DID

Who am I? I don’t know.

~ KJ ~ 9 Comments

In many ways, I am an open person. I’ve shared my life. I’ve shared my experiences. I’ve shared my diagnosis with the world. But there are still aspects of my DID that I am just not that open about.

I’m a member of quite a few online DID groups. I don’t participate very much on a personal level; I tend to stick with answering questions, diffusing conflicts, and offering support. I think some of that is because I don’t feel like I belong, I don’t feel like my experiences are close to most other people’s.

People talk about their systems like they are a well-oiled machine. Everyone communicates, everyone loves each other, everyone has a purpose. Hell, everyone even has a name. It seems so perfect. It seems like the exact opposite of what I have. No one wants to hear oh yea, I am pretty oblivious to many of my parts, and there’s a lot of anger and sadness and stress and my parts are existing in chaos.

And then there’s the numbers. It’s so common for people to introduce themselves and include a number. My name is Bobby, I have five alters. There is so much focus on how many parts each person has. While I was contributing my writing to the book on living with DID, I was asked to state how many parts I had. I was the only writer that did not include a number, and that genuinely surprised me.

How many parts do I have? Way too fucking many. I don’t count. I don’t keep track. That seems like the most daunting task in the world. Why do people need a number? Why do they need a list?

My parts don’t all have names. I may have a K and a Charlie and an Anna, but I’ve also got a whole lot of KJs and even more than that who are nameless. And some of them aren’t whole; some are pieces and pieces of pieces. I’m not Bobby with five alters. I’m KJ, and I’m a broken mess.

I go through life on autopilot. Who is running the show? I don’t really know, but it’s probably not me. I may wake up in the morning as KJ, but I can guarantee by the time I get to work, I’ve already dissociated at least twice, five more times by lunchtime, and a dozen times more by dinner. I may start a conversation with you, but 9 times out of 10, I’m not the one there when the conversation ends.

It’s my name on the paycheck, but it’s not always me doing the work. But as long as the work gets done, right? I play it off when my boss notices things. “Hey, your voice changed again!” I respond, “Oh, it’s because I’m not from here.” But I know that’s not the reason at all.

I don’t remember things. What I did last week. What I did yesterday. What I did ten minutes earlier. I try to fill in the gaps when I can, but it’s not always easy. People get frustrated. I just tell them I have a bad memory. How can I explain to them that I’m not always me? Hell, I don’t even know who me is to begin with.

I don’t know where I end and another part begins, or where I begin and another part ends. I don’t even know if I am someone, or maybe just a part. I know I exist, in the physical sense. But I don’t know who I am any more than I know who my neighbor is.

I’m so ashamed. I fear that if people really knew just how out of it I am so much of the time, they would know how broken and how out of control I am. They would know how much I have failed at my own life. I am too broken, literally and emotionally. To know that side of me is to know how much of a failure I am. So I try to hide it. I can admit I have DID, but I damn sure can’t tell you how broken I am. Let’s just keep pretending, please.

Who am I? I don’t know.

Who am I? Ask me again in five minutes or so. Maybe then I will know.

changed

The Cost of Silence, Part 1

~ KJ ~ 4 Comments

When I was in first grade, my teacher gave me a small plush bunny. She told me to hold on to it, that it would help me feel safe. And I did. I held on to it for years. I never thought anything of it.

While I was shopping in a store awhile back, I came across a small plush bunny. The bunny looked just like the one my teacher had given me. I remembered. I remembered everything. Then I immediately pushed it all away.

It was not the sweet childhood memory it should have been. It was much more complicated than that. And I didn’t want to bring it all up, so I pushed it back down and buried it and pretended like that memory didn’t exist.

Until the memory came up again. I was sitting in therapy, trying to think of childhood memories, and that memory popped through once again. I smiled at first because I felt the care I was given when my teacher gave 7 year-old me that bunny. Then my smile disappeared and I remembered things I didn’t want to remember. I had thoughts I didn’t want to think about.

I wanted to bury it all again. I didn’t want to think about what that memory meant. I didn’t want to feel the pain in my heart. But I did. And all I could do was cry.

Why did that teacher give me that bunny? Why did she tell me it would help me feel safe? Why did she think I needed to feel safe?

