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Alone

Is this a poem?

I’m alone every day
Smiling at everyone
They can’t know
And that’s all i know

Is this a poem?

I make friends
These are my friends — i made them
You can’t see them
They’re only for me

Is this a poem?

You look at my face
You hear my voice and you think you know me
I’m a Russian doll, friend
You don’t know a thing

Is this a poem?

I can’t write for shit
You’re reading how i talk
Every day all day
To people on the internet

Is this a poem?

It most certainly is not
I tap it out all the same
I live my best life
Regurgitating every thought

This is not poetry

~ Mine, August 24, 2020

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I Remember

I remember

your face filling every space in my eyes
no room for anything else
Nowt but you

I remember

your voice flooding into my ears
like a cheap cotton swab
What’d you say

I remember

your touch on every inch of my skin
oily and unctuous slick
Choking my pores

I remember

terrible days and terrifying nights with you
always bracing for the onslaught
violent and dreary

I remember

i’m stuck here in our memories together
still caught fast in your web
being consumed

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The Toll of Anguish

I was gone again for a while. I’m sorry. I wouldn’t leave if i could help it, but my stores are empty and i’m functioning on will alone. And that has been worn thin. I know i write about the same things over and over. I intended that to a degree, but these days i’m balanced on the head of a pin, and my strength is nearly gone, and i must focus and push on however i can. My life is at stake, not to put too fine a point on it.

I nearly put the kibosh on it this week. The work was too much to begin with, and now to be in the thick of it during these times, well, if i believed in such things i would say the universe has the darkest and twistiest sense of humour of us all.
After crawling out of my cups, and getting a couple of days of perspective, i think i shall keep trying, after all. But i’ve got to kick up the honesty and the writing and the talkiness. I may be even less fun than i have been already. Heh.

I’ve got let it all in, stop trying so hard to control the flow.

So much has been rushing into me, all at once. I’m having pain, epiphanies, and painful epiphanies. It’s like i’m at the end of the river’s mouth. I’m constantly being filled and i can’t stop it, and it’s impossible to swallow it all. I’m being drowned and being cleansed.
And i try be put it poetically, to take the bite out of it.
And i try to put a positive spin on it as soon as i’m able.
And these things are not a lie.
But i’m not telling how awful it was, not really.
But i’m not telling the terrible price i paid to grow up with who i was born to.
But i’m not telling the darkness and loneliness that has been my lot for my life.
But most of all, i’m not telling about the toll of this constant anguish.

This reuniting of my body to my brain, to reconnect my thoughts, my emotions, and my physical sensations is not just the hardest, most exhausting work i’ve ever done.
It is the ugliest.
The worst part of it is i feel FILTHY. Every part of my body, every cell, feels coated with slime and evil. When i dissociated while being abused in my childhood, i literally disconnected from my thoughts, feelings, and my physical senses. From the atmosphere of the room: the smell, the smell of them and their sweat and putrid breath, the stink of their fear*, the oily, slick feel of the air itself, coating my skin. I don’t feel like i’m a filthy person, what i’m feeling is the filth that coated me as a child. Other people’s filth.
And now i’m willingly experiencing it.

It’s not like fully reliving it. I simply couldn’t, wouldn’t do that. It’s more like something one says they remember “like it happened yesterday”, only more intense. I’m not reliving my memories so much as i’m allowing/encouraging myself to connect with them. I am experiencing emotions and physical stuffs, but it isn’t like i’m back in a room with a certain man at a certain point in time. I’m not seeing my mother in my room, getting me prettied up for a “special weekend.” I’m remembering, and allowing the feelings to come, without dissociating. And they are coming. It seems like everything triggers a memory, for months upon months now.

I’m barely functional these days.
Some days all i can do is let my system cry as my husband holds me.
The only thing any of us can say is, It was bad. It was bad. It was sososo baaaad!
I need to let more of the tears out. I’ve been trying to control the flow out as well as the flow in, i suppose. I feel my system wants to do more than weep – they want to sob and wail and even scream.
I am deeply afraid of this, but i sense it must be done.

Today i am asking myself how long must this anguish last, and if i can truly affect it.
My husband is as tired as i am. My son is resigned. My friends are removed.
I’m currently fighting a mania, just to make it all extra.
Oh yeah, and then the world is going crazier than i am.
And that breaks me, too.

Today i’m hanging on by the proverbial thread, and deciding to keep working.
That may change in a heartbeat, but i can’t help that. This is all i have to work with.

Crawl into my ambulance, your pulse is getting weak
Reveal yourself all now to me, girl, while you’ve got the strength to speak
‘Cause they’re waiting for you at Bellevue with their oxygen masks
But I could give it all to you now, if only you could ask
And don’t call for your surgeon, even he says it’s too late
It’s not your lungs this time, it’s your heart that holds your fate
~ Bruce Springsteen, For You

*Yes, i say fear. Nearly all of them seemed afraid to me. The ones that weren’t were the worst, but none of them deserve to be on a spectrum.

