Scattered pieces

Well we’re back from the in Auckland conference which was GREAT! We were really shaky for the whole thing and hit a few bumps along the way as people we used to work with 7 years ago asked us about the ex-husband and whether we had children etc. Was very hard to not let Management tell them that when he tried to kill us in February it sort of created a bit of deal-breaker as Dr Phil would say… and ohhh he was a sick puppy so there was no way we were going to breed with him. Management isn’t big on diplomacy.

But overall it wasn’t too bad. There were some great keynotes - George Oates from FLickr in particular was stunning with some really challenging ideas to shake up the librarians and archivists about control and metadata. The other keynote Dr Paul Gerhardt was finding it difficult to stay awake as he came over from England so the time difference was 11 hours and just a bit too much at times for him. But he did a gave a really interesting talk about copyright and creative commons licences.

Ok if you read past that last paragraph, you’re in trouble or a librarian/archivist… When the words metadata, copyright and creative commons are all mentioned in one paragraph, most people’s eyes glaze over and they switch off…

But anyways… we learnt heaps and there was a really good conference bag – which is always very important. However the funniest part of the whole event was the drive there and back. Imagine three librarians from a small pretend city in a work car going to Auckland which has scary things like motorways, on-ramps, off-ramps, multi-lane traffic… Because of our fear of switching and just being so shaky we didn’t want to drive so sat in the back seat on the way up there. Well, after about half an hour into the trip all we could think was “and we think WE’RE bad drivers”????? Far out, the car was being driven going over speed bumps at 40 kmph, swerving in and out of traffic… We white knuckled the arm rest the whole way up there.

On the way up we went straight to the conference and then the team leader drove us from the conference to the hotel… This is where it just got straight out hilarious. Ok, so you have three librarians in the car trying to navigate a city they don’t know with maps that don’t flow nicely, don’t show all of the one way system and don’t show that for some reason the street we wanted just suddenly stopped and then started again about 50m away with no connecting bit. So our fearless team leader took several illegal turns, but got us to the hotel with no major damage to the car (our emotional state was a different story). The hotel has a parking building around the block… to get to the car park you need to go via a car lift… SAY WHAT???? A car lift? Good grief, we’re feeling lucky to be alive and you want us to go in a car lift with these women driving? Anyway, we were at the point of just being numb and constantly laughing. After another adventure trying to find the car parking building our fearless team leader took a mere 100 turns to get the car reversed into the car lift! We were beyond caring and were just laughing non-stop. Thankfully so were the other two… we all agreed that the team leader needed a good long drink!

Because the other two had gotten us to the hotel, it was decided that it was our turn to try and get into the car lift to get out of the place and then drive us back home. So after about 10 turns we got the stupid car into the lift and bugged outta there fairly easily. But it was a different story driving back home. It started out with Tezza driving – she’s VERY chatty and tends to talk with her hands. The others in the car quickly asked that we keep our hands on the steering wheel while on the motorway – she was driving safely as it was a straight road and we were only going about 20km/h because of the traffic. But this caused a switch to Management who didn’t chat at all and got slightly impatient with the traffic jam – it’s rather amusing watching her. So then we got Sophie who liked the slower speed but kept letting everyone into the line of traffic which annoyed Management. So we finally ended up with Ellie and Buffie – a VERY strange combination, but it worked as it blocked out Management and Sophie totally. We couldn’t leave Ellie alone as she has the Irish accent of our uncle, so she couldn’t respond to the others in the car alone.

If it wasn’t all in this head, and didn’t cause so many problems it would be funny. Ok, so sometimes it is just plain funny…

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Now playing: Hymn by Brooke Fraser
via FoxyTunes

So today was a therapy day.

We had it all sorted about what we were going to do – ask her to provide 5 peer reviewed articles that mentioned using the eviction technique she is so keen on using and we’d consider it. In turn we had found 10 peer reviewed articles that mentioned other therapeutic techniques such as integration, working together, addressing the body only as the name given at birth etc. We were ready with our best defences happening! We even had scenarios about how to do the entire conversation sorted in our head – we were prepared I tell you, prepared…

So we left work with 20mins to get there – plenty of time, or so we thought. We got red lights, road works and ducks crossing the road (yes, that’s right – ducks). This all meant that we arrived 3 minutes late, which may not sound much, but when we have this thing about being on time, its huge. To make the whole time thing worse, she wasn’t ready. I have a feeling she was fitting us in during her lunchtime – so yes she is dedicated.

