Do your ears hang low?
Yes, I probably have lost the plot… but anyway, here goes…
All morning I’ve had the children’s song “Do your ears hang low” in my head… over and over and over… It’s not in “my voice”, but a younger ones voice. I try to ask if it’s for comfort – the voice gets louder. I ask if it’s because that song means something – the voice gets quieter. I ask if it’s to do with Mr G. (our primary school teacher who sometimes ran the singing during school assembly) – the voice gets louder again. I ask if it’s to do with the deputy principal – there’s total silence.
Ok… so does the voice getting louder mean that what I said was important, or when it’s getting quieter? Am I finally losing my sanity, and will forever have the following lines ringing in my head:
Do your ears hang low?
Do they wobble to and fro?
Can you tie them in a knot?
Can you tie them in a bow?
Can you throw them o’er your shoulder
like a Continental Soldier?
Do your ears hang low?
So you get the full impact of this crazy making… here’s a hint at what I’m getting… over and over and over…
One hint, the voice is singing it in tune… that probably means that it’s from one of the ones who got us into the school choir.
Argh!!!
PDF Stand by me
I was 24 when I last talked to the father. It was during my first year of being on-campus at university and I’d agreed to stay with him for a long weekend. He hadn’t been contributing to our care since the divorce when we were 16, but we still a sense of duty to him because… well, he is the father. To say that the weekend was a disaster, would be an understatement. He lived alone in a cold, small, two bedroom semi-detached house situated at the bottom of a hill. The house felt dirty, but I think that was our association of his dirtiness getting mixed up in the perception of the house. He had become a bitter, mean old man who took pleasure in putting others down and feeding his narcissistic desires. He was not pleasant to be near.
In a move similar to asking the mother to leave when she came to visit, I left the father’s house earlier than planned. I couldn’t cope with him. The day I left I knew that I would not be able to see him again as he was too toxic. I grieved on the drive home… grieved for the father I realised I would never have, and the one I was now leaving behind. While listening to the radio during the drive, a song came on that started the tears – Stand by me by Ben E. King. To me, the song is about being strong enough to face the darkness of your fears, as long as there is someone standing beside you. During that car trip, this was particularly meaningful… I knew I was about to tell the family about my decision to no longer have contact with the father. I also knew that I was probably going to have to confront the father as well.
At the time I was living alone – I didn’t even have Winnie (our cat). So, I knew that there would be no one standing beside me, instead it would be up to the dissociative system to come together in a meaningful way to protect us all. This was at a time when I had no working knowledge of my dissociation, but I remember the internal conversations which evolved as I was taking the long trip home… There was fear, screaming, celebrations and physical pain caused by tension… But then, in a shift that I’ve now come to identify as M taking over, there was a sudden calmness and knowledge of what needed to be done. This calmness allowed Sophie to listen to the song and begin our grieving. I don’t think we fully explored the grief, but the song allowed us to cry for things we wouldn’t have and to get to a place of accepting what was happening.
When we got home, we made the necessary phone calls to the family. I don’t remember much about that time, but I do remember slamming the phone down on the father with the parting words that he and I had “never been able to talk”. I have seen him since that time – grandfather’s funeral etc. We’ve tried to be civil to him, purely out of fear and not wanting to cause more trouble within the family. But I know that under that veneer of civility, Frank is waiting to tell the father just what damage he has done. I also know that such a discussion would be pointless, as he is incapable of seeing his own faults and it would only serve to frustrate us further.
There have been other versions of the song done, but it’s Ben E. King’s version that affects us the most…
A day at the office
This came through our twitter feed via CakeWrecks today. It made us smile.
We don’t like the song so much, it’s more about the fun they obviously had making the clip :)
Once upon a time…
Note: This post could be triggering, please read with care.
There was once a little girl who got hurt by the people who should have taken care of her. This experience taught her about keeping secrets, packing the bad things into containers inside her head and to forget about most of the bad things altogether. She became good at playing the parts and emotions that were acceptable to those around her. Compartmentalisation and dissociation became her way of life.
As this girl grew, the dissociative walls became higher and more entrenched. Her core beliefs were that she was a nuisance, stupid and ugly. But she wasn’t a victim. Oh no, she knew that bad stuff had happened, but she believed that it happened to every little girl, and no one else seemed to be complaining. So when the girl became a woman and met a nice man, she didn’t tell him about the bad stuff; instead she listened to his stories of being abused by his sister when he was a boy. She didn’t understand how that could have happened to this seemingly big, strong man. It made him cry and she comforted him.
