Postmortem Revival

She has returned . . . a former, archaic version of myself that I had ignorantly believed I would never need again. Her revival has not been so subtle, and she has reprised her role as the destructor of my life, the tamer of hope, and the inventor of all necessity to be alone.

She brings with her every negative thought she has collected over this life, constantly reminding me of my baseness and worthlessness. And I, needing her to get me through every elongated second, believe every nasty comment she purports about me. Because God knows every time I've ever had a positive thought about myself it has been burned to ash by someone else's reality.

The promise of hope is lost. Every cut, every purge, every drink, every missed meal bears her fingerprints and her assurance that only she can bring comfort.

I know the significance of her resurrection. Coming back to life will lead to my death. But I've been living dead too long to count now, and I don't mind letting go. In fact, I've asked for it, which is why she's come.

I do not have the luxury of turning her away this time. I can't do this on my own, and I have no one else to scatter away the tears that collect daily on my face.

And there is nothing anyone can do to help me. No amount of attention, intervention, or abandonment can affect me. I am in this alone, as I've always been.  If I don't bow out of life now, I will be expelled out later, and there is no coming back in anyone's space from that. There will not even be a shadow of a woman to trace through the day.

I would like to confess it doesn't hurt anymore, but, in truth, it isn't decent how deeply I ache.

I wear wounds that would give you nightmares.

grasping at air

there are f e w words.

went through R.A.D. self defense simulations yesterday

flashbacks    terror     crying

13 hours later still not okay

still crying  still scared    still terrified

need safe hugs   need peace    need for it all to go away

need to cope   bad ideas in mind  

need help   need to talk     but there are no words

i’m silenced just like then

oh, god, how i need help

Heroes needed. Apply here.

I’m decompensating.  I am fulfilling everything ever said about me.  

In my internship as a 6^th grade Language Arts teacher, my parts have been out and I’ve lost time.  My university supervisor has given me feedback regarding a comment he said I made to the students.  It was a very demeaning, destructive comment. I have no recollection of saying anything so hurtful to my students.

He said, along with my cooperating teacher, that I can not handle stress, and I break down emotionally.

I could have saved them the paperwork.  I already knew that.

It’s a hopeless situation.  I don’t know how to handle stress.  My reactions are reflexive.  Always has been.  Always will be..

And now, I’m facing my last semester of school.  I don’t want to fall short of graduation by just one semester, but I honestly think I don’t have the ability to be a teacher.   I don’t think there is any amount of cooperation I can establish among my parts to make teaching safe.  

What devastates us so much is that we try twice as hard as other people but are only half as successful.  We will never measure up.  We will always be deficient.  

I’m no longer a hero.  How pathetic.

Bathroom secrets

The need to write is strong, but the words aren’t easy to come by. My mind is split. Raked out the center. Emptied of all reality. I’m disillusioned. Our actions are those taken by a troubled woman, but she feels no urgency at all. What for one woman might be a cry for help, for this other woman is simply everyday life.

Anxiety still has been high. Some wonder why we just don’t face what we fear and the anxiety will lessen. This continual running, or avoiding as Therapist would eagerly point out, only makes the anxiety grow stronger, gives it more power.

Power. Therapist said we were giving abuser X all the power back,; I guess because we are engaging in eating disorder behaviors again. I don’t know that I see it that way. I don’t have a logical explanation for the eating disorder behaviors, but I don’t see how it is related to abuser X. The timing is suspect, I acknowledge. We started back into behaviors shortly after seeing abuser X in October. But when we refuse a meal or purge, abuser X is not on the mind.

