THE COUP: ILLEGAL SEIZURE OF POWER

Maybelline sound asleep.  She loves her crate.  Makes her feel safe and secure.

I don’t know if I can write this post.  I feel extremely dissociative at this very moment despite taking my medication.

I don’t know why it’s important to write this, but last night’s experience was so bizarre, disruptive, and disturbing that I need to make sense of it.  

Last night wreaked havoc on me, and I’m not sure I can adequately give voice to it.  

I think something was triggered in our session with Therapist yesterday.  We came home, journaled, and then went to our place of worship.  I was so emotional through the services that I sat in my seat and cried.  When time was up, we had a congregation prayer, and it dawned on me my eyes were open during it.  Then I had a flashback to a time when I might have been eight years old, and I refused to close my eyes during prayer and hadn't been for a long while.  Closed eyes do not equal safety.  You must always keep your eyes open to remain vigilant and safe from people hurting you.  

When I remembered this, I began to dissociate and switch.  It was like the light switch was being turned off and on, off and on, over and over.  The switching was constant, and I had to leave quickly.  

Meanwhile, I came home around 9:30 pm and my lower extremities were in such pain, but I had no clue why.  I hadn't done anything differently to cause such pain. It baffled me, but I took pain medication that never worked.  I doubled the dosage and nothing even came close to alleviating the pain.  

Meantime, Husband left to go to bed around this time of 10:00, but I wasn’t sleepy so I stayed in the living room to catch up on social media, pay bills, etc.  But I kept noticing I couldn’t remembering what I was supposed to be doing.  I would start a task and then forget what I was supposed to do.  It felt like I was flitting from one thing to another, but I couldn’t make sense out of anything I was trying to accomplish.  

I can not overstate it when I say I couldn’t remember from one moment to the next.  It was like being in a dense, thick fog, and I couldn’t process anything.  I was confounded, but couldn’t untangle the mental mess.

I decided to take my night meds and go to bed, but the dissociation had other plans for me.  I wasn’t tired or sleepy despite taking sleeping pills.  

It honestly felt like someone was overriding my medication or it just didn’t affect them.  It never felt like true insomnia.  This felt totally different, like my members were just wide awake.  Almost manic but without the hyperactivity.  I was simply awake and not able to think clearly.

Hours later, I took a muscle relaxer and laid in bed feeling very strange and out of sorts

Sleep finally found me but in bits and pieces, tossing and turning.  

I’ve had insomnia frequently in life but never before did it feel like the hostile takeover of last night.

Today has been similiar.  I’ve been spacey, dissociative, and I have an unrelenting migraine.  

I write this experience because I’m trying to make sense of it, and I’m wondering if anyone reading this might have had a similiar experience because this was way out of the spectrum of normal for me.

Safety is as Stupid Does

Maybelline taking a long nap after a walk.

I feel uneasy and unsettled, and a lot has to do with our session with Therapist.  The clock revealed only 30 minutes had elapsed, so I must have lost time in there.  I remember talking about Husband’s violent behavior and about how others cope who don’t cut, which I find interesting because the cutting isn’t what Therapist should be worried about.  Burning and my restrictive thoughts and behaviors should concern him more.  But with satisfaction I digress.  

Always looking for safe places.

So I’m supposed to blog about what would make me feel safe; what in my present life would make me feel safe.  

LOL.  I’m more likely to find the 8th World Wonder.

SAFETY: the condition of being protected from or unlikely to cause danger, risk, or injury. Security.

Ironically, what has made me feel the most unsafe is the only thing that can make me feel safe again.  Men.  I remember how safe Former Psychiatrist made me feel.  He spoke softly and tenderly to us.  He even allowed me to see how my poetry made him cry.  

Some have said they feel safe with Therapist.  I can’t say that.  I don’t feel he’s warm, soft, or caring, and that’s what we need.

Safety should be a one-way street.  There should be other things to make me feel safe.  But the truth is that what destroyed me is the only thing that can resurrect me.  

But in a perfect world, what would keep me safe?

I can’t answer that.  Nothing will or would.  I’m constantly aware of the dangers around me.  I wonder if you can be both.  Can you be aware of danger but be safe at the same time?

I have no concept of safety.  I’ve always wanted to feel taken care of and protected.  To the core and by the core, we’ve never felt safe.

This subject is bringing out my self-harm inclincations.

I hate this fucking topic of safety.  No where in the world is it safe.  Danger lies in everyone’s thoughts and behind everyone’s perverted fucking eyes.  

I don’t wanna write anymore.  

