Month: June 2016

When pain becomes your normal

~ KJ ~ 9 Comments

When you’ve been hurt repeatedly for so long, that hurt becomes normal, almost natural, to you.

Wake up, feel pain. Breathe air, feel pain.

You learn to anticipate it. You wake up every day as a child and know that you’re going to be hurt in some way; you just don’t know exactly how and when. But you find a sick sort of comfort in knowing that it’s coming. The familiarity with routine makes you feel more secure. You’re unsure of yourself, you’re unsure of the people around you, but you are sure you’re going to be hurt.

The hurt becomes so much your normal that when you go so long without it, you start to panic. They let me off easy today. Something isn’t right. It’s as if you’re hoping for that pain just to feel yourself again. And sure enough, the pain comes, and everything is back to normal.

Then you become desensitized. You get to a point where you become an expert at hiding the pain from the world. You smile and laugh to cover your crying. You wear clothes to cover the marks left behind. No evidence of pain. They can’t see it, so it must not be there.

But the pain has always been there, like a best friend that never leaves your side. It knows everything that goes on. It holds all of your secrets. You hold on to it, because you need it to survive. It’s the only constant in your life, the only stability in your unstable world. Pain becomes as much a part of your life as food and water.

Then your life changes. You finally get away from those who were causing you pain. You are free. But you can’t be  free from the pain. The emotional damage is still there, deeply rooted in your heart and soul, still killing you from the inside.

Pain has always been your normal. It has become a part of you so strongly that you need it to survive. So you become your own abuser. You find a sense of comfort and release in feeling normal again. You become so blinded with feeling the pain, that you don’t even realize what’s happening. You are perpetuating the cycle of your own abuse.

You can’t run away from yourself. Now you’ve become your own worst enemy.

Perfection

~ KJ ~ 3 Comments

Growing up, I had to choose between being hurt for being too good or being hurt for not being good enough. There was no in between; those were my only options. So I chose to be perfect. It probably helped that I was born with relatively high intelligence, which allowed me to succeed academically with very little, if any, effort.

But it still ended up hurting me. Being perfect was viewed as an insult in my family. Being perfect meant that I thought that I was better than them. How could I have the audacity to think I was better than anyone, especially them? It made my parents angry, and they took that anger out on me. I could never take pleasure in an achievement; it ended up resulting in more pain.

I held on to perfection like it were a life raft, saving me from drowning. It’s the only thing I had in my life that gave me any sense of worth. Other people would tell me how intelligent I was, how much potential I had, how much talent I possessed. I needed that because it gave my life meaning.

Unfortunately, my need for perfection has hindered me in the long run. If I am not perfect, I feel worthless. I cannot bask in many of my achievements if I know I could have done better. I hold myself to (at times) impossibly high standards.

This was exemplified recently when I took the GRE. I told my therapist the unofficial raw scores I received, completely lacking any enthusiasm about them. I was such a mess when I took the exam that I knew, in my belief, that I had done poorly. My tremendous headache (self-induced) and lack of sleep just ruined everything for me.

“I know students that would be thrilled to have GRE scores anywhere close to yours.”

“But they’re not good enough.”

“You can get in to any school with scores like those.”

“But they’re not perfect.”

On some level, I knew my therapist was right. But I was so mad at myself because I didn’t get that perfect score. I could have slept longer. I could have not gone crazy and banged my head the day before. I could have eaten breakfast. I could have done better than I did. I need to be perfect or I’m not good enough.

So when any other person would be ecstatic with those scores, I could not take any kind of pleasure in what was, in reality, a considerable achievement. I talked about it as if I were talking about cloudy weather.

I also think my previous graduate school experience has hampered my academic outlook in general. I can no longer get excited about anything because no matter what I did before, I ended up not being good enough for the program. If I don’t get excited, I won’t be as hurt in the end when it doesn’t work out. It’s a twisted form of self-protection.

As a child, I held on to hope that perfection would save me. It never did. So why do I still need it in order to feel like I’m worth something?

Polyfragmented

~ KJ ~ 13 Comments

I have been avoiding my DID again. Sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously. In therapy, the topic has barely been brought up because I always have so many issues going on, that managing my DID drops down on the priority list.

