Hartly
The journey “indicates unfulfilled aspirations and unsatisfied longings. It also symbolizes decisive stages and is considered in myth to be a pilgrimage to one’s personal center, where one can discover the self, inner balance, and wholeness. A journey expresses a desire for discovery and enlightenment like a quest. Change and evolution occur on the way to one’s destination” (Anne Rice)
Othel (1) is doing yet another project. Nothing can stop him. This time he is studying world history and indigenous peoples.
At times we want to give everything we have to the world. To surrender all who we are.
Old Self (2), Gabriel (3) and The Children of the Thirteen (3) are still on top of the mountain but they are no longer waiting for something. Instead they have built a fire and they are preparing something. The Beast of Rage (1) doesn’t seem to be there though. Where is he then?
We are going to start having official meetings Inside, with an agenda and issues to discuss. Our first “Council Fire” we talk about not feeling comfortable and safe at Lyn’s new office. It doesn’t feel private enough.
Last night Graham said he wanted to get Christmas presents for some of us. We are touched by his love. He says that last week he was hanging out with some friends and a girl started to pretend she was possessed, seeming multiple. Graham says it made him really angry and he cried. He made an excuse to his friends that he has a good friend who is multiple. He didn’t want to tell anyone it was us. It is hard to imagine how this is for him, to know his mom is multiple. How does this affect him? How does he feel? One of his friends revealed she had been abused as early as two years old. He suggested she might be multiple and she should get counselling. Ah ... he’s learning.
Ariel (1) zips out today beside Graham. She doesn’t say anything, just sits beside him as he is playing on the computer. He knows it. He looks at her and asks if she were someone else. She skirts around it, not admitting to anything. Then Annie Charlie (1) comes out and tells Graham it was Ariel. Later Graham says that Ariel and Tir (1) are opposites. How true. Ariel is pretty energetic, bubbly, and often silly and playful. Tir is soft, quiet, almost shy. Fragile.
Maybe it’s possible that others of us who have not been out with other people might want to come out now. We are feeling a little braver. To open up and say to the world – here we are. Touching the world. But maybe it has to come slowly. The shock is bad enough for me. There is the risk of not being accepted. This is about changing more than anything. And about becoming.
Today we sit and knit for 8 hours. Football on tv. No thoughts about abuse. Well ... only a little. Just a break from it all. Total immersion into something else for a while. A much needed rest.
We make room in The Cocoon for The Thirteen (3). It is not all peace, love and harmony however. Yesterday the noise Inside was almost unbearable. A lot of arguing. Some extremely upset. Tir kept looking for John, our counsellor at SAFER. We are not working with him anymore Tir. Stop looking for him. and I could not understand where I was. Then I knew .. and then I didn’t. Sometimes I didn’t even know the day, the time, the year. This is what remembering does to you. It makes me so angry I just want to cry. So helpless. So powerless.
No one wants to stay out. All of us want to retreat. Should we be using The Observers (1)? But Ariel, brave girl, volunteers to be out even though she is scared to. She does a great job. She takes care of CF (1) and Annie Charlie. In fact, she protects them from the internal chaos. They are able to be children and play.
I think I will dance and dream in the dark. Until it is all over.
-----
I am feeling good about life today so I ask Tir to come out and walk with me. She holds my hand. I show her the nice things in the world – the sun, the mountains, Stanley Park, big boats on the water, people visiting our city from other parts of the world. I want her to know there are beautiful and good things in the Outside world too, not just in her internal world. She looks around with innocent child-like eyes. She has a lot of life to experience yet.
We go down by Canada Place where the huge cruise ships come in. When we get home the kids want to draw a picture for Sarah who is away right now. We write for Annie Charlie who says “we seen some big boats and they had swimming pools on them and chairs and a place where you could play a game with a ball and they had a thing up so the ball wouldn’t go off the boat and the boat was really really big and I wanted to go for a ride on it but Shell said I couldn’t and Katy Ann (2) said she would draw a picture of the boat for you in our book and Katy Ann let me pick the colours.” Whew!
Our session with Lyn is full of fear. I feel so afraid and I want to scream at Lyn to hold me really tight so I won’t fall apart. I am terrified that I will, that I won’t be able to cope with things. I feel scared that I might start to scream or lose control in the most inappropriate place, like out in public. And we are still not ready to go back to work.
Tir has been crying today. It is a despairing cry.
I can’t read any books on multiplexity right now. They are like hot coals in my hands – they burn my skin to the touch. I looked at one in the library and I wanted to cry the minute I read the inside jacket. I just can’t. I just can’t.
Dream: crawling on all fours down the street.
Tir says she has a dead baby inside her. Calls her Dead Baby (8). Now she wants to rename her, after the singer Sarah McLachlan. She loves her music so much. So Dead Baby is now called Baby Sarah. Is she an alter?
The walls between alters is necessary for survival. Things you must not know until you are ready, mature enough to handle it all. The walls mean we survive. On the other hand, the connections between alters means we are effective in our life. We do the things we want and need to do, to have a good life. To not just survive, but thrive.
Our rage. There was a lot of it when we were with David, Graham’s dad. We attacked him many times – physically. But he never raised a hand to us except to defend himself. Once he pushed us into our bedroom, closed the door and held onto it until we calmed down. Once we put our fist through a huge window because he was on the other side of it. Thank goodness he was too far away to get hurt. We didn’t get hurt either which was truly amazing. He remembers with a laugh a time that we kicked a bedroom door right off its hinges. I’m glad he can laugh about it but my god we were angry back then. Yet David was so good and kind. He never struck back. Thank god he was a physically strong man too otherwise we would have hurt him.
No comments:
Post a Comment