The Black Web
Intimacy means
doing what other people want you to do,
says a child voice within.
I know I say I can’t cope with much more of this stuff, but we are getting stronger. Is that what therapy does? There is no use in me trying to convince anyone of how sick I really am, in making all of this up and I don’t even know if all that is real either. The Miss Angry (1) part of me that continuously sends Doubt, Denial and Disbelief my way. I don’t know what is real and that’s the worst part of all. I know that I can’t stop the others from coming out. They just do. And I can’t stop the “stories” they tell. So I just have to let it all happen. What choice do I have anyway? Always the passenger...
Yes, Miss Angry. And Miss Normal (1) and The Censor (2). All parts of me-Shell. It’s like there are several chairs for me to sit on and they all have “Shell” written on them. Everyone else Inside only has one chair. Why do I have several? Why am I like this? Apparently I shift from chair to chair, rather than switch. I’m still me. But only one quarter of me. Who the hell designed me like this? I don’t even realize when I change chairs. Don’t feel a thing. Don’t feel any different really. Although, I guess I do feel Miss Angry when she is around. I feel the doubts thick in the air then. And they hurt so much. I have 4 parts to me and yet I feel so insubstantial and empty without the others Inside. Maybe that is the Adult Empty (1) part of me. An open vessel to carry the others. And who controls when I am present and when I am not? When Tir (1) comes out I am gone. Absent. But when Annie Charlie (1) comes out I can be fully present. I am so confused and yet no one Inside is trying to help me sort this out. Maybe they can’t.
When I deny, when I try not to believe, I freak out and Arwen (1) must come forward. But if I believe it’s all true then what will happen to me? I fear a total disintegration, a true and deep insanity will take hold of me. It will kill me. I have to work with my disbelief continually. There are times I don’t even bother questioning. I just forget it and carry on. Other times I think I have something wrong with me. But for all of the questions and doubts, there seems to be an equal number of things that say – there’s no way you could have made this up. Lyn says my “story” is consistent over time. Frank Putnam’s book about multiplexity has so much information that I relate to. Yes, I have that symptom, and that one. And yes, we have that type of alter and this type too. There were so many similarities between the other women in the support group and me, us. I did not doubt them. Nor did I sit down and study a book in order to pretend to be multiple. I have to ask myself these questions though and remember these facts over and over. This is a hell of a place to be.
I feel really out of it. Someone says maybe I am really in it. My life has changed drastically and I don’t know how to cope with it. I keep trying to figure it out and I can’t seem to. The more I look for explanations and answers, the more I get information I wasn’t looking for. Then I get taken further and further away from whoever I was before. Who was I then?
Headaches. Like circuits all jammed up then freezing. Everything gone blank. Nothing available then. Dead air. But Sarah understood how confused I felt today, how lost. It amazes me that someone can understand.
I want to quit therapy. I don’t want to know anymore. Urges to cut or take a whole bunch of pills. Shadows and images of violence, of blood. But it’s all quite vague, seen through a fog. Nothing really clear. Things on tv are disturbing. Can’t separate from them. They are attached to me. I am living them. I am jumpy too. Phone calls and people hanging up as soon as I pick up the receiver. Everything shakes me up and leaves me confused. Last night disappeared. I didn’t have it. It wasn’t mine. Did I even sleep? Were there dreams? It’s getting harder for me to figure out whether I am “out” or not. Am I losing time and don’t realize it? More and more questions and very few answers.
Black Widow (3) is spinning out of control and tries to catch me in her web. What does she want with me? Patience (1) tells me the suicidal urges are not mine. Gee, Patience, that’s really helpful. Does it really matter who it belongs to? The pain is there no matter who’s it is. Just deep terrible pain.
Black Widow is trying to convince me I’m lying about everything, especially about the ritual abuse. She’s doing a damn good job but Patience and Ariel (1) say no, you’re not lying Shell. I just love these holes in our logic. It’s almost funny. Black Widow is working through Miss Angry, my doubting self part. Clever. But my mouth has a life of its own and keeps spilling the words out. These words are like a fast car, getting someone home, getting The Truths out.
Some talk about shutting down the System. What does that mean exactly? Is that when The Observers (1) come out? I think I can handle that. Or is it something else entirely? Can I please get more information rather than leave me in the dark.
Despite all of what is happening and all of my fear and confusion I am becoming unstuck about other things. I feel myself becoming “more me” and that is really incredible. It’s like doors that have been closed for so long, doors that I didn’t even know existed, suddenly begin to open. I get glimpses of possibilities of new things coming.
At other times I hate me. I want to destroy me. Just me though. Not the others. I hate when I can’t understand who is me. I cannot forgive who is me. I hate who is me.
I often dream of going to the bathroom in front of people. Being so intimately exposed. Our journals do this and our book will do it even more. It is terrifying to know that people will see who I really am. But there is a need to be visible and yet also a need to be invisible. And there is a cost to both. Tir yearns to be more visible, to express who she is. She is an artist, a performer, a dancer. She longs to express her being and essence through dance and she has had plenty of opportunities to do so. But when she is thus exposed, she runs away, leaving only a shadow of who she really is. In the end, fear overtakes her and she is left hidden and grieving. The rose bud that cannot open.
The nightmare we had last night was just a brief thing. Sarah is reading in her diary, talking about what we had been like today. It is Sunday. She says something about Epiphany and I feel a great weight pushing down on my side. I wake up crying out. Epiphany (4). Little Christmas. January 6. And a great insight. A light bulb moment. And the name of another one. Not yet to surface.
Speaking of Christmas I think of church and I think of the church we attended as a child. It was damaging and it raped our soul in some way, caged us in. Remembering it, it feels like a heavy coating of syrup, restricting, suffocating. The atmosphere was claustrophobic. Yet Julia (1) loved it. She used to perform the whole Sunday mass when she was alone at home. She loved the incense and the intensity of the rituals. How ironic given that we were abused by rituals. But Julia is separate from that. She loves rituals, is soothed by them and their certainty, their predictability. Instead she knelt at home and read out loud the prayers. Then she stood and sung the hymns. She remembered the incense and how it thickened throughout the service. In the middle of the mass, the minister would be deep within the ceremony and the prayers. His voice would rise and fall with intensity. The wooden pews would creak as people shifted in them. Once in a while someone would faint. But never at the beginning or the end. Always somewhere in the middle as if it was just too intense, too overwhelming. Julia loved it all.
I want Othel’s (1) mind. He is smarter than me, than most of us. Smarter in a scientific, analytical way but he’s been held back. Someone stifled his abilities just as they stifled Tir’s wonderful and pure creativity. A sense that we are capable of much more than this. It only needs another key to unlock the door.
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The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
The Good
Dream: driving along the coast of some exotic, tropical country. Gigantic mountains beside the road. They soar above us, straight up. There are jagged edges and peaks covered with mosses and trees. They are absolutely magnificent and beautiful. Stunning.
The Bad
Timothy (3) cries and is inconsolable. Nevertheless, we hold him.
The Ugly
Dream: in a therapy session. We have to vocalize the accusation of murderer by throwing a rock on the ground and crying out “Murderer!” We watch other people do this too while we feel the weight of sadness, so heavy we sob. That’s what our dreams are these days. Dreams of terrible abuse and accusations. And guilt.
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