Those were the questions I thought of when that memory first came up, and I immediately pushed it all back down. In my adult mind, I knew the answers, and they were the answers that I did not want to hear. They were the answers I could not handle. And here they were, coming up again. I didn’t want to go there. I didn’t want to face the reality of what it all meant. The possibility that my teacher knew the truth, that she knew I was being abused.

My child self may have thought that bunny helped, because my child self didn’t know any better. But my adult self knows that a bunny wasn’t going to help me. A bunny wasn’t what I needed to be safe. A bunny wasn’t going to stop my mother from hurting me. I needed someone to help me. I needed someone to be my voice. Instead all I got was a plush bunny.

That teacher wasn’t the only person to stay silent. There were others: teachers, family members, family friends. Some of them admitted that they knew something was going on but just didn’t want to get involved, they didn’t want to cross any lines. Then there were other people who had to have known, but just ignored the signs.

It hurts. Sometimes it hurts worse than what my mother and father did to me. I think that it’s hard for people to understand. It doesn’t make much logical sense. How could being ignored hurt worse than the actual abuse?

It’s a different type of pain. It’s not the sting from a cut or the ache from a bruise or shooting pain of a broken bone. It’s a deep pain in your heart. The pain of being invisible. The pain of being unworthy of anyone’s love or attention. The pain of being so worthless that no one would help you.

My parents always told me to stay silent. Did they tell all of those other people, too? Why did no one speak for me? Why didn’t they help? Why did they stay silent? How was I supposed to know I mattered if no one ever acted like I mattered?

I was a child who held out hope that someone would save me. I needed to matter to someone. I needed to be seen. But time and time again, people turned their backs on me. I wanted my parents to be wrong. Instead I grew up believing they must have been right.

Dear K Explained

~ KJ ~ 3 Comments

After I posted the letter to K last night, I was emotionally exhausted. It was the first time I read the letter in its entirety, and the emotions I had experienced during the last three days of writing it had hit me all at once. I wanted to write more, I wanted to explain, but I couldn’t. I ended up crying myself to sleep, hoping that would be the last time that I had to feel it. But it wasn’t.

I didn’t want to write a letter at all. How do I write to a stranger? How do I write to someone who I’m not even sure is there?  I didn’t even really want to talk about K, let alone write a letter to her. But my therapist encouraged me to think about writing a letter to K after session last week, and since my therapist has yet to steer me in the wrong direction, I followed her suggestion.

I’ve had such a disconnect from K for so long, partly to protect myself, and partly because of the guilt I felt about her absence. Her loss is connected with one of the worst experiences in my life, an experience I end up reliving each time I think about her and what she went through.

I never knew K. She took care of my parts before I knew I had parts. She was there, protecting me and the others, as I spent my younger years in blissful ignorance of my DID. K was the reason I made it through childhood. 

But then K went away, on the night my father attacked me, the night I got beaten for being depressed. I don’t know all that happened. I still only remember small parts of that night. But I do know that’s when everything changed. That’s when the voices started. That’s when Charlie came to be. That’s when my life became chaos.

I learned who K was over the years, and I was able to put all of the pieces of who she was together. I missed her. I never knew her, but I missed what she did for me. My life before that night was vastly different from my life after. The difference was her.

I also felt an immense sense of guilt. She disappeared because of me. I couldn’t fight back my father. I couldn’t stand up for myself. I wasn’t strong enough, and I let her take all of the pain. I don’t even know what happened. That’s the frustrating part. I don’t even know why she had to go away.

I just know that, if that night never happened, K would still be here. If I just fought my father back, K would still be here. If I would have just acted normal, K would still be here. If I hadn’t been depressed, K would still be here. K is gone because of me.

It’s why I never talk about her much. I feel at fault. She existed because of me. She left because of me. Why couldn’t I just be better, stronger, and more courageous? Why did I have to be so weak?

As I started writing the letter, all I could think about was how sorry I was. I was sorry she had to exist. I was sorry she had to work so hard to protect us. I was sorry she had to endure something so horrible that she had to go away. I was overcome with so much guilt that I couldn’t see anything else. The first sentence I wrote down was not a “hello” or “thank you”. It was “I’m so sorry.”

