dissociative identity disorder

14 weeks

~ KJ ~ 4 Comments

Today marks 14 weeks of freedom.

Sometimes I still question what the hell I’m doing here. I wish I could say my situation is ideal, but it isn’t. I’m living on savings. I’m still paying off my family’s debts. I made the decision to apply to grad school for the spring semester so I can take out loans to help support myself. It was one of the options my therapist brought up to me, and the most doable. I will still have time to manage my own mental health without completely exhausting myself. I can start trying to relate to those parts of me that need attention, attention that I just haven’t had the energy to give. I just need to stay on top of myself and make sure I finish the application in time, because otherwise I’m screwed.

My living situation is a mess at times. There are times when it’s okay. Then there are times when I am scared to be here. My roommate got herself into a situation the other night and yelled my name out to help her. It was the middle of the night. I had already heard them fighting before that and tried to keep myself grounded. When she yelled for me, I froze. Then I realized I had wet my pants…something I hadn’t done for weeks and had just told my therapist about it like it was the biggest accomplishment ever. In that moment, I’m not sure my mind knew that I wasn’t a child, that I wasn’t back at home, and that it wasn’t my mother yelling my name. I was in fear. So I cleaned myself up and left without saying a word. I didn’t even check to see if she was okay. I wasn’t even okay.

I guess I should be grateful to be out of my previous home situation, but I never intended to throw myself into a different unsafe situation. Maybe this is just the norm. Maybe my hope of one day living in peace is just a dream that can’t be fulfilled. I don’t know. I’ve been through enough already. Why do I keep getting hit with more? When do I get a break? Sometimes it seems more worthwhile to end up in jail. I’m already used to it. For now, I’ve resorted to wearing a Superman beanie to bed. I realize it’s a very child-like response to the things that have happened, but it’s a false sense of security that is working for me in the moment. Superman will protect me.

Today also happens to be my brother’s birthday. I’m not even sure why I care. Perhaps because it was so hard to ignore the disparity between how my brother’s birthdays were celebrated and how mine were. My brother always got what he wanted. He still does. My mother always forced me to buy him a birthday gift, even though I never wanted to celebrate him. I hated him. I hated how he was honored, yet when my birthday rolled around, it was just another day. I actually grew to hate my birthdays for a while until my friends at work started celebrating it like it should have been celebrated by my own family. Then, it didn’t matter to me how my family treated me on that day, because my friends and coworkers would always do enough to make me feel wanted.

I almost feel bad for my brother. Here he is now, in his mid-late 30s, still being controlled by our mother. He doesn’t understand that there is life without her. She doesn’t own him. She is not his wife (though she continuously acts as if she is). He is still following mommy’s orders like he is six years old. I will admit, his willingness to comply likely saved him a lot of pain in childhood. I got the brunt of the abuse because there was always a part of me that wanted to rebel, that wanted to go against my mother. I think my mother knew that, which is why she kept me under such tight control, yet allowed my brother a little more freedom. My brother did whatever she would say. He would believe anything she said. If she claimed the sky was green, he would eagerly agree with her. I could never do that, even as a child. It ended up causing me a lot more pain and anguish. Perhaps it would have been better for me to just comply like a good little soldier. But then where would I be? Like my brother? My brother is not free. He may very well never be free until the day she dies.

But I’m free. My mother no longer controls me. I may have a lot more scars than my brother, and a few more (diagnosed) psychological problems. But I’m free. I’m intelligent, I have a decent head on my shoulders, a good moral compass, and a sense of responsibility; all things my brother lacks. While the lack of those things may have saved him from some pain, it has only prolonged his prison sentence. I’ve been exonerated, and I’m never going back.

She always knows

~ KJ ~ 3 Comments

Today’s therapy session included quite a bit of discussion about my mother. Fortunately, I was able to stay present through the entire session. Progress.

My therapist asked if I would have ever started this blog while I was still living with my family. I quickly answered no. The risk was too great for my mother finding out, and when she did find out, I would have had nowhere to hide. I knew there was spyware on my computer; that had been an ongoing practice for a long time. I learned to do most things on my phone so she wouldn’t be able to trace anything.