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Dream Shifts

This post might only be for me, but i’m sharing it just in case. I’ll put it in a new category, labelled Dream Journal. It’s weird, but what’s new?

So, i guess i’m dream-journalling again:

Been struggling with insomnia, and when i can sleep, it’s either for 8, 10, 12hrs, which is uncharacteristic, or frustrated tossing about and cursing, punctuated by brief, unsatisfying dozes.

And always whatever sleep is filled with dreaming, and the days, with headaches. The headaches can be mild, like an ache in the base of my skull that spreads cloudy pain in a band around my forehead. An asteroid belt orbiting my brain. There are worse ones though, and they’ve been more frequent. The band tightens and makes my brain feel like it’s swelling inside my skull, there are screws of intensity at my temples. These days those are near-constant. I can feel my eyeballs, 2 hot stones that bounce around and make my sockets radiate ache.
Plus, my dreams are escalating.

After weeks of struggle, i’m thinking my dreams are telling me they have something to tell me. Maybe they’re trying to get my attention. Weird, not-my-usual sort of dreams have been happening. I’m remembering a lot more of them too, when for years, outside of maybe a dozen or so a year, they were like trying to grab wisps of smoke upon waking.

I spoke of my dreams just a few posts ago, in “Mindful Dreaming”, so this journal will only include mention of dreams or fragments of, that i’ve had since.

Dream #1:

– Husband and i are at the neighbours to pick up something i left the last time i was there. They are wealthy, hospitable people, and invite us to stay for a cool drink by their pool. Hubby obliges with the man of the house, poolside, and i proceed to the kitchen with the lady. She’s kind, petite, elegant, the epitome of gentility and graciousness. We speak as those who don’t know each other well, but like each other much. We bring a plate of snacks out to the men, whose number has grown to 3. I sit beside the one that’s mine, who’s got a 6-pack of beer at his feet, and is tucking into his second. Odd, because he rarely drinks, and when he does, it’s only a couple, enjoyed slowly.

I’m looking around at all the lovely things they have, so tastefully decorated and well-maintained. Then i’m talking to a few other women and we are no longer by the pool, we are in a gorgeous living room. It’s sunken, with deep pile white carpeting. There are banisters providing a broken border on 3 sides. One side provides entrance to a luxe dining area. There are tables laden with an incredible array of desserts, including what look like driftwood logs that have split open long ago and spilled their contents. But the logs are made of chocolate, and what spills out are dozens and dozens of the most delectable looking chocolates – a veritable chocolaterie. And there are exquisite tea cakes of every imagining, served on tiered plates made of fine china and gold. I make a note to GTF over there and get me some as soon as this person stops chattering at me.

One side of the room steps up and opens to a door leading to a hallway, which i know leads to other apartments like this one, although none of the rest have a pool, and this couple has the best apartment of all. (We don’t live there, we live in our own, much more humble home next door.) The door suddenly opens, and this guy comes in, looking like he just walked in from a retirement community in Florida. He’s very animated and blustery, and he emotes to the whole room about how he’s confessing that he’s the one who stole from Mister’s humidor. Further, he states that he’s not sorry, and proceeds to steal another box of cigars and runs back out, giggling gleefully. Mister laughs and says to the group of us, which has become more like a crowd, that he isn’t going to bother himself with that.
At which point, conversations and indulgences resume.

I then hear a voice coming from my right, and i cringe immediately because i know who it is. My mother is sitting in a chair above the sunken area, at one of the openings. I can’t remember exactly what she said, but i know it was bemoaning her life. I see she’s settling in to a speech: she sighs dramatically and stretches back. Her legs open, exposing her panties, and her gathered top comes undone, but she only pays it the barest attention. As she’s sighing deeply and fixing her soulful eyes on us, she makes a half-assed attempt to hold it up with her hand, but it falls open on one side, exposing her breast.
I said something like, This didn’t last long, and get up and head over to “handle” her. I’m burning with embarrassment.

Suddenly Missus gets my attention and hands me a beautiful piece of clothing. Taking it from her and turning it about in my hands i see it’s old fashioned type knickers, but the kind we wore in the 80s, that have a frilly sleeveless top attached. These aren’t ridiculous though, they’re perfectly stitched, frothy perfection. She tells me they’re a bit big for her and she thought that i might like them. I chuckle at her and say, A bit? and Thank you! Then she hands me a piece my own lingerie that i recognise immediately. I wondered aloud how the heck she found them, but that got lost as she handed me more lingerie, all in a rosegold satin pouch. I thought it contained one thing, but it was a complete matching outfit. Tasteful, well made, and obviously expensive. Then i saw there was another one, and another. Every time i finished looking at one, there would be another underneath it. They were all as exquisite and detailed as everything else, and i still remember many, incredibly minute details, which is odd for a dream, i think. I mark as of this writing, that while every outfit i saw was of a different colour: white, cream, gold and black, only one mostly white set, had any red, and that was merely a few stripes along with some black ones. There was nothing aggressively sexual – it was more like the wedding trousseau of a lady of some means.
I also mark that everything was a very average size, and i wasn’t worried about any of it fitting me, which has been the case for most of my life – whether asleep or awake.