It took me three days to finish that letter. The emotions were so overwhelming for me that I had to step away several times so I wouldn’t break down completely. I felt sadness. I felt guilt and shame. I felt a sense of loss over someone I didn’t even know was there. I felt for my parts, too. They lost a mother. Really, they lost two mothers; one I caused to go away and one I took us away from.

I thought I had got it all out. I thought that once I wrote those words down, the feelings and emotions would disappear. But they didn’t. As much as I wanted to read the letter to my therapist, I worried that speaking it out loud would make the feelings all come back. And they did come back, stronger than ever. Guilt. Shame. Sadness. Confusion. Loss. Hurt. Pain. I cried for her. I cried for my parts. I cried for me.

I didn’t understand why she left us. Why did she have to go?

I still need her. I can’t be her. I can’t love. I can’t nurture. I can’t be caring. I can’t protect anyone. I’m not K. My therapist says that I am all of those things. Those qualities were K, but they are me, too; they always have been. But I just can’t see it.

K was all of those good things. K got hurt and went away. I am not any of those good things. I wasn’t the one who got hurt.

K is not me, and I am not K.

I can’t be.

Dear K

~ KJ ~ 5 Comments

Dear K,

You know me, but I don’t know you. Or at least I don’t remember knowing you. But I do know of you. I know you were there when I was young. I know you watched over me, over everyone.

Sometimes, I try to think about what you were like. The others said you were caring and kind. You were always nice and loving. You took care of everyone. You were like a mother, protecting everyone and keeping them safe. You were the mother they never got to have. You gave them all of the things that I couldn’t give to them. You gave them safety in a situation that was anything but safe.

I wish I got to know you. I wish I realized that you were there. I used to wonder why you never told me anything. Then I realized it was probably better that way. It would have been too much for me to handle. I was just a child.

You did so much for me. You kept things hidden from me that I wasn’t ready to face. You kept me from hearing voices I wasn’t ready to hear. You kept me from breaking apart into pieces I could never get back. You kept me safe, even when I was surrounded by danger.

It hurts me to know that you existed to keep me alive. If I had never been hurt, if I had never been broken, you wouldn’t have had to be there. It would have been just me. But that’s not what happened. I was broken into hundreds of pieces, and you were there trying to keep the pieces together.

It must have been so hard for you. You took care of so many of us, but no one ever took care of you. You deserved to be taken care of, too. But you were selfless. You endured the pain. You held it all together, and you gave all that you could until the day that you couldn’t.

I couldn’t fight my own battles. You helped fight them for me. You kept me alive. I didn’t know it at the time, but you were always there for me. You took the pain from me and hid it away. You won so many battles for me, but you didn’t win that last battle. None of us did.

I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I wasn’t strong enough to deal with life on my own. I’m sorry you had to watch over the others for so long because I didn’t. I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you the night that you went away. I’m sorry I didn’t fight him back. If I did, maybe you would still be here. Maybe you wouldn’t have had to go away.

Everything changed. You went away and there was no one left to care for everyone. I lost you. We lost you.

I don’t know what I’m doing, K. I can’t even care for myself, let alone all of the others. I’m not you. Charlie isn’t you. I know he tries, but it’s not the same. I think ne needs you. They all need you. I need you.

I miss you. I miss the peace in my head. I miss believing that I was okay. I miss how everything was before that day. I miss everything that you did for me, and for us.

I don’t know if you can hear me. I don’t even know if you’re still there somewhere. But if you are, and if you can hear, I want to thank you. Thank you for protecting me. Thank you for protecting my parts. Thank you for keeping us all alive. I needed you. I still do. 

Disaster

~ KJ ~ 7 Comments

I envy my mother.

She hid who she really was so perfectly. She was (and still is) a brilliant actress. No one suspected she was abusing her own children. They only saw what she presented to the world.

She was a true Catholic woman who went to Church every weekend.

She was a devoted mother who was involved in all of her children’s activities.

She was a kind, good-hearted, charitable person who never hesitated to give what she could to others.

