emotions. I don’t want to have to force myself to do the routine i’ve set in place to help combat these feelings/times. I’m proud that i’ve come this far, to this place where it works when i work it, but i’d like to wake up and want to get stuff done. I’d like to awake refreshed and looking forward to the day and all the activities i have planned. No dread at night, maybe even anticipation.
But i wasn’t having that. I was having dark dreams that warned me of psychic trouble.
I think to myself, It’s this personal issue i have going right now, but i’m handling that as best i can, and there’s nothing more i can do about it unless and until circumstances change.
So i journal every day about my current state, thinking Maybe this is what’s going on, and then Oh, maybe it’s that…
I resisted the urge to hide in bed, but i almost tricked myself into thinking i could find the answers in my dreams, so it’d be okay…

I stopped that shit right in its tracks, because that’s my Peanut Gallery and i knew it was.
Look, i said, If y’all want me to know something, you’re just gonna have to freaking tell me. I made a commitment for 1 month, and i’m not breaking it without a good reason.
But i felt more and more unsettled every day. I was close to exhausted, as i wasn’t getting proper sleep, i’ve been fighting depression every day, my fibro’s been screaming and my back had started to ache.

Friday nights are my night to do a little work on this problem i have in my life. This thing i don’t talk about, but refer to all the time. If that’s frustrating, i am really sorry, it’s just that it doesn’t only involve me, and the only secrets i share are either exclusively my own, or involve evil people that are dead or out of my life. I won’t ever disclose someone’s personal business without their permission – even those from whom i’m estranged. I’m not, nor do i want to be, that person. So i work on this issue and go to bed feeling good about what i’ve accomplished.

I woke from awful dreams to find i felt like a bag of smashed assholes. So bad it deserves the profanity. Oh joy.
Sometimes mindfulness is a hard choice to make. I’ve got mad skills to avoid pain, but i checked in instead. Did a searching and fearless physical inventory. Behold how my brain works: I’ve definitely got a UTI. Fuck. It’s a big, cold ball of ache right behind my pubic bone, and it extends all the way to my back. That’s why it’s been hurting. I don’t want to go to a clinic for antibiotics. I don’t people on Saturdays. Saturdays are my day to goof off. Read. Watch crap on telly. Do little self care things like skin masks and foot scrubs and you-shore-smell-purty lotions and all that froo-froo stuff. That won’t be happening.
I could cry. My husband even has a rare Saturday off and now we can’t go do anything.
If i can hold off going to the bathroom long enough maybe i can handle it without a doctor/prescription.

I don’t even know if other people do this, but i’ve been doing it all my life.
I’ve had bladder/kidney problems since i was a baby. I’ve had countless UTIs. For the first half dozen or so years of my life, i thought it was supposed to burn when you urinated.
I’m checking in to my body, realising i have a UTI, and my mind wanders to thinking about all the UTIs i’ve had since as far back as i can remember. My mother telling people she had me potty trained as soon as i could walk (10mos) because i would make a hissing sound when i was about to pee. Because it burned.
The thought pops into my head, I wonder if this is somatisation. That question is like nitrous in my brain’s think tank, and my thoughts race. The level of chatter increases and thoughts are whizzing by so fast it’s hard to track them. But things are clicking…

Click. Click. CLICK. BOOM! 

Some of that reasonably certain stuff became practically a certainty.
I’m not going to get any more graphic, but i realised there was more going on physically, and it confirmed some of my suspicions into as close to conviction as i’ll likely get, or want to get.
The evidence was there all along, i just hadn’t put it together.
Don’t ask me why i needed to know, because i’m not sure i did. I’ve spent these last few years trying to take good care of my Bits n’ Pieces, trying to prove that i can be trusted with their welfare, that it’s my turn to take care of them. Maybe telling me eased their burden, or healed some of their pain. I can only hope.

Today i woke up with a lessening of the physical symptoms from Saturday, but i’m covered in hives. I don’t know if it’s a somatic manifestation of trauma, or a psychic purging, or wtf. I don’t need to know. This may always be my life. I’m hoping things will gradually settle down and my life will be more smooth sailing with less chop, and i have every reason to believe it will. I carved out a safe place with the family i built. I do the work in front of me. I enjoy a quality of life for which i’d hardly dared hope.

This confirmation is a dark thing. It hurts my heart and grieves me. It shakes my worldview. But only a little. This was something i was moderately sure of, but i’d let it be, because my skepticism told me it was appropriate, and i didn’t need it to make my case. My worldview is informed by freethought, but as a humanist, i recognise that perspective may be beneficial to the achievement of the humanitarianism to which i aspire.

So yes, i’ve been on the receiving end of some of the greatest evil humans can do, but as i look back with a critical eye i find plenty of evidence that my seemingly innate belief in the essential goodness of humanity is justifiable. I’m at a point in my life and my personal development where this is not an unmanageable burden.
It’s like back in the day when fires were fought by a community, standing side by side, passing buckets full of water to douse the flames. In this analogy i’m not the one closest to the fire – i think i’m the bucket of water. I’m not an individual inside my brain so much as i’m a sleepy bedroom community on the outskirts of a city, where we’re a bit snooty and mostly keep to ourselves. The day will arrive when we’re part of the city. It is the way of things, and we all understand.

Love and Peace,
~H~

Posted on by histrionicabutterfly

To Past Or Not To Past


To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?
~To Be Or Not To Be, from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Act 3 Scene 1

Some people journal a lot. I suppose i could be considered one of those people, but with me it was sporadic. I’d pick it up for a few months or a year or so, but eventually i’d drop it. Consistency is not one of the hallmarks of my life.
Some people regularly look back over their journals to see what they’ve learned and how far they’ve come.
I should not do that – at least not now. Perhaps never.