Then mentioning the phone led me to bring up the first time I tried to have my own phone. I was in my 20s, and didn’t want my mother knowing everything I had done and everyone I had contacted on my phone and going through interrogations about it, so I bought a cheap Tracfone and did the majority of my texting and calling on that phone. I thought I hid it well; I actually bought a phone small enough that I could hide it behind my other phone and have them both in one holster case. But then one day, I went with my brother to pick up food after work and he said “we know you have another phone; we found the empty package in your room.” My heart started racing, because I knew this meant trouble. My mother was not going to be happy. I was in for it. What is even more sad is that I became angry with myself for not hiding the package well enough. It was wrapped inside of plastic bags, then put inside of a book bag underneath some other things, which means my mother had to go through several obstacles just to find that empty phone package.

My therapist seemed surprised at first that my mother would go to such lengths. But this was a regular part of my existence. She would inspect my room and my things regularly. My brother participated right alongside her, as if he were her sidekick. I always knew when they were in my room because they could never put anything back right, and it annoyed me just as much as them going through my things. My desk, drawers, bags, and my nightstand. They would even go through the clothes in my dresser, and my laundry hamper; even my trash was inspected. I tried to hide things wherever I could. I’d cut sections out of books to hide cash in. I’d stuff things inside of pillows. I had to get creative. When I wanted to throw something away and needed to avoid interrogation, I’d hide it in my purse and bring it to work to throw away there. It was an exhausting way to live. It was, almost literally, a home prison.

After I disclosed some of my mother’s controlling ways, my therapist seemed to understand where my fears of my mother finding things out came from. My therapist told me that a few of my parts have this intense fear of mother finding out that they’ve talked or that they’ve done something, and now she sees exactly where that stems from. My mother has been that way for as long as I can remember. As an adult, obviously I knew how she found everything out because I knew more and was aware of her ways. As a child, I believed she had some magical power that caused her to know everything I said or did. It’s why I was so fearful. I’m guessing that’s why my parts are fearful, too.

My therapist asked if I see my mother’s seeming ability to know everything differently now than I did as a child. Obviously I don’t think she has magical powers anymore. Looking back, I have to wonder if she just got lucky those times she did find things out. There were so many times she falsely accused me of talking or of doing something that I never actually did. Did she just consistently make accusations and when they happened to be true, they stuck with me? I’ll probably never have a real answer to that question. I’m forever trying to rationalize the irrational.

Evil

~ KJ ~ 3 Comments

I woke up this morning thinking about my mother.

That’s never a way I want to start my morning, but unfortunately I’ve been stuck in a place where her words have become heavily involved in my current self-perception. I’ve been trying to overcome the feelings of being inherently evil, but nothing has worked.

While in therapy Monday, I was discussing people who call their children names and how they might grow up to become that name; it was sparked by something I saw on social media, completely unrelated to me. As the conversation went on and I continued to color my butterfly (we’ve been coloring a lot to keep my hands busy) I said “that’s why I’m evil.” My mother said it so many times, that it came true. I remember feeling nauseated and not wanting to talk anymore. I don’t remember much after that.

My therapist has been trying to help me come up with statements I can use when I feel myself slipping into that self-blaming or evil mindset. I admittedly haven’t done much myself because I’ve been so drained physically and emotionally. But I need to. It’s so strange because on one level I know I’m a good person, but those beliefs get pushed away so easily by self-blame and the belief that I am, in fact, evil.

I thought about what my mother’s intentions were when she said those things to me as a child. Did she genuinely believe I was evil? Or was she telling me I was so I would think I deserved all of the shit she was doing to me? For a while, I believed her reasoning was because she knew I was evil. I never once considered that she used it as a way to manipulate me into accepting the abuse. If I had to decide between delusional or manipulative, my mother was definitely the latter.

Why is this even important? If she believed I was evil, it’s harder for me to believe the opposite. She must have known things I didn’t. If she manipulated me into believing a lie, I just need to remind myself that it was her manipulation and not the truth. I’m not quite sure which side of the fence I stand on. I’d like to be on the side of manipulation, but there’s also a part of me that believes my mother hated me for a reason, and I don’t know what that reason is.

I have a lot of questions that I know will never have answers. Some questions are more concrete. Is my father really my father? There are some genetic improbabilities that have put doubt in my mind for a while now. Is that why I’m evil? But then, what does that matter? That doesn’t excuse her behavior. Am I looking for answers or am I looking for excuses? Then there are the abstract questions. Am I evil? What is evil anyway? Why should I care?

13 weeks (and one less job)

~ KJ ~ 1 Comment

I’ve made it 13 weeks. Thirteen grueling weeks.

