A blurry past
“August, 1991: In a therapy session Caer easily regresses and begins to re-experience past trauma. Over time she is gradually becoming more skilled at controlling this. At home deliberate self harm by cutting is the main way she uses to stop dissociating. She is uncomfortable with the intensity of her feelings and has difficulty containing them. There are strong suicidal thoughts at times. She is terrified by the intensity of her rage. Brief psychotic episodes continue at times of stress but she is learning to manage them.”
More alters have surfaced. Rebecca (1) and Arwen (1). Arwen seems very likeable and cheerful. Apparently she is the last alter to be made, much later than everyone else. Una (4) created her in 1989 to help us when we began to fall apart and the multiplexity surfaced. Smart move I guess although I’m wishing there weren’t any more to know about. Rebecca is very calm, quiet and patient. She should be. She was created by Patience (1). And although Arwen was created by Una these two are considered to be Patience’s cohorts and helpers.
Still so much goes on Inside. Nothing stays still for long. Understandable I guess but it is so difficult. Tir (1), Ariel (1), Razor Man (3), CF (1), Julia (1), Isa (1). All have something going on. And Patience tells me I am psychotic. I say “fuck you Patience!” I don’t like her. I don’t trust her. And there is one called No Self (4). No identity. Having nothing. Being nothing. Nothing denied. No “me”, no “them”. For me – it hurts to find no answer to the question “who am I?” because there really is no “I” only “we”. We are.
A dream. We have been cut right between our breasts by a long thin blade. Bleeding we go to Lyn our psychiatrist for her to fix it but we are reluctant to lift our shirt and show her our wound. We don’t want her to touch it because we know she will make it hurt more at first before it heals. Doesn’t take much to understand that. We know we have a long way to go to heal from the past and it will hurt over and over. Therapy is about pain right now. A pain we don’t want, we resist but it must be if we truly want to heal.
Patience writes a brief letter to Lyn.
I think I can help a bit with an issue that keeps coming up in sessions lately. It looks like Razor Man wants to protect us from painful memories but I think that he is really wanting to protect himself. I think he believes (deluded as this seems) that he is the person who abused us. His physical looks are very much like the first foster father who abused us. He is also hostile because he carries rage for us and he thinks Shell is not willing to carry it much less express our rage.
The cutting continues. 146 on our legs. And I am in a state of euphoria, at the pinnacle of all who I can be. A sense of power with those slashes. It feels like revenge, even though I don’t know who it is against but it does taste sweet. I watch Tir dance in the forest and she looks so goddamned beautiful. She is such a free spirit in her forested worlds. She is happiest there.
A black slithery thing in my backpack reaches out for my neck. It has many tentacles and they are hairy and wet. I become smaller and smaller while this eyeball becomes magnified many times. I hear each tiny movement it makes, like the creaking of an old wooden ship. Patience tells me this is Eye (1), one of The Observers (1). God how strange is this.
Othel (1) gives a lot of drive to the system and he helps relieve our depression. What really gets him going is having a project to work on. If he’s learning something new and able to apply it to us he’s extremely happy and energetic. Ariel says she likes Othel a lot. He is very neutral and safe. The opposite of Razor Man. He is respectful of all of us, not demanding.
Meanwhile I struggle with the issue of my own identity in the middle of all of this. Are there others inside of me or am I inside of others? I can feel CF, Ariel, Tir, Othel and Razor Man as if they are the energy within me. They keep me going, keep me alive and feeling. I am empty without them. Adult Empty (1). And being multiple .... I feel ashamed of it. I’m afraid people won’t believe me if I tell them I am multiple. They don’t see the others come out. We hide us from the world. We can move as one. But inside are conflicts, pushes and pulls in different directions. A battle of wills.
And I am so afraid of what will be uncovered in terms of the abuse. Will I remember eventually? How will I cope with it? How will I recover? All I have is this feeling that for at least 20 to 25 years my head has been telling me something is wrong inside. Each time I have done therapy in the past I thought it all got worked out but here I am again only this time it’s much more severe. I was labelled depressed before. A psychiatrist I saw in my early 20s labelled me passive-dependent. Am I going to have a lifetime of labels? Looks like it.
Patience wrote me a lengthy letter and I feel angry and resentful. Who does she think she is telling me I am depressed or that I’m the one blocking our therapy. She hints that those three hags may be alters. I still don’t think they are. She tells me I am afraid.
I don’t want to be Shell anymore. I don’t want to be Caer anymore. I don’t want this life anymore. I want to run away to where no one will bother me. I want to be left alone, no more expectations of me. I am an empty “person”. There is only something to me when the others are here. Otherwise I am nothing. Not even No Self. I need to find a way to end my life and let you guys continue on. I would like to just slip away quietly, so no one will notice.
“Caer has co-existing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Multiple Personality Disorder. She has features of Borderline Personality Disorder, including brief psychotic episodes. I think that her prognosis is good but that the course of her therapy will be slow, lasting several years. She is not able to work at this time due to her acute emotional distress and poor concentration. It is difficult for her to spend prolonged periods of time around other people.”
I think there is another child besides CF. Someone who really wants to put her arms around Lyn’s neck and be held. The other day I felt that child’s pull so strong that I sat in the corner of the kitchen and cried, feeling her.
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