If the Truth Were Told

I even said a prayer before my session with Therapist today and asked God that I not be so guarded and to help me be open to change.  But what transpired between me and Therapist was more than I bargained for, and I deeply regret it.

As I remember it, the discussion centered around purging and how I think eating makes me a whore.  I didn’t understand these feelings, so he asked something around the idea of did I want to know why there might be the association of food being dirty and how eating makes me a whore.

Here’s where it derailed on my side.  

I said yes.

Therapist tells me the food association correlates with an abuser on whom oral sex was performed by  me/we/he/she/they/it.  

1. I don’t remember this event or telling Therapist of it.
2. I don’t want to know this event.
3. This event must be a lie.

Throughout the day, I reflected on this piece of “history” that has been told to me, but of which I have no recollection, and I find myself greatly disturbed.  It has me twisted in knots and made me profoundly sullen and sad.  I can barely breathe.

I’m left holding a piece of a memory that doesn’t belong to me but still troubles me deeply, and I don’t know how to escape this purgatory.  

If the truth were told, I think this has set me back in terms of therapy, and I feel hopeless all over again.

Time's Confessions

The thick, heavy hours creep behind me, lethargically following me into my personal hell.

Life slows down and elongates itself into eternity.

Time spawns replicas of itself, burgeoning forth as every instant feels like infinity.

Each second hurls itself at me, expectantly waiting for me to placate the duration with purpose.

But I am trapped in the confessions of my head.

Anxiety spectacularly begins to surface. Panic reproduces itself.

Each moment breeds another moment, another opportunity to surfeit upon the frenzy of disquieting thoughts in the indiscernible distance.

The battle continues.

My thoughts stage a hostile takeover, targeting my unwillingness to listen.

Against my will and with the sanction of time, the merge is complete.

The new memories come to me in waves, but I nor my tears could have been prepared.

Time may stop now.

Slowly coming back

I do not even know what to write. Silence grips me. I try to speak but only gasps for air come out. I lay down my life with the memories, sensations, and flashbacks luring me back to childhood. I feel eight years old. I feel eleven years old. I feel too much.

Thank you for everyone who e-mailed me or dropped a comment. I’m overwhelmed at your support.

A question has been posed on my Formspring page and I will answer it as soon as I get my words back.

Home of the apathetic and tired

I'm tired. It's more than not getting enough sleep or the tired you feel after a long day of work. I'm tired to the core of my being. I think my brain has stopped working. My body is lethargic and craves rest.

I feel so negative. Every time I write it's always about some crisis or negative feeling I'm dealing with. I know that was and is the purpose of this blog: to document the journey from being completely fractured to finally whole. Maybe one day I'll have something positive to say.

For now, all I can say is that I hate therapy. I'm tired of it. I don't feel we're getting anything out of it. Maybe it's all because we're mad at Therapist. Yesterday we read an extremely difficult writing from our journal regarding, among other things, certain boundaries that we let be crossed by Husband and all Therapist could say was what a good wife we are for having such compassion since Husband doesn't feel good and is still depressed. That didn't sit too well with us. How could he compliment us when all we did was sacrifice ourselves to the wishes of Husband just so he'd feel better. What about our feelings?

Plus, we just have nothing to talk about in therapy anymore. We've been in therapy eighteen years. Enough is enough. There's nothing left to share. There are no memories of the abuse to process. What's left to discuss?

Life is just so difficult right now.

And the beast is still out. She is really devouring me and there's nothing we can do to stop it. I wonder how this member with the eating disorder behavior has so much control over the rest of us. Like today, we were at the gym for 2 1/2 hours. I didn't want to be there that long. I felt guilty for it, but I felt compelled to stay. This member is young. I don't think anyone can win against her. Our focus is on restricting, working out, and losing weight. I can understand how friends and family would say to someone with eating disorder behaviors to just pick up the food and eat. It should be that simple and easy. Just EAT!! But it's not that simple at all. There are consequences to eating. Getting fat is one of them.

The thing is, I think this member wants a way out. I think she's miserable with and without the behaviors. This member was out for our 6th grade year in school and she was picked on and made fun of a lot. She is consumed with self-loathing, courtesy of children and adults. For her, being thin is her only salvation.

I don't want to eat. Then I'll be a failure. If I can't lose weight I won't be comfortable with myself and I won't feel okay with myself. This is the way to erase all the wrongs that happened.