One of my sons asked me for a recipe yesterday. I knew i had it posted online somewhere, so i set about finding it for him. While i did find it, i stumbled across some other things. I also found journal entries and posted social media rants. My brain, which has been full of background mumblings lately, fairly exploded a la Scanners (1981 Canadian horror film from David Cronenberg).
Yesterday was an absolute shit of a day.

What i see when i look back at old journal entries depresses and scares the hell outta me.
It’s the same thing, over and over:
I know i’m not right, somehow.
I’m doing the things i’ve been told are good to do, and i’m seeing some progress.
I think i’m finally on my way and i’m hopeful for the future.

It’s the same fears, the same struggles, the same words on the page.
What if this is just the same thing again? What if i’m still screwed? What if i’ve always been just blowing smoke up my own ass? What if i’m full of it, and i’ll always be full of it, and i’ve just convinced myself over the years that i’m not? What if i’m just pathetic and deluded?

Oh, and then there was the other thing.
Social media.
Fuck.
I’ve been so angry.
So bloody angry.
And the drama. The dramatic pronouncements and the histrionic outcries.
“This is the most important thing i’ve ever written.”
I read that yesterday, and it most certainly was not. It was childish, was what it was.
It read like a prepubescent diary entry.
And here’s the thing – i am just SO embarrassed. All of the rants and the diatribes that i put on my social media. So much anger. Hostile towards everyone, save a very, very few.

Hang on. I’m having trouble pulling out thoughts and putting them down with any kind of logical flow. It’s all tumbling around in my head, with the occasional geyser out my mouth/fingers. It’s so hard to rein in my bits and pieces when i’m like this.
There are some things that i may not be able to convey well, unless i first provide a basic understanding of how my brain works with regards to my Peanut Gallery.
I really, really don’t want to do that.
It’s taken forever for me to even use the word dissociative.
I use a euphemism for my alters, and using that word makes me cringe. Alters. *shudder*
I’ll share what i will, but you may still be nonplussed. Please know that i’m sorry and i’m doing the best that i can.

I don’t know where to begin. When my head gets full like this i either go to sleep, use drugs, or switch. I don’t want to do any of those things anymore, but this is bloody hard. It feels like too much, it’s too real and too fucking personal. Who wants to know all this shit anyway? Blargh. I can feel the separation starting. It’s like i’m pulling away from the rest of what’s going on in my head. Distancing myself from the mass of crawling thoughts and emotions. Dissociating. I can’t allow that to happen though, because most of the last few years has been dissociative writing, and i want that to stop. Maybe not for always, but definitely for now.

What i wanted when i first started this blog was to help myself stay in control of the way my brain works, and motivate and inspire myself to keep improving. I was depressed over what i saw as wasted years, and so i also thought sharing my life might help someone else. That’s all.
Well, maybe one thing i knew i did not want. I didn’t want to be the subject of morbid fascination. One need only think of how many television shows and movies have used multiple personalities as a cheap plot device to get an idea where i’m coming from. I want to find healing through being understood and find purpose through helping others, but i have no desire to be a sideshow attraction. (Much respect to those over the years who have done so, however.)
I never want this to be some kind of bizarre soap opera with the entire cast being played by me. I don’t want to be a train wreck that you can’t look away from, and besides, some people are just trying to get somewhere else and they have no time for a traffic jam.

Which sort of brings me to the next thing that bothered me while i was looking through my notes yesterday. I am deeply and profoundly embarrassed. I was so obviously dysfunctional for so long. Gah. Like, hermitting is easier since yesterday – and honey, it wasn’t hard. I never want to go out again. I only looked through a few things, but they were enough. After that i thought about the pictures there are; so much evidence of all my antics, and i think, This is a pretty nice rock i live under, i could stay here forever and not be sorry about it.
I’m ashamed that i’m only a couple of years out from acting the perfect fool. The obnoxious try-hard that fancies herself the centre of attention when she’s really just tolerated and pitied. Ugh. A woman who, from her late 30s to late 40s, acted more of a teenager than her own children.

This is where i start to cry as i type, because this is very, very personal. And frustrating, because i don’t know that i’ll be able to communicate well enough for anyone to understand. There are a lot of voices in my head wanting to be heard on this matter, and they’re all trusting me to get this part right.

When i finally accepted my diagnosis i made a decision to stop trying to control everything (it wasn’t working anyway), and to allow myself to fall apart. I don’t think i could have stopped it if i’d tried, looking back. I was entering my first full-on mania, which hit me like a tornado in a trailer park. I had no idea what i was in for. My past had come out in little drips and drabs, but not the whole story all at once, and there were many things that i’d never told anyone. It took a while, but i told my husband all of it. Plus, i disclosed to some friends on a personal blog i kept for a few years. I haven’t spoken much about it since then. The details, i mean. I can refer to some things in a general way, but i don’t go back to specific incidents and i try not to focus on details. I see no positive reason for reliving my abuse any further.

But that’s now. What happened then was i devolved. My level of function went way down at home, and mania took me out of the house, along with a bunch of people who’d been cooped up in my brain for too long. And they wanted to get out and get some fresh air and exercise. What they did was nearly destroy the half decent life i’d managed to build.

I’m ashamed, but what good does the shame do me, or anyone i love for that matter? If it’s a stepping stone to sincere regret and a genuine attempt at amends, fine. I’m already there, though. I have been living my amends for some time. The shame i carry now can do actual harm to people i care about. My people. The parts of me that are me and yet not me. I don’t want to hurt them with my shame and embarrassment. They saved my life so very many times. They took the abuse at home, they took the bullying at school, they handled the nighttime activities, they covered for me when i was too traumatised or triggered to function. Without them i would either be permanently committed, or dead – whether by my own hand or an abuser’s. They’ve done their job and they did it well; i’m here and i’m better than i’ve ever been and now it’s my job to take care of them.

