life

Saved

~ KJ ~ 9 Comments

I passed out last Saturday.

I was in the shower about to condition my hair when I noticed my vision getting blurry. I couldn’t even make out the bottles. I felt weird, and very off-balance. It was similar to how I felt two years before, when I ended up passing out in the hospital. I had just enough reaction time to open the shower curtain and lean on the toilet so I didn’t fall down.

It scared me. I hadn’t passed out like that in two years. And I was alone with the door locked. What would have happened if I fell and got injured? No one could have helped me. It could have been a lot worse than it was.

Since then, I’ve been taking breaks every morning when I shower. I’ll stand for a few minutes, then step out and sit for a few minutes before getting back in. I thought I could just deal with it. But I still didn’t feel right. I was still feeling light-headed, even at random times throughout the day.

We are supposed to report any side effects or events like that to the nurse at the program. But I hesitated for a few days, because I was afraid it would mean I had to stop taking the medication I was taking for the PTSD (it is primarily a blood pressure medication). I finally decided on Wednesday to tell the nurse what had happened. I hadn’t been feeling well that morning and I was scared again.

I told her exactly what I remembered. She asked a few questions and had me sit down to take my blood pressure. Then I saw the confusion and concern on her face. Something’s not right here. My blood pressure was reading exceptionally high — the exact opposite of what she was expecting, since my symptoms all pointed towards low blood pressure. She took it again and ended up with the same result.

At this point, I think we were both a little concerned. Something made her check my other arm. This is so bizarre. I asked her what was wrong. My blood pressure was reading very low. Two different arms with two drastically different blood pressures. She had never seen it before. She wrote down the results, asked me a few more questions about different symptoms and went to consult with the psychiatrist.

When I checked back in with the nurse, she told me the doctor said to stop taking the Cardura right away and see a cardiologist ASAP. This wasn’t normal at all.

I was scared and a bit of an emotional mess. I couldn’t focus on much of anything at that point. I just wanted to pretend like this never happened. Let’s just go on like we never found this out. But I knew I couldn’t do that, and the nurse didn’t want me to do that, either. So I called the cardiologist, explained the situation, and got an appointment for the next day.

Even though part of me wanted to flee that appointment, I went. I also knew I needed to go because the people at program were concerned about me, and insisted that this was important.

They were right. It was important, and my issues weren’t normal. I need further tests, but the cardiologist thinks it is an arterial stenosis, or blockage in one of the arteries on my left side. I need to have a CAT scan and ultrasound to confirm exactly where the blockage is before we can do anything further. The cardiologist also wants me to see a neurologist to rule out seizures, because he says my pass out events are not typical of heart-related fainting.

And now I have to sit and wait. Wait for insurance to approve the tests. Wait for a diagnosis. Wait for more answers.

I don’t want to wait. I don’t even want to deal with this right now. I just…I don’t even know what is happening to me. I am falling apart in more ways than one. And I don’t understand why all of this is happening. What did I do wrong?

My emotions are in all the wrong places. I have been crying off and on and I’m not even sure why. I eat, I cry. I sit down, I cry. I go pee, I cry. I’m a mess.

I was angry at myself for causing this. Maybe if I had just gone to the doctor all these years like a normal person. Maybe if I didn’t smoke. Maybe if I just took better care of myself, I wouldn’t be in this moment right now, dealing with a serious medical issue.

I was angry at the nurse for finding something off and sending me to the cardiologist. If she didn’t check my other arm, this would have never happened. Like it was her fault for all of this. I know it wasn’t her fault at all. And I felt incredibly ashamed for feeling anger towards her in the first place.

The nurse checked my blood pressure today. Part of me hoped that other day was just one big mistake, that the machine was just acting up. But it wasn’t, and once again, there was a drastic difference between each side. I wanted to cry. The nurse was trying to be encouraging, just as she has been these past two months as I’ve continued to struggle with my declining health.

I told her about my feelings towards her, and the misdirected anger. I felt the need to apologize for my feelings that she would have never even known about if I hadn’t told her. She didn’t take it personally. She said a few things, and then she ended with and I may have saved your life.

And she’s right. But I still struggle with whether or not my life is even worth saving anymore.

 

Through the Eyes of DID

~ KJ ~ 2 Comments

Yesterday, Grief Diaries: Through the Eyes of DID was published.

I was fortunate enough to be able to share part of my story, as I was one of the contributing writers for this book.

I had a lot of mixed emotions about being a part of this book. I actually changed my mind a few times before finally deciding to go through with it.