But we didn’t find the answers.  

Except for one: it’s not safe even inside.  

(There is a child talking to me with a British accent and I hear Victoria trying to calm her)

Why is she upset?   Is she upset because there’s no safety anywhere?

*Realization*

Words.  Words make Victoria feel safe, especially when she can artfully craft them and express them just how she wants them to be.  She’s protected by her words.  They are her defenses.

The rest of us don’t have one.

AGE IS NOTHIN' BUT A NUMBER

Mom, I'm out of peanut butter!

I’m not a happy camper.  Plenty of reasons why.  I burned myself yesterday.  It’s only a bummer because it doesn’t hurt today.  I know what will.

We sent a scathing email to Therapist last night.  I’d be nonplussed  if he didn’t tell me not to come back.  But he deserved it.  He thinks I’m too mature, which means too old, to self-harm.  Probs buys into the idea it’s a young person’s disease.

Maybe I am too old to engage in such behaviors, but then why do I want to do it so bad?  Why does it feel so good?  It might not always feel good.  There is shame in it and a wondering of why I’m acting so foolishly.  I should and do know better, but it’s better than nothing.  Reality is filled with uncertainty, disrepair, and unidentified emotions, and I’d do anything to escape reality.  I don’t know how to handle myself in a way that is positive and satisfies my need to have people worry about me.  I wish someone worried about me.  

I can’t make myself stop.  How do you make someone stop feeling ten years old?  That’s how old I feel at this moment.  How can I be  mature when I feel like a child?  Who cares anyhow?

Tales from the visits with Mother-In-Law

I went out of town for a few days.  Not a vacation.  More like looking after recently widowed Mother-In-Law.  I love her dearly, but she came back with me for a week, and I'm already nervous.  My dissociation has heightened to an unmeasurable degree.  I don't play nicely with others, and I don't want to share my apartment with her.  I couldn't even begin to write until I heavily medicated myself and put myself into a sleep.

I don't think it's Mother-In-Law.  I think my new apartment has been created as a place of comfort, and I don't even like sharing it with Husband.   He doesn't appreciate it at all. Which is another story entirely.  As soon as I got home and saw him I felt my skin crawl and the chaos in my head began.  Someone doesn't like him and steals from me.  If I don't resolve life with him I don't think there will be a marriage much longer.  He's got less than a year now to show signs he's willing to participate in change with me.

But my happiest times lately are when I get up, have coffee, slowly wake up, work around the apartment, read, take Maybelline for a walk, and continue my day however.

The cutting has subsided, but I crave burning myself.  Being watched by Mother-In-Law 24/7 and taking care of her in return has left little opportunity to comfort myself.  But I think of burning.  I know what I will do.  I crave it.  I imagine and fantasize about it.

I stuck pretty much to my weight loss plan while I was gone.  I weigh in tomorrow, hating what the scale says, hating what it doesn't.

I absolutely don't want to see Therapist for our session tomorrow.  I'm afraid it will be a let-down session, that there will be no true communication, partly me to blame.  The defenses are already being erected early, anticipating on what he might want to discuss.  It will be a waste if he bull shits the first thirty minutes and then tries to raise delicate issues.  If Therapist is going to bring up shit, he should bring it up quickly.  I don't want to wait there wondering when the other shoe will drop.

All in all, except for dissociative episode tonight, I'd say I'm doing well.  It's nice to be able to say that.

ARE YOU SAFE?

Trigger Warning

YOU ARE NOT SAFE, NOT EVEN CLOSE.

I am quite uneasy; be still my nerves.  An unknown nagging feeling keeps jabbing at the back of my mind, worrying me, filling me with concern and disrupting my thoughts.  

I am supposed to write something for Therapist, but I don’t know if I have an accurate topic.  Something about finding a reason to give up cutting and restricting.  

I suppose this is in response to the fact that I’ve been cutting and joined a weight loss program that I am taking a little too far.

So I guess the question is why keep going back to old patterns that “don’t serve me well.”  

My response then questions why should I let go of "old patterns" such as cutting and restriction when they keep me safe.  Perhaps I am the fool or just engage in foolish behavior.  I own both.  But why give any self destructive behavior up when they serve the purpose of protecting us.  

I have an alcoholic part, but she doesn’t get out often.  But those that cut and restrict are doing so to protect us.  If we didn’t hurt ourselves, then wouldn’t others?  Maybe we’re just beating other people to the opportunity.

All I know is engaging in behaviors keeps me child-like, needy, requiring others to take care of us, make us safe, safe, safe.  It’s selfish, I know.  It’s almost manipulative to carry on hurting onself so others will be obligated to handle our life.  