We get into the room and because it was such a hot day she had the windows open to let a breeze through. Because it was during lunchtime, builders were having a break a couple of sections away – they were LOUD! So, we freaked and switched. Our little toughie W came forward and was not impressed about being there. This caused further switching with the whole session rapidly turned pear shaped. Suddenly we were talking about people we chat with online… then the mother… then the fear of change, but the desire to… the fear of consequences of the changes if we make the wrong choices… the daddy long legs spider the was behind the chair… fear of hospitals… what constitutes manipulation and what motivates it… we can’t change other people so we can only change our reaction to them… the new arrangement of her office stuffed toys…

She admitted for the first time that she was having difficulty keeping up with it all. Geez lady try being on this side of the eyes and see how you feel! We went from needing to play with the soft toy on our keyring; to wanting to self injure with the keys; to needing to throw the keys; to putting the keys down; to wanting to break the fingers as we played with them; to wanting to run; then finally to actually walking really rapidly from the offices – someone might notice us if we ran, so we could only walk really fast.

What finally tipped the scales to the crazy arsed fast walking was the discussion about the childhood not being all that bad. There is this belief that it wasn’t all that bad – ok so we can’t remember most of it… but ya know it wasn’t too bad. Whenever we say this, there is an immediate reaction internally. We either get thrown a memory, or a body pain sweeps through almost as a punishment. This time we got thrown a new memory. We always had this partial memory of the sisters much older boyfriend walking towards us while we were curled up on the chair at night after the rest of the house was asleep – we were always bad sleepers so had gotten up to get some milk and he was sleeping on the couch, which we didn’t realise until we were in the room. The memory had always stopped with him being about three steps away, with us looking at his hands and middle. Well this time the full memory came through. We got swept into the flashback. We became aware of the room again at one minute after the session was meant to end. No idea how much time we lost or what happened, just aware of the need to run. She told us to take our time, but we just said we needed to run…

So we walked… rapidly…

As usual, we went back to work and just pretended that everything was fine. Thankfully no one saw us go into the office. The first person to talk to us was this amazing lady who just jokes, teases and soothes us. So we sat shaking with the constant smell of the chair we were sitting on that night filling our senses.

Well at least the therapist now knows a little bit more about what she’s dealing with! Wish it hadn’t happened like that though… we had such a good argument surrounding the whole therapy approach happening too… *sigh*

The word safe for us is confusing.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary Online; Safe means:
“Free from hurt or damage; unharmed.”
“Free from danger; secure.”

Intellectually we know this. We understand what these words mean and how they should be used.

But what happens when safe has meant harm, hurt and danger in the past? How is a child meant to understand what that word means when someone encourages them into a place or situation by telling them it is safe, or they are safe; only to then hurt that child? What happens when that word becomes a trigger?

This became a struggle yesterday while on the phone to a friend in America. We both wanted to feel safe… one of his alters responded that there is no safety. We understand this feeling and empathise with it. But for us this gets further confused when the older parts, unaware of what it does to the younger parts use the word as a soothing technique. As soon as they hear that word there is panic… acceptance of the pain to come… defeat… confusion…

We once mistakenly tried to ease that fear by saying “Shhhhhh”. We will never do that again. The pain of seeing and feeling a child part screaming in pure terror or staying perfectly still in pure defeat is more than we can handle.

We’ve yet to find an alternative that has the strength of the concept behind the word safe that makes sense to us all. If anyone has any suggestions, it would be appreciated.

Hmmm going to have to stop writing triggering entries… This might trigger, I don’t know.

Last night was a BAD night. The need to escape was overpowering. We managed to get it down to a level of needing to run with some quick action by Management. So we got in the car and drove. We know we shouldn’t of, but it’s the only way to fulfill that need to run… to escape…

We drove well while in town – there is still the desire not to hurt anyone else. But as soon as we hit the open road it was all on. It was pitch black. There were few other cars on the road and the road had many bends. We don’t know who drove, but we became aware of things again when we reached Cambridge. Just sat on the side of the road shaking. Trying to find some way of grounding us into the present. We pulled into a service station and brought some cold drink to try and snap us back to reality.