The truth was that my mother only went to Church because membership was requires in order to get discounted tuition for the Catholic schools she sent her children to. Her stoic Catholicism  disappeared once her children finished school. The schools she sent her children to, not to give them a better education or strong faith, but because it made her look good. Bad parents don’t send their children to private school, right?

The truth was that my mother was involved in every activity not because she was devoted, but because she needed to be in control at all times. She was a Girl Scout troop leader not because she believed in what the organization stood for, but because it put her in an easily obtained power position.

The truth was that my mother brought gifts and donated to charities because it made her look good. She would buy lavish gifts for friends and extended family with money she didn’t have to spend. We’d often sit at home with no power because she spent all of the money she had buying things, and had no money left to pay the bills. But that didn’t bother her, because no one saw that our power was off, but they did see the nice things she bought for them (and for herself).

As an adult, I envied my mother’s ability to present whatever she wanted to the world, even when it was a lie. I could never do that. I wore the truth on my face without even trying.

But I’ve come to realize, I am pretending just like she did. I am hiding behind a false presentation I give to the world.

People see that I have it together. I go to work, I go to school, I write. I’m functioning so well. People read my articles, they see what I’ve done and they look up to me.

The truth is I am fucked up. I can barely get out of bed most mornings, and even though I manage to make it to work, it sucks up the little energy I have. I don’t even know how I’m making it through school because I have no fucking clue what’s going on. I know I’m reading English, but it might as well be Chinese because I just can’t understand it. I write articles that give people with DID hope, showing them that they can live a normal life, when I am spending so many of my days in a black hole of hopelessness, questioning if my life could get any more fucked up than it already is. I tell people to accept their diagnosis, while I wake up and tell myself I don’t have DID. I’m a fucking hypocrite.

And in the moments that someone sees that I am not together, I pretend like I am. I don’t want them seeing the mess that I am. So I tell them I am okay. I put on a smile. I do my work. They think I’m okay. There’s nothing to see here. Please go, and care about someone who matters.

People see that I look better. I’ve lost so much weight, but they assume it’s okay because I’m overweight. They give me compliments about my appearance, and tell me how great and healthy I look. I smile and thank them.

The truth is I am not healthy. I’ve lost so much weight because I starve myself. No one thinks anything of it, because they only think eating disorders happen to skinny people. It’s just like childhood. You don’t look like you’re starving. Oh, but I was. And I still am. The only difference is now I am the one in control, not my mother. I learned to shut off my hunger like a switch. If I don’t feel it, then it’s not a problem. I am in control now.

And in the moments that someone shows concern about my eating, I eat for them. I take their offers of food. I act like I enjoy it. Then I go in the bathroom and throw it all up. But they don’t see that. They see me eat and they think I’m okay. There’s nothing to see here. Please go, and care about someone who matters.

People see that I am planning a future. I’m working hard. I’m continuing my education. I’m going to therapy in order to heal. I must be working towards a better life.

The truth is that I’m just going through the motions. I am not planning my future any more than I am planning my death. I’m working because I have to. I’m going to school because I need the money. Therapy isn’t going to heal me. You can’t heal a person that’s been broken so many times, just like you can’t repair a shattered mug. I’m not working towards anything. I’m just waiting for the end.

And in the moments when someone sees my hopelessness, my depression, I tell them I’m fine. I tell them they’re wrong. If I were so hopeless and so lost, I wouldn’t be working,  going to school, or going to therapy. If I were so hopeless, I would have killed myself already. I make valid points. They think I must be okay. Please go, and care about someone who matters.

I am just like my mother. I’ve become so good at acting normal, that no one can see who I really am.

A fucking disaster.

Robot

~ KJ ~ 6 Comments

I am constantly on high-alert. I am (painfully) aware of things that other people don’t notice, or don’t think twice about: sounds, people, cars, everything. I know that is related to my PTSD.

In some ways, it benefits me. I had someone following me in the dark a couple of weeks ago and I noticed right away and took action.

In other ways, I can do without the hypervigilance. It’s tiring. I am constantly questioning every little noise and every movement. It makes it impossible to focus.

You would think that, with being so aware of my environment at all times, I would be aware of what is going on within me. If I know the outside, I should know the inside, too. It seems like common sense. It seems like it should be that way. But it’s not for me.