I’m holding them up for the assemblage, and a beautiful woman who’s standing over a sofa filled with other ladies and talking animatedly with them, oohs and ahs, and comes for a closer look. It’s Reese Witherspoon, and she’s a dear friend of the lady of the house, and a minor one of mine.

I wake up.

Comments, Thoughts, Meanderings, Ponderings*:

– There is a quality in many of my dreams that particularly stands out in this one. I often have a tonne of backstory with both the people in interact with, and the places i go. I don’t know if it’s like that with other people, as i’ve never asked. In fact, i don’t think i’ve told anyone this before. There are long histories that are very clear and intricate, and well-known to me while dreaming, that mostly fade upon waking. Lately though, i’m starting to remember them, as i have here, although not quite as intense.

For instance, there are 2 trailer parks i’ve visited repeatedly: 1 is my own childhood home, but the other is an old, rundown, and vaguely sinister one with only a few, set far apart, with large, equally unkempt bits of land, where once were kept chickens, maybe rabbits, definitely sad, old dogs on chains in the hot sun. I’ve been there countless times, but never in my waking life.
Thankfully.
I don’t care to visit my childhood one at all, either.
Brains, huh?

– I think it’s obvious all the clothing is significant.

For one, the fact that i don’t fret about my size or the size of the clothes, which are obviously NOT plus-size, speaks volumes to me. It confirms that my image of myself IS changing. The last time i lost a lot of weight, i couldn’t see it. I still had what i now refer to as “fat eyes”. It’s like how i see other friends looking at pictures of themselves from years ago and saying God, i thought i was so fat back then, but i sure wish i was that weight now. Poor self-image, coupled with eating, food, and body/sex issues, made sure i basically couldn’t see myself realistically.
Screw lousy parents, and screw mean girls and bully boys, too.
Just sayin’.

For another, i think it’s significant that everything is tasteful and demure (as far as lingerie goes, heh) and beautifully made, and very expensive. Except the panties of mine that she found. They were more bold, say? Some might say bawdy. This lovely, sweet and elegant lady that everyone liked, was giving me something of hers, and then an incredibly generous gift of so much more. As i stated some time back in my piece about my husband’s and my relationship regarding intimacy (it wasn’t a big TMI, it was more vague references and euphemisms, also heh), we have stripped ourselves back to our beginnings, to figure out what we like/want, and don’t like/want; that includes as sexual beings. I won’t get too personal here, except to say i’m experiencing myself in a way expressed by those pretty, frilly, softly coloured, luxurious items.
I think it speaks both to who i am, and what i’m worth.

– Next, what about the barging in, rude dude?

About this, i have no clear inclination. I’ll have to marinate in all the questions i have for a bit. It’s like no one was put out by his loudness, or brashness, or confession, or his continued inappropriate behaviour. Well now, writing that out certainly gave me some ideas.
That’s why i’m doing this.
Is it me, and that no one minds my mental illness, my strange ways of behaving, my quirks and oddities?
I’m also reminded now that no one reacted to my mother at all.

– Let me tell you about my mother.

Just kidding. I’ve probably shared way too much for anyone’s level of comfortability or interest about my mother, but her appearance in this dream is significant, regardless.
It’s one of her rare appearances where she’s not the size she was when she died, around 500lbs. She was more of her size when i was 6 or 7, i’d guess around 170 or 180 (for 5’8″), which is not much over, in my opinion. She was younger and still had her looks. She was a pretty woman, before what was inside her began rotting her outsides.

She was removed from the rest of us.
She was above us.
She didn’t look at me or address me directly.

I was embarrassed, yes, but it wasn’t like in my childhood. The feeling i had was more like how one might feel when a sick relative who can’t help themselves does something. Like when i’ve been in full mania, walked up to random people, and asked them to score drugs for me. I wasn’t angry, either. She usually pisses me right off in my dreams of late – and i tell her so, which has been therapeutic as heck. But no, i was more resigned to the fact that my afternoon fun was over because i had to get her out of there and take care of her.
Weird.
Weirder still, but easier for me to ken, was the interference of the lady of the house.

Does the first mean that my rage and pain are finally dulling some? I mean, they have faded over years of therapy, but this new work i’m doing has brought the feelings back. It can feel fresh and intense at times. Am i letting go of things? Is my brain doing that, or my body, or both? And if it’s both, is it because i AM mending the connection between them? Something to ponder.

And further, who is the lady of the house?
That will require some time and more writing still, methinks.