So began, what would become 8 years of physical, psychological and sexual abuse for that woman – me.
In many ways, the man came into the relationship more honest and open than we did. He said he’d been abused, we didn’t. We got so caught up in his past that we didn’t say anything about ours – we didn’t really consider it that bad or worthy of talking about anyway. Abuse was what we had come to expect. So when he raped us for the first time, we dissociated it away and considered it normal. Besides, he was good to us – he gave us flowers, cooked for us and treated us with a form of delicate care (when in front of other people) we’d never experienced before.
A pattern developed over time, he would have a crisis of some sort and we would save him. He needed us to be strong, so we were. We were hardly innocent within this scenario. The woman at work used to feel sorry for him as we appeared to pick on him and order him around. I can understand why they would get this impression – he needed to be saved and we needed to be a saviour. The weaker he became within his work and mental health, the stronger we had to be, and the more he would abuse us when no one was looking. The strength we showed to the world was one of us organising our world to gain some control. When we got behind closed doors there would be a dissociative switch to one who enjoyed the pain that he inflicted sexually and physically. He became good at triggering our switches, so we built the walls inside our internal house higher and stronger.
About four years into the relationship, we were in a side impact car accident. We sustained a mild concussion. In that one instant, our lives changed forever. Our coping mechanisms fell apart. Suddenly we were weak. Suddenly he had to be strong, but he wasn’t able.
He had been intermittently seeing different therapists over the years, but had never seen one for more than three sessions. They were always useless or changing their fees or playing games… We realised we were in trouble and started counselling again. He began to self-injure, often in front of us or because of us. He was fired from his job for assaulting a supervisor. We tried to be strong, but were slowly falling apart.
He got a job as a security officer – a job where he could “get some respect”. We also changed jobs. But nothing fixed the things that were happening in each of our heads or in that house. We were two people who had serious mental health issues crashing into each other. We became suicidal and were regularly assessed for danger, always to be released back into the care of the strong man who was now our husband.
On the 9th of February 2008, we attempted suicide. It wasn’t our most serious attempt, but it landed us in A&E and then the secure psychiatric ward. On the 10th of February 2008, the strong man took us home. What followed is blurry, but I know M made a smart arse remark to him about how he needed to grow up. He then showed us how strong he was by trying to kill us. His level of violence scared him and he called our mother, screaming that he’d done it this time and it was all over. The mother thought he’d killed us. When she talked to us, she asked if we wanted someone to come up to be with us. Sophie said “yes”. With our family there, he couldn’t cope with what had happened, so left the house on the 14th of February 2008.
Looking back, I can see how our different issues collided to cause what happened. If he’d married someone who wasn’t dissociative, this probably wouldn’t have happened. We were so conditioned for abuse, if it hadn’t been him, it would’ve been someone very similar. Could we have ever made it work? I doubt it. He was not interested in healing. He paid lip-service to therapy, but wasn’t prepared to invest the time and energy. I was too defensive and in deep denial. I wasn’t prepared to heal myself, instead I was so caught up in his problems that he was all I could see. My life became about fixing him. He has refused to attend the court ordered counselling as part of the Protection Order, so I don’t think he’ll ever heal. I hope he does and proves me wrong…
The following clip is one we did a year ago to try to work through the events surrounding the marriage. It may trigger.
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Now playing: Powderfinger – Sunsets (acoustic)
via FoxyTunes
Scarlet
One of the first YouTube clips Sophie created was Little girl lost… which used the song Scarlet by Brooke Fraser. This song represents our suicidal struggles. It isn’t one of her more popular songs and as far as I know she never made a video to go with it. Here is a simple fans version…
Middle of nowhere
Finally you can breathe
Nobody knows your name
It’s easier
Shut your eyes tightly
Clench your fists ’til they almost bleed
Cautiously, lightly
Gently expose what’s underneath
And all you feel now
Is the scarlet in the day
Even if it’s real
You can’t stay…
So there you go
You’re gone for good
There you go
You’re gone for good
Your mind is swollen
From months of thought without release
They’ve taken their toll on you
And this very moment
Of timid and fragile honesty
Is precious and rare and fleeting
And all you feel now
Is the scarlet in the day
And even if it’s real
You can’t stay…
So there you go
You’re gone for good
There you go
You’re gone for good
Oohhhh…
There you go
You’re gone for good
There you go
You’re gone for good
Hell & Anger
We did this clip over a year ago, but heard the song on the radio earlier and it reminded us about this clip. Just trying to keep occupied…
Note: It contains images which are only suitable for adults and might trigger.