Yesterday, I was putting labels up at work. I started noticing splotches of reddish-orange. I thought it was just marker or something, so I tried to rub it off, but that just seemed to spread it more. Then I noticed my hand, which had the same color splotches on it. Then I noticed my finger, entirely covered in it. It took me a minute to realize that it wasn’t marker on the labels. It was me.

I was bleeding. Profusely. I didn’t even notice I had cut my finger. How, I don’t know. I didn’t feel a thing. No pain. Nothing.

I could understand if this was a one time thing. I could rationalize it by saying that I was just too tired. But this wasn’t the first time something like this has happened. Years ago, I leaned over a burner while it was on and burned my abdomen. I didn’t feel anything. The only thing I noticed was the smell of my burning shirt. I’ve injured myself countless times and not felt any pain.

Why can I notice everything going on outside me, but I can’t notice anything going on inside me? I notice the blood on the paper, but not the cut on my finger. I notice the smell of burning fabric, but not the burns on my skin. It doesn’t make sense.

It scares me. How can I know when something is wrong if I can’t feel anything?

It frustrates me. People ask me how something feels and I just don’t know. Isn’t it hot in here? Well, I guess it is hot since you asked. But I have no idea. What does this pillow feel like? I don’t know, but since I can see that it’s silky, I’ll take a guess and say that it’s soft. I use context clues so I can seem normal. The truth is I really have no fucking clue how anything feels to my body half the time.

It worries me. You could cut the head off of my body and I feel like I’d still function the same. I don’t feel connected at all. There is no mind-body connection here.

I feel like a robot. Robots can’t feel, and neither can I.

Why do I write?

~ KJ ~ 9 Comments

When I was a senior in high school, a friend introduced me to DeadJournal. It was my first and only outlet at the time. I knew my mother would never allow it, so I created it in secret. I wrote very obscure posts about my pain. I never wrote anything specific, for fear of my mother finding out.

And sure enough, my mother walked into my bedroom one night and searched my computer. DeadJournal popped up. She interrogated me, asking what it was. I told her it was an online journal I was looking at. She flipped. She told me I was not allowed to write about feelings. I was punished, thankfully less severe as I would have been had she seen what I actually wrote. But I never wrote in it again.

That journal was supposed to be for me. It was my opportunity to write how I felt, and that was taken away from me. Just like everything else was taken away from me.

I started writing after I ran away, because I knew my mother wouldn’t be able to take that away from me again. I could write what I felt, without anyone telling me what I should or shouldn’t write.

I didn’t go into this blog expecting anyone to read it. I did it for me, as a way of getting things out that I held in for so long. That was the purpose.

Along the way, a lot more people started reading my blog. Mostly strangers, and people who started out as strangers that I now have come to care about. And then people from my real life started reading. Then I wasn’t so anonymous. I couldn’t hide in my writing anymore. I was exposed. I learned to be okay with that, because people were supportive. In some ways, it reconnected me with people from my old life who were forced away from me by my mother.

Even with all of that, my writing never changed its purpose. I wrote for me. I write for me. If you don’t like it, don’t read what I write. If you feel the need to decide what I should or shouldn’t be writing about, don’t read it. This is my writing. This is my life.I write about my struggles. I write about my PTSD and DID. I write about the things that affect me.

I don’t write about my morning coffee. I don’t write about mundane shit. That doesn’t affect me. My writing isn’t sunshine and rainbows, because I’m not sunshine and rainbows. I’m not here to make anyone look good. I don’t even make myself look good.

I don’t want to hear anyone telling me what I should write. I will not be controlled again. This is MY space. If my mother ever came to me and told me to stop writing so negatively about her, I would tell her to fuck off. Perhaps she should have not done the things she did in the first place that led me to write in such a way.

This sentiment applies to anyone who thinks the same. If you want to read my writing and be supportive, rock on. If you want to read my writing and criticize, you can go away. I have enough to deal with already.

Now, since I got that all out, I have a dilemma.

My therapist asked me last session if I thought it would be beneficial for her to read my blog before our sessions. On an intellectual level, I understood her reasons for suggesting that. I wrote about my issues with communication before. It’s still a problem. I can write much easier than I can speak out loud, even with my therapist.