On the topic of abuser X, he made another appearance in our dreams. It was a benign dream, if that is an appropriate categorization. There was no abuse in the dream; we just heard his voice and his denials of what he did to us. But something did happen in the dream that freaked me out, and I find it hard to admit because I don’t know what it means, and I’m afraid of what it says about us/me. At the end of the dream, there was one of the littles. I could only see her back, not her face, but I knew who she was. I was scared by her presence. She was scared too. What shook me about the dream is that Therapist was there. He physically got down to her level, on one knee, and told this little girl that she could tell him anything, any secret, and it would be safe. And in the dream you could feel that this little girl wanted to tell him something but was too afraid. Then, Therapist whispered to her that they could go into the bathroom and she could tell him her secret. At that point I woke up, but I woke up with feelings of being safe with Therapist and protected by him. I shudder to think what that says about us. I’m sure there’s some fancy psychological phenomenon going on, and I hate that it’s happening. I know he’s not our protector, so why would I dream it? It’s embarrassing to admit that he was involved in our dream that way.

I think it interesting that he offered to take her into the bathroom because, as weird as it sounds, that has always been a safe place for me. I don’t know if it’s the privacy of the bathroom, the ability to lock the door, or what, but the bathroom floor has always been a place of refuge.

When the body was little and we were too afraid to sleep in the bed, we slept on the floor, eventually the bathroom floor. And over the years, throughout anxiety attacks and flashbacks, it’s the cold bathroom floor that we’ve sought for safety. So I find it interesting that is where Therapist offered to take the little girl.

The image of the little girl stayed with me throughout the morning. We had a series of intrusive pictures of the old bedroom, and that put us on edge and fueled the anxiety.

I don’t know what else we have to do to get better. It seems the key to getting better is locked away with the other members. How does everybody heal? Do the memories have to be shared in order to recover?

Today at work while doing a mindless task the stray thought wafted across our conscious regarding if “normal” people ever think of suicide. I guess the thought stems from the meeting with Dietician we had today. It left us feeling hopeless and powerless and like death is the only way out. Not that I’m thinking of suicide. But when the thought floated to me, I wondered who was thinking of suicide and how serious they were.

So after saying all this, I repeat what I wrote in the beginning. My mind is split. Half of me thinks there is something wrong with me, and the other half thinks everything is okay and the eating disorder behaviors aren’t a big deal. I know something is wrong, but I don’t even have to try and outrun myself. It just comes so naturally. So, thinking out loud, if running from things comes naturally, then I’ll have to do something “unnatural” to face my fears and anxieties. But I don’t know what that is.

To Sleep: Perchance to Dream

I am quite anxious and uneven. Forces are against me… or just in pain.

I have gone through a transformation, a metamorphosis of a dark kind. I am not the same me I was at the beginning of summer. Something happened to me to change me, and I can’t change back, though I need to. Seeing and talking with one of my abusers has damaged me in incomprehensible and enigmatic ways. It has consummately broken me. I don’t know how I’ve changed; I just know I’m not the same. Feelings of uselessness, worthlessness, and sadness are more profound than ever. There is no crack in the casing.

I had another dream of abuser X three nights ago. The damage still lingers, the hurt still staggers around inside my beleaguered soul. The dream is hard to recall now, but the stain of its imprint is irremovable. He is as close to me now as he was then.

I woke up sick on my stomach. The dream kept refreshing itself in my head, playing again and again. There was no escape. I went to an EDA meeting where the focus was on how to handle people and food for the holiday. Benign topic in its own right. But one of the group members brought up how she was to see her abuser over the holidays, and my dream came back to me with all the hurt and sadness with which it could dominate. I began to cry in the middle of group, in the middle of twenty people. I could not restrain the tears, so I left group to cry it out and then rejoin. I sat on the floor in a dark, private room and sobbed the most heart-wrenching tears to ever know an existence. Time elapsed and slipped into a trance. I don’t know for how long. I made my way back to the concluding group, make-up-less and empty. Fortunately I had plans with Elle who let me be myself and cry on the way to our lunch. I told her why. It didn’t matter much to me for her to know. Nothing mattered at the time.

