Boundaries
I’m not good with boundaries… I know this. When the dissociation and switching increases in frequency, my scant understanding of appropriate boundaries goes out the window. This was (yet again) evident earlier this week, when Matthew Branton asked (a perfectly legitimate question) about having a place within the blog where new readers could get an understanding of my background and the experiences that brought me to this place in my healing. This question, in conjunction with reading Matthew’s account of his past, and Faith Allen’s series of posts about her past on Blooming Lotus; meant that a part of me took this question very literally… Suddenly there were over a 1000 words on a new page within the blog which described my family and what I have been told about my childhood up until I was a toddler. There was a real drive to write this history out, but that need came from a part of me that didn’t understand the implications for the rest of the system. They are a part of me that always obeys a suggestion or request without question. The ultimate people pleaser.
You’ll see that the page is no longer on the blog, I’ve hidden it. I realise that I do need to write out my history, but I need to write it out for Allison’s eyes only. It would be too easy to piece together my history, and find out who I am in real life from the detailed account that was being generated… that just can’t happen! I would risk losing my career and being labelled with all of the negative stereotypes that those with mental health issues carry. I hate the stereotypes and misinformation about those who deal with mental health issues every day, but I’m not in a strong enough place to fight it. Also, to be blunt, librarians are a bunch of close minded, gossiping old biddies… if they discovered that I have DID, I would never get another job within New Zealand.
After talking to a friend, I realised that I can still write a summary here about my past, but I don’t have to go into so much detail. This is where I need to learn about the appropriate boundary. How much do readers of this blog really need to know about me? Does it matter that I’m the youngest child? Does it matter that I have no memory of what any of my family looked like as I was growing up? These are the questions that I need to ask myself, and take my time answering. So, I will put up a new page that carries a summary of my experiences, but it will take me some time to come to an internal agreement as to what I can reveal safely.
The other boundary issue I’ve been facing this week, is the re-decorating of my rented house. I knew that the landlords were going to re-decorate the house sometime soon, but on Monday I got a call from a painter saying he’d be starting Tuesday; so, could I leave a key to the house under the mat to allow his team access to the house. Now, I know I should be grateful that the landlords are doing the work – the wallpaper was peeling. BUT, STRANGE MEN WERE GOING TO BE IN MY HOUSE WHILE I WASN’T THERE. They were going to be moving my stuff. They were going to be walking in my house… the house that I worked so hard to try and make feel safe. It caused havoc within the system.
On Tuesday when we came home, the wallpaper had been stripped from the walls, but the house wasn’t too messy. We could cope with a great amount of deep breathing and locking all the windows and doors – then re-checking them every hour or so. But on Wednesday when we came home, they had painted the woodwork, which caused a huge mess. They’d been careless with our possessions – our cats food and water bowl were spoiled with paint dust, there was paint on our wooden dresser and they’d carelessly knocked over our things in the bathroom. We’d also had to do some teaching that day, so it was all too much… What I’m really proud of though, is that we didn’t self injure! We were in a mess, but One remembered Paul’s oil pastel artwork, so found our old pastels and got us to draw instead of injure. This is what we drew…
Swirl
Black Red
I’m not really aware of what happened as we were drawing these, or even what they mean. But, I know that there was a great deal of energy used on the second one.
We were hoping that they would be finished the redecorating on Friday, but it looks like they didn’t do any work at all that day. This, in combination with a rough day at work and being the anniversary of when Sophie and R were born due to an abusive event in the past; meant that last night there was a total loss of control. I only came back to any sort of awareness late Saturday morning.
What’s interesting about this latest event, is that I’m being told “You won’t tell that b@t@h Allison about this.” I’m not sure if this is a statement of fact, a challenge, or a derisive comment on my inability to talk about the tough issues in therapy. But I know that this time, I do need to tell Allison… I need to get outside help for the dangerous dysfunction. So, that’s what this weeks therapy is going to be about… wish me luck!
This latest round of confusion and self-injury, has made me aware of how little internal communication I now have. The dissociation has ramped up several notches, and my old skills have been lost (or maybe misplaced). Trust has gone, and it feels like I’m starting from scratch again… For some reason I was reminded of this old Telecom ad… Maybe it’s the message about communication being the first step… and maybe about communication starting with the children/young ones… Or, as is now being suggested internally, maybe I’m just a sap :)
Oh, and on a positive note… I’m the lucky “god-fearing” person chosen by Miss Linda to help her money launder retrieve $22 million from her fathers estate. The poor man was poisoned by his business colleagues (nasty men), and her only hope to get the money out of the Ivory Coast, is through me. I’ll be the lucky recipient of 15% of this sum, so it’s all good… my money worries are over! This is also a much better offer than last weeks one from Mr Philip, a lawyer from England… Strange how a lawyer would track me down as a long lost relative, when I never use my real name in any of my email addresses… but then, he’s a lawyer with wicked mad skills apparently ;)
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Now playing: Cat Stevens – Where Do The Children Play?
via FoxyTunes
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!!!
ACC
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…
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.