Every single night
I endure the flight
Of little wings of white-flamed
Butterflies in my brain
… every single night’s alight with my brain
~ Fiona Apple, Every Single Night

*I’ve titled that as i did, because it’s what my therapist, the wonderful Ms T, asks me at the end of every session. Seems apropos.

 

 

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To Be a Real Girl

WARNING: This piece contains discussion of suicidal ideation and a description of an attempt. However, this is a positive piece and i am not currently suicidal, nor am i experiencing ideations.

**********

More on Tuesday’s therapy sesh with the lovely and talented Ms T.
I shared with her that i’d fallen so low that i was experiencing some serious suicidal ideation, and i was deeply disappointed in myself for it. I haven’t dealt with those thoughts and feelings in any serious way for a solid number of years. Sure, there had been some brief moments, sometimes intense, but i saw them for what they were as they were happening. They held no power over me. I could see that they were a direct response to something i was going through at the time, or something that had triggered me. I knew how to weather it, and that it would likely pass quickly. It always did.

This time the thoughts and feelings persisted. It’s been a shadow in my head casting a pall over my heart. I’ve been thinking that my loved ones would be better off without me. That i take up too much space and use up too much of their time and energy. I’ve been feeling unworthy of their love and support and concern. I see how much of our family business is in fact, my business. When i’m manic, or my system is in a panic, i stir everyone up. When i’m depressed and drowning in sadness and remembered pain, i clutch at them to save me, but it seems like i just pull them down with me.
I used to be angry about that – thinking it was because as the keeper of the home and hearth, i set the tone. I would think, Dammit! Stay out of my process, you make me feel guilty for being where i’m at – go be where YOU’RE at. This spot here is mine and these feelings are mine and just… Just stop copying me!
(That’s my Littles talking there; i’m not generally that immature. Heh.)

Now i see it differently. I see my responsibility in it –i did before, too– but it’s got a sour taste to it. Before, the conclusion i came to was that it was only natural, that as the carer and nurturer of the family unit, i would set the tone for the household. It made perfect sense that my other family members would feel low when i was down, would be brittle when i was anxious, warm and smiley when i was happy, snarky and snappish when i was angry. We love each other and we’re deeply connected. I’m the life-bringer, the nourishment provider, the space-maintainer. It is only the way it could be, considering the way our family is structured. That perspective felt right and good. But the way i see it now was working through me like slow poison.

I see how i’m hurting the people i love most and it’s dragging me down into an abyss. And i’m currently fighting a mania. One might think there is no darkness in mania, but oh, there can be for me. When i’ve gone dark during a mania i’ve displayed the riskiest behaviours, put myself in the most danger. I’m like a hurricane at night. It’s a terrible place, where some of my parts are swallowed whole, and the automatic death puppets in me come out and begin eating everything in sight.
I’m disappointed in myself, sad and low, and that empty pit inside has opened back up. I tell her i’m ashamed that i’m at this place again, after all these years and all this work.

I’m reminded first that shame is my body’s signal that i’m wanting connection with another human. And it is so, as i learned from her a few months ago, anytime i’ve felt shame i’ve been able to easily trace it to that desire. I’ve been able to ask for connection from safe people, like my husband and children, and a friend or 2, and shame has disappeared as the connection is responded to and made.
But then she casually says that she’s not at all surprised that i’m struggling afresh with suicidal thoughts and feelings. I don’t understand, but i am paying close attention. And then she says, “This work you’re doing – you are giving the same attention and care to your body as you have to your brain, and the split off bits of you that live there.”

I almost lean into the phone. Yes. Tick, tick, tick…

“How do you think your body felt when all those terrible things were being done to it?”

I can hear my own sharp intake of breath. Yessss. CLICK.

I wanted to die. I felt so covered in filth i wished i could stop existing. I wished it so hard in fact, that i created a Land of the Dead inside my own brain, where i went and hid for the majority of my upbringing. When the worst of the abuse was finally over, one of the first things i did was take an overdose of the medication i took for epilepsy. When my Daddy was finally out of my life, and my mother moved to a little town where no one knew i’d once been for sale, i had some relief for the first time i could remember. I poked my head out from my safe graveyard, and i simply could not deal with any of it. My first impulse was to match my outside with my inside. To be dead. I remember swallowing dozens of those little white pills. I see myself like an automaton, hand to mouth, zombielike. Dead, but breathing. I was completely numb. I couldn’t feel my hands or my legs or my face, or anything else. The air around me was foggy and filled with invisible bees.
And then i see myself putting the glass in the sink, and the bottle back in the cupboard, and going to my room to read.