My therapist knows about this blog; she has since the beginning. But she told me in the beginning that she would not read it, and I was okay with that. I didn’t really think my writing was all that substantive back then anyway.

For some reason, when my therapist brought it up this time, I had a strong negative reaction. Perhaps it was the timing. I have recently been dealing with some people who feel the need to dictate what I should and shouldn’t write in my blog (hence my mini-rant just before). I think I may have transferred my anger about that onto my therapist.

I know my therapist is not out to criticize or judge my writing, or even my life. But I feel like I am losing my safe space a bit. I started out being able to write whatever I wanted, and now I have people in my life trying to change that. What if I wanted to hide here? What if I wanted to write something really horrible? Can I do that without receiving backlash?

I trust my therapist more than any human being, past, present, and probably future. I have told her things I would never tell another person, things I would never even write about here. But what if something came up that I didn’t want to tell her? I wouldn’t have a place to put those thoughts anymore. I’d have to keep them inside, like I did for most of my life. I don’t want to do that anymore.

On a realistic level, I see the benefits. On an emotional level, I feel invaded.

I just want to be able to hide. But do I really need to?

Asserting myself, Part 2

~ KJ ~ 6 Comments

I woke up the next morning, not looking much better than I did the night before. The swelling migrated downward, pushing my eyes outward towards the sides of my face. I looked like one of the aliens you see in movies. I put my glasses on and brushed my hair in front of my face. No one could see me. Though I couldn’t see anyone else, either.

My legs were shaking as I sat in the waiting area of my therapist’s office. My therapist came out to get me like usual. I kept my hair blocking my face, hiding the disaster underneath.

I don’t know how I thought I would get away with it. My therapist noticed the different style right away. She asked me if I was hiding. I told her I was. She thought I was hiding to hide. She didn’t know I was hiding the disaster on my head.

My therapist continued to prod. She needed to see my face, and I needed to be able to see hers. I told her I was scared. She said it was safe, that I didn’t need to hide. She asked if it was related to what happened on Monday, but I told her it wasn’t.

My therapist kept telling me it was okay. I told her I was afraid of getting in trouble, I was afraid of her sending me away. I started crying. She said she wasn’t going to send me away, and that I wasn’t in trouble. I finally told her I was hiding something on my head.

Now my therapist understood what was going on. She asked if it was a wound I was hiding, and I nodded yes. She asked if I could pull my hair back so she could see. I hesitated, took a breath, and pushed my hair over. I felt overcome with shame. I felt like a failure.

She assured me she wasn’t angry with me. My anxiety started to subside. She asked how it happened. I told her I didn’t remember it all. I told her everything that happened before. I told her that I finally stood up for myself. I finally did what my therapist had been encouraging me to do for so long.

But it failed. My therapist could sense my disappointment with the situation. I had this false sense of hope that I would assert myself and that it would work, and all would be right with the world. Instead, I asserted myself and it failed. I put all of the blame on myself.

My therapist reminded me that I can’t change other people’s behaviors. It’s not my fault that my roommate didn’t understand. I did what I needed to do. I stood up for myself.

Don’t let this be a reason to stop standing up for yourself. Yes, it didn’t work this time. That doesn’t mean you stop doing it. It won’t always work out this way.

As we continued to talk about it all, I noticed my therapist wasn’t focusing on the fact that I completely self-destructed. She focused on the positive. I finally asserted myself. One thing I have been struggling with for so long, and I overcame it.

Sure, I could have done without the likely concussion. I could have done without the bruises and scrapes, and the half-blackened eyes. I could have done with the horrible headache and eye pain. I could have done without that all, but I can’t change that it happened. I can only work through it and try to prevent it from happening again.

We discussed what led up to the issue, and how I could work on changing it. It’s difficult once I get in that place, to get myself back out. The reason I asked my roommate to stop is because those words are reminders of things my mother said to me. When I hear them, it triggers parts of me. I start to get confused, not realizing that it’s my roommate and not my mother saying those things. Younger parts can’t tell the difference. It causes chaos that I would rather not deal with (and I shouldn’t have to).