I still carry a lot of shame and guilt for what happened to me. I still believe, in some ways, that my childhood was my fault. I thought, if anyone reads this, they are going to think I was a horrible child. They are going to believe I am a horrible person. How bad a child I must have been for my own mother to treat me like that. How weak of a woman I must have been for allowing the abuse to keep happening. How crazy I am with this diagnosis.

It’s not like I haven’t spoken about it all before. I’ve been vocal about my trauma in social media. I write publicly about my disorder on my professional blog, under my real name. I write about everything on here, under not-so-anonymous anonymity. But this was something different. This was my life, attached to my real name, printed in a book, available across the world for anyone to read.

And then there was the issue of protecting the people who hurt me. I felt bad for labeling my abusers. I could have just said someone abused me. I didn’t have to name names. But who was that helping? Who was that protecting? It wasn’t helping me. It wasn’t protecting me. It was helping and protecting my mother. It was helping and protecting my father. And I didn’t owe them help or protection. I didn’t owe them anything.

I’ve held so much anger against the people who failed to protect me from my mother, and here I was doing that same exact thing — protecting her. The woman who stole my childhood. The woman who took away my innocence. The woman who broke me again and again. It’s bad enough to be abused, but to be abused by your own mother, the one person who is supposed to nurture, love, and care for you — that is a whole other level of pain. It’s a pain I want people to know about, because I want them to realize that it can happen to anyone. I want people to know that mothers can hurt their children, just like anyone else can.

So I did it. I admitted my mother abused me.

My biological mother was my main abuser. I call her my biological mother because it’s difficult to call her mother sometimes. I acknowledge that she gave birth to me, but her motherly qualities stopped there. For simplicity, I will refer to her as my mother, but I’d like to believe that real mothers don’t abuse their own children.

But that was not my only struggle in writing for this book.

In collaborating with the other writers who also had DID, I realized that I am just not at that level of acceptance yet. The other writers were so okay with announcing how many parts they had. They knew all their parts’ names and what purpose they had in the system.

And then there was me. How many parts do I have? Too many to count right now. What are their names? I don’t know. I know a few. But not all of them have names. I don’t keep a tally. I don’t keep an attendance sheet. Just the other night, I was kept awake by a voice inside that kept saying Sadie wants to color and all I could think was who the FUCK is Sadie? Because I just don’t know. I don’t know my parts. I don’t know me. I am a failure here, among all of these perfectly organized and knowledgeable people with DID.

I’m not going to lie. Seeing what others wrote made me feel like shit. I thought maybe I shouldn’t be writing for this book, because my DID is as chaotic as my life is, and that’s not the image that anyone else was portraying.

But then I remembered that I’m not supposed to be perfect, and my DID sure as hell doesn’t have to be perfect, either.

So I wrote my reality. I wrote of my shame in having more parts than I cared to admit. I admitted I didn’t know everything that was going on, inside and outside my head. I told of my struggles with drugs and alcohol, my suicide attempts, my fears about turning into an abuser. I wrote about how afraid I was of losing control and of losing my life. I opened myself up in a way I hadn’t before.

And now it’s all out there. The life I hid for so long. The parts of my life that I am still hiding. The denial. The failure. The fear. The struggle.

I don’t want to hide anymore. I shouldn’t have to.

You know me as Kyra Jack, but I’m also Crystalie.

I have DID.

I am a human being.

Crash

~ KJ ~ 10 Comments

I feel it coming.

That moment when the last string holding shit together finally breaks and everything comes spilling out. That moment when the last screw in the last hinge comes loose and the door flies right off the wall. That moment when everything comes crashing down because the weight is just too much to handle.

I am tired. Physically and emotionally spent. But I can’t even sleep anymore, between the noise in my head and the noise right outside my door. Every ring of the doorbell, every knock at the door, every 3 AM TV show played on volume 50, every fucking noise in the middle of the night — I hear it. And I can’t sleep.

And it drains me. At a time when my body needs the most rest, I am getting the least. The least sleep. The least food. The least of everything. I am running on fumes, and I’m waiting for the day when I finally run out of gas and drop to the floor.

I thought about going to the hospital, which is ironic considering I just fought my way out of there two weeks ago when I was sick. But there are things there that I can’t get right now: a safe place to sleep, three meals a day, quiet, and care. I need those things, right now more than ever.

But I can’t do that. I can’t just drop everything and pretend like my needs matter. The world doesn’t work like that. If I went to the hospital, I wouldn’t be able to go to work, and right now I can’t even afford a tissue to sneeze in. So what choice do I have? No matter what I do, I’m fucked in one way or another.