As with all tears, they eventually found their stopping point and I was left alone till the next day when I was driving to work and all thoughts, memories, and tears flooded back. And even as I recall the recalling, I am tearful because I know I’ve lost something in all this mess. I’ve lost me, a me I didn’t even want, but a me I would rather have back. Something more than this broken limbed, empty stuffing, torn-apart rag doll.

And I don’t know that it even matters any more. I thought he couldn’t take anything else away. But even in my dreams he’s the winner, and the winner takes it all.

And I don’t know how to take my next breath. It won’t come naturally. I have to remind myself to breath.

And I don’t know what to do with all this. Therapist says to write about it, but what good does that do? There’s nothing to process. I don’t know why I’m crying. I don’t know why abuser X is bothering me now. I don’t know what to do.

I don’t know.

I don’t know.

I don’t know.

“To sleep: perchance to dream” is from Hamlet and is about suicide, which is entering the crevices of my mind more and more.

In the end, it doesn’t even matter. I ’m already gone.

I see what I expect.

This would be funny if it weren't so true.

“I see what I expect.” ~ Annie Dillard.

I just read her for my American Lit class, and I love that line. I know if all I expect to “see” in me is the worst possible attributes, then that is exactly what I’ll see: the worst. All I expect of me is a big, fat, slutty failure, so when I look at myself that’s all I see. A fat, slutty failure who is chipping away time, pretending to be in recovery, until she fatally falls.

All my grades in school seem to be on the “A” side. I’ve learned my grade in American Lit. is going to be a “B”, and there is nothing I can do about it. I’ve opted not to write our third and optional paper, because it won’t improve my grade. There is a slim chance in hell I could get an “A” if I made a 100% on my last exam. And don’t you know I will try. But knowing this professor who NEVER gives 100% on an exam since it’s all subjective, I'll more than likely get a "B" and I’ll have my 3.95 GPA lowered. And I’ll feel like a failure. Like everybody is better than me. And I know in my deepest heart they are.

I really didn’t know when I began communicating and eventually meeting abuser A face to face that it would have the enormous impact it did on me. I finally feel like I’m coming out of the fog I was in for several months. I just felt sick all that time. Hard to explain. But my mind was letting my body know it was under immense stress, and I felt like my body was giving out on me. The switches were unforgivingly incessant. I thought I was going crazy. I believe if I hadn’t have met abuser A face to face my grades might be better, because for weeks after we met I was seriously distracted to the point of not even caring what grades I made or what material we were covering. And nothing good came from the meetings, except maybe to confirm through his denial what he did to me. But even that is relative. As I was sitting in class tonight, I was recanting what he did to me, denying that he ever laid a hand on me, explaining to myself that I got it wrong. I still haven’t come to a conclusion on the topic.

My weekend was extraordinary in the fact it was unusual. I had a record-setting two days in a row of socializing. Very scary for me. I keep trying to remember what I did Friday but that is no good. Friday is gone to someone else’s memory it seems. Saturday I woke up and went to bootcamp that a “friend” of mine runs. He and I went to elementary, middle, and high school together. I only recently found him on Facebook, although I wasn’t looking for him. I was looking for another friend that I went to all the schools with and was fortunate enough to find her, and, thusly, him. So this was the second time I’ve been to his bootcamp and got an amazing workout. I was weak though. I haven’t been nourishing my body according to its demands lately, and Saturday I was paying for it. I met six other women who like to talk and laugh and workout. Some are older than I, some are the same age. After bootcamp, N, the girl I went to school with, asked me if I wanted to go for coffee. I was stunned that someone would actually ask “ME” for coffee. Why would anyone want to spend time with me I don’t know, but we had a Starbuck’s and talked for an hour and a half before time got away and we had to part company. We promised to do it again, and I believe she is crazy enough to mean it. We talked of seeing a movie and having a meal. She’s a great conversationalist and I hope I see her again.