On an intellectual level, i know all the things i need to know in order to get through this.
Reading those things i posted though… I’m gonna be 50 in a couple of months and the lack of maturity i’ve displayed is mortifying. And i know a more mature person would not be so impacted. I should be calmed and comforted by the truth, that i was doing the best i could with the tools and the information i had available to me at the time, rather than wanting to take to my bed with a case of the vapours.

Let me tell you something, writing stuff down and sharing it can have some unintended effects. For the writer and for the reader. I can take the edge off of the evil and the ugliness by writing about it. For me it can seem like it’s okay, or at least less terrible because now it’s prose – it is attractively arranged sentences with flowery descriptors, creating a pretty turn of phrase. And for the reader? Well i don’t know how you’re reacting of course, but i know how i’ve reacted to similar pieces like these, and i also have some feedback on what i’ve written from people i know personally. Therefore i feel confident that some who read this may come away from my blog thinking i’m doing so very well. That i’ve really got my poop in a pile, or my ducks in a row, or whatever.

Let’s neither of us allow ourselves to be fooled, shall we?
I am only now starting to function on a level that can sustain a healthy lifestyle, including relationships. Barely.
I’m talking about things like cooking meals, keeping house, and doing laundry.
Things like showering and brushing my teeth.
Eating a balanced diet and exercising.
Taking my dogs for a long walk every day.
Going through dozens of boxes filled with goodness knows what and organising my space.
Not drinking or drugging to cope with people, feelings, thoughts or memories.
STAYING PRESENT, IN THE FACE ALL DAY.

There is a trail of wreckage behind me. The last 10yrs i’ve ended every significant relationship i’d managed to maintain or tolerate except my husband and my children. I’m amazed that my children have forgiven me for scarcely being present. I’ve been utterly unable to forge new friendships that cross the line into comfortable intimacy. The only friendships i have that are still strong are with an online community of people that i wouldn’t have allowed that close to me had i known them in real life, and maybe they wouldn’t have minded.

I needed to lose these last 10yrs. I maybe could have found another way, but i’d already tried a lot of different things. All i need for proof is my journals. Yes, the journals i shouldn’t be looking at, but they sit in my drawer bearing paper witness to many attempts by me to figure my shit out and get well. It took what it took, i did what i did, and here i am. But the more clarity and presence of mind i gain the more i realise how much of these last years is either blurry or blank. Booze, drugs, and a constantly rotating cast of players that are all me have made it so.

I should be further along in my personal development as a human being, but i’m here.
I should have been raised in a safe and loving environment, but i wasn’t.
So to answer my own question: I past-ed, but am not currently past-ing.
It is what it is.

I don’t know what the hell the point was to all this, but apparently it needed to come out.
How this hodge-podge could help anyone besides me, well – i can’t imagine, but here it is, regardless. If you read this, you’re a champ. Thanks.

Love and Peace,
~H~

Posted on by histrionicabutterfly · 1 Comment

Let Reality Be Reality

Those who know me might be very confused as to why someone with my personality would have a problem accepting a diagnosis of dissociation.
After all, i do make a rather strong impression. That i’ve changed significantly through study and hard work notwithstanding, people generally remember meeting me. More than that, they probably also have a fairly good idea whether they like me or they don’t; i’m that sort of person. I’m drawn to extremes, i feel things intensely, i have strong opinions, and i don’t mind telling you about them – even though you may not have asked. Heh.

Did you notice the name i use for my site? Histrionica is a name i made up (which i’ve since learned is the name of a beetle) years ago when i joined a scifi fan page. I thought it hilariously appropriate because i can be a tad histrionic upon occasion. I added an “a” to make it sound feminine, and voila!

I revelled in drama growing up. I joined choirs and drama groups every place we lived. I joined every club and after school activity i could in order to get out of the house as much as possible. (Not after school SCHOOL activities, though. School was as hellish as home was, sometimes.) I sang and i acted and i was very, very good. Gifted, by all accounts by all the directors with whom i ever worked. Full of potential and promise. I could sing anything, play anyone convincingly. I could affect any accent you wished, i only had to listen to it for a bit and i could do it. I could ape anyone. I could do you, for anyone who knew you, and they’d know it was you.

And then there was school… UGH. Well, there’s no sense in sugarcoating shit at this stage of the game, so i won’t.

I lied. I lied a LOT. I lied about anything, to anyone, for any reason. For no reason.
It started at home. If i did something wrong, i got hit. I didn’t want to get hit, so i would deny i did the wrong thing, even if i had done it. Pretty typical kid behaviour, except the abuse i was living with exacerbated the problem. Even when i hadn’t done anything wrong, i was consistently treated as if i had. I was the receptacle for all my parent’s unwanted emotions. I grew up believing there was something terribly wrong with me – that i was bad and deserving of punishment. That doesn’t mean i didn’t still try to avoid it.

My first defense was always denial.
Then i’d tell a story about why i couldn’t/wouldn’t/didn’t do the thing of which i was accused, that i had actually done.

This carried itself into my school performance. I didn’t want to get into trouble, so i would lie. There was so much tumult at home that i often wouldn’t complete my homework, and when the teacher would ask me about it, i’d lie. And i was so strange in my appearance (read: poor and unkempt) and odd in my behaviour, that i would invent grand and fantastical stories as to why. I mean, i knew i was different, if for no other reason than my fellow students would regularly remind me. Some even questioned me about it – mostly the bullies, but every once in a while, a genuine, concerned query would come from a kinder peer. I’d always lie. Well, i told a bit of truth to a couple of friends in high school, but their lack of response only reaffirmed what i’d learned growing up:

1) We do not speak of these things;

2) It’s not a big deal;

3) You deserve what’s happening to you.