I spent most of today laying in bed, and by most, I mean I just got out of bed about 10 minutes ago. I was that physically and mentally exhausted. I should be at work right now, but I can’t work there any more. I made it three days before I realized what a bad decision it was.

It wasn’t that I couldn’t handle the physical demands of the job. The job itself was easy; probably a little too easy. It was a popular baby store. It didn’t even cross my mind that there would ever be an issue for me. My therapist asked me before I started the job if I was sure being in that environment wasn’t going to be triggering to me. I didn’t think it was, so I brushed it off as a non-issue. I didn’t have any problems the first day because I was in the back doing training. The second day was slow and I was kind of out of it a little, but I bounced back. Yesterday was a nightmare. I lost complete control. I couldn’t stop crying; it got so bad sometimes I had to run to the bathroom. The nausea was so intense, I thought for sure I was going to puke. I felt like I was floating away. I don’t even think I heard half of what was going on, I was just trying so hard to make it through the night. It is exhausting trying to stay grounded for a few minutes. Imagine trying to stay grounded for a few hours.

When I finally made it home, I broke down completely. I couldn’t stop crying. I could barely open my eyes because my face was so swollen. I couldn’t handle being bombarded with all of these happy families, with mothers proudly holding their babies and toddlers. What happened to me that my mother hated me so much from the start? What did I do that these children didn’t? Why did I miss out? I won’t ever be able to experience what it’s like to be loved by a mother, or even by a family. And now I was being constantly reminded of it every few minutes at work. It just wasn’t going to work out.

My roommate heard me crying and made me open the door. By this time it was well after 11 o’clock at night. I was so exhausted, which just made me cry even more. My roommate tried to comfort me. She told me I didn’t have to work there if it was going to mess up all of the progress I’ve made (what progress?). She said I wasn’t a failure if I quit. But I wasn’t having it. Still crying. She took me outside for some air and a cigarette (smoking used to be one of the few things that calmed my nerves before I quit). We tried to figure out the best way to go about it. She said she would go there for me and explain everything if I wanted her to. Instead, she called me out of work today just so I could have a day to think. I was finally able to stop crying, or it could have just been that I ran out of tears. We came inside and she told me to stay and watch a movie to clear my head a little bit.

By 1:30, I had been awake more than 21 hours and I knew I couldn’t fight it anymore, so I went upstairs. I checked my e-mail and saw that my therapist had e-mailed me back. I e-mailed her in the middle of my breakdown out of desperation. I must say, it’s a privilege not only to have a therapist who willingly deals with my shit, but also one who answers e-mails at 1 o’clock in the morning. Some of the things she wrote were the same things my roommate was trying to tell me. She wrote that it is not a failure to admit that this work isn’t the best place for me right now, and that I’m still grieving the loss of the family I never had.

“Success is not rigidly adhering to a plan that is not working.  Your mental health is more important than that particular job, and for you, I would count a decision to value yourself and your healing process as a success. There are other jobs you can take.  There is only one Crystalie, and she is worth protecting.”

I’m still having trouble seeing this as a success. I’ve never had to quit a job before, let alone quit one like this with no notice. I don’t even think I can tell them face-to-face because I will just break down again. I considered writing a note and slipping it under the door tomorrow while the store is closed so I don’t have to see anyone. I just don’t want anyone to hold it against me. I don’t expect them to understand. I don’t expect anyone to understand. I don’t even understand it myself. Things like this shouldn’t bother me. I shouldn’t have to leave a job because I can’t mentally handle being there. This isn’t me. This isn’t who I should be.

So now I need to reassess my life once again. I am going to take a couple of weeks and figure out what the hell I can do to survive, because this isn’t going to work long-term. I absolutely refuse assistance of any kind. I am capable of working. I am capable of supporting myself. I don’t want help. I just want to be normal. I want to be able to experience the world without experiencing a flashback, or a breakdown, or dissociation.

My heart hurts more than anything right now.

I just want the pain to go away.

Therapy Thursday

~ KJ ~ 2 Comments

My therapy sessions on Thursdays always seem to be the most intense compared to the other sessions during the week. This week was no exception. My general exhaustion probably didn’t make it any easier on myself or on my therapist. It was a disaster.

