Scattered pieces

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…

I’ve just come from an appointment with Jo.  Jo is a physically similar to us in many ways, which made it hard when we walked in today and found her with her arm in a sling, a foot brace on her right foot, bruises on her arms and a black eye.  We were already a little fragile, but that sent us over the edge.  It was impossible to stop transferring her injuries to how it was with us when we were with the husband.  She assured us that she had been hurt in a fall caused by her wearing high heels which she was unfamiliar with…  But inside the young ones were screaming that someone had pushed her.  Even after further assurance, they still didn’t believe her – we used to make excuses and say that the bruises were for all sorts of reasons.

We couldn’t cope with her in all of the bandages, so blocked her from our vision.  When we get particularly stressed about something visual, that object becomes blurred in our vision.  So Jo became a dark blur in the upper left corner, of what became a narrower and narrower field of vision.  We had to leave, we couldn’t stay.  We were dissociating and switching all over the place.  M was trying to bring a sense of calm to the system by blocking out and stamping down the memories again, but it was too late… the memories were triggered and running rampant.

We felt so guilty for making her injuries about us and our triggers.  We were worried for her, but the overwhelming message came about us being hurt.  Feeling so pathetic and weak for not showing someone the care that they needed.

We’re now sitting at work freaking… we usually wear our headphones and listen to music when we’re like this, but each time the cords touch our neck we’re triggered into thinking his hands are around our neck again.  We can’t stop shaking and jumping at each sound or flash of light.  Only four more hours before we can go home to the safety of the house…

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Now playing: Brooke Fraser – Lifeline
via FoxyTunes

When we started this blog over a year ago, we never thought we’d maintain it for any length of time.  We’d previously tried journaling in paper format and never been able to maintain it for longer than a week.  We never knew what to say, and quite frankly the idea of writing down our thoughts was terrifying.  This is possibly why we had so much trouble with doing a time-line with Liz on Monday.  I know that we consider the written word incredibly important – our escape while growing up, was to curl up in the Sun somewhere and read for hours on end, escaping into an imagined world.  Books and words were our safety, journaling and written based therapy exercises could be seen as a threat to that sense of safety.  Online blogs aren’t tactile, and we associate online writing with work, so we can do this as it doesn’t have the same emotional ties that a book has.

In many ways, we treat this blog as our journal.  The problem is that we know we have a small group of readers for our work here, so we can’t be as honest as we should and we get hung up with worrying about others perceptions of us.  We’ve tried creating separate online journals, but each of these has failed over time.  It is often when we need to write the most, that we shut down and don’t write anything.  Instead of reaching out and trying to express/process the pain, we go back to our old coping mechanisms of cutting everything and everyone off.  It’s only recently that I’ve been called on this – friends and Liz have accused me of shutting them out, I know I do it and can see it happening, but am powerless to stop it (at the moment).

Now that we have this site, we’re going to start another journal.  Maybe this one will work, I don’t know.  Today we went to the Zoo and it was interesting as Aimee wanted to write about the trip here.  But she is 9 and nearly illiterate, I wouldn’t expose her/us like that here, but it is the sort of thing that we should add to a private blog.  Looks like I’ll have to get M moving on creating the new private journal :)

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Now playing: Ludwig van Beethoven – Symphony No. 3 in E flat major (‘Eroica’), Op. 55: Marcia funebre, Adagio assai
via FoxyTunes

Please note that this may trigger.

The husband of our cynical friend was buried today.  It was an amazing service which showed how much he was loved by those around him.  The eulogies were funny and heartfelt.  Our friend held up well throughout the funeral, she cried and was supported by her youngest daughter… the love within the family was obvious and honest.  One of the graphic designers at work did a montage of photos of his life, it was amazing to see how much he had changed, but not changed over the years – the laughter in his eyes was there all the way through.

We were close to not going to the funeral, we don’t find funerals easy things to attend.  They tend to overwhelm us with too many messages… but we were fine today.  Our friend also said she was looking for us when we went to give her a hug afterwards, so I’m glad we went.  She deserves all the support she can get.

After the funeral there was a wake held at a working men’s club.  We didn’t particularly want to go to this as we knew there would be lots of people, but everyone from work pressured us into going.  We were fine driving there and parking… it was when we got to the door that the trouble began.  This club is like many throughout New Zealand, they have a similar feel and design – a big open space with table for standing and drinking at while you watch the big screen TV, and another area for dining.  The smell of alcohol greets you at the door.  What also greeted me at the door was the first flashback.