Honestly though, i must have had quite the reputation for telling whoppers, so how were they supposed to know when i was telling the truth? I don’t blame them a bit. The one teacher i disclosed to is another story… He was my favourite teacher and he broke my heart and it hurts to this day.

Sorry… A bit off topic, but still somewhat relevant to what i’m trying to relay.

Finally, i must devote some time to my love of fantasy. Growing up, my ability to lose myself in art: books, movies, television, even music – it saved my life. Both figuratively speaking, and i believe, quite literally as well. I didn’t just read Lord of the Rings – i lived it. I read the books through 3 or 4 times, just to go back and be with my friends and have those adventures again. My imagination is very developed, very adept, very intense. I WAS Alice. I was Pippi Longstocking, i was Marcia Brady, i was Ginger AND Mary Ann. I was Velma, and i was the smart one who solved the mystery. I would come home from a day of teachers ignoring me and children torturing me, and i would be Belinda Carlisle on tour with the Go-Go’s, and i would bump into Harrison Ford or Sting at some Hollywood party, where they would see me and ask me out and we’d fall in love…

I would comfort my poor, hurt feelings for hours sometimes, with only enough time left to take orders from Mom over cooking, cleaning, or kid care, and then to bed. Door closed and light off or i’d get yelled at and/or hit. Next day at school, i’d lie to the teacher about why my homework wasn’t done.

Once i got away from school and home, i didn’t need to lie so much. And so i actually didn’t. Over the years though, the one thing i found i couldn’t quite let go of was my penchant for exaggeration. It was like a lingering imprint or a reflex that lessened with age, but still… For many years, i just couldn’t seem to resist embellishing the truth a little. If i lost 10lbs, i’d tell you 20. If i hadn’t slept a wink last night, i’d tell you not for the last 2 or 3. If i ate an entire pizza to myself and you asked what i’d had for supper, i’d tell you salad and fresh fruit. Okay that last one was an outright lie. I admit i still told those sometimes.

It wasn’t until i learned enough about the effects of abuse that i understood why i was lying and telling fish stories. I believed i wasn’t good enough. I was afraid that deep down inside, i was bad. I was trying to hide it – trying to keep others from finding out. It took years of concerted effort, but that kind of behaviour has been behind me for a long time.

I still lie, but only when necessary, or for reasons of self-care or kindness. If you think honesty is the best policy, or lying is always bad, well… This piece isn’t for that subject, but maybe one day i’ll write a bit about my thoughts in this area, and you can read it and see what you think.

Maybe you’re starting to see where i’m going.
Why i resisted my diagnosis so hard, and for so long.
If you are, maybe you can help me out here, because it’s freaking hard to put into words. Blargh. It’s all buzzing around up there in my brain, but it’s like trying to separate the ingredients once you’ve made soup out of them.
Good luck.

This is a mental illness with more baggage than most. A lot of people don’t even believe it exists. Some people fake it in order to escape the consequences of their bad behaviour, or to get attention. Most people’s only experience of it is through ham-handed tv tropes, or as a literary device, including the (in?)famously debunked novels like “Sybil” and “Michelle Remembers”. It’s an illness chock full of drama and controversy. It invites and elicits very strong opinions.

Once i got away from my mother and her influence, i realised i was an abused child. Once i had a child of my own i knew i needed to deal with it or i couldn’t be the kind of mom i wanted to be. Through doing the work, i realised i was mentally ill, but i didn’t know exactly what was wrong – no diagnosis seemed to fit. And then this diagnosis comes along that fits me perfectly, but it appeals to parts of my nature that i’m trying to change or eliminate altogether. Parts like my propensity for embellishment and my tendency towards histrionics. I was terrified that people were telling me what the sick parts of me wanted to hear. Factor in that out of the dozens of people i’d met claiming to be dissociative, they all seemed to be faking it, save one.

I couldn’t allow myself to accept something because it offered a convenient excuse for all the troubles of my life. And i couldn’t allow myself to believe it just because it was perfect for the artist inside me, or even for the little girl who saved her own life with her mutant power of imagination.

What got me there is what you read on my blog in every single post i make.
I was indoctrinated from birth. I was actively brainwashed.
The greatest, most beautiful, powerful, and incredible thing that happened to me when i got away from my mother, is that i was given the opportunity to think for myself. It was slow going until i found my safe place (my person*), but once i had that i was able to work harder and achieve better results. I wanted to know what i thought and why i thought it. As the bible i once studied required of me, i wanted to have a reason for what i believed. From there i learned to study independently, and i was on my way. I didn’t know that there was a name for what i was doing, but i now know it’s called critical thinking.

I’m not going to share with you my step-by-step examination of who i am and what the diagnosis says dissociatives are. It would be an exercise in people-pleasing on my part, and that is something i try to do only because i want to, not because i’m trying to prove something. Like anyone, i still crave those 4As (attention, acknowledgement, acceptance, affection), but that’s not what this is about. Whether or not you believe in the diagnosis, believe that what i share in this blog is genuinely me. This is who i am and how my brain works.

This is life as me, whatever name you give me or box you put me in. I don’t mind.
I want to help myself and be a better human. I hope that by sharing how i’m helping myself, i can do both.

He thought he was gonna die,
But he didn’t.
She thought she just couldn’t cope,
But she did.
We thought it would be so hard,
But it wasn’t…
It wasn’t easy, though!
~Walk Straight Down the Middle, Kate Bush

Love and Peace As Always,
~H~

*Grey’s Anatomy reference, my not-guilty-at-all pleasure.