I try to get care in wherever I can. I stay at work just so I can have some peace and quiet. I sleep there, too. I feed myself off of unwanted food and value menu items I buy with the gift cards I got for Christmas. I use another gift card to go to the movies to give myself a break from my life for a little while. I don’t think my coworkers and friends will ever know how much their gifts have helped me get through these last couple weeks. They have indirectly been my source of care, of peace and sustenance.

This isn’t a way to live. I can’t do it anymore. I shouldn’t have to live like this. I shouldn’t have to sleep at work. I shouldn’t have to look for peace and solace in places that aren’t my home. I shouldn’t have to feel trapped inside my own room.

But don’t worry about me. I’m fine. I still get out of bed. I still go to work in the morning. I am still breathing.

Is that enough?

Terminate

~ KJ ~ 11 Comments

I think there are people in this world that just can’t be helped.

I think I am one of those people.

I tried. I really did.

I took every pill the doctors prescribed. Every anti-depressant that left me more suicidal than before. Every anti-psychotic that failed to stop the voices or the impulse to self-destruct. Every anti-anxiety pill that only took the edge off. Every mood stabilizer that sent me spiraling deeper into depression. Every sleeping pill, every stimulant, every off-label medication they tried to help me with has failed.

There is no pill for this. There’s no magic medicine, no chemical imbalance to correct.

My mind is broken in a way that can’t be fixed. You can’t put a splint on my brain. You can’t put a cast on my memories. You can’t fix something that’s been broken too many times for too long.

Maybe if someone had caught it early, I wouldn’t be this way. If someone spoke up instead of saying silent. If someone had questioned my mother instead of letting it go. If someone told her to stop instead of helping her. If someone feared her as much as they feared God. If someone had saved me, instead of leaving me behind.

But no one did any of that. And now I am here, shattered pieces held together by watered-down glue. Forever unstable, the slightest touch breaks me all over again.

There is no cure for this. There’s no way to undo what’s been done. I can’t hit rewind. I can’t start over. I can’t erase the pain in my heart because it’s been written in permanent ink.

Every time I was raped, molested, assaulted, beaten, burned — another piece of me was broken. A tiny crack on the surface was all anyone could see, but beneath that was complete brokenness. A soul left to die, a mind left shattered, both hidden underneath the face and body of an innocent child, an innocent child who didn’t know her innocence because it was stolen from her before she ever had a chance to experience it.

How does someone get over that? I think I would have rather been hurt by a stranger. Maybe I could have handled it better then. At least I would have known what love was, at least I could have had someone to turn to. But I didn’t have that, because the one person that should have loved and supported me and kept me safe was the person that hurt me night after night and taught me how to be afraid.

I tried to be helped. Every school guidance counselor, every social worker, every therapist. They tried. But they couldn’t help me, either. I took one last chance. I told myself if this didn’t work, then that was it for me. Fifteen years of medication and therapy failures is fifteen years too many. I didn’t want to go through it anymore. I gave up everything for this one last attempt at healing.

But I don’t think it’s working. The cost of my freedom has been permanent fear, a fear that can’t be helped. No matter what day it is, no matter where I am, I am living in fear of her. I’m afraid every morning when I try to take a shower without her. I’m afraid every afternoon when I’m walking home alone, waiting for her to come and kill me before I can get in the door. I’m afraid every time I go to bed, because I don’t know if she will come in and hurt me. I’m afraid every time I get sick, because I’m scared it means she will have to take care of me.

I’m in two worlds. One that’s the present and one that’s the past. One where I’m living and one where I’m dying. One where I’m grown up and one where I’m growing. I can’t tell the difference anymore. I don’t think I’m in one or the other. The worlds collided and now I am stuck in the middle, walking alone. I just want someone to walk with me. I want someone to understand what it’s like to be inside my mind. But that can never happen.

It’s not fair. It’s not fair for me to put other people through my chaos. My therapist can’t cure me. She can’t go inside my mind. She can’t walk with me. She can’t help me.

So maybe it’s time to let therapy go. Maybe I’m just supposed to live with the fear and the panic and the pain and the shame and the confusion. Maybe I’m lost because there isn’t a way home. Maybe I’m just supposed to exist like this.

Maybe they were right all along. I am too complex. I am a puzzle that can never be put back together because the pieces have been torn up, burned, and thrown away. And no one ever wants to put together a puzzle that doesn’t have all its pieces. It’s an effort destined for failure, no matter what you do, the puzzle can never be solved. I can never be fixed.