My mother had suspected i wasn’t taking my meds and had counted them the night before. She counted them again, not long after i’d taken them. She yelled at me while taking me to emergency, where they pumped my stomach and then filled me full of ipecac, just to be sure. It was the nicest thing she ever did for me, besides dying.*

I’ve been listening to my body for months and months now. The intention is to hear its story through physical sensations, and through that mend the broken connections between my brain and my body. The end goal is to be alive. To live my life conscious: thinking my thoughts and being aware of them in the moment, feeling my emotions and experiencing my physical sensations in real time, as they happen. I’ve always taken them all and stuffed them away in a box, to take them out and look upon them from a distance, disenchanted and uninvolved, completely divorced from any kinship, any simpatico.

It has been through thinking my thoughts and listening to the people that live in my brain that i’ve been able to begin to take my place as the head of my system and gather them all closer to me. To function as a more cohesive unit and bring some calm, quiet, and success to my day-to-day life.
It is now through experiencing my physical sensations that i hope to rejoin my body to my brain, and finally become a real, living girl!**

My body has been communicating some awful things to me. I’m reliving my abuse in a physical way. The things i became a multiple to escape, i’ve now invited back in to tell their stories. My jaw aches, my girl parts hurt, my legs twitch with the need to run, and so much more. But there’s yet more than i’ve felt and here it is now, and i see/feel so clearly. It’s sharp, this knowledge i have suddenly, my hands gripping the phone so tight it’s a wonder i didn’t push a wrong button and lose her. It makes my heart twinge in sympathy for myself –that poor child i was– all alone and in unbearable pain mentally, emotionally, physically.
My body wanted to die.

I don’t want to die today! I know and trust in the love and support of my husband and my sons. I believe them when they look deeply into me and tell me they understand, they love me and it’s all right. Shh, it’s okay. You’re doing great, you’ve come so far, you’re so much better.
This is my body telling me its story.
And suddenly i am free of it. I’m lighter, but not the floatiness of dissociation. It’s a burden that i’m laying down. I’ve unwound another ream of the bandages that have mummified me. I am being reborn, coming alive. Breathing out death and breathing in life, LIFE!

I tell Ms T of the revelation inside that her words have brought me. We share the wonder and beauty of the moment and then it’s time to end the call for another 2wks. Before she hangs up (i’m old, we used to hang up our phones, okay?) she tells me how proud she is of how hard i’ve worked and all i’ve accomplished. She reminds me that not a lot of people who’ve been through things like i’ve been through ever make it this far.
Without excuse or qualification i tell her Thank you.

And then she says, “For this next 2wks i’d like you to celebrate, really celebrate, what you’ve been able to do and how awesome you are.”

I barely rolled my eyes.

May Love and Peace Be Yours In Some Measure Today,
~H~

*Sorry for the brutality of that statement, but it is a true one.

**I use the word “girl” without any cutesiness – i am not being coy. I may be in my 50s and technically a woman, but on the inside i’m a girl who is only now on the cusp of adulthood. It’s an accurate description, to my mind.

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No Knot of No Note

I learned years ago, that if i wanted to avoid depression (or deeper depression), to absolutely not, under any circumstances, read old journals.
What happened –every dang time– was i’d be confronted with the same problems, the same situations repeating, the same emotions shared in the same words, the same pain bleeding all over the page, and the same whywhyWHYs… No answers, no resolution, no apparent movement forward. No progress, and so, no relief. It would fill me with a panicky sort of hopelessness – like a bird beating its wings against its cage. I was trapped and unable to break free. It solidified my belief that i was a failure, and invariably cranked the volume way up on all those ohsowelcome (/s) voices that sit in judgment inside my skull.

Some parts of my system are only conscious when they’re in the face (meaning, the one currently presenting, and in control of my body). I can feel them inside if i focus, but i don’t hear any commentary or thoughts that i’d identify as coming from them. Other parts, although many are capable of facetime, never do so. They seem to need/prefer to keep to the safety of my space-soup of thoughts. And some are so poorly developed that they lack any awareness or will to do anything other than the tiny, specific thing that they do, e.g. the one that just screams. When i first began actively dealing with the people that live in my brain, there were only a few parts that could be both in the face, and maintain their own sort of consciousness when they weren’t.

As i’ve grown in knowledge and competency (as the one in charge {hopefully}), that is changing. I see and experience, that as i heal, my Bits N’ Pieces are also; we are all morphing into something else. There are new voices (they aren’t new themselves, they merely didn’t participate in the chatter before), some voices have different tones, and the odd collection of folks and freaks feels different. And now, there are some voices i used to hear that i don’t hear at all anymore. It was the terror i felt at that which brought me back to therapy, after a hiatus of some years.
I didn’t know it was a hiatus, but my therapist sure did. Well, she hoped so, i suppose, but one of the things that makes her the best, is that she’s never tried to tell me how my life should look. I thought i was done – as fixed as i was gonna get. These last 2yrs have taught me that there’s so much more i want and am capable of achieving.

So yeah, i had a peekaboo at my old journal.

YIKES.

