trauma survivor

Polyfragmented

~ KJ ~ 13 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The return home, Part 3

~ KJ ~ 4 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The return home, Part 2

~ KJ ~ 4 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Family

~ KJ ~ 11 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

11 months

~ KJ ~ 4 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’m losing my mind.

Welcome to the closet

~ KJ ~ 17 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’m exhausted.

Strings

~ KJ ~ 8 Comments

I feel like a marionette. Each string is a connection to my life, a piece of who I am. I need those strings to perform. I need those strings to live. But those strings are thin and weak; they started out that way. I started my life out with a disadvantage. 

But I continued to perform, I continued to live even with those weak strings. Now I’ve lost so many strings that all I can do is sit there and twitch a few limbs, waiting for that last string to break, the moment when I lose myself completely.

Some of my strings, I cut away myself. I had to. My parents were not supportive strings. They had to go. They were taking complete control over everything. The other strings couldn’t work right. I needed some freedom. 

In doing that, I weakened some of my other strings. The strings of people who I thought were there for me, they ended up snapping. They were only helping me alongside my parents’ strings. Once my parents’ strings were gone, so too were those others.

And then the strings of people in my old life, my friends and acquaintances. I feel them weakening as time goes on. Some of them have broken already. Some are splintering, seconds away from complete disconnection. I look up and see the damage, but there’s nothing I can do. So I have to watch as my strings continue to break away.

The strings of people I called my family – they are weakening, too; they were weak this whole time. I’m seeing now that those strings are not supporting me. They are there. I can see them. Everyone on the outside can see them. They appear to be strong, maybe a little colorful, but it’s all for show. They are not doing anything for me. They’re just there.

There’s one strong string. That is the string of my therapist. She’s holding me upright, even as all of the strings around me are snapping and breaking away.

But now that I’ve lost all of my other strings, all of my other resources, And I have nothing left to help her; I have nothing else left to help me.

Soon, that string will be cut from me. And I will have nothing. My supports will be gone, and nothing will be there to hold me up anymore. So I’ll fall to the ground, limp and lifeless.

I’ll no longer have a purpose.

They were wrong

~ KJ ~ 2 Comments

“I want to hate him, but I can’t.”

Those words I spoke during my therapy session yesterday have continued to stick out in my mind.

I told my therapist what I had been struggling with in relating to my memory, in a very general way because I wanted to avoid a flashback. I don’t understand how someone could do that. I don’t understand how you can reject your own child.

I tried so hard to hold my feelings inside. Anger, hurt, and sadness were swirling around inside of my heart. I tried to hold in the tears, but that wasn’t working as well as I had liked. Even my therapist could tell I was trying to hold back, and told me it was okay to let it out.

My therapist asked what I would say to my father if I could talk to him right then. My mind started going into overdrive. So many questions and statements started running through my head, and without really thinking, the first thing I said was not even a question or a statement to my father. I said “I want to hate him, but I can’t.”

Despite all of the things he has done to me, and now the rejection I am very much aware of, I still have trouble hating him. I want to hate him. I think he more than deserves it. But somehow, despite being raised by two heartless people, I have a kind and compassionate heart. It’s what allowed me to bury my feelings and take care of my father when he got sick so many years ago. He didn’t deserve my care, to be honest. But he got it.

My therapist asked me again. I ran through a list of questions in my mind, quickly playing out what his responses would be. Then I realized that, it wouldn’t even matter what I asked him or what I said to him. “It doesn’t even matter, he doesn’t believe he did anything wrong.”

I thought I was right. Neither my mother nor my father would ever admit fault. I always just assumed that it was because they believed they never did anything wrong. That is how they (especially my mother) played it off.

But then my therapist asked what my father would say if I told him what he did to me. She asked, “Would he say there was nothing wrong with it, or would he say that it never happened?”

I didn’t even have to think for more than a second before I had my answer. “He’d say that it never happened.”

I grew up being told that people on the outside just wouldn’t understand, that’s why we couldn’t tell. But if that were really true, and nothing was wrong with what my parents did, then why would they deny it? If they really believed that they were right, they would say there was nothing wrong with it. They deny it because they know they were wrong.

All of a sudden, it started to make sense to me. I never thought of how contradictory their line of thinking was.

For so many years, I’ve been blaming myself for what happened. I have been carrying that guilt within my heart. Something must have been wrong with me, a child rejected by her own parents. The only reason that made sense to me was that something was inherently wrong with me. I was the wrong one.

Part of me still believes that. That is why it’s so difficult to work through shit in therapy. I hold a lot of shame because I still believe it was my fault. I need to stop carrying the guilt and the blame. I need to keep telling myself that they were wrong.

My father was wrong. My mother was wrong. They were wrong.

I was just a child, born to parents who didn’t deserve me. I was not wrong.

Withdraw

~ KJ ~ 17 Comments

At 6 o’clock this morning, I submitted my official withdrawal from university.

I knew it was the right thing to do, but I still cried. And I cried again when I got the e-mail at 8 AM that my withdrawal was accepted.

It has been over a month and I still haven’t received an answer, and I just can’t wait around for a committee of people who don’t even know me to judge me based on a diagnosis and a few sentences out of my blog.

You know what? I’m hurt. I’m angry. I feel betrayed. I feel judged.