The father managed a working men’s club as we were growing up.  Our lives revolved around that club, sport and alcohol.  We were abused at that club.  We were forced to drink alcohol for the first time in that club.  Some of us still live in that club within our head, they’re stuck there.  Walking into the club today triggered them all…

M took control as best she could, but she has problems with alcohol – she uses it to drown out the noise in the head.  As we walked to the bar all we could hear is the noise of the crowd becoming fainter and the internal screaming getting louder and louder.

“Raspberry and chips… raspberry and chips… raspberry and chips…”

This is all M could hear, so she orders a drink to drown out the sound.  The screaming gets louder as she takes the first sip of beer.  She always drinks beer as it makes us drunk quicker.  The first beer doesn’t deaden the screaming, time for another…

Random flashes, snippets and sounds from the past come through… some good, some not so good, some horrific.  Still the screaming…

“Raspberry and chips… raspberry and chips… raspberry and chips…”

M tries deep breathing, but that doesn’t calm the noise…  Time for another drink.  No one around us is aware of anything going on.  M answers all the questions and shows an interest in everything as she continues to drink. I don’t know how much she drank, it’s always hard to tell as the dissociation seems to mask the effects of the alcohol… or maybe we’re just immune to the effects, I’m not sure.

We all know what “Raspberry and chips” means… it was a reward for being a good girl after the abuse.  We hate raspberry soda and potato chips…

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Now playing: Crowded House – Better be home soon
via FoxyTunes

I’m struggling…  struggling to maintain the feeling of being alive and being an adult.

Tomorrow I go to the funeral of my cynical work friends husband.  He died on Sunday after a year of battling cancer.  I unsuccessfully researched the guilt associated with someone who is suicidal continuing to live, while someone who was in love and loved life dies a horrible death.  There seems a great injustice in that scenario.  When I mentioned it to Liz on Monday, she came very close to talking about religion again, but squeaked by with the “there must be a reason” line.  I’m at a loss as to what that reason is.

We’ve been asking M to do a majority of the work and I think this might be part of the reason why we’re struggling.  M is incredibly functional, focused and driven; but she comes with the baggage of addiction issues which can harm the rest of us.  I’m not sure how to break through this barrier that we seem to have up.  I’m not sure if it is the time of year causing the problem (Wedding Anniversary, ex-husbands birthday and Christmas are approaching).  It could also be the work environment which is still negative and emotionally draining.

I suppose the big problem is that I was hoping the time off work would help to ease these issues, but it hasn’t.  Maybe I was hoping for another quick fix…  I’m realising that quick fixes don’t seem to exist within mental health.

I’ve just dropped the mother off at the airport.  She agreed to go home last night – so she doesn’t put me through more “torture” (her words).

I feel like the worst daughter ever.  I know she doesn’t mean any harm and she was trying to help, but it wasn’t working.  When we woke up this morning, I thought maybe I’d made a mistake and she should stay…  But then on the way to the airport she was talking about the cold snap that has come up the country and how it would hurt all the lambs (yes, I can’t even type what really would have happened to them).  I don’t watch the news at this time of the year because I know they will show the horrific shots of the lambs in trucks.  In my world, no lambs get hurt…  Most people would realise that you shouldn’t talk about cute animals being hurt to someone who is DID and suicidal, not so my mother.  This is why I’m sure that she really doesn’t understand DID or me.  She doesn’t intend to be cruel or nasty, she just doesn’t realise the implications of her words.

Because of her words, this is how Sophie was feeling last night…  It’s bad when one of our most high functioning and optimistic one does a collage like this.

Untitled by castorgirl on Polyvore.com

“Unfit for work…” those words sting, they really do.  They’re the words used to explain why I won’t be able to work for the next 12 days.  They’re part of the standard form that the doctor fills in, so it’s nothing personal, but it means failure to some of us.  We know that our functioning at work has been so poor that there was no other choice, but it still cuts us to the core of what many of us perceive as our self-worth.  M in particular, is struggling with being put off work, yet she was the one who made the appointment and mentioned the problems we were having, knowing full well that enforced sick leave was the likely outcome.  M couldn’t hand the medical certificate over in person – it would be like admitting failure and having to face the disappointment of those around us; so we left it on the team leaders desk with an email message apologising for the inconvenience we were causing.  Some of us consider this the wimps way out… failing to face up to our responsibilities and the repercussions of our actions.