I debated including a sample, because it makes me cringe hard enough to crack a rib or two, but in for a penny, as they say…
Aaaand nope.
I noped it.
I slept on it, and in the morning it was clear to me that that would be self-destructive.
Also, i’ve seen enough, too. It’s locked down and shall remain so for the foreseeable future. There’s doing a forensic examination, and then there’s returning to sniff my own leavings.
Ew. No thank you.

While it was hard to read, the results have been very positive.
Not, Phew, i made it through that and didn’t die!
For the very first time, i looked back at old writings and saw with bold clarity, that i am absolutely, unequivocally, a healthier and happier person.

I’m no longer twisted up in various enraged and hyper-alarmed knots. I still feel that way sometimes, but i’ve untied the big ones, and have found mobility, and even some flexibility of movement. I no longer eke out a meager existence as a knot of no note. (Ooh, i think i’ve found my title!) I’ve only got a couple more of those tiny, tight suckers that require long and patient picking, before a bow is within my reach.
A BOW, for Maude’s sake!
I’m THIS close to being tied up in a bow!
Have i ever felt this upbeat on a Monday morning? Hell no. And i’m not even gassed up on espresso, merely an egg sammy and a cuppa tea.

I in no way regret my old journal entries, cringe-worthy though they may be. I started it innocuously, meaning all my friends were doing it. We were doing fun questionnaires and making random, silly observations about life, the universe and, you know… everythink. This is the music i’m listening to and this is my current mood and OMG, the last season of Angel is KILLING MEEEE!!
I had friends on the blogsite that used it for other, deeper things, though. Very thinky thoughts, tough feelings, and inner struggles. Since i was in and out of The Bin, struggling with mania, and looking for someone/anyone that could help me, i quickly fell in with them.

Except i took it to a whole. nutha. level.
As tends to be my way, especially while manic. Heh.

My blog became my therapist. And when i finally (and the angels sang Hallelujah!), finally found someone i could work with, my online journal became my dumping ground. My proving ground, too. I was dealing with the reality of being multiple for the first time, and working with someone who specialised in my unique brand of crazy. She came to my home, and to the hospital when necessary, and helped me look at my brain. She taught me to listen to what it was trying to tell me. I figured out that i needed to talk about what’d happened to me growing up. So i told my husband my story, and then Ms T would sit on my loveseat 10ft away from me (that was as close as she could get for a couple of years), and help me deal with the fallout. And i spilled a great deal of it with my small, tight circle of friends on the journalling platform i used.

It’s all so fucking frantic. I’m alternately furious and terrified – back then there was no angry and scared. Back then i was the embodiment of Histrionica. Emotions running amok. Memories, dreams, and are they memories or dreams, all vomited out onto the page/screen. Delivered with hot teenage angst, too. Like hiding-in-my-room-writing-bad-poetry angst.
I still write bad poetry. Heh.

The overarching and undergirding emotion that i see now though, is hurt. I didn’t write much about it, because the big 1-2 punch of the others took all my time and energy.
And i wasn’t ready or prepared to feel that much pain.
I’m glad and grateful that i didn’t, because i know, as much as one can know anything that didn’t happen, that it would likely have ended me. I’ve been preparing myself for it, sort of unbeknownst to myself, for nearly 15yrs now, and i’m barely keeping my head above water.

The pain has been like being gutted with a knife made of ice. My insides splash out of me, hot and bitterly pungent, my pain bursting from its integuments. I gather it all into my arms, and carefully place it all back in, stitching myself back together with knowledge and love… Only to gasp as the knife slices again. I’ve barely time to breathe between, and this has been my life for a year or more (it’s hard to track when i’m in the thick of it).

As i’m writing this, i’ve suddenly seen that i’ve returned a bit to that fear-stricken girl. I am being quite dramatic. Interesting. Not surprising and certainly understandable, but interesting. I’m getting both mercy and grace for me then – and now. This has been intense work, and its job is to connect me to all the parts of myself that have broken or split off over the years, while trying to survive the unsurvivable. I guess it’s working.
Yay?
I see my then-self as a daughter, of some stripe. She tried very hard. She did the work and pushed through with much wailing and gnashing of teeth. There was vitriol, but it was her due. She never got to be a child, or teenager – not really.
So what if my teenage years were in my late 30s to mid-40s?

If you ask me about the child part, i’ll tell you the truth of it:
In some ways, i’ve only now begun to NOT be a child.
I read those old posts, and armed with new knowledge about a human’s need for connection, and what happens to a child when that need isn’t met; i see a starving child in those words i typed over a decade ago.
I read those old posts, and buoyed by new experiences as a connected human, and how it feels to no longer be alone; i reach out to my then-self and gather her close to me.

I think she is mostly part of me now, and i’ll hold her tight until i’m done breathing.
And i’m not just Histrionica anymore.
I am HistrionicaButterfly.