For me, there is no safety.  I do not feel safe.  There have been brief moments of feeling almost, kind of safe with Therapist.  It doesn’t get lost on me that my long-term therapeutic relationships have been with men.  It’s also not lost on me, though highly ironic, that I was engaged to an abusive man with whom I felt safe.  

Maybelline sitting in my lap making it hard to write.

I’ve spent all of my life searching for safe places, from real and perceived monsters.  Searching for safe places for my minds.  What one part thinks is safe another doesn’t.  

So I just cut.  It feels good.  It’s not a desperate plea for others to notice, although we hope they do.  If others learn what we are doing, maybe they will save us from ourselves.

See, we’ve been on a weight-loss program, but we’ve taken it too far.  There are ways to get around recording what you’re eating.  And in addition, the calorie/point range is too low.  How do we know?  Dizzy spells.  Dizzy when standing.  Fatigue.  But we take our Adderall, get busy, skip lunch, and enjoy the thrill of winning that day.  And when we don’t win, we take a razor to our skin because that somehow makes it okay that we effed up our food that day.  And we keep it a secret until we can no longer stand it, and we hope someone will rescue us from ourselves.  Make it safe.  Make it safe.  Make it safe.

And we are carted off to recovery facilities where they check appendages and other self-harm canvases, weigh us, check our vitals, and save us from ourselves.  But no more.  I will never go to another facility only to get a patch job.  

So what now?  How does one feel safe?  Does one ever feel safe?  When is it enough: to be safe from others or safe from ourselves?  Are those two even possible?

Secure, safe, protected, shielded, guarded, loved.  I don't know those words or connotations.

I don’t think I’ve ever felt loved in my life.  Never felt safe.  Never felt protected.

And when I hurt myself by cutting or restricting, that’s me saying, “I love you, and I will make sure you are safe and will be protected/looked after.”

And now that I’ve just made myself cry, I’m going to go make myself feel safe, loved, and protected.

Dear Me, I Hate You

These are things difficult to discuss because I'm afraid it will be thought I'm only seeking attention.  So when I say I don't want to talk about it, we really might need to discuss it but are afraid of people being overly concerned or or just not caring.  There is no easy way, and we don't know how to do "this" because "this" isn't a goddamn thing.

And tired of your pretending to care.

It's all bullshit.  I'm against this post.  Never works.  Never.

Writing, Therapy, and Flashbacks

I don’t feel like conspiring to write brilliantly.  I don’t want to care that the creativity has gone out of me like a candle in the wind.  I think I shall never write again because we are not in the blackouts of depression, despair, or constant self-damnation to write from the heart and soul again.

There’s a website I’m linking here called Writing Forward that has creative writing prompts, but I haven’t been doing them.  Maybe because I’m lazy, maybe because there’s no audience to which to write, maybe the prompts just don’t speak to me like writing about the dark side of life.  

But if I can’t write about things other than me and World War III, then what kind of writer am I?

Maybe I’m afraid.  Writing never comes easily anymore, and I think I’m afraid of failure.  Insert failure/success cliches.  

I bought a book for $4.00 full of creative writing exercises that I hope will inspire me. Perhaps this is a ghost I will always be pursuing.

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So we met with Therapist 2x this week instead of the usual once-a-week session.  I think as a group we were in a better mood and there wasn’t such a self-imposed hurry or demand to get everything said and covered we could because we know there’s another session coming soon.  So I think we were more relaxed.  Today we exchanged first bumps, which is somewhat innocuous on the human “touch” scale.  

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We had a flashback tonight.  I’m scared to think about it, but we can not let fear dictate which insiders we help and which ones we don’t .  What if the girl in the flashback is fleeing towards us? Are we going to close our minds to her and the help she needs?

I don’t know what you expect me to say.  

Nothing really.  I just think we need to be open to sights, sounds, and feelings and not abandon insiders.  Why so angry?

B L O C K

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I'm sad. a teardrop falls in my hand.

PAINKILLER

Things are quiet and subdued tonight.  Though I feel the need to write, words scurry away. I can’t wrap my mind around what is happening to me.

 

I listen to music; it is a salve to my soul.

Music speaks to me and comforts me, and I need all the comfort I can obtain now.  

I wish I could use my own words to kill my pain, but they do not evolve, so I borrow other’s.  

I am empty, tired, drained.  I’ve cried so much today that my eyes burn.  

I’ll put it on the list of things not to discuss with Therapist.