Help came too late.

500 Days of Freedom, Part 4 (The Stones I’ve Given Away)

~ KJ ~ 12 Comments

I went through what I’ve lost.

I went through what I’ve gained.

But there were still things I needed to get out, things that weren’t really losses or false beliefs or truths uncovered. These were feelings, feelings I had for a very long time that I no longer wanted to feel. Guilt. Shame. Fault. Blame.

I took the stones I had left — all 50 of them. I wrote those four words down, over and over again, one word on every stone. Then I stared at them for a while. I didn’t want to keep them. I didn’t want to hold onto them any longer than I already had. These were heavy stones. They were weighing me down too much. I didn’t need them.

I could have thrown those feelings into the ocean, just like I threw the stones of my false beliefs. But it didn’t feel right. These feelings had a place. That place was definitely not within me, but it also wasn’t somewhere in the bottom of the Atlantic.

I knew where these feelings really belonged. They belonged to my mother.

My mother is the one who should feel guilty. She is the one that hurt me. She is the one that abused her children. She is the one that broke the rules. She is the guilty one, on so many levels she is the guilty one. Not me.

My mother is the one that should feel shame. A normal person doesn’t abuse their own children. The things she did to me do not exemplify who I am as a person; they show what she is. She is the sick one. Not me.

My mother is the one at fault. She knew what she was doing was wrong. I was just a child. I didn’t choose this. She took away my power. She took everything from me. She was the wrong one. Not me.

My mother is the one to blame. She was the adult. She was my mother. She had no right to do what she did. She was supposed to protect me. I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t cause this. She caused it. She is the one that should be taking the blame. Not me.

I gathered the stones together. I tried to think of what I could put them in. I had an extra craft jar, and started putting the stones in there. I wanted to make sure I fit all 50 of them; I didn’t want any left behind. Then I noticed the jar of peanut butter I keep in my desk drawer. I try to eat a spoonful a day, because it’s the only food I can always tolerate. It also happens to be one of the only foods I wanted as a child, but couldn’t have.

So I finished the peanut butter. I cleaned out the jar and made sure it was dry. And then I started putting all of the stones inside. And it was a perfect fit. I put the lid on the jar and sealed it. It was done.

The jar may have been small, but it was heavy. Just like the weight of the guilt, shame, fault, and blame I had been carrying with me for so many years.

Those feelings don’t belong to me anymore, and neither does that jar. I packed it all up in a box and sent it to my mother (re-routed safely through another location).

They belong to her now. It doesn’t matter if she accepts them; that’s not on me. All I know is that those stones are no longer mine. The weight of those feelings are no longer mine. She will have to carry that weight, even if it’s for just a few minutes before she realizes what they are and throws them out the window.

They are the stones I’ve given away, or really, the stones I’ve given back. My mother put those feelings on me, and I don’t want them anymore. She can have them.

 

500 Days of Freedom, Part 3 (The Stones I’ve Gained)

~ KJ ~ 8 Comments

I am good. I have worth. I have power. I have hope. I have a purpose. I can have feelings. I can say no. I can live. I deserve care. It wasn’t my fault. I am safe; we are safe. I am free.

These are the stones I’ve gained. They aren’t false beliefs. They are the truths I learned from being free.They don’t weigh me down like the other stones.They don’t need to be thrown out to sea, or thrown out of my mind. I hold them close to me. I hold the beliefs in my mind everywhere I go, and the stones in a jar I keep with me. The stones remind me of what’s already growing inside: my new beliefs, the truths that I’ve gained from the lies I threw away.

I am good.

I was a good child. I am a good adult. I am a good friend, a good colleague, and a good human being. I was a good daughter, even though I never got the good mother I deserved. I do good things. I think good thoughts. There is goodness inside of me that was never allowed to come out. But now it can. And now I know. I am a good person, inside and out.

I have worth.

My body matters. My thoughts matter. My feelings matter. I matter. I am a human being, and human beings have worth. I am worthy of respect, kindness, and love. I am worthy of family and friendship. I am worthy of so much. I matter.

I have power.

I can make choices now. I may not always know how to, but I am learning. I have the power. My mother can’t make decisions for me anymore. I make my own decisions. She took my power away from me, but I got it back. Now I am learning to use it.

I have hope.

