Little Red
When I see the image of candles all around and am asked if I drink blood I understand. But I don’t know yet. Dizzy, dizzy. The world floating up and down, on a raft. My bed shakes for the last three nights, vibrating with an intense energy. And dreams that haunt. I am physically exhausted by day.
Tir (1) has bizarre visions and ideas and is difficult to talk to or understand. What’s most frightening is the things she sees. In a session with Lyn I saw blood, thick, dark red flowing from Lyn’s heater. The heater alternated with the sight of an altar and Tir’s voice in my head says “sacrificial beast”. Lyn takes a guess as to what this is about but I do not want to hear it. I am Denying her words. Not now. Please not now. I am already so tired of the list of abuses from the others Inside. I can’t stand it anymore and I think that maybe I am simply crazy. It is impossible to believe. I am going dead instead. The secrets are killing me. It’s easier if I just sit still, a zombie. It is too great an effort to make a meal, pick up a book, put clothes on. My body is weighed down, pushing me into the floor. I need to move slowly if at all.
The Bitches (8) wear black-hooded cloaks. Before I knew of the others, in 1990 when I fell apart, I had visions of people around my bed, dark cloaks and chanting.
Tir’s thoughts are about death aren’t they? I can feel them and see glimpses of them. A quick image of something in front of me, something brushing in front of my face but I can’t get it clear. I am so afraid of the buried horror, residing deep beneath layers that we have to peel back, until there are no more covers, until no more is hidden. Until we are raw and totally exposed, revealing the deepest wound.
Yesterday in therapy I kept getting an image of one of us tied up and naked. It really freaked me out and I started screaming. I don’t know where this could have happened.
The support group. The facilitator, Anna, is also multiple. This goes deep. It means she understands. She’s been there. Being in this support group is very difficult and painful. The fact that I am multiple sinks in deeper, into the Red of Remembering and I hate it. During the break I go to the bathroom and cry and cry although what I really want to do is scream. It is not just that I am multiple but that the abuse was worse than I believed. I don’t want to know! I refuse to believe! However, the group does confirm some things. Like some of the other women in the group, I don’t want to be with people very much. I prefer being alone and at home. I screen my phone calls too. And I don’t always want to be hugged either.
Anna does a closure at the end of each group, asking everyone Inside to go to a safe place. She uses a model called PACEM. She says to push back any memories that have come up of physical sensations (the “P”) of the abuse, then to push back all the auditory (“A”), everything we heard during the abuse, then the content (“C”) of what was said to us, the emotions (“E”) we felt, and finally any effects from drugs or medication (“M”) we felt. Put all those memories away for now, until there is the right time and place for them to surface. It is amazingly calming as Anna speaks. Then she asks for one to come out who can help us get home. Patience (1) does that for us.
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Second session. Today is very different from last week. There is more laughter as each of us begins to hear that we are not alone, that we are real, that we are we. Most of us have had a tough week after last week’s session. The information, the knowledge sinking in. Validation can be very painful indeed. Anna talks about the “Outside Person” or “host” as some people call it. She says that this alter may do a lot of healing work on her own, getting her life together but not knowing of the others’ existence. I did plenty of therapy in my adult life but never really touched the abuse or the multiplexity. Except for the one time when Sean-Charlotte (5) tried to emerge in a therapy session. She went back when it was obviously not the right time.
Anna also says that the others decide when the Outside Person, or host, is ready to know. Before I found out about being multiple I read Truddi Chase’s book. I felt such understanding and such familiarity with her situation. Apparently when that happened ones Inside said “She’s ready to know” and they began to reveal themselves.
Anna refers to an Inner Self Helper (ISH), one who always stood back from the abuse. At first I thought maybe this was Tir but it became clear that our ISH is Patience. She did not directly experience any of our abuse. But Anna says this helper also knows everything yet Patience says that is not true for her. She did not know about The Terrible Twos (2) who emerged not long ago. As well, Frank Putnam in his book says that sometimes an ISH does not lay all of her cards on the table at one time. I know Patience is like that.
The Bitches say we are not to believe Anna’s words, that she is evil and trying to brainwash all of us in the group. Is this simply fear on their part? By break time I feel very upset and for the rest of the group session I begin to feel very sleepy and my head is heavy. I don’t have the energy to talk and I can barely hear what the other women are saying. I am tuning out but it is not in my control. I start to feel shaky and light-headed and am trying to “black out”. I can’t hear anymore of this.
And yet somehow the words come in. Anna says the Outside Person usually doesn’t know about any of the abuse and was created to cope with the world. They may feel ripped off from everything. Sometimes her, or his, job is to present a facade of being okay. And she may feel like a “blank slate” with no thoughts or feelings of her own. Oh such validation.
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We can’t stop our journey now. We must continue on the path in Kereth. Someone knows where we are going and the pull is so strong. It has not abated in two years. It has rested yet not died. However, other things must be cleared out of the way – slowly – bit by bit until nothing stands in our way of being all who we are. Until we are all very much alive and together.
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