Scattered pieces

This is the writing to accompany a You Tube clip Sophie did a couple of years ago.  Today, we find comfort and expression in the words.  It doesn’t quite sound right without the music and pictures, but someone asked if they could use (what they described as) this poem in a presentation about DID.  I’d never thought of the words as a separate entity until that point, but this is what Sophie wrote…

Little girl lost…
How much more can she take…
Before she breaks?
Looks our from behind the mask…
That hides the shattered fragments of her past.

Wonders what she ever did…
To make them treat her like this.
She tried to be invisible…
Tried to make everything perfect…
And she kept all of the secrets…
But the games continued.

She never knew what game they wanted…
She just knew it was going to hurt.
So she’d shut her eyes tightly…
And pretend she was somewhere else…
But some part remained…
Who felt the pain.

But now we cautiously look…
For help…
For understanding.
But all we feel is the pain…
Only now the scars are for all to see…
We’re not sure how much more pain we can take…
Before we have to escape.

Despite all the pain…
There are parts which hold an innocence…
And sense of wonder.
So we are at a crossroad…
Do we escape the pain permanently…
Or refuse to let the pain and abusers win…
By giving that innocence a chance…
To grow into strength, peace…
And tranquility.

—————-
Now playing: Brooke Fraser – Scarlet
via FoxyTunes

A good friend recently mentioned that she felt like she was going to fall, and fall deeply.  Part of her was expecting, and almost wanting the fall to happen.  Thankfully, her fall hasn’t happened, and I hope it doesn’t; but what she describes is a feeling I know all to well.  It’s like standing on an edge, waiting for that last push to send you over into a mental health free-fall.  The scary bit about standing there, is that you have an awareness about where you are.  You know that one more negative thing is going to push you over, and part of you wishes that it would come so that it’s over with; but another part of you hopes that you can still claw your way back to safer ground.  It becomes a tug of war between different parts of you…  This alone is so tiring that it can be enough to tip you over…

I know I’m also moving closer to the edge.  The stressors in my life have kicked into high gear and I can feel the pressure building.  At the moment, I’m far enough away to know that I’m in danger without being too close to it.  A part of me niggles that I’m thinking myself into moving towards the edge – why do I think of my ex-husband, why worry about the ACC assessments etc.  But the rational part of my brain knows that I’m experiencing PTSD flashbacks and my worry is justified based on past assessments.  This is the beginning of the tug of war that intensifies over time.  Soon other issues will come in to muddy the waters – denial, and a need for validation have already started to appear.  All of this increases my anxiety levels.  I’ve experienced this often enough in the last few years to notice the pattern…  It becomes like a dance, to and fro… ever closer to the edge…

The problem becomes, how do you stop the dance?  If I called a crisis line, they would take me through the individual stressors I am facing and encourage me to break them down into solvable chunks.  This would work for some of the issues I’m facing, but they can’t help with the PTSD symptoms.  I saw Jo today, and she was recommending trying to ground in the present, and while I agree with her reasoning, I also know that I can be very grounded in 2010 and still keep on dancing towards the edge.  Some of the grounding work can make the situation worse – repeating “it’s the 26th of January, 2010 and they are just memories” can morph into a denial statement about the memories all being made up.  The most effective way of keeping the anxiety at bay is to consciously breathe deeply – this also tends to by one of the first things I forget to do.  Like many survivors who experience anxiety, I have a form of hyperventilation syndrome, with my breathing being short and shallow.  It takes a conscious effort to alter my breathing pattern to a healthier depth and pace.  Changing my breathing will temporarily ease the anxiety, but often this isn’t enough to stop the dance towards the edge.  I’m not always sure what moves me away from the edge, I think this time it will be the formal dissolution of my marriage and completing the ACC assessment.  If this is the case, I’ve got about another three weeks of doing the dance around the edge.  I don’t think I’ll fall, but a part of me thinks I will…  A part of me wants to fall, because they think that this is what I deserve…