I don't know how to help her. I don't know how to help myself. Therapist said things that he wishes for us and someone said all the wishes in the world wont' make it happen. It seems the steps necessary to take to get better are out of our reach. Today, we are just too tired. Everything seems overwhelming. We are exhausted. It doesn't seem to matter anymore. We are an empty vessel.

I feel like there's so much more to say, but it's not coming forward. I sense many members writing today and I know I won't remember the content of this blog. Such is our life.

Ramblings of a gone mind

I'm not okay. I'm feeling rather rabid and English. The words are coming from somewhere else. I don't know what to do with myself. I know what I should do, but "shoulds" are woulds that can't help themselves.

I feel like Sarah McLachlin when she sang with the Perishers a song called "Pills." She sang they weren't alright, they needed pills to get through the night, needed lies to get through the day, and she wasn't okay.

That's how I feel today. My abusers are mingling with my memory, creating a cause for alarm and exhaustion. I find no solace anywhere, except in place I'm not allowed to look: a long sleep.

The nights are terrible for me. It seems that right after dinner it's an all out panic attack for me. Nothing in my coping skills bag satisfies. I try to color, do puzzles, play a computer game, nothing compensates for my deterioriation. I dry up and crumble.

I've the perfect opportunity to act out on my eating disorder this morning. I "pray" I do not. I worked it out with D. that if I don't act out on my eating disorder till the end of the month I can get my third tattoo, and I really want that tattoo.

I can feel my younger parts gathering around. This is really difficult. I don't know where I've gone.

Lengths to getting better.

What a weekend! It was filled with errands, sleep, and taking my god-daughters to a movie and shopping. We had assignments by our T. to complete and haven't been as productive as we would have liked; nevertheless, we did do some journaling, which was part of our instruction. Another assignment was to let Tina, one of our members, make chocolate chip cookies. We came close, even got the ingredients together. That was as far as we made it with that. We left the ingredients out so Tina can make the cookies for tomorrow. We didn't get a work out in on Saturday, so being behind a day in calories meant we had to put the cookies off until we could safely get an extra work out in.

We've been thinking about how we ended our previous blog. The topic of the lengths we will go to to get better came up and is rather pertinent considering the lapse that has happened since leaving treatment. What are we willing to give up in order to get better?

The question firsts needs to be asked do we want to get better. The answer is yes, especially with the dissociation. Not meaning that we want to get rid of our members. But there are times when we are switching constantly and it gives me a raging, intolerable headache. The switching and shifting is disconcerting, confusing, and most of all, unsettling. There is every reason in the world to want to get better. But the food issues come in. Most anorexics agree, even the ones on the road to recovery, that there is a sliver inside somewhere that starving oneself creates a sense of safety. Getting attention, having people who formerly didn't notice you start to care, and being sick is a plus in having this disorder. Growing up, the only time we got attention from the birth mother was when we were sick. The only time we get attention now is when we are sick.

Back to the point: what are we willing to give up, what lengths will we go to to get better? Certain areas of our life have to be explored and let go before we can even get close to wanting to let go of the eating disorder. I don't think it even possible to let go of the E.D. until some exploration is done into the reason we dissociate and the trauma we've gone through and blocked off.

For some of us, food is dirty and equated to abuse. Eating most things is reminiscent to the sexual abuse. Starving ourselves makes us clean and pure inside. One of our assignments is to find ways to feel clean about ourselves without depriving ourselves of food. Much thought has gone into this. There are three ways we use to cleanse us. Starvation, over exercise, and showers. We shower and scrub like we've just been victimized. The skin is red and raw.

I've no idea of any other avenues to avail that will produce the same cleansing effect, because it has become like a chemical release inside. It's like the release of endorphins. What else could give us that rush? Shopping, cooking, playing with the dogs, cleaning the house, watching a movie? Cleaning the house might help, but I can't think of anything else to make me feel clean about myself so that I don't want to starve or exercise or damage myself in any other way.

If members could let go of their secrets and share their memories with each other then perhaps we might not feel so dirty inside that emptiness is the only answer. Towards the end in res. tx. it got easier to access memories, but I don't know how to do that without res. tx. Sure, I have a therapist, but there's a missing link. Yes, I trust my therapist. The alters agree that they do as well; so, why can't we access the memories like we did before.

What comes first: giving up the memories or giving up the anorexia? The anorexia makes me feel clean, but so would dealing with the memories that tainted me to begin with. I remember towards the end of residential treatment after dealing with a painful memory that my weight wasn't as important as it had been. Processing the memories and feelings were more helpful. That feeling didn't last long, but if I kept at it and worked with the trauma it might make the anorexia less important. I wouldn't need it for safety.