Sunday I met up with a friend with whom I have been meeting and socializing with every weekend, L. If we skip a weekend, we try to make up for it during the week. Again my mind goes to wondering why she wants to be friends with me. What does she see in me that keeps her coming back. One day I’ll have the nerve to ask her. But on Sunday we met up where she lives which is an hour away. She usually drives to my neck of the woods, but I thought it would be fair to drive where she lives. We met and parked at a restaurant and she drove us to a walking trail. We walked for 4.4 miles and talked the whole time. There weren’t any awkward silences and the conversation kept flowing. She is also in recovery from an eating disorder and we’ve learned that our ED’s have taken on a very similar character and look. I try not to comment on how she eats (she still does rituals) or how she looks healthier now, but she made a tragic mistake of commenting on how I look like I’m doing fine. I didn’t show it but her comment bothered me. I’m hiding a lot of things from a lot of people, and I wanted to tell her ‘no! I’m not doing as well as you think,” but I feel like I’m the cheerleader of our ED support group, so I can’t let people see how I struggle. Her comment backfired in a way and made me want to act out in a way so that people will see how hard food still is for me.

After we finished walking we went to our favorite safe restaurant and ordered our food. There were moments in the meal that were silent, and it felt okay. It was a comfortable silence where neither one of us felt the pressure to fill the space with words. It was comfortable and relaxing, like we could just be ourselves. We both had anxiety going into our walk and meal together, but neither of us could voice why because we’ve been hanging out for months now.

Then tonight, even though I wasn’t social with new people, Husband and I went to a college basket ball game, which was novel for me because any time I’m not in school I’m studying for school. But not tonight. I wanted to be at the game and it was great. My school had a victory and the crowd was wild and into it.

The dreams seem to be getting better. I was having vivid, disturbing dreams ever since abuser A and I met, but they are becoming less malignant and detrimental. I am still having dreams, but I can’t remember them. I just wake up in the morning and they are on my mind, the periphery of my mind, but I can’t remember exactly what I dreamed. There is mercy after all.

So I currently feel a mix of emotions. I feel like a failure for not getting an A in American Lit, but almost, barely proud of myself for having stuck with it and completing out the semester. I feel afraid as well. I know I’m engaging in behaviors that are unhealthy and I need to get back on track, but I don’t know if I can do that before I hit a bottom. I don’t want to normalize myself and treat myself better until I can get as bad as I can get; then, maybe I’ll do something about it, but not until then. I don’t understand this thinking.

Though school has gotten better, it is still difficult to keep focus and my mind on class work. I have two exams coming up and I worry that it will be just as traumatic as before for having to sit for four hours accomplishing a test others take in an hour. Somewhere, something in my brain just clicked off and decided not to cooperate anymore. I don’t know how to get her back.

Will I ever get any of me back? Do I really want any of me?

God, grant me serenity to accept the things I can not change.

********Trigger Warning for talk of sex and abuse*********

The world feels like a dream. There are things I wonder if I dreamed about, or if I actually did them. Such as feeding the dogs this morning. I thought I fed them, it felt like I felt them, but I couldn't remember at all if they were fed. It’s one o’clock p.m. as I write this. This morning doesn’t feel real. Did I got to the dermatologist or did I dream it? Did I have physical therapy today, or was that yesterday? I am accidental to this world, and my presence is not needed.

Sometimes I will make off-handed comments to Therapist about killing myself, but he really doesn’t know how often and seriously I think about it.

School is hard for everyone, but this semester has been a sheer, diaphanous nightmare for me. Every corner turned has been a hardship and I am so burned out. I’m not on top of my assignments like I need to be.

So Therapist and we talked about some serious issues last night. I can’t believe I told him what I did. I can’t believe I’m even broaching the subject with you. The topic of sex has been brought up and what is involved in receiving pleasure from sex. It’s always a miss with me. Sometimes one of the young ones just cries and cries inconsolably afterwards. I don’t know who she is, but even as I type this I feel her tears crawling fearfully down my cheeks. Her age seems to be young adolescence.