And so the dance continues…

—————-
Now playing: The Feelers – Stand Up
via FoxyTunes

We have to do another ACC assessment to continue getting assistance…  As a result we’ve been playing “angry” music.  This song in particular, fits nicely…

I took this photo awhile ago now, but today it means something to us… We call it “Journey”…

Journey

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When we look at this picture today it means many different things to us -

• Journey into the light from the dark – a journey of hope
• Journey of danger as a child is lead away to disappear with the man beside him
• Journey of death, with this light at the end of the tunnel being what you see upon your death
• Journey of innocence as the child plays happily beside the safe man
• Journey through the holding pens, ready for death at the meat market.  People before these two have left their last messages on the walls, only for it to be covered up like graffiti…  If you look at the image large size on black, you can see the hand marks made on the ceiling as a last attempt to leave something behind

This jumble of messages is how we are at the moment, a messy jumble of thoughts, both good and bad.  We’re not sure where our journey is taking us, but at the moment it feels like things are shifting internally.  I’m not sure of the reason – maybe it’s returning to work, maybe it’s the two year anniversary of the attempt on our life by our then husband, maybe it’s our healing work…  I’m not sure, but I wish we were more settled and safer.

I think I’ve mentioned here before that we have a young one called Aimee who is 9, happy and illiterate.  Similar to S being a sexual being, I’d pigeon-holed Aimee in this way, quite forgetting all the other things she does for us.  Quite often in therapy, if we’re worried about saying something that is a little scary, we’ll ask Aimee to say it for us – things like we’re scared of talking about food, etc.  She’s also incredibly happy, no matter what is happening.  When things are too out of control, she’s often nowhere to be found, but when we’re tired beyond belief, she will often be there to help us through.  To put it bluntly, she’s incredible…  If there’s any aspect of the different ones that we’d like to have consistent access to, it’s Aimee’s optimism.

Over the years, Aimee has learned that she can communicate with people online if she gets one of the others to read and write for her.  Usually this job was Sophie’s, but recently W was doing the interpreting for Aimee.  What we’ve noticed, is that with W doing the reading and writing, suddenly Aimee seems to be able to do more reading and writing herself.  It’s not like she’s gone to school and suddenly learned how to read, but rather some of W’s literacy seems to have leaked over to Aimee.  It’s the first tangible sign of healing and growth that I have seen within the system…  I know this may sound silly, but yesterday was a very long day filled with triggers and sharing of secrets, so Aimee suddenly being able to read and write a little bit is huge.

I know that this should be a further lesson in why I shouldn’t stereotype or pigeon-hole any part within the system.  I suppose I get caught up in wanting them to be one- or two-dimensional and forget that some of the different ones are quite complex personalities.  Recent blog reading would indicate that it would be easier to heal if the different ones weren’t so complex, but even the act of one part becoming seemingly more complex has given me hope… Aimee is becoming less extreme in her personality, so maybe that means we will all move toward being more balanced and co-operative…

Reading and writing signify intelligence, high scholarly expectations and being serious…  This is why I think Aimee was never able to read or write, those skills don’t fit with her role of being happy and carefree.  So if she is now reading and writing, but still happy, her personality is becoming more complete and rounded.  Whether this means she will be integrated, or continue to exist as a separate one within the system, I don’t know.  But I see it as an important step in our healing process…

I’m on Facebook…  The big thing about Facebook is that it tries to encourage connections – connections with your workplace, interest groups, family, current friends and people from the past.  As a person who is fairly wary of friendships and making connections, I have only a few friends on Facebook – mainly people from the survivor community, a couple of family members and more recently a couple of people from my childhood.  One of the ways in which Facebook encourages connections is by suggesting friends for you based on the friends of your friends.  This means that you get a list of people Facebook suggest that you might like to become friends with, because one of your friends happens to know them.  This was all very innocuous, up until the point where I friended the people from my childhood.  These were safe friends when I was younger, so they weren’t triggering or associated with anything negative.  It just so happens that some of their friends are people who hurt us.  Last night, I logged into Facebook and on the right hand side of my screen were the photos of two of the people who hurt us.  These boys (now men) were part of a gang of boys that hurt us… One of them has a smiling photo of his family, which includes a daughter who would be about the age I was when he was hurting me.  It was such a shock to see these men smiling out at me.  They looked so “normal” and happy, you’d never expect them to have anything untoward in their past.