It started out okay. I talked about work. Both my jobs seem to be going really well. I am getting a lot of positive feedback which is a little surprising to me, because I spent ten and a half years at a job where I was made to feel as if they were doing me a favor by keeping me. I had mentioned in an e-mail to my therapist that I was working on grad school applications in between job shifts. She asked me about it in session today. I told her I didn’t get far, I still had to write the essay. She asked where I was applying to, and for what program. I’m not striving for much, just the bare minimum. Then she asked me if I would consider doing a doctorate program instead of just a masters. What? Me? I can barely function as it is now and I’m not even in school yet. I don’t even know if I can handle a masters program, and now you’re throwing the idea of a doctorate at me? Do you know who I am? I’m in therapy so much it feels like a part-time job sometimes. How am I supposed to function in a doctorate program?

Then she had to go and say it. “You’re smart enough for it.” No. No. I’m not smart. Please, let’s pretend I’m not smart. Let’s pretend I’m of average intelligence, or better yet, below average. My mother hated that I was more intelligent than she was. She always made me feel like shit about it from an early age, whether it be through negative comments or smacks to the face. She resented me for being intelligent. I think I ended up internalizing that negativity.

I knew what was going to happen once my therapist went down that road. Initiate downward spiral. Cue the negative voices in my head. Here comes the nausea. I sat there and tried to listen to my therapist the best I could, but it’s hard to focus when all I could really hear is the commotion going on inside my head. My therapist could tell I was struggling so she came and sat next to me to hold my hand and help keep me connected to the real world. She asked me what the voices were saying, but I didn’t want to tell her. They were saying horrible things. Then she asked who was saying them, if it was my voice or Charlie’s voice. But it was neither of ours. Then she asked if I thought I had other parts besides Charlie and Anna and K. I don’t want to think about that. I don’t need any more parts. I can’t handle any more parts, especially parts that seem to act just like the abusive people in my life. No. Just no.

Then I told my therapist I should have stayed home. She thought I meant stay home from therapy. I really meant stay home and not move away. I wouldn’t be struggling to keep myself together, to keep a roof over my head, and be minimally fed if I had just stayed home. I’m slowly killing myself here. How is it any different? I’m making progress, but at what cost? I don’t know.

If that wasn’t enough, I reverted back into what I call my “evil child syndrome”. I tried fervently to convince my therapist that I was evil, but she just didn’t get it. I told her she couldn’t see it because it was inside of me, but she had to trust me that it was there. She couldn’t see it yet because she doesn’t know me well enough. But she wouldn’t listen to me. I turned away from her in frustration. She said that those things my mother told me were lies. But mothers don’t lie. One day my therapist will see the evil in me.

I went out of it for a little after that. I remember getting really angry and pulling away from my therapist because I didn’t want to hurt her. I came back holding a black crayon. Not a surprising choice at all. Black is my color of choice when it comes to anger. I wish I remember what I colored. Maybe it will come to me later. Does my therapist keep these things? Does she have a folder with these monstrosities I create in therapy? My God, how embarrassing. I need to stop.

No more therapy.

Some exhaustion, some progress, and some reluctance to acknowledge my reality

~ KJ ~ Leave a comment

I know I haven’t blogged in quite a few days, which is not the norm for me.

I started my second out-of-the-house job this week. There are some days that I leave my house at 5:30 in the morning to work at my first job and won’t get home until 10:30 or 11 o’clock at night when I finish my second job. It doesn’t leave me with much time for anything, but we’ll see how long I can function like this before having a total meltdown (because let’s face it, one is bound to happen). I take my laptop with me so I am able to work on my blogs in the two-hour gap between jobs. I’m also in the middle of grad school applications, trying to figure out how to write my essay and who to get letters of recommendation from. So, yea, it’s been a little hectic to say the least.

On top of all of that, I have really been trying to take steps towards managing my DID. My therapist and I have been working on finding healthier ways for Anna and Charlie to let out their tension and anger. I had no concept of how ‘normal’ children do this, so I cheated and used Google. I decided that Play Doh would be good for Anna. She can squish it, throw it, rip it up…do whatever she wants with it. It’s age appropriate for her. Charlie was more difficult. As I was writing an e-mail to my therapist about it, I wrote “I think the only thing that would make Charlie feel any better is to hit something, but that’s not healthy.” My therapist then followed up with a suggestion for a literal punching bag. It made sense. I didn’t even think of it. So, after my shift yesterday, I went to a sporting goods store to look and see what they had. I ended up walking out with a free-standing heavy bag (which works, so I won’t have to hang anything from anywhere), gloves, and hand wraps. By the time I lugged that thing home on two buses plus a mile walk, I was exhausted. I still made myself put it together, though. It took me a couple of hours, but I did it. I may have pushed myself a little too hard, but I hope that Charlie knows that I did it for him. Heck, I might even use it myself.