For me to receive any type of pleasurable feelings, I have to imagine that I’m being taken sexually assaulted and taken advantage of and abused. This makes me feel like a freak and ruins the sanctity of “love-making” with my partner. I haven’t had an orgasm in forever. And I think I might want to just to feel connected with my husband. But orgasms scare the hell out of me. It feels dirty and out of control. Sometimes I’ll get close, but stop myself. It’s not that I don’t feel like I deserve an orgasm, but I don’t want to deal with the guilt and other consequences.

I don’t think I’m fair to Husband. Sex is so complicated. I have a member that is gay, and a member that wants to cheat on Husband. I don’t know what to do with this. It all seems too overwhelming to untangle.

I told Therapist about a memory regarding abuser A. The way abuser A forced my legs apart. What am I supposed to do with that now? So now Therapist has a piece of the puzzle. What the fuck now? Does just verbalizing it make it any better? It doesn’t make it any easier to talk about it. I’m surprised I revealed it on here. It doesn’t make me feel any better. I’ve never felt like this before. True, I’ve had moments of hoplessness, but this seems like there really is not hope behind my past. I hear Therapist disagreeing with me. Tough shit. He truly doesn’t know what it’s like to live a particle of a life.

I’ve been thinking more about what I want to do when I get my undergrad. I think I would like to go on and get my Master’s in writing. I really want to write. Poetry to be specific. But I don’t know how I would do it. My words get lost in the head, sometimes taken for hostage, ransomed, and then maybe given back to me.

I have so much schoolwork to do but I can’t focus. The anxiety is too over bearable. And I feel nobody in this whole world has any idea what I’m going through. I know all who live with D.I.D. can relate on some level. But I feel so far gone. It feels I am completely and truly alone with my symptoms. Everyone struggles, but this defies the explanation of a struggle. To get through each day takes superhuman strength, and I don’t have it in me anymore to keep fighting.

The Revival

Recently I was contacted to give an update to my blog, so here I am obliging. It has been difficult for me to get back to writing because I don't always remember the posts, and the last thing I need is to be reminded of events going on in my life of which I have no detail. I have also been arduously practicing denial of having D.I.D., and that is not easily done when the whole design and theme of said blog is about you missing somewhere in between the identity of "the others."

In my lapse of writing I returned to school, and by all outward accounts I am doing well. Grades are solid and there have been no missed classes. For the most part I am keeping up. But underneath the show things are grim. I anticipated my reaction to the stress, but I felt like I would be able to counter the anticipated backlash. And maybe I am still handling it. I don't know that I've abandoned all hope. But my historical mechanics of stress management have manifest again and self-destructive means are the end. For me, the smallest amount of negative stress makes me physically ill. I break out in fever blisters, endure hot and cold flashes, and an untamed panic wails from the abyss. I can't sleep, I'm too exhausted to blink, and my thoughts commit suicide in their infancy. This reaction is as natural to me as breathing.

When I last left you in the Summer, communication with one of my abusers was imminent. The disaster that was to be our correspondence didn't fail to disappoint and unnerve me. And even after I imploded, he exerted a continual presence in my madness and undoing. He continues to resurface in my daily thoughts, though how prolific the damage I am not willing to say at this moment.

One of my biggest obstacles is what to disclose to Therapist. My theme right now is denial, denial, denial. If I deny it long enough, loud enough, and hard enough, then it didn't happen, it doesn't exist, and the devil made me do it. (For future reference, reader, it is not a good regular practice of denial to overtly confess your thoughts to your therapist.) But I also don't want to sabotage myself, and I can see my epic denial failing me. Nevertheless, it is what it is, and for now, I'm just not ready.

Got Apology?

A couple of weeks ago I posted here about contacting one of my abusers demanding an apology. After listening to everyone’s feedback, I decided it would not be in our best interest to instigate any type of contact with him. I didn’t think he would ever apologize, and I didn’t want to set myself up to be even more hurt by him.