I think that it is clear, given the events of the last few weeks, that DID is a problem, and a problem that isn’t going away.

My therapist used a metaphor of a daycare to explain what was going on inside. There are some daycare centers that are clean, organized, running on a schedule, and everyone knows what to do. Then there are daycare centers that are a mess, with no planning in place, children running around screaming, and poop on the walls (I contributed to that part).

My system is like that second daycare. There’s no order, just chaos. My parts are running around, confused and out of control. The caretakers have left the building. It’s a mess. My system is a mess. But it doesn’t have to be, and I know that. I am just so incredibly exhausted from life that I don’t have any energy left to work on myself.

My therapist asked about my long-term goals, if I wanted integration or to live as a multiple. The choice was completely up to me, and my therapist has worked with people successfully on both sides. I hadn’t really thought about it enough, because I still like to wake up and tell myself I don’t have DID, so then I won’t have to think about these things.

I just want to be normal, but I’m pretty sure that ship has sailed at this point.

At one point, my therapist asked me how many parts I thought I had. “Dozens, hundreds, thousands?”

My immediate (denial) reaction in my head was well, I don’t have any parts.

I found myself say out loud, “hundreds…”, but not as an answer. I was surprised that hundreds was even an option. Why does this woman think I have parts at all?

Before I could finish my thought statement, my therapist confirmed, “Hundreds? Okay.”

She said it like she wasn’t surprised at all that I would have hundreds of parts. She confirmed it like it was a normal, expected answer.

I quickly jumped on the defensive. “No, no, I don’t have hundreds of parts. I’m not polyfragmented. I’m not that bad.” Polyfragmented DID results from prolonged, systematic, severe trauma. I didn’t go through that. My life wasn’t that bad. I don’t have any parts. I am not broken. Having that many parts means you are just that much more broken. I’m okay.

I can’t help but wonder why my therapist was so quick to accept my statement as reality. Does she think I am so broken? Does she know more than I do?

I don’t want to be fragmented. I want to be whole.

The return home, Part 3

~ KJ ~ 4 Comments

I think my head-banging and a large iced coffee may have ended up saving my life.

By the time I got on the train, my headache was excruciating. I just sat there the whole time, looking at the seat ahead of me. I couldn’t read. I couldn’t listen to music. I couldn’t think of any of the ways I could have fucked myself up by knocking on my mother’s door. I couldn’t do anything.

By the time I arrived and my friend picked me up, I was exhausted. I took a pill, which helped a little bit with the pain in my head, but it was still very much there. I decided to pick up some food and just stay in while my friend went out for a few hours. I was still processing my emotions from earlier in the day. I wrote for a little, trying to get out some of my feelings. Then I just laid on the couch and stared at the ceiling, in some sort of numb state.

Despite my exhaustion, I couldn’t sleep well. I ended up passing out after midnight and waking up some time after 3 AM, unable to fall back to sleep. The massive headache was still there. In a few hours, we were out the door and on the way to the test site so I could take my GRE, which ended up being a disaster. I was running on no breakfast, very little sleep, and a massive headache. I think I read each question three or four times and I still didn’t understand half the shit that was being asked. I sat there for four hours completely mentally dead. I couldn’t even answer all of the questions in time. I’m not even sure I really cared.

I walked to a coffee shop to wait for my friend to get out of work and pick me up. I ordered a large iced coffee, because I knew I had to kill a lot of time waiting. I watched dozens of people walk in and out. I saw teenagers come in, by themselves, and walk out, by themselves. Then I thought about how I never had that freedom before. Here I was, sitting by myself, in a coffee shop, completely free to do whatever I wanted to do. There was no one with me. There was no one outside waiting in the car, watching every thing that I did. I was free.

After a couple of hours, my friend picked me up. As he was driving, we passed by the place where I used to live. I froze for a minute, and then I started to cry. There was my prison. The place I spent more than 29 years of my life, 29+ years of pain and hurt. If I were living there, I wouldn’t have been able to enjoy that iced coffee I just drank two hours before, alone, with no one watching over me. I wouldn’t have been free.