Be as well and stay as safe as you can.
Love and Peace,
~H~

Posted on by histrionicabutterfly

Wrung Out

I’m crying everyone’s tears
I have already paid for all
my future sins
There’s nothing anyone
can say to take this away
It’s just another day
and nothing’s any good
I’m the king of sorrow
~ King of Sorrow, Sade

I’m suddenly empty inside. Numb. I’m angry and sad and i want to crawl under the covers and eat/drink/drug myself into a coma. I want to be on the outside like i am on the inside. Empty, cavernous, echoing. There are tears on the inside, but they flow slowly down the sheer rockface of my organs and guts. Erosion too slow to be of any note. I remain hard and implacable here.

Whispers flutter up from the deep of me, like little birds that fly into the garage and can’t escape. The door is open, but their panic blinds them. The ceiling is not the sky and they flap around in the corners, their tiny fluffy chests heaving. When i try to help them, say gently shoo them with a broom, it only gets worse. I’ve learned to leave them be, and they’ll eventually make their way out on their own.

I wonder if that’s the answer for the ones caught inside me. I try to focus in on them. I try to find mercy inside me, or grace, but all i can muster is a detached kind of concern. It’s like when an ambulance races by on the highway – i hope the people involved will be okay, but i don’t know them and can’t help them, so that’s as far as i go with it. My casual wishing fades with the sound of the siren.
This is not dissociation – this is emotional flatness.
This isn’t me in any of my iterations.

I am HistrionicaButterfly. Intense, dramatic, passionate. Full of thought and art and creation. I talk i make i hold i care i trytrytry. But i’m sitting here made of stone on the inside. I’ve become a damp cave, with little light and less warmth.

I’m looking at the entirety of my childhood, and i’m wrung out. All the emotions are still there –the various and varying levels of anger and sadness and pain– bits of beak and feather flapping about in a tizzy. I watch from a hard distance. I feel mostly meh, although i sense danger is close by.
I’m standing on ice, and if it cracks, i’ll plunge into the glacial waters of fear that flow through me. Rivers that have carved deeply into me. They rush over me and overflow my banks in their season.

I don’t know if i’m relieved or grateful or if i feel anything at all about it.
I’m dispassionate, and this is not me.
This is the work and i’m doing it.
I check in and stay in it and ask questions and address needs.
I use the tools i have and try new ones too.
I make small adjustments. I get quiet and listen some more.
And then i do more and other things. I give my body what it’s asking for, and i care for the broken off bits of me that bounce around in my head.

I try to stay anchored in the real world. I sleep, i eat, i shower, i cook and clean. I have mundane conversations with those who live here with me. I play mindless games and watch silly programs to distract me from the thing that is happening inside me. I’m turning into a zombie. I do what’s in front me; i keep moving forward. One shuffling foot in front of the other. Neither careless nor carefree. A Borg cut off from The Collective. I wander around inside my Cube with purpose, but minus something that once tethered me. What gravity have i lost?

What me is this, this colourless, tepid thing?

Keep flying for you
Keep flying I’m falling falling
And I’m falling falling
And I’m falling falling
I’ve given you all that I have
I show you how I want to live
How could I love you more
~ No Ordinary Love, Sade

Posted on by histrionicabutterfly

Toes In The Grass

The sadness i embrace is ever present
so very deep
It eeks from my bones and suffuses my flesh with its chill marrow
traveling the rivers of my body, bobbing along in my blood
Morose and resigned
stopping my heart over, and over again
I gasp in pain, wanting to run from it
to drown it in wine
I want to return to the Land of the Dead, where i’ve dwelt all my life
I’ve felt this sadness already, and the pain
But no
Not like this
That was all the voices crying out in my brain, wanting to be heard
to be seen, to be known
That was brain pain.

Now my body cries out from the acres of death where it dwells
No more to be a dead thing encased in living flesh
a golem from the past
I send out tendrils of warmth and light from the Upper Room
They float down the stairs and illuminate the spaces that were once flat blackness
a nice enough place
Needs a bit of work
The rooms are crumbling, although they’ve never been lived in
Like Chinese malls.

Too old to not yet have lived in this body
I was born in a riptide, barely keeping my head above the water
Mindlessly, mechanically,
moving my way through the rushing of the water
Fighting the current that never stopped
sucking at me
One day i grew strong
and broke free of my prison
Building a boat out of hope, i sailed the vast sea of my mind
I charted its waters until i grew bored
Letting the wind and the waves plot my course
I thought i’d found peace
But mystery beckoned me from the shores
The smell of the air promised fresh adventures
I jumped off the bow
and swam for the shore
Dolphin-slicing expertly through the currents.