I have very little memory of my past involving these people.  I have vague images of a wood sheds, boys, smells and the light coming through the window…  Seeing these men and their smiling families triggered switching and internal chaos.  I didn’t even think I remembered their names, but obviously someone inside remembered when it was combined with their photo.  The problem is, what do I do with this?  If asked about the past, these men would probably say that what occurred in the wood shed was natural experimentation amongst consenting children.  There is no way that I could do anything about bringing charges against these men, it was too long ago in a context that could be twisted too easily.

But now, one of my safe escapes has been invaded by their presence.  I could “un-friend” the people from my childhood, but the parts of me that remember the carefree times we had with these people are reluctant to do this.  I’m also not sure that I want these men to have power over me… but sitting here writing this, I’m starting to have memories around the physical pain inflicted by these boys.  I keep thinking that they’re just silly photos, I don’t have to look at them, but, they’re like a car wreck – you don’t want to look, but you end up looking anyway.

I’ve yet to find a way to turn off the “Suggestions” area of Facebook, if anyone knows how, I would appreciate them letting me know.  I could block these men, but that means going into their profile which is something I wasn’t strong enough to do at the time.  Maybe today or tomorrow I will have the strength to block them…  I hope so.

While in respite, the respite house owner/carer turned to me and directly asked me how I was.  It had been a hectic day with the other women in respite acting out in various ways, meanwhile we’d been quietly in our room doing art and drinking water.  The question was asked directly, and we deflected it nicely by saying that we were fine.  It was her follow up statement that threw me, and cut to the core of our issues while growing up – “It’s always the quiet ones who get overlooked”.  I was that quiet one.  I always have been.  I actively become quiet when things are bad with my mental health or if people are hurting me.  It’s one of the ways to become invisible, to become so quiet that no one sees you.  If no one sees you, then no one can hurt you and no one can ask you difficult questions.  So, we became very good at being quiet and flying under the radar.  The respite carer knew this technique…

When we relayed this incident to the mother after we’d come out of respite, we couldn’t do it without tearing up…  The carer “saw us” in that brief moment of asking the how we were.  In contrast, when telling the mother, she looked away, uncomfortable with the situation and the tears in my eyes.  I try not to blame my mother for her reactions, she had tough parenting and has never been in therapy long enough to change the habits of being an absentee parent herself.  She does try to show she cares in various ways, they’re just not very productive or meaningful.  Instead of apologising for the oversights in the past, she washes my windows…

We remain that quiet one.  We do this in therapy as well.  Liz has now realised the extent of our avoidance and quietness during therapy.  Our resolve for the New Year is to try and tease out the anger that sits within the system.  In many ways I don’t mind if this happens, I’m so out of touch with the anger that I don’t recognise it as existing.  But, at times when I do get a sense of the anger being there, it terrifies me to think that we will be looking at it more closely.  It’s something that has been tucked away and growing for the last 30 odd years, I’m not quite sure what it will look like when we do lift the lid.  Liz assures me that we will lift the lid very slowly and with great care…

Flying through space, dissociated from everything
Watching all my fellow travellers trying to touch ground
But there is no ground in this strange land, just clouds
These clouds provide no sanctuary
They encourage you to fly higher and higher
Soaring higher into the bright blue sky

The colours are bright here in this cloud filled world
Blues are bluer
Greens are greener
Blood is redder
Smells are more intense too
Cigarette smoke burns your nose and lungs
Musty worn seats fill your senses

Memories fill the clouds
Clouds of pain
Clouds of scorn
Clouds of tears
Clouds of events you want to forget
Each touches you as you float by
Trying to grasp onto the cloud, only makes it dissipate before you

The clouds, like you, are lost with nowhere to go