So while I made the return to my home city of origin, that ended up being the closest I got to that place that was once called home. In that moment, I realized I couldn’t give up the freedom I finally had. While I may at one point need to return to that same city, I could never return to that building. I would be much better without a home at all, then back in the prison my parents believed home should be.

The return home, Part 2

~ KJ ~ 4 Comments

My therapist knew exactly where I was in my mind. She knew I had reached the point of hopelessness. She also knew the danger that returning to my home of origin would put me in, a danger that I could not see because my mind was so focused on giving up.

My therapist talked about other options. She realized that half my battle was financial, something I had been not-so-upfront with in the past. That is when she brought up going on disability. I’ve never been on any type of government assistance, because I feared it would mean I was a leech like my parents, constantly depending on others to get by. Also, with SSDI, that would make my diagnoses real, and part of me still lives on in denial.

I promised my therapist I would look into it, even though I really didn’t want to go that route. I told her it wouldn’t matter anyway, because it takes months to process, and that is even if I am approved, which is unlikely the first time around. Then my therapist brought up cutting our sessions down to once a week to save money, and I started to panic. I can barely handle myself right now; I cannot imagine going to therapy just once a week.

Then she brought up seeing another therapist, one that is covered by my insurance. That was even more horrifying than cutting therapy down to once a week. I’ve been in an out of therapy for 15 years, and the last few years were some of the worst because Medicaid makes it near impossible to find competent mental health treatment. I was not about to go through all of that again. I might as well just treat myself.

Then reality hit again. “Ethically, I can’t continue to take your money and treat you, knowing that you may end up homeless.”

I sort of knew this already, but I didn’t want to accept it. The main reason I moved to this particular area was because I needed help, and I knew I could get it from her. I started therapy within a week of moving here, before I even got a job. Therapy was, and has been, my priority. And now I felt like I was losing that, too.

I didn’t want to think about it then. I had to get myself back on track. I needed to remember why I was traveling, that I was going to take an exam that was going to better our lives.

I went home after therapy and started packing my bags. I had a list written out of everything I needed. I obsessively checked and re-checked everything. By the time I was done, I was so exhausted that I just went to bed, but I didn’t sleep much because my mind was still racing with anxiety.

I got up at my usual 4:30 time, took a shower, packed my last-minute things, and went to work. I was hoping for a rather uneventful morning, but that proved to be false hope. Instead, I got another realization that some of the people and things I held hope in were no good. The thought of going back home to my parents reemerged in my mind. I reached hopelessness again.

I tried to fight back, but at that point everything was chaos. I wanted to quit my job and never come back. What was the point anymore? No family, no more therapy, no money, no life. The life I was building here was fading away fast. I didn’t know what I was going to do.

Part of me was afraid to make the trip at all, knowing that I was risking throwing myself into the lion’s den. Part of me had given up entirely. And another part of me knew we needed to take this test, and there was no other way to get there.

With Courage and Superbear right alongside me, I went to the train station after work and caught the train back to my home of origin, still struggling through the mush of possibilities in my mind.

 

The return home, Part 1

~ KJ ~ 1 Comment

Last Friday, I took a train back to the  city I fled 11 months ago.

I didn’t have much of a choice. The graduate schools I am applying to require the GRE for admission – I had never taken it before because it wasn’t required for my first graduate school. The application deadlines are fast approaching (and in one case, very much past) and I needed to take the exam as soon as possible. I tried registering online, only to find out that almost every test location was either closed down, or did not have any available test dates for the next three months. The only option left just happened to be the farthest from my current location, and the closest to my home of origin.

Scrambling, I tried to figure out a way I could even get there. I asked an old friend, out of desperation, if he could take me. He agreed. Because of timing (the test appointment was at 8:00 AM Saturday morning) and distance (an additional 30+ minutes of travel), I had to take the train the day before and stay overnight. It definitely caused some panic.

I was worried about my arrival, because I would be stopping in the center of the city, where all of the buses pass through. Many of my former coworkers travel by bus, and a few of them live in the area. I was worried about someone seeing me and alerting  my mother. But during my therapy session last Monday, my therapist reassured me that the likelihood that someone would recognize me was low. My hair was completely different, and I had lost a significant amount of weight. She encouraged me to work out a plan so I would be out in the open as little as possible. I felt a little better, and less panicked.