Last week I found out he contacted someone I know (hereafter called X). They discussed me, including how I had thought about contacting him. After discussion, the abuser apologized to X, but X told him his issue was with me. The abuser said he would contact me and would apologize. X said he never admitted to what he did, but said he would contact me, if I wanted him to, and he “would make it right.”

I was effing stunned. Was this man who made my life Hell really going to contact me and apologize? I checked outside to see if pigs were flying and to see if Hell had frozen over. It hadn’t. So I first told X to give him my phone number. I thought the asshole would be more inclined to contact me and apologize by phone, thinking he’s too much of a coward to apologize where there could be a record of it printed out as in e-mail. I figured he would be too afraid I would show it to people he knows.

But then I thought to myself, do I really want to hear the sound of his voice? How will my members/alters/parts feel at the sound of his voice? Will having my phone number give him some power over us, as if we were waiting with baited breath for him to call us when he wanted to? Will it give him control over us? Will it give him the upper hand, again? So I changed my mind and told X to give the bastard my e-mail address.

That was a week ago, and like all abusers, he is too selfish and cowardly to e-mail me an apology on my terms, when I want it. He knows I was thinking of contacting him, he knows I want an apology. So what’s he waiting for? Perhaps he’s waiting to get drunk on Jack Daniels again so he can muster up the liquid courage to write an apology.

Frankly, I don’t want his fucking apology. If he can’t ADMIT that he did it, then what the hell is he apologizing for! Freak!

When we first found out he would contact us, we checked our e-mail even when our phone wasn’t beeping. The anticipation that we would finally be validated was intense. But now that a week has gone by, there is a sense of resignation. We almost hope he doesn’t contact us and apologize. It brings forth a lot of questions.

Do we owe him anything if he apologizes? What about the F-word? Forgiveness. Do we have to forgive the m-f-er? How will our “relationship” change? Will we begin to sympathize with him? What about the people we mutually know? Will they want to start associating with the son of a bitch? Will they accept his apology and invite him to functions I might be attending? And most of all, will he be conciliatory enough to let us say what WE want to say? If he apologizes, we want and have the right to ask him questions and tell him how his actions hurt us. Will he refuse to listen?

IF we do get an apology, it will be a small victory for us. But it’s true you better be careful what you wish for. An apology brings up a slew of questions we just don’t have the answers to.

One thing is for sure, he’s a piece of shit and nothing can make up for what he did to us.

Anger times infinity

Friedrich Nietzsche said, "Nothing on earth consumes a man more quickly than the passion of resentment."

This was the quote for my daily mediation today. I have to admit I've fallen prey to resenting the majority of my life and those who've played a role in its demise.

It's natural to resent being hurt, but if I'm TRULY honest with myself, I've made a career out of resenting those that have dishonored me and abused me. But I don't know how to not be angry and resentful.

Those people hurt me deeply, seemingly irrevocably. How do you get over that? How do you get beyond the anger and resentment? More therapy, indeed.

I'm calling myself out about being eaten alive with hate, anger and resentment. I realize this only halts my progress into a world where I can fully live without being triggered by the anything and everything. People on the outside would never know how damaged I am inside because I put on a front. I have members who are responsible for interacting in the real world. But I'm not at peace and never will be until we can let go.

As I write this it sounds to familiar to the post we wrote about forgiveness. Bad topic. I won't forgive, so if forgiveness means I have to let go of the anger and resentment, then tough shit.

But maybe it's not mutually exclusive. Maybe we can still let go of anger and not forgive. Anger is just a warning sign that something has hurt us. I don't even know what I'm angry at, just that I'm angry. To be honest, and I know some of the blogging community thinks this is bull shit, but I have a member dedicated to anger. It is her job to hold the anger; it's her defense mechanism and the way she keeps people at arms length.

I know she can protect us through other means, but the anger is so much easier for her to revert to. Not everybody is out to get us.