But I can't force alters to give up their memories and secrets. They know I'm scared witless. I don't know how to cross that bridge. I say I'm ready to deal with it. I stuck with the painful feelings in treatment during session and didn't run from it, but I don't know how to access the memories and feelings now that I'm in the real world. I'm quite confused.

I would go to any length possible to get ready of the dirty, shamed feelings. It takes starving myself and exercising for at least 60 minutes everyday to feel clean. I have to be empty, weightless and hollow to be clean, pure and
unpolluted. I would give it up yesterday if I only knew how. Anorexia is necessary in making myself feel that I'm not degraded, trashy, and worthless. I'm so done feeling that way; I just don't know how to give it up.

I know I shouldn't have this episode because it sabotages my chances of recovery, but I purchased an episode of a t.v. show named "Intervention" and downloaded it to my iPod. It is about a woman named Emily who was anorexic, at least at the time. I identified with what she said about not eating and then exercising and showering and feeling empty and clean after that. She said it was the best feeling in the world, and I totally agree with her.

Anorexia is going to be very difficult to give up. I have to find something that will give me that same pure, clean, and spotless feeling. I just don't know what it is or where to find it. I also wish my members would be more forthcoming in sharing their trauma experiences. Without that, I don't know if we'll ever make it past the tight rope of death that we walk every day.

Empty words = pink hair

We've been working on the piece for our writing class at the university. this class is on how to teach writing to adolescents and high schoolers; however, we have to go through the writing process ourselves so we can empathize with the road blocks and issues our students will face when they produce text. The semester just started two weeks ago and already we are panicking. We get certain accommodations but we still have to do the work. The piece we had to produce this week is called "I remember"...not an easy piece for anyone with a dissociative disorder. We were supposed to draw memory maps in our journal, which we went out and bought a cool skull journal that makes ME (a member named ME) happy. She loves skulls, crossbones, Johnny Depp. Anyway, so we gave in to the sucky assignment and drew the memory map of the neighborhood in which we lived. The assignment was that the memory map would jog our "memory" and we were to choose and write about three memories. WTF? WTF? WTF? i wrote down things. i don't know what they are now. I'd have to go back

and look in the fucking journal. whatever. don't think so.

switches all over the place. can we please get to it already.

i was thinking about it this afternoon on the exercise machine. Some of the best thinking is done working out. We came up with some memories but decided to leave out the ones that were the least repulsive. In other words, we chose to write about the memories (and embellish them for privacy sake) that were not happy or at least neutral or benign. The harder things were decided upon. i know this sounds like rambling.

For instance, we would rather write about doing 100 jumping jacks when we were ten because we ate a chocolate chip cookie than about the watching cartoons with another girl in the neighborhood or making "survival kits" of stickers, tootsie rolls, and bubble gum. The short of it is this: we are attracted to the bad. don't know if it means we are pathetic and are harping on what will destroy us (where is the woman with the words? this makes no sense.)

i can tell when she's not around.

i don't want to write about happy shit. there was nothing happy about anything that took place in that house. i have to wonder why i don't want to know or hold on to anything that is good.

i don't want anything to do with that hell hole; i don't want the stinking memories. i think it's similar to what we go through today. if we let go of any of the bad, if we stop cutting, if we eat write, if we stop cursing Randy out, okay, if I stop cursing Randy out, who will we be? who will love us with out the bad? who will care about us if we are happy?

the movies and stories people remember and want to know again are the sad ones, not the comedies or memories that weren't impressionable. how can we have an identity without embracing, clinging, clutching, and squeezing the life out of everything that had destroyed us? yet, we walk such a fine line. how can we live and die at the same time? how can we be functionally miserable?

all that came from some writing assignment about remember three things from the age of ten. i've maintained to most every one's chagrin that writing about issues doesn't let them go and this is supportive of that. i write and write and write and it doesn't get gone, for lack of better English.

it's all about change and i hate change. maybe i will do what we've wanted to do for a while and change our hair color to pink. what other changes could we try that don't mean death or the desire for death. we could change our professor's assignment to what we want, but then we'll get an F. to skydive is to die. i think i'll stick with pink hair, although i just became a "natural" blond again with the aid of my colorist.

i hate these types of writing. i feel like i said so much and said nothing. The Woman with the Words is missing and we have no hope in coining our words the way we want them. We can tell a vast difference when she's here and when she's not. We don't feel like we got our point across and like we made sense. it's more confusing than anything. what a waste.