I see opportunities. My mother wanted me to be nothing, but I am going to be something. I used to live in the darkness, where there was no light. But now I know that light exists, so I try to talk towards it. Even if I still stumble in darkness, I can remember that there is a flame.

I have a purpose.

I try to believe that there are reasons that things are the way they are. There is a reason I’m still alive when I should be dead. There is a reason I found my way here, in this city, at this job, writing this blog, telling my story. I am not useless, or a waste of space. I have a purpose, and I will make a difference to someone, even if that difference is small.

I can have feelings.

I can be angry without being my mother. I can be sad without being punished. I can cry for as long as I want. I can feel without fear. I can feel something other than constant fear. I don’t have to hide my feelings anymore. I am learning that it’s okay to feel.

I can say no.

I couldn’t say no before, because saying no never worked. No one listened. I became powerless. I lost my ability to say no, and it caused me a lot of pain. But I can say no now, because I have power. I don’t have to comply with other people’s wants at the expense of my own needs. I can say no without feeling bad or wrong for doing so. I can be assertive now, and no one will punish me for it.

I can live.

I don’t have to die now. I am not destined for a life of pain. I still hurt, but hurt is not my life. I no longer wait for death. I no longer wait for an end to the pain. I find relief in the every day. The little things are the reason I can keep living.

I deserve care.

I deserve to receive care from others. Friends, coworkers, doctors, therapists. I am worthy of others’ care. I can go to the doctor. I can ask for things I need without having to feel guilty. And I deserve my own care, too. I deserve to take care of myself, in the ways I should have been taken care of as a child.

It wasn’t my fault.

My family’s failures were not my fault. My father’s death was not my fault. The abuse was not my fault. I was a child. I wasn’t to blame for any of this. It was never my fault, no matter what she said and still says. I didn’t do anything to deserve any hurt.

I am safe. We are safe.

I got away. I escaped. My mother can’t hurt me now. She can’t hurt my parts any more, either. I try to let them know that. I try to let me know that. I don’t have to be scared all of the time now. I am trying to learn how to be not scared.

I am free.

I can leave my house. I can walk down the street. I can lock or unlock my door. I can buy what I want. I can eat what I want. I can do all of the things I should have been able to do before, but couldn’t. I am free now. She can no longer control me.

They are the stones I’ve gained.

500 Days of Freedom, Part 1

~ KJ ~ 7 Comments

I still count the number of days since I ran away.

I started counting the day I left. I didn’t really know how far I’d get, but I still kept counting. Every morning was another day of freedom gained, every seven days was another week I made it through.

And now I have made it 500 days.

I realized I was getting close to 500 days a few weeks ago. I noticed it was also very close to the Thanksgiving holiday, which is a difficult one for me. I knew I needed to do something to celebrate. It would not only be good for me to acknowledge how far I’ve come, but also to be able to celebrate something meaningful for me while other people celebrate something meaningful to them.

I wanted to do something different. I brainstormed for a few days. Then one night, I was sitting at my desk and saw the stones of what I (thought I) lost. They have been sitting on my bookshelf since July, when I made them at the workshop I attended. As much as I wanted to do something special with them, I realized that they were made in a moment of hopelessness. I was plagued by a horrible memory, and it cast a dark cloud on my mind. I believed in that moment that I had lost hope, love, support, and purpose. But they weren’t really my losses. I had those things. I still do.

So I decided I was going to have a do-over. I was going to make new stones. I went to the craft store and found the biggest, heaviest, stones and put them in my basket. Then I saw a bag of small, smooth stones. I thought, I can do something with these, too. And then I grabbed another bag of stones as well. They were small, but not smooth; they were disfigured and heavy. I didn’t know exactly what I was going to do just yet, but I know I would come up with something.

And I did. I separated the three groups of stones. The big, heavy stones were going to be the stones of what I’ve lost. The small, smooth stones were going to be the stones of what I’ve gained. The heavy, oddly shaped stones were going to be the stones of what I’ve given away.

These stones were my progress; five-hundred days summed up on 72 stones. I felt something with every word I wrote on each stone. I cried. I got angry. I grieved. But I kept going. Just like I’ve kept going for 500 days.

I know there are many people who don’t understand why I still count the days, who don’t understand what I ran away from, and who don’t understand why I celebrate seemingly meaningless things like 500 days of freedom. But I know. I understand. And that’s what matters.

I spent the day with my stones. Some are gone forever now. Some are still with me. And some have found a different home. I grieved today. I cried. A lot. But I also smiled. I sensed relief. I felt the burden of what I’ve been carrying for so long lifted away.