Once I got everything cleaned up last night, I sat on my bed and looked around my room. I thought to myself how perplexing this room would look to a stranger. Coloring books and crayons in one corner. A nightstand with a tower of psychology books and books on DID right next to some canisters of Play Doh. A bed with a floral comforter and an array of stuffed animals resting against the wall. A giant body image poster behind my door, with “HATE” written in bold letters across the face. Paper doggies adorning a tower of totes in one corner. And now, a punching bag in the last corner. How could this all possibly be for one person? All of these items, so different, yet all important to me and my parts.

Now I just need to tell Charlie and Anna that these things are there for them. My therapist told me to just tell them that they’re there when they need them and I just gave her a look. It’s still weird for me to acknowledge having a conversation with something/someone intangible. While I talk to Charlie, it’s always an inner dialogue in my head, never out loud, and never anything complicated. I also feel like telling Anna especially means that I am acknowledging that she exists, and that is hard for me. I know my actions show that I am accepting, or I wouldn’t be going out of my way to make sure Anna and Charlie have what they need. But mentally, there is still a wall there that I am reluctant to break down.

I am hoping that my need to work doesn’t interfere with my need to take care of myself and my parts. I need to be able to know when it’s getting too much for us to handle.

Missing pieces

~ KJ ~ 2 Comments

When I first moved here, I would go out on my back porch every night and sit and look at the stars. It was something I was never able to do back home. There was just something so amazing about looking into a vast sky with millions (billions?) of stars, wondering how many people were out there looking at the same stars as I was. But I don’t go out on the porch at night anymore, and I stopped looking at the stars.

In the beginning, I was full of hope and excitement, and running on a rush of adrenaline. Now, I’m coming to realize all that I’ve lost along the way during this transition. Pieces of me are missing. I feel incomplete.

It may be hard for some to understand, but when I was at home, I always held out hope that someday something would change…that someday, my family would become different people and the void in my heart would be filled and I would finally be whole. But now that I’ve moved away, I’ve lost that chance forever. I’ve been trying to fill the void with things that just can’t occupy that space in someone’s heart that is meant for family. I left them. I walked away and I took that chance to fill that void away from myself for good.

It’s not just the loss of my parents. It’s the loss of my entire family. It will never be the same again. I can never see my grandmother; she’s already fallen for their lies about me. My brother is too far brainwashed. Other members of my family don’t want to get involved. They don’t come to visit me, even if they are a quick drive away. I feel incredibly isolated from the people I should be closest to. Your family makes up part of your identity. So what do you do when that part of you is gone? I don’t even feel like I belong in this name anymore.

Then there are my friends. The ones I was closest to back home. The ones that now barely reach out to me, and the ones that haven’t bothered to visit me. I can feel what were once my strongest relationships now fading farther and farther away into the distance. I didn’t expect our friendships to remain the same, but I didn’t expect them to grow so far apart so quickly, either.

Then there are the quiet supporter friends: the ones that support me in private, but when I need them to stand up and fight with me, they are nowhere to be found. Then I am left alone to fight battles I don’t want to fight. It reminds me of the people in my life that knew I was being abused and chose to do nothing because they “didn’t want to get involved.” Not getting involved never solves anything.

People have changed the way they treat me. I’m not a child. I’m not made of glass that can be easily broken at the slightest touch. I’m perfectly capable of making my own decisions. I haven’t been able to make real decisions for the last 29 years of my life. Now I want to make them. I need to learn for myself how to make them. It doesn’t matter that they aren’t all good; no one’s decisions are all good. That’s called life. I’m no different from anyone else; I just have a little catching up to do.

It’s a little sad that the only person that I’ve come to depend on (aside from my therapist) is my roommate. My roommate…a woman I met off of Craigslist right before I moved. She barely knows me. She has no obligation to know me. Yet hers is the shoulder I cry on when I become overwhelmed. She is the one who holds my arms down when I dissociate and start scratching myself. And she is the one who sits with me when I don’t feel safe enough to be alone. She, a person unrelated to me and completely unknown to me until a few months ago, now burdened with dealing with me.