Our next moment of awareness is behind the wheel driving at 140 kph straight at a retaining wall at a corner in the road. There was a fleeting feeling of glee as which ever part left and we came back. I think the only thing that forced the switch back was that there were cars coming in the other direction around the corner. If we’d kept going any longer we would’ve hit those cars and killed the drivers at least. We ran off the road as we swerved to miss the cars. But no one got hurt.

We managed to get home. Don’t ask me how, I don’t remember. I know there was panic. I know we called for help – before, during and after getting into the car. I know we could’ve hurt someone. I know we’re going to have to face what is causing us to want to run very soon.

We’re back to the derealisation, the depersonalisation. As soon as we stop talking to anyone, we’re back into the internal world. We’re not coping… We’re angry that we’re not coping…

Today New Zealand faces the aftermath of one of the worst cases of child abuse seen here. The trial that found two found guilty of murder, the mother guilty of manslaughter and two other with charges of abuse. Key witnesses were other children in the house. I won’t go into what happened to Nia, but some of the comments in the newspapers have been about a culture that enabled the abuse to continue through turning a blind eye. How can people ignore and gloss over such obvious abuse?

This is not an isolated incident. Within our own experiences we were forced to perform sexual acts on boys in the classroom while the lessons were continuing. The teacher was made aware of this by another table of students – she just looked away.

Why do people look away? What makes a person see an obvious case of harm being done, but they decide that it isn’t any of their business? When does someones safety become your business?

The conditions that Nia was growing up in were known by neighbours, visitors, family etc. No one did anything. How dare they do nothing! How dare they not save her! It has been said that the neighbours who did nothing were worried about gang retaliation. What’s worse – a gang retaliation, or living with the knowledge that if you had said something one little girl might have been saved?

Yes, today is his birthday. He is 37 today.
I wish we felt something about him – love, hate, pity, ANYTHING!
Today we’re very depersonalised and having periods of derealisation as well.
Today we’re not really part of anything.
We had a good start to the day by deciding that we couldn’t face work and talked to someone while we played cards online instead. Anything to distract.
Had to take some Clonazepam, but that wasn’t unexpected.

But the worst is yet to come… It will be tonight that we’ll get the nightmares. There have already been flashbacks and just imagined glimpses of him out the side of our vision. The silence inside is disturbing at the moment. Usually there’s some form of chatter or noise internally, and it provides some level of comfort. When things are like this, there’s either the two extremes of overwhelming silence or noise.

Trying to keep us focused in the moment. In some respects we should have gone into work today, but someone was leaving so there would have been lots of people and interaction which we couldn’t have coped with. But we’re really going to miss the person leaving, she’s an amazing person.

One of the other people we can chat with at work is over in Aussie on holiday… I don’t know if she meant to do it on purpose or not, but she sent us an email just telling us rubbishy stuff they’re doing – just the sort of thing we do for each other to distract each other from the bigger stuff and to keep it all normal. We provide the distraction to help her cope with her husband who’s got terminal cancer and she just helps us by making sure we laugh at least once before 9am each morning. We told her last week that it was the ex’s birthday today… don’t know if that’s why she sent the email or not, but it helped SO MUCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We know people care… we know we can get through this day… we know we don’t have to go and self injure through sex, alcohol or cutting… But that one email made Sophie cry and that helped us all…

Small acts of kindness do mean so much…

Thank you to those of you who read and comment on our blog… We never meant it to be read by other people. It’s purpose is to try and communicate what is happening for us. We’re not experts, we’re not special, we’re not advocates or good examples of what it is like to live with the after effects of trauma… We’re just us… With all our craziness, stupidity, confusion and when we’re really lucky, humour as well.

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Now playing: Tracy Chapman – I’m Ready
via FoxyTunes

Ok, so we managed to get respite organised. They said they would extend the stay out for two weeks if we needed it – they were really nice :)

But then we got there… PANIC… They forgot to mention that the respite place was an old converted hospital! We can’t do hospitals. One of our worst triggers. Sure it had been converted and re-decorated and everything, but it was still looking like an old hospital. We lasted about an hour and 2mg of clonazepam. They tried having someone there that we could call on for help, and then leaving us totally alone. Then they nicely asked if we thought we could cope. Well did a bit of craziness then bugged outta there!

They drove us around to the local psyc ward as they were concerned about our level of safety, but were released after being assessed by some resident who didn’t know much. Random question – why do they make the least experienced people in the hospital do assessments?????

