Great Unrealistic Expectations

My dog Maybelline is stressing me.  She wants to go on a walk, and I just don’t have it in me to get off this couch, which makes me feel like a terrible pet partner.

Taken from today’s journal:

Been a busy day.  Service, errands, back pain.  The works.  I wish I could take a muscle relaxer right now, but I’m supposed to take Mabes for walk, and I can’t do that if I’m asleep.

Times and days are running together.  I find no support anywhere.  I was doing fine until Husband came home.  I was busy packing for our move, and when he came home we started to feel “off”.  Most would call that experience dissociation.  I don’t know what to call it anymore.  There is still the troubled argument of whether we accept the D.I.D. DX.  Tina gets very angry if we accept it.  But writing and talking just like this, isn’t that a sign of dissociation and of others?  This battle gets old.  I KNOW what’s wrong.  Tina’s doubts have left an imprint on us, but not a lasting imprint.  

*****I wonder if we’re making it up as we go *****

If you have D.I.D., but don’t acknowledge it, can you still improve anyway because the prescription of psychotherapy is still the same?  I hate whatever I’m going through right now.

So I was fine until Husband came home.  Then I felt “off” or dissociative.  I lasted as long as I could but broke down and took an anti-anxiety med.  It didn’t help much.  A muscle relaxer would help, but the timing is no good.  

So why do I feel “dissociative” when Husband comes home?  Probably because he’s so temperamental and to some degree I (and the littles if there really are any) am afraid of him, his moods, his headaches, his temper, his race -car driving.  I never know which Husband I’ll meet next.  So we get scared around him.  

If D.I.D. has lots of faces, shapes, and norms, why couldn’t mine be one?  I question whether I really hear voices of others or is it just my own voice.  I guess D.I.D. has been going on so long I have failed to recognize just . . . I don’t know what I was going to say.

What am I?  I just want to be sure I’m not lying or making a fool out of myself.  Mostly it seems too much to believe.  Bad things couldn’t have happened.  I had a happy childhood.  But, oh, how I hated Birth Parents.  And it can’t be denied that at least on a superficial level there was some abuse and neglect. I own that.

Good God.  *sigh* I think we want to see Therapist more than once a week.  What bullshit.  Some feel “close” to him and have a need for his attention, so they want to see him more often.  Little children who want to feel special.  Is that good or bad?  Does that give Therapist too much power and make us even more vulnerable?  Better yet, why need more attention now?  Has their source of attention dried?  Are they not receiving attention inside?  I doubt Tina, in her crisis, is up to showering them with love and attention.

For some reason, this journal entry feels accurate. I think it's because it feels like we're communicating.  It feels true to what is going on inside, and that is a cause for mourning: Mourning for the system that doesn’t feel like it used to feel, mourning for Tina who is not the same right now and is in crisis, mourning for those parts who require more attention and special feelings, mourning for those who aren’t getting their needs met by this ever-evolving system.  

I can feel Tina seeping her way through this journal entry.  I feel her sending her hate and anger to me, but that’s not all she’s sending. I sense from Tina some subtle undertones of helplessness and vulnerability.   I sense great fear in her . . . and great sorrow.  What a pity.  I almost don’t recognize her at all.

White Knuckles

I am dissociative.  My brain is foggy, and I can't think.  My head has a far-away ache.  There is chaos living inside that I cannot describe would I even be allowed.

I'm a little bit hungry, but feeling empty is keeping me calm even though I'm coming off the rails and in over my head.

There is so much to say, but I don't know what it is.  The tears are scurrying behind my eyes and the rallying cry to keep "it" away from me is called.  I have not enough focus for this post.  I am zigzagging like a ping pong ball in my brain, and there are chinks in my thoughts disrupting its lineage.

What I would say if I could is that I need a hug, I need a hug, I need a hug.  I need the safe touch of someone who cares, who understands, who would let me cry on a shoulder.

No sooner do I write that then Tina gets angry.  I grow so tired of her indignation.  So much of the time it feels directed towards me.  A few tears slipped by her, and they started to make me feel better, but then she wiped the tears away and cut me off.  What started out as nascent feelings of clarity and lucidity give way to being blank again.

I don't know how I'll get through the night.  I'm trying to stay away from pills that will serve to dull the ache of unrevealed pieces and to find other ways to ground myself.  It's not going so well.

I started by going through my entire collection of iTunes music and deleted hundreds of songs I don't remember buying and greatly dislike.  Where did they come from?

My dog Maybelline is here with me, softly sleeping, and unaware of the turmoil in which I languish.  They say dogs are intuitive to human suffering.  Not her.  She is as blank as I am.

I'm tired of being blank.

Thus, I surrender to the meds that whisk me away to where it doesn't hurt as much to be vacant, and into the numbness I sink willingly and gracefully.

Memories Denied

I disappear under the collapse of the padded walls in which I am mentally locked. I seem to have spectacularly careened off the solid road of recovery and engaged in behaviors that have sent me back to being someone emotionally unstable. Barely making it, I am now suffocating with the awareness of all the frivolous attempts at a sane life I've perpetrated, like so many lies spilling from my unselective mouth.

At the beginning of my summer break, I decided to begin writing my memoir. I set myself up for failure. It seems to write a memoir one needs memories and be able to recall experiences. I know nothing of the life this woman lived, and the parts have died and taken their memories and experiences with them. I have “assumed” knowledge, but I can not provide first-hand experiences of life in or out of that house.

I've been reading books on how to write a memoir, and there are writing activities provided to aid in the writer's process. One of the activities from Sue William Silverman in Fearless Confessions is a series of fill-in-the-blank sentences to help the writer to begin to submerge him- or herself in “particular moments of time.” I struggled immensely with these simple, evocative sentences. Take a look at a couple of the suggested sentences.

• When I was ten, I smelled __________ outside my bedroom window.
• The item of clothing I recall most vividly from childhood is _________.
• The noise that scared me the most growing up was ________.

When I try to complete them, I go completely blank. I have no answers. I can't even come close to anything resembling an idea. If I can't recall basic memories and details of childhood, how can I write a whole book dedicated to the most poignant moments of my life.

And I hate to fail at this, too. Writing this memoir is supposed to be symbolic of making it through hell and living to tell about it, and hopefully someone reading it down the road can say, “I wasn't alone”. I don't want to give up, but is the struggle worth it? Do I even want the memories and feelings I need to write this book?

This whole scenario, front and back, inside and out, is derailing me.

And this just feels like an underscore to the emptiness, depersonalization, and lack of self I feel. Not being able to write this memoir just proves I don't really exist, and maybe I never have.