Posted on by histrionicabutterfly

Inside Outside Upside Down*


Manic episode symptoms: The symptoms of mania include: elevated mood, inflated self-esteem, decreased need for sleep, racing thoughts, difficulty maintaining attention, increase in goal-directed activity, and excessive involvement in pleasurable activities. These manic symptoms significantly impact a person’s daily living.
Source: Steve Bressert, Ph.D., PsychCentral

“The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long… ”
~Tyrell

This will not be a tell-all of my escapades while in the grips of mania. Suffice to say they were not at all epic, in fact i’d say they bordered on the pathetic.
But of course that’s only in hindsight.

To me, the world had suddenly become more exciting, more enticing, and much, much more accessible. I was pretty and i was crazy and i was fun and i was hungry for experiences. I’d shut myself off from being very social for most of my life. It was difficult, and i knew i wasn’t very good at it, although i tried hard and with sincerity. Being shunted to the bottom of the social pile in nearly every school i attended taught me that i would never be cool. I didn’t have the family standing, i didn’t have the clothes or the toys, and i was never able to talk like they talked or act like they acted. I had nothing going for me and zero chance of getting any of it.

As i’ve mentioned before, once i got away from the judgmental hell of school, i did find some acceptance and favour in certain social circles. I could have more friends if i wanted, but i discovered a lot of life situations still foster an atmosphere that’s no more emotionally developed than high school. It was less acute, but there were still pecking orders and hierarchies in places like work and church. I still flopped and floundered around like the proverbial fish out of water a lot of the time, but it wasn’t the intense microcosm of human social behaviour that school can be.

Weight loss provided me with a little more attractive packaging, and mania dished me up a heaping helping of thoughtlessness masquerading as confidence, like eating a bowl of chili that you never know was actually made with TVP.** I went where i wanted and did what i pleased with whomever i wished. I overindulged in everything except food. I was -yeah, you guessed it- the life of the party, the centre of attention, the belle of the ball.
I was wanted.
I was liked.
I was accepted.
I was popular.

Of course it was all an illusion, brought about by the grandiose thinking and fearlessness i feel when i’m manic. Oh and if dissociation dulls self-awareness – mania makes the blade utterly useless.
It’s mania that almost cost me my children.
Not depression and suicide attempts, not anxiety or panic attacks, not PTSD, and not borderline agoraphobia. Because mania made me selfish, and it blinded me to the effects my behaviour was having on anyone around me – even, and especially, my husband and my children. I repeatedly put myself in high risk situations, doing harmful things to myself with dangerous people.

When the mania finally wore off i’d paid a terrible price. I’d lost loved ones and things that were precious. I was empty and beyond mortified and fully penitent. My thinking still wasn’t terribly coherent, but i knew i needed to stop and start over.

Sometimes a change in geography can help facilitate a cure of sorts.
A new town provided the emotional cytotoxins.
The depression irradiated every thought in my head.

I spent months hiding under my mother-in-law’s gentle and protective wing, and longer still in my brand new Little Crooked House, but my brain was percolating. I had no defenses left to protect me from either the truth of my upbringing, or what my brain had done in order to keep me alive. My brain got very full. Very LOUD. I call it “bursty”. I’ll tell you why. Because one day, my head got too full and i exploded.

I’d been drinking too much for weeks, months, trying to shut my head up. Trying to find peace and quiet. Trying to sleep. Trying to avoid the hangover the next day. Trying to laugh instead of cry. Well one day it all came crashing down around me and i wrecked one house, smashed in another, terrified my loved ones, attempted suicide, and got put away for a couple of months in a special mental hospital. Not a ward, not a floor, but an entire hospital dedicated to VERY crazy people.
I was in the big leagues.

I got help… kinda. I got more diagnoses and conflicting diagnoses and shrinks who would tell me the last one was wrong and take me off all the old medications and put me on new ones. I got thrown out of a couple of programs that the p-docs at the hospital signed me up for, and that’s when i started seeing the “You again?” look on the nurses’ faces.

I’ve been in and out of The Bin for the better part of 20yrs, but after this last big blow out that happened in front of my family, something happened inside me. I decided i’d had enough of running away from who i am and what i’d been through. So i made a 180 and instead, i ran right into it. I threw myself head first into whatever the hell was gonna happen. I’d had enough of trying so hard not to be fucked up and being fucked up anyway.

I slid around inside my head – not gone, but not totally there. I was so tired. Two and a half years of pedal to the metal mania will do that to a person. I was used up inside, emotionally and physically.

Then i lucked out and got a really good social worker. (It’s happened a couple of times – they’re out there.) She accepted my diagnosis and actually knew a lot about it. She treated me like a person and not a case. She helped me make a plan and set goals. Most of all she helped me feel good about who i was as a human and especially as a mother. She helped me get my feet underneath me and take more than a few steps in the right direction. I even had a little momentum going.

Eventually my husband convinced me to go out and meet people.
I don’t actually have much to tell you about that time.
I know we met people, but i don’t know who, or how. I think some of it happened through going to the bar and singing karaoke, but beyond that, i have no idea. I don’t remember very much. The problem was, i could feel another explosion building inside my head, and i was so afraid and still so very tired from the last one that i was dissociating to avoid… everything. Relationships, feelings, my past, my mental issues. All of it.

I already knew what i had to do in order to avoid yet another major meltdown. I knew that i had to disclose and i knew to whom. I sat my husband down and told him that i had to purge it all, that it would likely take a couple of weeks, that i would be a slobbering, jibbering mess throughout, and i was pretty sure that afterwards i would be useless at best and dangerous to myself and others at worst.
He said Okay, let ‘er fly. I’ve got this.
I was right and he was almost wrong.