We went crazy due to this blog post we wrote here to which Therapist has access.  Things were said that never should have been and fighting amongst the parts ensued.  We will never be able to look Therapist in the eye again.  Then we spent Friday frantically e-mailing him, trying to intercept the blog post.  His response to the last email brought us some serenity again.  It was so simple: He wrote: “It’s not a problem.”  That seemed to calm us down.

Tonight I’ve hit a low key.  And I just want to walk away, disappear, and never look back.    I just need to walk away.   Heaven help me walk away.

Am I Reality? and What Not to Disclose to Your Therapist!

An amalgam of three days of journal writing

Our purpose here is to figure out two things:  1) how to nurture our angry protector Tina 2) Therapist mentioned that we need acceptance.  Figure out what he meant by acceptance.  Accept what?

I don’t know what he meant by acceptance.  All I want to do is ask him to see us twice a week.  Would that be nurturing enough for Tina to see the only person she even semi-trusts for two hours a week?  Therapist would say no and charge us with finding other people we can trust, and then that would be the death of that relationship and I guess therapy.  

I think Therapist believes the only way to nurture Tina is through relationships, I guess so she can learn his fable that not everybody is scary and out to get us.  

We’ve not really talked with anyone, but we’ve hemmed and hawed to a couple of people about our stress, anxiety, and depression.  But truly it’s like waiting for the other shoe to drop.  One lady knows scant little and it would be great if she had been in touch with me these past few weeks during the death of Husband’s father and our move.

I want to prove Therapist wrong.  What if he’s right?  Of course he’s not.

I so wanted to get through life with D.I.D. differently.  I wanted inner communication.  I wanted to have the gaps filled.  I wanted to know myself and feel whole.  Therapist says i know or have an idea of what happened to me.  I might have an idea, but it is so vague.  I really don’t know.  I really don’t.  

All of this just brings up a panic in me.  Is Therapist saying I’m at the end of my therapy journey, that I can get on without therapy?  It doesn’t fix the current dissociation.  

I guess i have a fear i’m being cast off, abandoned, declared with simplicity that all i need are friends, trustworthy people.  And I will be so sad if that is what he is saying because having friends won’t fix these problems.

So, acceptance.  Hmmm.  Accept what?  What work have we done?  None.  Or we’ve regressed.  The insides feel distant, like no one knows each other.  I don’t have memories of who they are, what they’ve been through.  I feel like I’m starting all over.

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I feel dissociative but for no reason at all.  It’s not really a big deal.  I can just feel them behind my eyes, watching.  There are things i don’t want to write here because I’m afraid someone will put it on the blog.

I guess I can almost accept being dissociative and having other inside people a part of me.  I don’t like accepting it and there still is resistance.  I can’t fight much anymore.  I’m tired of fighting.  Fighting for the sake of fighting.

I hate that Therapist was told Tina trusted him some, but on some level we all trust him more than anyone, even Husband.  I wonder what it’d be like if we said we had love for him.  Not a romantic, inappropriate, stalky, perverted kind of love.  But a benign, innocuous, healthy! kind of caring for him for being trustworthy to a degree so far.  Ugh. Is that wrong?

Which partly explains why the group as a whole can’t shake the idea of seeing him twice a week.  Maybe it’s mostly selfish, wanting to feel relatively safe twice a week for an hour each.  

But Therapist is so flawed.  His optimism angers me.  I find his bright-side-of-things view puts a lot of pressure on me to live up to his expectations, but that is impossible and will never happen.

He says I already have an idea of what happened to me already.  I know a cast of characters.  Uncle.  Neighbor.  But I honestly don’t know what they did.  Maybe they didn’t do anything.  I don’t know and wonder how what the inside people claim can be verified and proven.  But when I say something, anything, I want to be believed, not second guessed.  I bet they would want this too.

But I feel incomplete.  I don’t know the people/parts inside.  There is no communication, at least of which I’m aware.  I used to talk with them, but I stopped because I felt silly.  I didn’t think they were really talking back or working towards communicating.  Like doing anything like I used to do such as baking chocolate chip cookies together, getting them Build-A-Bears, sticker books, children’s books.  I wanted to believe there was a connection, but that’s probably where some of the doubt has come from.  It really felt as if I were the only one doing those things, like they weren’t actively helping.  I was doing it all alone.  Forever alone.