And then my week went to shit. Tuesday, I withdrew from graduate school and essentially lost my dream of being a counselor. I was denied for a personal loan, one that I needed in order to get through the summer until I started a new graduate school in the Fall. I had a realization that the people I thought I could depend on were not dependable at all; actually, they ended up hurting me more. I wanted just to go to sleep to avoid the pain, but even that ended up impossible because I was startled awake by nonsense going on close by.

So I spent Tuesday night into Wednesday morning crying. I felt my life crumbling around me. At that point, I decided I should just go home for good. I’m losing everything in the life I was building here, so what else could I do? I decided. Friday, we were going home, and we weren’t coming back.

I walked to work early and sat outside, crying. I felt lost. I was also exhausted, and crying only magnified that exhaustion. I couldn’t deal with the emotional pain combined with the physical pain I am still in, and I ended up leaving work early. Then, cue my emotional break and dissociative chaos I wrote about here.

Somehow I managed to get myself to therapy on Thursday, though I will admit I am not even sure if it was all me. I was a mess. I tried (and failed) to hold it together.

My therapist and I went over what happened in the days leading up to session. I told her how I ended up the closet, which is something that has happened quite a few times before. I reluctantly told her about my plan to return home. I knew it could go one of two ways. My mother would take me in and help me, and I’d have a home and family again. Or she would kill me. That’s what I really wanted. I wanted to go home so my mother would kill me, and I wouldn’t have to worry about doing it myself.

I reached the point of dire hopelessness. There was nothing else left to lose.

Family

~ KJ ~ 11 Comments

I was waiting outside at the bus stop earlier today when I saw my cousin walk by. My gut reaction was to scream out and run to her. Hey! Remember me? I’m your family!  But then I remembered her direct connection to my mother, and I started to panic and hide away.

I’m not even sure why I felt the need to hide. My cousin hasn’t seen me since I was a child, at least 15 years ago. She hasn’t changed much at all; I, on the other hand, look nothing like I did as a child. My eyes are the same, but that’s about it. She would have never recognized me. I probably would have scared her, shouting her name across the parking lot. I was a stranger to her.

As I sat there, processing the hurricane of emotions I just had in that short moment, the realization started to sink in again. I have no family. I felt the emptiness in my heart, and I started to cry. At the bus stop. With people around. Great.

I know that disconnecting from my family was the safest thing I could have ever done. I ran away from my parents, and in doing that, I also ran away from the rest of my family. I can’t risk my life connecting with anyone who is still connecting with my mother. As badly as I want to feel that family connection, I have to realize and absorb that is no longer possible.

What little family I did have left, I have had to disconnect from. Even though they were technically safe and disconnected from my mother, they were not emotionally safe for me. After enough repeated heartbreak and longing for love and support that was just met with frustration and hurt, I had to cut them away.

Now, I literally have no family. I am still grieving that loss. The wound is still fresh. It’s so hard, because no matter how many friends I have, they are not my family. I need family. I’m not sure what’s so wrong with me that I could never get that.

Now I’m like him

~ KJ ~ 2 Comments

As I’m dealing with this throbbing headache (caused by my own doing), I keep wondering how my brother felt after his “incident”.

About 15 or so years ago, my brother had what I consider to be an emotional breakdown. He locked himself in the bathroom, crying uncontrollably and bashing his head against the wall for what seemed like hours.

I remember sitting in the living room, and for the first time, really seeing and understanding the pain my brother was in. The pain he could never verbalize, because he was never very good at verbalizing much anyway. The pain we were never allowed to show the world.

I was used to the pain. But up until that point, I assumed my brother just handled our torture in a different way. He never seemed bothered by it, at least not in very outward ways that I could recognize (keep in mind, I was just a young teenager at the time). But here he was, in very obvious pain.

Once he came out of the bathroom, bruised and bloody, life just continued as if the entire incident never happened. Move along now, nothing to see here. Looking back at it now, I see how fucking bizarre it was. Your son just locked himself up in the bathroom and gave himself significant head injuries and a concussion, and you go back to watching television and getting ready for dinner, like it was just a normal day.