The nights that my roommate is not here, I have no one. Those nights are the worst for me; tonight is one of those nights. I often wonder if this is what my life will be like forever. Loneliness. Even Charlie is quiet. It makes me miss his angry ramblings just a little. He probably feels just as lonely as I do.

For so long, I defined myself based on the relationships I had with others. It was part of who I was. Those relationships mattered. And now those pieces of me are going missing, and I don’t know what to do. No family, dwindling friendships, and a lack of identity. I feel empty. It’s no wonder I don’t know who my parts really are. I don’t even know who I am.

A day with Courage

~ KJ ~ 4 Comments

I had another thrilling 2 hour therapy session.  It started out okay.  We talked about my upcoming job interview (tomorrow – I haven’t had a chance to mention it), about my blogging orientation for HealthyPlace on Wednesday, and about my inability to set up an appointment with the social worker so I can get my medications adjusted and refilled.  Yep.  Mind you, I’ve been back and forth over the phone with the social worker since I got out of the hospital back in the beginning of August and she has yet to set up an appointment with me or get me set up with the psychiatrist.  Now I have two weeks of medication before I am left with nothing.  So, that’s going to be an issue.  Something is always an issue.

Then we started to color and just talk about whatever came to mind.  I started talking about why there were so many mushrooms on children’s coloring pages.  I wanted to know why.  There was a dog and a mushroom.  A mouse hiding under a mushroom.  A frog on a mushroom.  Why so many mushrooms?  I’m not sure I knew what a mushroom even was as a child.  Very strange.

As I finished the picture, I started to hate it.  My therapist asked me what was wrong.  I said it wasn’t perfect.  She came over next to me and looked at it, and like a typical therapist said “nope, I don’t see anything wrong with it.”  Then Charlie started to chime in.  Of course it’s not perfect.  It looks like shit.  Everything is shit.  So then I was having an argument with Charlie in my head while simultaneously trying to listen and interact with my therapist.  For the record, that is just not possible for very long.  Charlie ended up winning that battle.  When I came back to the present, and my therapist began to talk about him (he did not tell her his name – she asked what letter his name started with and he told her a ‘C’), I knew right away who it was because I remembered arguing with him internally right before.  And it was funny because my therapist said how he didn’t say much.  He certainly doesn’t shut up when he talks to me.  Weird.  Boys.

My therapist told me to try to think about what a 15 year-old boy would want.  I…well…I don’t know.  I’m not sure I want to know.  That’s entering a dangerous zone.  I don’t want to know about teenage boys.  How did I end up with a teenage boy part anyway?  The teenage boys I knew in high school were atypical bookworm types.  I doubt that’s who Charlie is.  I don’t know how to be a boy.  Not that I’m a girly girl in any sense either, but…I don’t know.  This is going to be hard work.

My therapist also brought up Charlie’s and Anna’s self-injurious tendencies.  She asked me if I wanted her to stop those behaviors or allow them to continue (within reason).  Shit.  I don’t know.  I mean, is there a right answer?  No one wants to hurt.  She asked me what I thought the reasons behind the self-injury were.  Do I think they are doing it to try to get people to see that they are hurting, or is it something else?  I don’t know.  Why would a seven year-old self-injure?  How does a seven year-old even know how to self-injure?  I don’t think Anna knows what she’s doing is self-injury.  I remember writing down that she told my therapist she was scratching to get the bad out.  I would imagine she developed that somehow from seeing my mother’s techniques of cleansing me from evil.  Charlie is another story, though.  Charlie is angry and wants everyone to know it.  I don’t think I (or my therapist, or anyone for that matter) could approach the two the same, because their motivations are completely different.  I’m too exhausted to think about this more than I already have.

At the end of our session, my therapist asked if I’d be able to carry something home.  Confused, I told her “yeah, I guess.”  Then she took Courage, the stuffed lion, from the other side of the couch and handed him to me.  Courage has been sitting on that couch through many sessions.  He’s seen and heard it all.  He’s helped me come back to the present many times.  I thought at first she wanted me to take him for the day; then I realized she was giving him to me to keep.

“Don’t you need him here for your other clients?” I asked.

“I can always train a new therapy animal if I need to.”