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I’ve been thinking today that I’m losing touch with me, life, and time.  I can recite and tell what  was done today, like making phone calls, taking my dog Maybelline for a walk, the route we took, and cooking dinner.  But none of it feels like me.  I know I did those things, but did the real me do it?  It doesn’t seem like time loss, although there was a kind of awakening where I realized I had not been in control up to that point.  I wonder what has been happening.  Like I remember to some degree writing the blog recently, but it wasn’t all me.  Where is reality?  Do I live in reality?  Am I real?

I flip flop back and forth on whether to share these journal entries with Therapist.  I don’t know why I do.  He acts like he knows everything because he never listens to me.  He always acts as if he knows all the answers.  

I wasn’t feeling dissociative before or during eating, but I feel it now.  

Again, am I real?

I don’t feel well.  I’m split in many different ways.  My future seems shaky and i worry about everything.  

Still thinking of Tina, I think she needs less and less of Husband.  I think he’s soaked in his own troubles and can not help any of us to any degree.  I think that’s why we get spacy, distant, and unsettled when he’s around.  Tina would be just fine living by herself without having to wrestle with Husband’s mood swings.  I’m not looking to leave him, but I’m not happy with the way things are.  I am trying to be especially patient since the death of his father, but I would assume his father’s death would be a catalyst for change.  

So we cooked dinner tonight.  I don’t know for sure because I’m not in touch with her enough, but I think she enjoyed it.

I bury my face in my hands.  There’s something bugging me, nagging me, and it won’t go away.  When I close my eyes, I see Tina standing there, surrounded in darkness.  I think I see others, young ones, sliding down hills in burlap bags.  Where is this coming from?

Therapist said I have an idea of what happened to me.  I’ve gone back and done some reading, and vague generalities are all I find.  

Some writing says I was “hurt”.  Well, hell, what does that mean?  I’m not looking for minute, painful details to be disclosed.  I just want to know what “hurt” means.  And I want to know how the parts developed, why were they needed, what do they want and need now.  What are their fears or happy times?

I want more.  I want to know more about the people/parts that total us.

But as I stop and think how good it sounds, I know it will never happen.  Fear always wins.  

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This may have been written, but it’s not cause for discussion.  Don't even think about it. Don’t you dare.

Home of the Not-So Brave

It’s been two weeks since I’ve written.  In that time I’ve lost a dear father-in-law to death, moved from a nice home to a cramped, crappy apartment, had an exhausting moving sale where all I did was fight with Birth Mother, and have barely escaped foreclosure on my home.  I’ve had enough.

In the meantime I’ve discovered I’ve been doing it all wrong.  Dissociation and my approach to it.

If there really is dissociation, and I still deny it, I won’t ever heal.  I don’t know how to handle insider people or if I even want to acknowledge them.  Just assuming I dissociate, I don’t want a relationship with them or hold that connection  with them long enough to hear from them what their hurts are, their boo-boos, their traumas.

Even as I type this, I’m rushing.  I want so little to do with this idea of dissociation or blog posting or anything associated with it.

I think at one point I might have wanted that connection, but I’m not doing the work with them I once was.

It is all overwhelming and makes me angry.  There’s no comfort for anyone here.

I don’t know how to create inside safety for them or even me.  Why create safety?  I don’t understand things.

I don’t want to speak with insiders who may or may not be feeling the trauma.  No one is hurting, but how would I know when I refuse to spend time with them?

I don’t care if they are good people or bad people, I want stay away.  

I’m scared.

One article I read said to remove replications of the outside trauma on the inside bodies.  GTFOH.  The author said there might be dirt, blood, mud, or messy stuff on the inside bodies.  TBH, I know this is true, but I can’t get rid of it.

The effing article also said to give the injured insiders “lots of TLC”.  Maybe the reason I am so defiant against the idea of being dissociative is because I am so well disconnected from them.  

And I also don’t have the patience for this crap.

I thought I was at one time building a genuine rapport with my inside people and that there was honest communication.  I think it’s why I like my last post found here.  It felt like honest communication.     But it has evaporated.  It’s like I woke up and had to start all over again with them so I decided I didn’t want to.  

So I hate them and I hate me for hating them.  

I’m also scared.  I don’t think since the original diagnosis over 20 years ago have I made any progress.  Where does that leave me because I don’t want to do the work anyway, so I’ll be stuck here for another twenty years if I make it.

I just want my words back and if one of those bitches took them I’ll be pissed.

What if I don’t have it in me to get better - not better - but have an inclusive, relatively peaceful life?  

I keep failing.  I don’t know who’s really in inside because I’ve shut them out so long.  I know names on a map but not personalities, and I don’t have the fortitude to find out.  

I”m out of time, in more ways than one.