I stand up on the beach and look round
The sand is not much warmer than the water
Perhaps the green i can see ahead is as warm as it looks
I walk slowly up towards it
When i crest the embankment i stop
My feet step into the grass
It’s warm, it’s wonderful, and i scrunch my toes into its
Toes
I have toes
I look down and see my feet
Feet!
—
And i gasp myself awake
Only not awake
Not dreaming
My window has crashed inward from the storm raging outside
I’ve been struck alive by a bolt of lightning
What was dead now lives
The tendrils of warm light coming down from the attic illuminate the first floor of my house
I’m sitting in an old chair that’s never entertained a guest
Life is pain, and i ache to find it so
I shudder with the power of the pain that fills me
The sobs that shake me
like water from a paintbrush
The light moves past me, fluttering and waving along
Curious to explore other rooms
Every step, every movement,
Every moment brings pain
But i follow
I follow the light.

Posted on by histrionicabutterfly · 4 Comments

Noping

I’ll be keeping this brief and kinda point form.

Adding back in structure didn’t work. My anxiety has me in a chokehold and i can’t stop this therapy. So i’m going to ground.

I’ve done it before, when things got so beyond my control i knew i had to cut my life back to bare minimum.

I can’t leave the house at this current time, like most of you, but i wouldn’t if i could.

Socialising, just my BFF, and even then, if it feels like too much to do anything more than the occasional text – she understands.

Zero news or social media.
We PVR everything and skip ALL commercials. I may have to cut out some of the darker fare that i usually enjoy watching. If it turns out it triggers anxiety, it’s getting noped.

I love cooking, but all the fancy stuff is getting noped. None of my typical careful concern for a balanced meal. I’ll be working with frozen and prepared foods as much as possible, and leftovers will be on the menu whenever there are any.

Personal hygiene is stripped to bare minimum.
Skincare will be a quick wipe and some cream (i have a near-Korean level regime).
Showering: when i stink, jump under the spray for 5mins with bar soap. Shaving is a nope. Exfoliating, nope.
Curly Curl Method is a hard nope. Regular shampoo/conditioner when needed.
All the extra lady things like mini-mani/pedis are also noped.

My new uniform will be comfy pajamas. No more stressing over what to wear and what looks cute and what style will i choose today and trying on item after item that turns my bedroom into a disaster area. Just… nope.

All notifications are turned off on my phone except for my husband, my 2 sons at home, and my therapist.

Housekeeping will be just enough so i don’t get triggered by the mess (my mother’s house was a pigsty).

Blogging will get done, but only when i feel like it, and only as much as i want to do. No shoulding myself to write out of some imagined obligation to my readers. I am going to focus on myself – 100%
The world will keep turning without me.
Other people can manage fine without my help.
I can’t change what’s happening, and frankly, i don’t want to know about it.
I simply cannot handle it.
I don’t need anyone to agree or even understand.
This is my life and i’m noping the fuck out of just about everyone and everything.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but it has become a matter of my survival.

I fell down a hole so hard and fast last week that it came close to ruining me.
No details, but know that i am okay.
A lot of my Facebook friends are regular readers, but i won’t be sharing my blog posts over there. If you’re subscribed, you’ll know. If you check in on the regular, you’ll know.

I have turned my eye inward to the point where i have no room for anything else.
And for the first time in my life, i feel no guilt or shame about it – at all.

This is my birthday present to me.
Happy birfday, H.

Had a (phone) sesh with my therapist today.
Maybe i’ll write about that next
… Or maybe i won’t. *wink*

Posted on by histrionicabutterfly

Low

Today i’m low
Oh, i’m so low
I can pretend i’m not, but can i not pretend?
Dear Ms. Therapist, i am trying
I thought i had it rough, but now i know i didn’t – not really
My brain can do this amazing thing where it takes me out of the shit and fills my face with someone else
I float
I float up here and watch some actressrobotclone do me for the masses
If it’s too much to watch, the door in my belly bids me come
It locks onto me like a tractor beam and pulls me in and slams behind me
I am nothingness
Was it all that bad if i wasn’t even there for it?
I inch my way slowly past the beckoning door, pressed flat against the far wall
I take the stairs down into my guts
It reeks down here. Like the smell of their fear that i could never scrub off me
Afraid of a little girl
The air tastes like salt and metal, like his hands when he pressed them over my nose and mouth
Shh, be quiet, shut up, stop fighting me!
Why do i have to come down here with these old ghosts?
I cleverly escaped their filthy clutches – why should i return?
They paw at me, and they stink
I don’t need anything down here
I look up and see my heart, beating blackly, shivering with pain
Reaching up, i place my hand firmly on it, the muscle quivers like a horse’s flank after a race
I pet my poor heart until it slows
It stops twitching and warms beneath my fingers
Stop running Dear One, i whisper
The race is done
We won a long time ago
I’m going back up the stairs now
Still tired and low, and this didn’t change me
There’s a light at the top that bids me come
Going carefully up over slime covered stone
I look down and say I’ll be back and that’s funny
The bilge water needs to be pumped out
My shoes are soaked and my feet, ice
I’ll bring salt when next i come, to dry up the fine, slick crust
I wave from the last step, and hope it doesn’t take me as long to clean the basement as it did the attic