Then I realized I would have to walk around town with a stuffed lion.  He was too big to fit in my bag entirely.  I managed to stuff him in there, but his head and upper body stuck out.  Maybe this was some kind of test.  What is my therapist doing to me?!  I was going to go straight home out of pure embarrassment.  Then as I was sitting at the bus stop, I told myself fuck it, I’m going to the store.  So I took the bus to a nearby retail store to scope out a new bike.  It’s an idea I had been going back and forth with for a while; with the possibility of now having two out-of-the-home jobs, I can’t rely on public transportation all of the time.  So Courage and I went and tried out some bicycles.  I quickly realized, upon sitting upon the first bicycle I tried, that I could not remember how to ride a bike.  I know that I must have ridden in childhood at some point.  But my mind and body did not want to do it.  I couldn’t put both feet on the pedals.  I tried another bike, and another.  My body started to shake and I knew it wasn’t going to work, so I left before I ended up having a full-blown anxiety attack.  I should know how to ride a damn bike.

I was disappointed, but I didn’t feel like going home and wallowing in anger or self-pity.  So Courage and I waited for the bus and then we went to the mall.  By now, it was mid-afternoon and I had yet to eat, so I stopped at Chick-Fil-A because they happen to sell chicken nuggets, the most delicious food on earth.  I had my bag on the table with Courage hanging out lopsided.  I felt kind of bad, so I took him out and stood him up on the table, right next to my bag of food.  I didn’t even care what people thought.  I even snapped a picture and posted it on Facebook, as if this stuffed lion and I were on some kind of adventure.
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We even went for ice cream.
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By this point, I was completely over the weirdness of being an adult and carrying around a stuffed lion.  I realized that I now had a stuffed animal, and my strong part had a stuffed animal, but I didn’t have anything for Charlie or Anna.  So, with time to kill, I ventured to the nearest store that sold stuffed animals – the Disney Store.  I managed to find a variety of dogs – perfect for Anna.  I must have circled the display three to four times trying to find something that screamed teenage boy.  Then, on my last round, I saw Baymax from Big Hero 6 hiding at the bottom of the display.  Robot, super hero, teenage boy…sounds good to me.  So now my parts and I each have something.  And if any new parts make themselves known, they will get one, too.
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Maybe I’m not so terrible at this DID business as I thought I was.

Ten weeks

~ KJ ~ 5 Comments

Here I am, ten weeks past my escape; ten weeks into freedom.

I’m exhausted, physically and emotionally.  It’s becoming increasingly difficult to get a decent night’s sleep.  My anxiety is so overwhelming.  I check the locks on the doors so many times.  Then I go upstairs to my bedroom and get in bed for five minutes before I’m compelled to go downstairs and check the locks again.  It’s hard to feel safe.  My mind races at night.  I can’t calm it down.  I can lay in bed for hours just staring at the ceiling.  I get startled at every noise.  I just want to be able to sleep.

Emotionally, I’m drained.  I cried a lot this week.  Perhaps it was needed.  I’ve spent the last ten weeks trying to show how strong I am, despite how I feel on the inside.  That is a job in itself.

I’ve started to open up more to people at work.  People seem to be inclined to open up and talk to me about things, and my coworkers are no different.  I’ve listened to them, and I’ve opened up to them as well.  We regularly talk about our therapy experiences and have an open dialogue about mental health.  It’s actually kind of nice.  While I haven’t revealed much of my story, I have told one coworker (who shared his own experiences in therapy with me) that I am in therapy several times a week.  He asked why so much; I told him I had a lot of issues.  Then he said how I seemed so level-headed and put-together at work, he would have never thought that about me.  For me, that was a testament to my ability to act strong and stable.  At least I have that.

I had a conversation with my parts yesterday.  I don’t know if they heard me.  I don’t even know if I did it right.  I could have just been talking to the ceiling.  I told them I didn’t want to be in pain anymore.  I know it’s not their fault.  It’s not my fault.  It’s not anyone’s fault.  I’m just tired of being in pain.  I don’t deserve it.  I don’t know what I did to burn myself, but it hurts.  It hurts to sleep, it hurts to shower, it hurts to sit down, it hurts to bend.  I don’t know how I managed to deal with this as a child.  Maybe it is better that I don’t remember much.  I know they want to protect me.  It’s just so complicated.