This morning we got a text message from our cynical work friend asking how we were.  I wasn’t sure how to respond, I know that in some ways I’m trying to protect her – she’s got enough on her plate without hearing my sob story.  So I sugar-coated what was happening.  No one at work was expecting us to have this time off, so it probably came as a shock.  I suppose this is one example of how we can appear so high functioning, but really be a total and utter mess.  What I fear the most is the reaction when we get back to work… will people alienate us, want to hug us, avoid talking about it?  At their core, the people that I work with are good and kind people, but they don’t understand mental health issues.  This means that I will odds are lie about what has happened when I get back to work, I’ll find some acceptable lie that doesn’t make them squirm.

This week we’ve also seen Jo and Liz…

Jo became quite worried about our safety after we did a collage with her.  It can be quite amusing on one level to see Jo’s art work which is all about love and happiness, while ours is dark and full of violence.  We both had mindless woman’s magazines to use as base material for the collage.  I had words like key, disappear, invisible… Jo had love and rainbow.  I had a picture of a puppet running through a door… Jo had a smiling woman on the beach.  She was concerned about our safety to the point of contacting Liz.  Poor Liz also now realises how much we were testing her when we first started seeing her – with Jo we go with the flow, but with Liz we resisted and argued at the beginning.  This wasn’t deliberate, but rather an unconscious way to see whether Liz was going to be able to help us heal and put up with what we could throw at her.

When we saw Liz, it was what I would consider a disaster.  Little Michelle came forward and made it almost impossible for us to speak.  She has such a problem with words and forming them that it’s like she is stuttering, but I don’t think it’s a true stutter, I think it’s more about not wanting to tell the secrets.  At one point, we were stuck on one sentence, and in particular one word… “I’m not special“.  We were so incapable of saying the word special, that we ended up having to write it down.  Little Michelle stuttered through explaining that she wasn’t “that word” to anyone, because if you were “that word” you then got hurt.  She wanted to runaway so that the pain would stop.  Liz offered to runaway with her, but Little Michelle said that no one else was allowed to come.  All the time this was going on, there were ones in the background yelling that she was telling lies and it’s all rubbish.  This was the first time the messages about it all being lies were so closely tied to someone saying anything.  Little Michelle shared no abusive events, but her presence alone was enough to stir-up the denial and nay-sayers.  That probably means something in psychology land, but to us it just felt crazy.

So we have 11 more days before we are allowed back to work…  We’re meant to relax and unwind…  This is terrifying!  Work is our structure, our safety.  Suddenly we’re meant to do this thing called relaxation and rest.  We’ve actively avoided doing either of those things for about 20 years…  Today we survived by going down to the gardens and taking pictures with the new lens’ we got the other day.  Not sure how we’re going to cope with another 11 days of this.

Here’s a random photo we took today…

Cherry blossom

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Now playing: Shihad – Pacifier
via FoxyTunes

I have come to a point in my healing where the sometimes dichotomous thinking and advice that I have been given has become confusing and counter-productive.  I said in a previous post that I have become so good at distraction techniques, that they have become another form of dissociating the pain and problems away.  I understand why they were shown to me, during the last two years of the marriage, I was consistently suicidal.  I thought death was the only way out of the marriage, as I knew he would never let me leave.  One of the first strategies they tell you when you are suicidal is to distract.  This makes sense when you’re so overwhelmed that suicide is the only option you can see.  So for years, I was told to distract my problems away.  This was the equivalent of telling me to put the problem in a box and put it in the archives of The Basement – which is exactly how I dissociate bad experiences, memories etc.  I’m pretty good at dissociating, and I am pretty good at using the distraction techniques to the point where they are also a dissociated and sometimes self-harmful experience.

Recently, I’ve heard more and more about looking at the pain.  The exact opposite to what I’ve been told to do for years.  It started off with practising some modified Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) – modified so that the names of the points have non-violent connotations and the taps to the head are not utilised.  EFT uses tapping pressure points on the body in combination with phrases to help ease emotional pain.  The phrases used are what I would consider ones which encourages you to think of the pain e.g. “even though I want to self-injure I fully and completely accept myself”.  So it was encouraging me to accept that this painful fact is part of me and that I’m not a bad or negative person for feeling that pain.  What was interesting doing this, is that it depended on who held the pain as to whether it was helpful or not.  If the pain was buried within the dissociative system, then the EFT often makes the dissociation worse.  Remember – this is just my experience and not necessarily one that others will encounter, or even one that I will continue to experience as time goes on.