Let me see the dark sides as well as the bright
I’m gonna love you inside out
I’m gonna love you inside out
Let me…
~Inside Out, The Chainsmokers

* The title is a reference to a children’s book by the great Stan and Jan Berenstain
** Textured vegetable protein. It’s actually great, and i use it in place of hamburger often.

Posted on by histrionicabutterfly

Sledgehammer, Part One

WARNING: This piece is about my relationship with my mother, and includes references to both physical and non-physical forms of sexual abuse, including rape.

“Let me tell you about my mother.”
~Leon

I don’t really know what happened to my mother. She told so many stories that cannot now be verified, and i’ve caught so many of her lies, that i cannot paint her picture with much detail.

Abstract expressionism it is, then.

My mother was born out of wedlock in 1945, to an young Canadian nurse and a British RAF officer.* She was adopted out to a first generation Canadian couple in southern Alberta. They’d lost their first child, a son, within weeks of his birth, to measles, and my grandmother was unable to bear more children. They adopted her first, and then later, a boy. This was during a time when many people believed that adopted children had “bad blood”, because they’d been born to loose, sinful women.

They were raised in a place where nearly everyone, including their relatives practised a particular faith, a faith my mother’s family decidedly did not. The bullying in school was constant, and terrible. The teachers were all of the same faith, and the bullies were never reprimanded. Her brother though, as a boy and a baseball star, avoided most of the school bullying, and all of the suspicions of adopted children being tainted at home. He had replaced the son my grandparents had lost. Mother was an unfortunately necessary step to getting their precious boy – girls were less desirable than boys, but a girl could get your foot in the door, you see.

She must have at least sensed from the very beginning that she wasn’t wanted. When she was raped by one of my grandfather’s ranch hands, their response must have settled the matter. The man had threatened to kill her brother if she told, but she was hemorrhaging so badly it could not be hidden. She wasn’t taken to a hospital, a local doctor came to the ranch to see to her privately. The man wasn’t accused, arrested, charged, or punished, he was merely fired. She was 5yrs old.*

She got pregnant at 15, and was sent to a home for unwed mothers in the US where she was forced to give her baby up for adoption.* Following the surrender, she attended school away from home, to help keep her secret shame safe from the rest of the town and area. The girls at her school being as purely vicious as they were, i don’t imagine she minded at all.

At 22yrs old, she got pregnant again.
This is the point in her life where i enter, and now there are too many asterisks to even bother using them.

~~~~~~~~~~

-she got pregnant by a married man,
-she was raped by a married man,
-she got pregnant by a man of another faith whose parents would have disowned him,
-she got pregnant by a man who left to fight in Vietnam and was captured in country…

She went again to the States to the same home for unwed mothers, but this time she rebelled. She left and got a job and her own apartment, where 8mos into her pregnancy she was the victim of a break and enter and a violent rape.

~~~~~~~~~~

She fled the US for home, only to go into labour on her way, requiring her to make an unscheduled stop in Vancouver, where i born.

I won’t be going into what happened the first 7 or 8yrs of my life. It’s a story that doesn’t need to be told again. What i mean is, i can tell you a bit about my mom by way of explaining the terrible fear i always carry of becoming like her, without putting myself through the unnecessary pain of recounting the most painful years of my life. The years that fractured my brain into the little pieces that i am now trying so hard to manage and love and maybe even heal…

What i will say about those years is this: Afterwards, i believe that she suffered a crisis of conscience over what she’d done, and she didn’t manage the crisis well. I think she fell into a deep depression. I think she tried to fix what she’d done by having other children and parenting them better than she had me. And when she wasn’t able to (she was better to them in some ways and worse in others), she set upon years of self hatred and vain attempts to excuse her behaviour. Finally, it is my opinion that she eventually gave up and gave in to what she had become, and spent her final years reflecting more and more on the outside, what she was on the inside. Filthy. Bloated. Foul.

It is her final years that have most imprinted upon me this fear i have inside.
I watched her descent into utter depravity. As parts of me can move forward or recede as required, as parts of me can emotionlessly record events i have watched her slow free fall into a bottomless pit of what i can only describe as uncleanness.

I watched the house get dirtier and dirtier, until there were used dishes covered in molding food all over the house, including the floors, and yes, even the bathtub, where they were also covered with stinking scummy water, like the ones that filled every sink.

I watched my siblings get dirtier and dirtier, until their eyes, which looked unnaturally large against the pulled masks of their starving faces, seemed to fairly glow. I watched them climb through piles of unwashed laundry that were stacked higher than they themselves stood, looking to find the least filthy item to wear to school.

And i watched my mother. I watched her take food out of her children’s mouths to fill her own gargantuan appetite. I watched her swell from an incredibly beautiful woman who would be called “thick” today, to a mass of heavy, unwashed flesh that topped out somewhere over 600lbs. I watched her stop caring about what she wore, until she simply wore nothing at all. Moving from room to room completely naked. When someone came to the door i had to beg her to drape a blanket over herself. And i was privy to her abandonment of all attempts at personal hygiene, until her stench would fill the room so pungently, that i would involuntarily heave.

I tried to help stem the tide of garbage and odour and clutter and spoiled food, but i was living a life almost completely dissociated from what was going on around me. My room was a sty, too. I would be beaten for it regularly, and it would be clean for a while, but it wasn’t long before it looked much as it had at my last beating. My environment was a reflection of what was going on inside me, just as it was with my mother. I was also terrified of cleaning the house. If i did so under her watchful eye, i’d get criticised, screamed at, and beaten. If i tried to get a bunch of cleaning done when she wasn’t around, i almost never did it right, and she’d beat me when she got home. She even told me once, after my best friend and i had come home for a visit to an empty home full of trash that one had to actually wade through in places, and spent over a day cleaning, that she would have preferred i’d done nothing.