Dissociation, friends and mindless games
On Friday we were feeling really good. It was fairly quiet internally and there was a sense that we were OK. We even did some YouTube stuff. Then out of the blue, our American friend we hadn’t heard from in 3-4 months contacted us. Yesterday we called him and it was a rather odd conversation. He mentioned that we seemed much more integrated now. Not sure how accurate this is, and it’s in direct contrast to a statement from Kriss who wonders if he’ll ever be able to talk to me without the protection of the others being there. I’ve often wondered how the dissociative protection appears for the significant people in our lives, it must be very confusing for them. I know when we were in high school one of our friends mentioned that we used to get a very nasty expression on our face for no apparent reason – I’m now pretty sure this was some sort of dissociative switch or trigger reaction. It also helps explain why we didn’t make friends easily (at all?)…
We’re still really shaky and numb from the phone call. I don’t know all of what was said, and most of it has been taken away from me. I know we talked for just over two hours, but I only remember about 20 minutes of it, if that.
As for the mindless games – well this one isn’t so much mindless as REALLY addictive and frustrating, it’s called Fantastic Contraption. The basic principle is that you have to build a contraption to move a piece of block from one area to another. Kriss sent me the link, and is just a little annoyed that while he was still working on level three we got to level six :) We have a young one who is great with this sort of problem solving.
As a final note, it seems that this year it’s televisions turn to beat up on Dissociative Identity Disorder – first United States of Tara and now another Criminal Minds episode… Movies like Beautiful Mind were seen as a fairly accurate description of what it is like to live with Schizophrenia, but also received awards and made box office millions. Why can’t the entertainment industry learn from this? Do it well, or don’t do it at all. But then, I suppose if they lived by that ethic there would be very few television shows or movies produced - and the problem with that would be???
Queen of Procrastination
This weekend we HAVE to finish the abuse history for ACC. So far other fascinating jobs have meant that we’ve been unable to do this. Jobs such as – doing the shopping; searching for images for a Polyvore set which we ended up not doing; doing household chores; trying to find a new container for a pot plant; playing cards online; answering some messages on YouTube; going to the library to drop off some books not due back for three weeks; this post… So yeah, like vital stuff :)
Kinda wondering how long we can make this post…
Or maybe we’ll just spell check it lots…
Ohhh Earth Hour means we can’t do anything on the computer between 8.30 and 9.30…
To continue the random theme, there was a very odd conversation on Thursday between B and one of the student assistants at work. He worked for over 10 years in a psychiatric ward while living in England – he refused to do similar work over here when he saw the conditions, techniques and methodologies used. We’ve talked previously about mental health issues in general – he has no idea about our diagnoses. He’s another of our cynical buddies who questions everything – usually appropriately.
Ok, so back to Thursday… He’d been working the front desk for a couple of hours and when we came out he was ready to pull what remains of his hair out. He’d had a stream of what he called “thick as” students. Did I mention that he is probably one of the most intelligent people I know? After showing his concern about the lack of common sense and academic ability amongst the student body of the institution, we joked about this factor being what made us feel more sane. Usually he would joke along with us, but for some reason on Thursday he didn’t. I’m not sure if he spotted us as being more vulnerable or what it was, but instead of the usual banter that would go long the lines of “we feel more sane and intelligent because we’re faced with greater stupidity and insanity”… he just straight up said “I’ve never noticed your brain not working correctly. It works fine.” At first we thought he was still playing around; but no, he was really serious.
M just reminded me that on Thursday we had our first appointment with the woman’s support programme, so we probably looked vulnerable to someone who knew what clues to look for. I know he’s looked closely at our arm a couple of times – one self-injury scar is noticeable if you know what it is. Hmmm going to have to be very “normal” with him this week and hope he forgets last week.
While we’re putting off the inevitable ACC hoop jumping exercise… We’ve sort of reached an odd point with this blog. We enjoy writing here, but as with anything that goes on the Internet it is open to misunderstanding, insults and ridicule. We’ve experienced all of these in the YouTube and Polyvore sites, and we’ve recently experienced it from one of our blog entries. With the YouTube comments, they were easily ignored because they obviously were from a very conservative view that was so out of touch with reality that it unsettled us, but didn’t really hurt too much. But with the Polyvore and the blog instances it was a little harder to cope with. It also tends to happen more when Sophie is involved – possibly because she is softer emotionally and that can show in the work we do. There’s not much that we can do about it – it tends to be other people with issues pushing their extreme ideas.
Ohhh well, better go and find something else to use as an avoidance technique…