I know all of the things I can do to distract myself. I know how to ground. That’s not the problem I have. I just don’t know how to put that all into practice when I am already on the edge.

I wish my experience ended up a little less painful. But damnit, I asserted myself. Let’s focus on that.

The future

~ KJ ~ 4 Comments

For the first 29 years of my life, I never envisioned any kind of future. I spent every day wanting to die, because I believed that death was the only chance to escape the hell I was living in.

Then I managed to get away, and I didn’t have to die.

I finally started to envision a future. I was going to be someone. I was going to make a difference. I was finally going to have the life I wasn’t able to have for 29 years.

And then reality hit, and that future started to dwindle away.

The reality that my mental illness will never be accepted. The reality that no matter what good things I do, no matter what I accomplish, my DID and PTSD will put everything into question.

The reality that, even though I’ve escaped physically, my mind has not escaped the terror. I still live in fear every day. I still carry 29 years of hell inside my mind.

The reality that my physical illness will shorten my life considerably. I’ll never have a family. I’ll never enjoy retirement. I’m going to die a lot sooner than I deserve to.

And that makes me angry. It makes me angry that I spent what will be the majority of my life in a prison.

It makes me angry that my mother may very well outlive me. Actually, I think that angers me more than the diagnosis itself. I can accept that I am sick, but I can’t accept the idea that my mother, of all people, could outlive me.

My therapist and I have talked about it a few times. She doesn’t sugarcoat anything for me, which I appreciate (most times). But I’m not so sure she understands the degree of anger and disgust I have over this.

My therapist tells me that yes, it’s possible that my mother will live longer than me, but it won’t be a good life, that my mother doesn’t experience joy and happiness, that her life is and will be empty. Even in a shorter life, I can still experience those things, things that my mother can’t.

But damnit, she still gets to live. I’m not even sure she deserves to be living now, and she sure as hell doesn’t deserve to live longer than me. How did this happen? For all the wrongs she has done, she is rewarded with a life longer than the one I will see. What did I do wrong?

It doesn’t matter that she can’t feel those good things. She can still experience life. She can still wake up every day and not stress about anything. And I get to spend the rest of my life struggling. I get to spend the rest of my life in fear of her, because I will never be not afraid until she is dead. I just want to know what it’s like to not live in fear. What if I never get that chance? What if I die before I know happiness? Then I really will be just like my mother.

My therapist envisions a future for me that I don’t see. To her, these existential circumstances don’t matter. She still believes I can do great things. She believes I can have a better life, and that I can heal.

But all I see is loss. I lost everything before, and now I’ve lost my future.

Pardon the mess

~ KJ ~ 5 Comments

I am at a functioning level right now.

When I say functioning, I mean I am able to get out of bed and go about my life in the most minimal ways.

I’m back in graduate school. It’s been a little hectic. With a professor missing in action for two weeks (due to a death in the family), it’s now a rush to get three weeks of work done in the next week. I was a little overwhelmed at first, having never used SPSS analytical software at all before, but I am getting the hang of it.

I’ve also been co-authoring a book on DID. The rough draft will be finished in just a couple of weeks, so it’s crunch time to make sure everything I want to say is included. Some of the chapters are intense. While writing about my abuse and struggles is tolerable in small doses, writing with deadlines on specific topics that I can’t avoid has sucked some of the energy right out of me. I’m well passed the halfway point now, so I’m not giving up.

I am going through some physical health issues. I should be used to it by now, but I am not. It’s anxiety-provoking. I have been fortunate enough to find a primary doctor that understands my PTSD and anxieties. Even though it takes me hours in travel just to get back and forth to her, no other doctor was willing to work with me, so I endure the trouble. I’ve got a lot of specialist appointments in my near future, and that scares me. We are taking it one step at a time, but even that one step seems like a leap across two mountains.

My mental health is shit. I’ve been managing to stay out of the hospital, but it’s been difficult. The only thing keeping me in check is all of the other shit I have going on that I won’t be able to complete if I’m in the hospital. That’s probably not the best motivator, but it’s working for the moment.

I have a lot to write about, a lot that’s on my mind. I just wish I had the energy right now to do it.