So we’re back home with our cat… lol.

Hating what our clinical psychologist and psychiatrist are going to say considering that they were the ones that organised the whole thing! Caught between feeling like a failure for not being able to stay at a respite place and just pure relief for having gotten outta there! It was a place where we were meant to relax and be safe for goodness sake… But no, we freak out just cos of the shape and feel of the building. How pathetic is that?

Yesterday we were told that we should go into respite care for a week to try and keep the body safe during the period of the ex-husband’s birthday. Not sure if we can – how can we leave our gorgeous cat in a boarding place?? I know that logic probably seems off, but she is one of the reasons we have to stay safe at home, she relies on us.

Told our therapist this via text – can imagine her rolling her eyes and calling us crazy. Well to most people there is no logic to it. Ok there’s probably no logic for anyone, but it’s one of the things we use as a coping mechanism.

Pretty sure we can stay safe, just have to use all our coping mechanisms and strategies… We have to work on Saturday too. That will help.

Would love to be able to control the ideation…

In a week’s time it is the birthday of the ex-husband.
Really wishing that fact didn’t matter…
Wishing that day isn’t already causing fear and anxiety…
Wishing we hadn’t been so organised and programmed the birthday into our cellphone so that it would send a reminder a week ahead of the date…

None of those wishes are going to happen this year.

This is what the previous birthdays have generally involved…
This will trigger

1. Getting him breakfast.
2. Morning sex – hopefully not a rape
3. Hopefully us going to work – he usually took the day off and spent it playing with his car and watching online pornography.
4. Going out to dinner and him having a few drinks.
5. Hopefully he had finished watching the pornography, but sometimes he hired some videos so had to watch that and then have VERY rough sex.
6. We would get up afterwards and try to recover by playing games online and try to calm the internal chaos or to fill the void created by an internal silence.

The pattern changed a little over the years with him sometimes demanding we had the day off as well and “go somewhere”. We always hoped that it would be to go over to Mt Mauganui, but sometimes it wasn’t.

Avoiding him was impossible. Our only way of coping was to dissociate into a young state who was used to the roughness and encouraged it in order for the whole experience to be over sooner.

Just shaking so much and wishing that these anniversaries would be over… We’d forgotten about his birthday until our clinical psychologist asked if there were any more coming up. Someone remembered. How can we not know what day, month or year it is but know that an anniversary is coming?

Today we went to therapy for the first time in a month. It was hard walking in the door considering all that had happened. Not sure if it was the subject matter of the session, or the amount of dissociation that happened, but it felt like a really long session…

She started off with trying to find ways in which to give us more support. Getting other organisations involved in our care. Sort of made us feel like we were being too difficult and a hopeless case again! We know that we need other avenues of help – a therapist can’t be available 24/7. Also our Mental Health Crisis lines are useless, so the usual ways of getting that assistance aren’t available. So while we’re anxious about having to get to know more people and more people knowing about our craziness, we know it makes sense.

Then came the bomb shell. She thinks our internal house is rather crowded – we know of about 25 alters, not all of whom are active. We don’t need that many, why don’t we ask someone to leave?

SAY WHAT????

She suggested it like it was nothing. Sort of like putting out the old chair you’ve had for ages that is kind of comforting, but isn’t really used anymore. She asked whose role within the system is no longer needed, their function no longer required. They would be the ones to be asked to leave.

SAY WHAT????

How do you ask someone to leave?
How do you know their role is no longer required?
What if we ask the wrong part to leave?

She asked if we wanted to change… Of course we said “Yes”… Of course we want to change! We can’t keep on going like we are – we got drunk last week for the first time in about a year. We were tempted to go buy some more after this session with her :( We can’t go back to the alcohol.

But how do we chose who should go? What if they hold some memory or something that we’re not aware of that is vital for our healing or functioning?

It’s tempting to ask a part like Frank to leave. He’s angry, he’s nasty and he abuses other parts of the system. But he also protects us from some of the angrier states. He enforces the safety plans.

Just a mess…

Once we decide who should go, how do we ask them to leave? What happens? We could just fake the whole leaving thing, but we can’t do that.

Craziness piled on top of craziness…

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Now playing: Sarah McLachlan – I Will Remember You [Live]
via FoxyTunes