Then today I read what was probably the most obvious and moving reason why I need to look at the pain.  It was Shen’s (Reunited Selves) entry in the Blog Carnival Against Child Abuse (September 2009) called The Hole in the Soul.  This post shows why we need to heal, the consequences of not healing, the positives that come from healing and acknowledgement of the pain and fear that the process creates.  It doesn’t encourage any particular method of healing, but rather advocates for an attitude, a willingness to do the work and a strength to keep on that journey.  I’m not sure if I have any of these qualities to the point of being able to look at, what Shen describes as, the hole in my soul.  Some of us balk at the use of the term “soul”, but I understand that we have a lightness and a blackness within.  Our internal Basement is in total darkness, while our internal Attic is bathed in light.  The Basement is where the most painful memories and emotions are kept, so I see the correlation.

As an aside, when M draws within therapy, she often does a black swirling circle, I wonder if she is drawing our “hole” and a representation of our feelings about all of this.  She’s our worst artist, so it could just be that’s all she can draw.  But it’s always black and it’s always circular, like a spiral or a tunnel.  This again could correlate to The Basement which is perceived as being bottomless.

So this need to face my pain is what I’m taking to Liz next week.  Liz has asked if we can put aside issues before to try and cope, but this isn’t possible with our current levels of functioning and being in the world.  We must either dissociate or distract it away from existence…  If nothing else, this new possibility for healing has helped to ease the place we have been in for the last week.

Thank you Shen for that amazing story and to those friends who have helped over the last few weeks, it is appreciated.

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Now playing: Dixie Chicks – Wide Open Spaces
via FoxyTunes

I’ve struggled long and hard to understand what is meant by the term “healing” within a mental health context.  I’m familiar with healing that can be quantified (e.g. a broken bone mending), but how do you quantify healing from childhood abuse?  Is it possible or desirable to do so? What time-frame should we look at as reasonable when we’re considering the healing process?

I’m very aware that this is the intellectual side of me asking these questions.  The questions are born from frustration at what is seeming like a very long journey that hasn’t got us very far.  I know that many survivors experience a decrease in functioning with the start of therapy, but how long can I expect this to continue?  I do what I can to hasten the healing process – I do the homework I’m set, I try to be as open as I can within therapy, etc.  But is this enough?  I’ve been told by therapists that I’m “working hard” within therapy, but I often feels as if it’s another part of my life that I’m drifting through.  There will be a moment of clarity surrounding why I do a certain behaviour, but it’s then lost in the confusion and dissociative memory gaps.

I’ve yet to fully understand what the term “working hard” refers to within therapy.  Yet, I often come out of a session absolutely exhausted or on an adrenaline high, both signs that I have experienced something extreme for what I sometimes dismiss as “sitting in a chair for 60 minutes talking”.  I have a great deal of respect for those who are working on their healing as a full-time endeavour, it’s not something that I have the strength for.  But I have no respect or patience for my own healing.  I’m still caught in dismissing and minimising the memories.  Liz has offered to assist with this process by using her as a sounding board to test out the feelings and potential accuracy of the memories.  There is a certain attraction in doing this, we could finally prove what is real and which memories have potentially been influenced.  But there is also a fear that Liz will say nothing about the validity of the memories, but rather ask us to look at them and analyse our feelings and emotions about the events.  This is my greatest fear, having no way to prove or dis-prove the memories and still having to do the work of recovering from the toxic mess they generate.

Part of my anxiety is generated from the proposed changes to the ACC scheme (check out the ACC category at Gudrun Frerich’s site for some of the issues surrounding the changes).  As an ACC client, the changes will mean more reporting, increasing need to measure the healing progress and the threat of my cover being stopped at any time.  There is no way that I would be able to afford therapy without ACC assistance, so this is  a huge issue.  This is not because we are attached to, or reliant on Liz; but rather I have a fear that if we can’t release the thoughts within a therapeutic framework, we will self-destruct.  Yes, I realise that I’m contradicting myself – how can therapy be “sitting in a chair talking for 60 minutes” as well as one of the things that keep us sane…

In totally other news, B entered us into a photo competition which we have absolutely no chance of winning or even placing in.  This goes against every single strand of perfectionism that runs through our body.  I do realise however, that it’s going to be an great deal of fun for them deciding how to photograph 100′s and 1000′s creatively.

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Now playing: The Feelers – Stand Up
via FoxyTunes

Welcome to our new blog.

I apologise for the apparent haste in the move, I made an error in the timing of the importation of the blog from the old account.  This has been compounded by the others not really liking this template, so it will probably change when they find one they prefer.  I’m also still learning the processes behind hosting a blog with the associated joys of file transfers etc.  It’s been an interesting process to get the blog this far – as well as a much needed distraction.

Hopefully the teething problems will be sorted out shortly and they can get back to the much needed release and processing of ideas they achieve through blogging.