But I'm off track and my thoughts are easily being tumbled and foggy. The issue on the table is letting go of anger and resentment. Anger is a message that something isn't right, and we've gotten the message. The abuse wasn't right, but we can't go back in time. And anger can't be fixed just by acknowleding that the abuse wasn't our fault. So we honestly don't know where to go with this post. We don't know how to get rid of the anger.

Maybe it's something time takes care of. Maybe acknowledging the abuse wasn't our fault will stop us from punishing ourselves, but that takes time. Feelings of guilt, anger, resentment are all tied together. How to untie them is a good question. Moving forward depends on handling the anger towards our abusers, ourselves, and the world.

I find this post flabbergasting. I started it out with one angle on anger, feeling I had answers, and now I've done a 180 degree turn. I don't know how I feel or what it will take to let the anger go. I've confused myself.

Anyone have any thoughts?

Paint our secrets a different color

Hate days like this. We are so sad we don't know where to begin. Don't know what to do when we get like this. The inertia is so pronounced there is nothing to be done. Our heart is broken and visions of the past perform before my eyes. Our secrets percolate under an eating disorder. We need help. We need for someone to do for us what we can't do for ourselves. We want the reward, but our heart is too heavy to let us seize it. Like this, we shall surely perish in our colored secrets.



It's official. Tomorrow, February 2, 2009 I start a partial hospitalization program. Bugger. This is the same program I entered last year who said I needed a higher level of care and didn't believe in D.I.D. They can't treat me. How do they propose to get my alters with the anorexia to eat if they don't believe I have alters? My one saving grace is my psychiatrist believes in it, but I've only seen him twice; hardly a relationship built on trust yet. On the plus side, one of my teens thinks he's hot. Go figure.



I've decided I want a tattoo. I guess the pink hair of 2008 wasn't rebellious enough or the piercings of '06 and '07. 2009 is looking ripe for another one as well. The teens are rambunctious. I think we are all feeling claustrophobic and trampled on right now because NO ONE wants to go to this damn program. It's quite hard, as anyone with an eating disorder might imagine. The lines are drawn and the battle begun. One side refuses to comply with any procedure, policy, or course of action set by the hospital. The other side knows the stakes and the fervent need to gain weight, get on track, work on trauma issues, and take care of business. Before tomorrow was firmly set, we could tell we were losing weight. Even our "skinny" jeans were falling off and belts didn't have enough holes in them. Now that we know our resolve will be tested by the mean 'ole dietitian tomorrow, a review of our body makes us see fat where there probably is none and curves we thought we had denied. Ironic the mind tricks that tease one.



After our intake at the hospital, we came home and was too tired to breathe. So, I put in the DVD of "The Notebook", my favorite movie. D. always knows when I'm in a bad place because I always play this movie when I'm sad or depressed. I love the movie. I want to move to Charleston, South Carolina, United States so badly I can taste it. I've visited it twice and have fallen in love with everything about it: the history, the culture, the coast, the locals, the schools, etc. It's my goal to get there one day. I have a bangle bracelet I always wear that has a palmetto tree and a crescent moon on it; the bracelet gives me hope that things will get better and I'll make it to Charleston and be an awesome eight grade Language Arts teacher. Pipe dreams.



I am hungry. The pangs of an empty stomach provide solace and comfort. They make me feel clean, unsoiled, faultless, and pure. I know in my head that food can't make you dirty, but when I eat, I feel disgusting, dirty, nasty, and worthless to name a few adjectives. That's why a shower before or after food is imperative. I must cleanse the filth that I have become.



It pains me to write that because I think of my littles and I get angry for them. One of my littles holds parts of the e.d. and I would never consider her dirty. She was a victim and I'm so tired of all of us revictimizing ourselves because it's more tolerable and it's what we know. I know where the blame goes, so why do we hash ourselves to death?