This wasn’t done out of concern for me. With the exception of one person (who I know did not write any anonymous reports), no one approached me about any concerns. Shit, no one even asked me if I was okay. A person who is genuinely concerned about someone will ASK that person, or at least make some attempt to talk to her. Genuinely concerned people don’t create fake e-mail addresses and send anonymous reports to the school, with links to my blog posts. That is not genuine concern. That, in simplest terms, is being an asshole.

You write extensively about your diagnosis of Dissociative Identity Disorder. Your blog documents serious struggles with mental health issues that have raised significant concerns…

Yes. I have DID. And? I don’t have it written on my forehead. You wouldn’t know I had it from looking at me. I have chosen to be open about it because of the shame and stigma attached to the diagnosis, shame and stigma that I have been trying to fight against. And yes, I  struggle with mental health issues. Any person who has been through similar experiences has them, too. But I manage them as best I can. I work just to pay for therapy.

In the blog you write that you are “consistently suicidal”, and that you are “in school for something that I’m not even sure I can handle.”

Gosh, a person with DID who struggles with suicidal thoughts. Considering that more than 70% of people with DID have attempted suicide, this should not be a huge surprise. As I have explained in this post, there is a difference between feeling suicidal and being suicidal. No matter how I was feeling, I continued to go to work, I went to class, and I did what needed to be done because I knew they were just feelings.

And what student hasn’t had doubts? My whole life, I’ve excelled academically. I’ve never really failed at anything. But I would be lying if I said I never doubted my abilities. I am sure some level of self-doubt is completely normal. I would be more concerned about someone who had absolutely no self-doubt.

Due to the severity of this situation and the perceived threat to yourself and others, I am making a referral…to evaluate whether or not your circumstances impair your ability to safely continue in the program…

Perceived threat to yourself and others.  Wow. Okay. I am not a threat to myself. If I wanted to kill myself, I would have either stayed in home prison or I would have jumped in front of a train by now. I wouldn’t have gotten a job, enrolled in graduate school, started an organization, and I wouldn’t be going to therapy a few times a week to make myself better.

A threat to others? In what way? Because I have DID? A diagnosis does not make me a violent lunatic. What have I ever done to show that I have ever been a threat to others? I don’t hurt other people. I didn’t even hurt my abusers. I avoided all conflict and confrontation and ran away. I let them get away with everything, when other people would have hurt them for what they did. If I didn’t hurt the very people who caused me so much pain, who the hell would I hurt? Who am I a threat to? No one. The answer is no one.

So, despite getting As, having a 4.0 GPA, scoring higher than average on the CPCE before I even started the program, giving an outstanding presentation on the psychological effects of continued child abuse, and handing in consistently professional, high-quality work, I have had to drop out of graduate school.

I’d like to think this wasn’t because of fear, viciousness, or misunderstanding, but my heart tells me that it was.

To whoever reported me, I hope you are never put in a situation where your life is scrutinized.

I haven’t done anything wrong. I will continue to write. I will continue to fight. I should not have to prove my worth any more than I already do.

Who are you?

~ KJ ~ 9 Comments

Who are you?

A simple question. Just three words. Nine letters total. Yet, it is the hardest question I’ve ever had to answer.

I’ve been working on my graduate school applications. The hardest part has been the personal statement. Nearly every graduate school requires one, and the two I am applying to are no exception. It should be easy, right? I’m a good writer. I’m intelligent. This should be a piece of cake.

Except it’s not. Because they want to know who I am. And I don’t know who I am.

In the first 29 years of my life, I never had the opportunity to be me. Everything I was, was based on what my mother wanted for and of me. She decided where I went to school. She decided where I worked. She had control over the food. She had control over everything.

That is why I have so much trouble, even today, making any kind of decision. I’ve had to have other people order food for me because I couldn’t decide on what I should eat. I nearly had a breakdown at Dunkin Donuts yesterday. The woman asked if I wanted the doughnut with or without sprinkles, and I froze. She asked again, and I struggled to find words. I wanted to cry. Over sprinkles.

Even the most basic facets of a person’s identity are complicated for me. The only thing I can say for sure, 100% of the time, is that I am a human being. Everything else? Complicated. Am I a woman? Yes, I have the anatomy, I guess. But I can’t tell you how many times I have stood in front of the restrooms in a public place and had to remind myself which gender I was, because there are times when I’m not really sure what I am.

For many, family shapes who they are. I don’t have that. I have no connection to my parents, no connection to my brother. I have no knowledge of my mother’s side of the family at all. Half of my genetic contribution, and I know nothing about it. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Shit, I’m still holding out hope that I was adopted. The very little I knew about my birth was a lie; I found out when I applied for a social security card last year that my place of birth was not what my mother told me. Was anything the truth?

Maybe I wasn’t even born. Maybe I don’t exist at all. I don’t even know anymore. Did I ever know?

Most times I don’t feel myself, if I even knew what being myself would feel like. Is this me, or is it a part of me? I don’t know how to tell the difference. What is my name today? I don’t know that, either. I guess I’ll just answer to anything.

I’ve had an identity that was always based on other people. I was never me, I was always Lori’s daughter. I am feeling angry, this means I am my father. I am a woman, this means I am my mother. I have never been me.

In many ways, my identity was stolen from me. I was never allowed autonomy as a child. I was never allowed to make choices for myself. Every aspect of my life was chosen for me; everything was controlled by my mother. How am I supposed to know who I am now if I never had the chance to be anybody?