(To this day i hate cleaning the house when other people are around, it makes me terribly anxious and i avoid it as much as possible.)

After i left home, nothing really changed except that my portion of abuse was redistributed among my siblings. I know she beat them until the day she was in the car accident that would eventually kill her. I know that some religious folks who’d been trying to help her went to her home while she was in hospital, to clean it up in anticipation of her return and were pretty grossed out by what they found. I know that i visited her in hospital and begged her forgiveness for all the trouble i’d been to her and she magnanimously forgave me. I know that she seemed to be recovering, but because of her massive girth and doctors’ relative inexperience with the super morbidly obese back then, they missed a small tear in her cecum, which leaked slowly into her guts for nearly 6wks following the accident, causing her to die from multiple organ failure due to sepsis.

And i know it was years before i even began to unravel, examine, and otherwise dissect the relationship i’d had with my mother. I’ve spent years and tears and not a little money in an attempt to learn the extent of the damage she wrought in my life, and to find ways to counteract it all. For a very long time all i could do was stem the flow. I was like her, thinking i was getting better and then i’d find another source of infection that was keeping me sick. And like in our literal lives, sometimes the antibiotic wouldn’t work, or it would stop working, and i’d have to search for something else – something stronger, or something else altogether.

END PART ONE

*Maybe. I cannot verify this as fact, but i have included it because, after years of study and contemplation, i accept that it is probably true.

Posted on by histrionicabutterfly

Under My Dome

This is one of those days where i really, really wish i was normal.

I’m not having that glib toss off comment that people often make about no one being normal, or what the heck is normal anyway. I understand where it comes from, and i know people don’t mean any harm or offense when they make it. And it doesn’t harm me or offend me when it’s made, either. I’m just saying that for today, if one were to make such a comment regarding this post – that might be considered by me to be a little insensitive.

I’m not referring to everyone’s little quirks and oddities. Yes, we all have those. I’m talking about living every single day of your life with a brain that works -in some very significant ways- much differently than most people’s. In ways that slow me down in my daily life, and have even held me back from achieving some things that i’ve wanted to do.

I’ve always had a terribly short attention span. I’ve struggled with concentration. In recent years, with the addition of bipolar disorder, i’ve had an awful time reading. Reading was one of the biggest things that saved my life growing up, and it’s been a slow and exasperating process trying to retrain my brain to read for pleasure again.

My thoughts either race so fast with mania, or process words so slowly with depression and dissociation, that i stopped reading novels. I forced myself to deal with the issue starting with non-fiction. As a person who’d finally broken free of my childhood programming that had taught me not to think for myself or question authority, i was hungry for information. So i started reading a lot of news articles, science articles, political pieces, and learning about philosophy. I’m not entirely sure why it’s been so much easier to read non-fiction, but i suspect it has something to do with fiction triggering my dissociative behaviours because it stimulates my imagination.

I’m trying though. I’ve had to, because i’m currently on a news/social media fast. The last year’s worth of campaigning, leading to the most frightening and disappointing election result in the US in my lifetime, necessitated a break. I’ve got too much going on in my personal life to even begin to process that event. Even typing this little bit about it in my blog is ramping up my anxiety level. And the Peanut Gallery in my head is on hypervigilant alert, meaning social media isn’t a good idea, either. I’m at a high risk for switching, and i can’t ask my online friends to go through that with me. It’s confusing enough for my husband and my children, i can’t imagine how much harder it would be when you don’t live with me, and don’t even have experience with me outside of the internet. (I was gonna say, “in the flesh”, but that sounded a bit dirty. Heh.)

Anyway, i’m trying to read a book i’ve been trying to get through for 2yrs. I’ve read other novels over the last few years, but King novels are especially hard for me, i think because he’s my favourite. I didn’t understand until a few years ago that my experience of imagination is different than most people. My therapist says that i am a superhero, and my mutant power is imagination. I was able to create people and worlds inside my brain in order to escape some of the awful things that happened to me as a child. My brain is a whole different level of creative. Not better than you, but very intense. Like, for those of you around my age, think in Technicolor, with Sensurround! If you’re a more recent arrival on the planet, think over 9,000!

When i found Stephen King novels it changed my life. It was more than just giving me an escape, the fact that they were based in horror helped me stay alive and be more sane. No, really. There were things that happened to me that i never spoke about. As years went by, they became like dreams i had, and as i grew i eventually “forgot” that they were real events and believed instead that they were only dreams. When other young people would talk about their dreams, i would wonder why mine were so strange and terrifying compared to theirs. I think King’s stories made it easier for me to, in due time, accept that there had been true evil in my life, as there is in the world, and that it can be overcome. As if reading about it in well-told stories made what i had lived through a bit more palatable. It was art. Dark, terrible art. It was maybe more romantic/poetic to me, seen through a writer’s eyes. That may not make sense to anyone else, but it does to me. Stephen King helped soften the blow in a way. His stories helped me to acknowledge and accept that my life was a story that he could have written.

For a week i have sat with this massive book in my lap. Forcing myself to read half an hour of this novel every day. It’s laborious and sluggish work. I have echobrain right now, meaning that i hear the sentence i just read bounce around inside my skull over and over, until it gradually fades. This forces me to say the sentence silently in my head as i’m reading it in order to cut down on the echo. Unfortunately, it also sloooows me doooown. I find it demeaning. I know i shouldn’t, but my reading speed and comprehension was something i was always so proud of, and here i am slogging away at a snail’s pace. And when i get frustrated i can always count on a voice or 2 to pipe up in there, which makes concentrating even more difficult.

So this is why i’m whining and wishing i was normal. It goes much deeper and darker than that though. It starts with the once-star-reader-turned-plodding-toiler and ends with oh-for-pity’s-sake-i’m-almost-50-and-i’m-barely-functional.