There is a song by Thousand Foot Krutch, called Give Up the Ghost. I listen to it every day. The words speak to me in ways a song rarely does. It reminds me of my struggle. It reminds me of all of the things my parents kept hidden from me, the things they took away from me. But it also reminds me of the freedom I found. I am no longer caged. I am no longer the enemy. I am me, and I am free.

They never told me that I could be

free from the hate that’s inside of me.

They took my place, took my dignity.

They kept me caged like an enemy.

But I know now, I can be

free from the pain that’s inside of me.

You took my place, gave me air to breathe.

Opened the cage, and you set me free.

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

It’s time to reassess

~ KJ ~ 5 Comments

It’s been a hectic two weeks. I have a lot of decision-making to do in a short amount of time.

I’m not feeling well. I’ve been working all week, which is good for distraction, but bad for leaving me any extra energy to apply to my life outside of work. Pain is also draining me, and I cannot get an appointment to get cortisone injections earlier than the middle of June. By then, I may just amputate my own feet (I’m kidding – I don’t have the energy for self-amputation).

Recently, my abilities were questioned. Now I have to deal with more shit on top of the shit I already manage on a daily basis to fight for something I shouldn’t have to fight for. It’s not that I can’t manage more shit; I feel I shouldn’t have to. I have never given anyone any reason to doubt me, or any reason to question my ability to do anything. I have never and will never put anyone in harm’s way.

Regardless, I am now questioning my life’s path. Maybe I am not where I am supposed to be. I have sort of, unfortunately, lost the motivation to continue where I am at. Part of me wants to stay so I can prove to these people that I can do anything I want to do, but part of me doesn’t want to be around people that feel the need to bring other people down.

I’ve been looking at other educational options. Perhaps entering a new program at a different school. Perhaps pursuing a doctorate instead of a masters. I’m not questioning my pursuit of psychology and counseling. That will never change. It is actually something I will need in order to be taken seriously, especially as I continue to grow PAFPAC. I want to be a counselor. I have had so many shitty experiences with counselors and I know that something needs to change. There are cracks in the system that need to be fixed. And I believe I can do that.

There’s just so much to consider. I wish I was more financially comfortable so I could take time to consider everything. I considered asking my grandmother for a loan – that is how desperate I’ve become. My grandmother seems oblivious to everything (as you can read here) and I’d be putting myself at risk of interacting with my abusers if she tells them about the whole thing. I’m still considering it, I just don’t know either way at this point.

I wish I could work more jobs, but it’s physically impossible at this time. I fear I will need surgery again to repair the damage in my foot. I never had the surgery I was supposed to have last summer because that was the time I ran away, and my feet are significantly worse now than they were back then. If surgery happens, I’m really screwed. I can’t afford to be out of work. Hell, I can’t even afford to be working.

It sucks right now. Everything just sucks. But I keep on keepin’ on.

~ KJ ~ 2 Comments

As I sit here at my favorite coffee shop, waiting out of the cold before I start work in half an hour or so, I’m thinking to myself how long am I going to make myself suffer?

I am running on two hours of sleep. I’ve just used up the last of my gift card for a small iced coffee that I am hoping will be enough to get me through my next eight hour shift at work. I have a case report due for my psychopathology class today, and a discussion on consultation for my ethics class due as well. And I’m already running on empty. The sun has just risen, and I’m already dead.

And this isn’t the first time. I go through this over and over again, telling myself that things will change, that people will change. But nothing changes. I have to change. I have to realize that I have enough worth in this world and I have to make a change. I don’t deserve the life I’m leading right now.

I have so much going on. It may not seem like a lot to some, but it’s a lot to me. I work a job that I really happen to enjoy, with coworkers that I really have grown to appreciate, love, and care for. I don’t care if you think it’s not a real job just because I don’t make more than you. I wake up every morning and go to work and earn a paycheck. I write my blog every other week. That’s real work to me, too. It matters and it makes a difference in others’ lives. And I deserve to be able to write my articles with a clear mind and in a decent environment. I should be able to move forward with my advocacy work, but I keep falling behind because I’m so exhausted and stressed out from everything else going on in my life that could probably be avoided. And school. Grad school is a lot of work. And I bring my books and my laptop to work just so I can get a few moments of clear thinking in because I just never know what life will bring to me elsewhere.

I’m fucking tired. I deserve peace and solitude and respect and love and care and decency and all of those positive things, but my situation is holding me back from that and it needs to change.

I just need energy, strength, courage, and maybe a rich husband.