As we were on the elliptical machine today I kept thinking how stupid, how pointless, how senseless to keep pushing us like that...out of breath, back pain, knee pain, chest pains, pain under the right rib cage, etc... There are very good reasons for us to have a life. True, we live in a sub-par house that is in constant need of repairs we are ignorant to undertake, we live paycheck to paycheck, have no savings, and I'm out of work. However, there are five good reasons to try to find reasons to make it through just one more day: a husband( I shan't sing his praises but I hear good things about him and he's put up with my tirades for more than a single moon), 2 god-daughters (twins, age 13, who would be lost with out us), and two very beautiful dogs that know when to crawl into my lap to absorb my trickling tears.



That should be enough, but it's not. Right or wrong, it only feels good when it hurts, and now, our voice has been taken away. Sufficiently.

Final curtain call

The purpose of this blog was and is to hold myself accountable, mostly to me, somewhat to my T., and then to the rest of the blogging community. Maybe I've been honest and called it like it is. I don't know. It seems those in my life are so obtuse that it only feeds my hopelessness. Can't they see the weight loss? Can't D. (husband) see the newly protruding ribs? How can he not know we are down to the weight we were when we entered treatment last year? Men are clueless. When I first got out of residential treatment, D. was so diligent, if not overbearing, on my eating my meals and not over exercising. Being I got out of treatment two months ago, he has settled into comfort that we're okay.

I guess we are okay if okay means it's normal to exercise for two hours straight on the elliptical and to binge and purge twice the same day. I guess being "okay" includes chest pain when working out, lightheadedness and dizziness. "Okay" means resurrecting food rituals, eating only certain food items, and eating off the same plate every time.

The hopelessness is mounting. The admittance to the outpatient program has been delayed, delayed, delayed, and, if truth be told and I hold myself accountable, I'm glad. I don't want to go to PHP. I don't want their food. There is no therapy there; it's all about fattening us up.

The trauma memories are coming harder and faster. They are alive in the dreams and fuel the desire to disappear. I know it cannot be fixed. Who gives a fuck? Our case manager says we need to be thinking of getting a job. I could not be more overwhelmed and desperate. This is not going to work.

I DON'T want to live my life like this. I hate it, but I don't know what else to do. I want to run from the PHP. I've been there before. This program can't help me. And nobody knows how far gone we are; how we worry about each calorie. Can we afford to eat the five calorie stick of gum? Oh no!! We had two pieces. That's ten calories. Shit. Shit. Shit.

We step on the scales before, during, and after. After what, you may ask. Does it fucking matter? We are always on the scale. We've had slid so far back.

It may sound like we don't want recovery. Not true. I want it, but not all my members want it. I know the PHP does not believe in or treat Dissociative Identity Disorder, so how are they going to treat an eating disorder that my alters have? I predict, as almost happened last year, we will be asked to leave the program. I know my members will not eat their fucking food. They need to heal their trauma. We're probably not healthy enough to do that now. Our weight is lower than it was last year when they tube fed us and we sure as hell ain't goin' that route again.

I don't know; I don't know; I don't know. I just feel a panic, a desperation, an immediate need for help. I need my husband to know I'm not okay.

After dinner last night, I went straight to the bathroom and threw up. When I returned, D. had his head phones on, listening to his computer, completely oblivious I threw up everything I ingested. After all we've been through, how can he be that imperceptive? I think it's a man thing. Our current T. seems just as stolid. (I'll get hell later for writing that.)

We're spiraling down fast, and I just need the world to know that it hurts, it sucks, and I can't tolerate much more. We have no answers and the well-rehearsed smiles can no longer triumph. It's a sad face we wear these days.

I hate myself.

Discussing dissociation

I found a blog from a trauma therapist called "Discussing Dissociation" and found a lot of great information on it. I most liked her idea on creating an internal scrapbook for alters to get to know one another in a more creative context. Also, as I looked around her site, she has so much good information that I thought it would be helpful for a lot of people to explore. Take a look. Hope it helps. Take care.

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.