You thought this was gonna be a bombastic tirade on how you non-crazies have it so good, didn’tcha?

Nah. I’m just PO’ed because all i want is to read my dang story. *sigh*

Who you lookin’ for
What was his name
you can prob’ly find him
at the football game
it’s a small town
you know what i mean
it’s a small town, son
and we all support the team
~James McMurtry

Y’all have yourself as good a day as you can.

Love and Peace,
~H~

Posted on by histrionicabutterfly

Rubber, Meet Road

Hello,

I’m not doing very well today and i’m not sure what to say about that. There are terrible and private things going on in my life that i’ve no one to talk to about. I have a therapist, but money is very tight, and we can only afford for one person to be seeing her right now and that person is not me.

I have no close friendships and i’ve suspended my social media. I’m so dissociative right now that i don’t feel like i have enough self-control to be on there. Everything everyone says either frightens, angers, or hurts me. These things that i want someone to talk to about involve the only people i have to talk to…

I don’t know what to do. All i have is this little piece of cyberspace and i don’t know what inside me is currently fit to print.

I do NOT like crying and i can feel my throat tensing up. I’ve got that terrible, painful ache that lives in the space behind the bottom of my sternum. That ache that spreads behind my breastplate, reaching up to fill the gap between my shoulder blades. The headache i’ve had for weeks is now at full throb and my sinuses are swollen and painful. And there’s a piano on my chest playing anxious music that sounds like something from a 60s British horror film.

Okay, i just took an hour’s break from this.

I’ll confess that i’ve been so low that i let my personal hygeine slip last night and this morning. Hey, i wasn’t dirty or smelly okay? Just slow, heavy, tired… sad. But y’all can read other blog posts that refer to the importance of regularity and regimen in my life, and particularly in this area. Clean house, clean person. I have set these routines in place when i was in a better frame of mind, to help get me through the times when i wasn’t quite myself.

So i thought, “Well, that will be a positive thing i can put in my blog, which will be better than going full Eeyore.”

Never go full Eeyore.

So i got up and stripped off my pajamas that i’d been in all day, and i dragged my unwashed arse into the shower. After that i did my skincare and took proper care of my teeth. I even flossed and gargled. Heck, i also lotioned and spritzed and put on a clean outfit.
In part, so i could come here and report that i’d done it.
I’d set that in place, too. So yay me.  /ns (not sarcastic)

Honestly, i didn’t feel much better. A little better, but still so low.
I had defeating thoughts. Like, “It didn’t help. Nothing’s gonna help,” and “I’m not gonna get through this without screwing up.”

Anyone who deals with this sort of self talk may be able to relate when i share that i almost bought in to those thoughts. I mean, that’s what has usually happened, right? I feel this way and i can’t get out from under it. So there’s this feeling of inevitability. And then there’s the lack of energy or fighting spirit. These feelings use up so much energy. I spend most of my will coping, with not much left with which to fight. None left to fight, it seems to my exhausted mind.

But i think about what could happen if i give in and stop trying/fighting:

– police involvement,
– involuntary commitment,
– suicidal feelings/attempts,
– pain and suffering for my loved ones,
– loss of my “streak” and at least some modicum of starting over.

So i tried to focus on getting supper ready.
My worldview shrank to very small chunks of time. Minutes.

Hang in there until my husband gets home.
Put finishing touches on pot roast.
Set table.
Distract myself with an engrossing program.

I made it until he got home. I’d shared with him by text that i’d lost a large part of the day and was not doing well mentally/emotionally.
He was gentle and kind and asked concerned questions when he got home.
He provided a buffer between me and a somewhat contentious teenager (hey, it happens, and he doesn’t know how awful my day has been).
They enjoyed the meal and said so.

After supper my husband hugs me and says how sorry he is about my day.
He asks if there’s anything he can do to help.
I say he’s already helped some, and i thank him. He works 12hrs a day, 6 days/wk, and so i keep supper late, and he sits down to eat before he showers, so that we can eat together as a family, before our son retires to his room.
While he’s showering i’m sitting right here and staring at this screen, trying to think of what to type. I want to be both honest and uplifting.

And that is when i realise that i can be.

You know what?
I’m in trouble. My mental health has been threatened by a terrible event and things could go very badly for me.
I have done all this hard work because, not only do i want to be happy and good, but i know that my mental illness can be a serious impediment to achieving those things. Especially when life happens. Which it does and it always will.

So i am sitting here with my fingers poised over my keyboard – waiting for something inspiring and poetic and deep and true to zing into existence inside my brain and zap my fingers into a rhythmic ratatat-tat on these blasted keys.

Last night my busy, busy, anxious AF brain wouldn’t let me sleep, so i made 4 1/2 dozen refrigerator cookies. Chocolate Haystacks, a childhood favourite.

Today i realised that i’d lost time and i texted my husband and told him i was in a bad place.

I knew things could go badly and i knew i didn’t want them to and i knew that it’s up to me to cope.
I reminded myself that my brain works in weird and fantastical ways, and i may not handle things as well as i -or anyone else for that matter- might like.

Today, i made a labour-intensive, slowcooker pot roast, while switched.

I have made it through the day without going full Eeyore.

While i am not currently suicidal, i can feel it, looming in the background like dark wings ready to fly. Whatever comes i feel even more committed and competent to handle it than i did yesterday. And that is a reasonable expectation realised.

This piece may have a metric fuck-tonne of mistakes in it, but i think i should post it without proofreading. That’s something i never do, but i don’t want to overthink this and end up not posting because it’s so raw and lacking any flowery accoutrement. I admit i checked my spelling of the fancy French word. Heh.

Love and Peace and THANK YOU,

~H~