I’m looking for a third job.  I don’t know how I’m going to manage it, but I need more work.  I sent in a few applications yesterday.  I was too tired to do any today.  I’ve been checking Craigslist to see if anything close by comes up.  I’d prefer to find something in walking distance, because public transportation doesn’t really run past dinner time.  I thought about buying a bike.  It would save me money in the long run so I wouldn’t have to pay for the bus or cab fares, but I also have to consider whether or not I can physically handle bicycling everywhere.  I am not the most in shape person.  I also managed to break my foot walking, so imagine what I could do riding a bike.

I’m trying to pull myself over back onto the side of positive thinking.  I think I’m in the middle right now.  I’m trying to think of how far I’ve come, and how much further I can go.  I was clearing out my e-mails today and I came across a copy of the letter I was going to send my mother once I moved out; I had e-mailed it to myself in case I ever lost it.  I read it over and couldn’t believe what I wrote.  A strong person wrote that.  I could never have written those words in the position I am in now.  It’s like I sunk back into weakness the last week or so.

I wonder what would have happened if I sent that letter when I left.  Even now, ten weeks later, my family is still going out of their way to infiltrate my life.  They are telling anyone who will listen all of these lies about me, and I am not there to defend myself.  I have to realize that the life (if I can even call it that) that I had there, the connections that I had there…I can’t get those back.  I have to severe ties.  My family is poison, and they have infected everyone there.  No one is safe.  As if they were ever safe in the first place.

To end on a positive note, every day this past week, a butterfly has followed me as I walked home from work.  I didn’t think anything of it the first two times.  But on the third day, I thought to myself, this is just weird.  I was wearing a different color shirt each time, so it wasn’t that it was attracted to a certain color.  I don’t know why it (they?) followed me.  I’m usually not into symbolic things at all, but I have to wonder this time, with all of the spiritual and transformative meaning behind the butterfly, if there was a reason it was with me.  And this week, of all weeks, when I was at my lowest.  Whatever it was, it helped.

A break

~ KJ ~ 5 Comments

Don’t worry, I’m not taking a break from blogging.

I am, however, taking a bit of a break from trauma therapy.  I’ll still be going to therapy as usual, but my therapist thinks it’s best to stop any trauma-related work for the time being.

I’ve been very off since my appointment on Monday.  It’s been difficult to turn off that “evil child” mentality that was activated as old memories were rehashed and I experienced that flashback during Monday’s session.  I’ve been extremely low and it’s been difficult to bring myself back up.  I also ended up dissociating and injuring myself in the same way my mother injured me as a child.  I re-enacted the same traumatic event.  Why?  I don’t understand it.

I didn’t even want to tell my therapist what happened.  I didn’t even want to go to therapy today.  But I went.  And I was in so much pain just sitting there that my facial expressions started to give my secret away.  She started asking if I was in pain and I tried to shut her out.  But she was (and always is) persistent.  Eventually I told her what I had done, and after a brief discussion, she came to the conclusion that it was best to take a break from the trauma for a while.

I felt like a therapy failure.  I asked her, “doesn’t this mean I’m weak?  I can’t even handle therapy.”  She tried to convince me that it actually took strength to admit what I did and that these things take time.  It’s not worth being re-traumatized.  I lived through this shit for 25 years, I can’t expect to jump into recovery in just two months.  I guess she is right, it was just not something I wanted to hear.

Everyone keeps telling me how strong I am, and how great I am doing.  All I can think is how weak I am and how close I am to failing.  A strong person doesn’t feel like dying on the inside.  A strong person doesn’t hurt themselves because some part of them still feels like they are an evil child that needs to be punished.  A strong person doesn’t need to take a break from trauma therapy.  Where’s this strength people see?  I’m having trouble finding it.  Sometimes I feel like I am so close to drowning.  I’m doing these things that people think are great, and I guess they are – but a part of me is dying, and nothing can stop that.  I can do all the great things in the world, but that won’t change who I am and what happened to me.

My therapist brought up my strong part.  I’ve talked briefly about her in therapy before, but not much.  I believe she is the part that got me through my escape.  My therapist started to ask me questions about that part and I shut down.  I don’t really know enough about her.  She doesn’t come out very often.  My therapist mentioned if I was self-sabotaging myself by not letting that part out more or getting to know that part.  I don’t know.  I feel that Charlie runs the show and doesn’t really let anyone else have a say, so it’s difficult for me to really know any of my other parts.  Maybe Charlie needs an Ativan.  Or a timeout.

I don’t know where therapy will go from here.  I’m just going to have to trust that it’s the right decision.