I wish I knew how they explained the very obvious injuries to my brother’s face. I’m sure, whatever it was, it wasn’t the truth. That would tarnish my mother’s “mother-of-the-year” image. But how did no one wonder what the fuck was going on?

Of course now, I feel like I channeled that same pain when I continually banged my head yesterday. The only difference was that I chose the table instead of the wall, and I didn’t do it hard enough to bleed. The emotion behind it was surely the same. 

And now I’m telling myself that I’m just like him. Can’t say out loud what’s going on, so just bang the noise away. 

What a fucked up family.

11 months

~ KJ ~ 4 Comments

I’m not even sure if it is a good idea to write. My mind is all over the place. My heart is all over the place. Everything around me seems to be falling apart, and I am there, falling apart myself.

My head hurts. I couldn’t figure out why it hurt so bad this afternoon. Then, upon touching my forehead and a reminder from my coworker, I remembered I had banged my head against the table repeatedly just an hour or two before. It is still hurting. Thankfully it is not as swollen now as it was before, but I still have a noticeable mark. The mark of despair.

Today, 11 months to the day since I ran away from home, and feel the world falling apart around me.

I used to say it’s been so many months of freedom, but I don’t know if I can really call this freedom.  It doesn’t feel like freedom. I’m forever trapped in my own mind. I’m trapped in the past. I feel so damaged, damaged to the point that I will probably never be free.

My therapist suggested that I consider applying for SSDI. I don’t want to be disabled. I want to be abled. But the reality is that I can’t keep going on like this. I can’t handle working another job. I tried that and ended up having an emotional breakdown.

I’ve run down my savings trying to support myself and pay for therapy. Now that I don’t have financial aid to help me, I’m out of options until I start college again in the Fall. I have to consider stopping therapy, which is a terrifying thought. I have to realize that in the next couple of months, I may lose everything. Even if I get the SSDI, it won’t be approved in time – the process takes months.

I’ve lost a lot of support. I am having to cut ties with people I don’t really want to, because they were connections to my old life that I still held on to. But I am realizing that those ties are not benefiting me at all. They are just causing more heartbreak.

I’ve lost my school. I’ve lost my family. I’ve lost my roots. I’m losing my new life here.

I’m losing my mind.

Welcome to the closet

~ KJ ~ 17 Comments

I woke up early this morning and found myself snuggled away in the closet, with blankets and a pillow.

I don’t remember a lot of yesterday night. I spent most of Tuesday night crying, which carried into Wednesday morning crying. That was followed by work and intermittent crying, followed by leaving work early and more crying.

Then I found myself wandering the streets crying in the rain. Rain is good for hiding crying, because everyone just assumes it’s the rain on your face. I mean, you can’t really tell tears from raindrops. So I just let it out and no one noticed a thing.

And then I found my way home, feeling completely broken. Took a shower to get rid of the chill in my bones, and ended up holding myself up against the wall of the shower, crying.

I managed to eat, despite feeling like absolute shit. And then I retreated to my room, where my thoughts were going to horrible places. 

I thought about going home. My place of origin home. I didn’t think things could get any worse, anyway. I didn’t see any options left. I wanted to go home because I secretly wished that my mother would kill me. It would be much easier that way. I wouldn’t have to do it myself. What else do I have left? Nothing.

Later on, I heard knocking at the door. I started to panic. I locked my bedroom door and pushed my punching bag over in back of it, barricading myself in. The fear that my mother had found me was overtaking me. Then I started to lose it. And then the next thing I know, I’m laying in the closet.

The closet is not a comfortable space for a 30 year-old. But my other parts aren’t 30 years old, so they don’t know that. They just believe it’s safe in there, or safer I should say. I don’t believe they or I will ever feel completely safe anywhere we go.

Now I’m dealing with absolute chaos on the inside. Fear and panic have set in. Parts are scared that we’re going to see our mother. It’s absolute fucking chaos.

I’m running damage control and trying to convince everyone that we are safe, which is hard for me to do because I’m not even sure that we are. And even though I’m present, I’m still struggling with having a foot in the past. Any little noise or startle and I start to lose it again.

I’m exhausted.