by Sheila Wolk
Dead Center in the city of Kereth. This is what it does to us....
Things are at a real “low” right now. The pain is very intense at times, almost unbearable and extremely frightening. Causes panic attacks sometimes.
Dead Center lies beneath another mountain. With it comes a torrent of memories, keeping The Time Traveller (2), while she receives them, and The Keepers of Maura (2) who retrieve them, very busy. How much can we control all of this flooding? We use the PACEM model for putting away the memories as well as retrieving them. P for the physical components of the memory, A for all that we heard during the abuse, C for the context, E for the emotions we felt and M for any drug effects.
Patience (1) says that the purpose of being here is to pick up all the pieces of who we are and bring them to “wholeness”. It is an integration of sorts, not of personalities but of our experiences and our being. In order for us to leave this place we must have some cohesion to move forward from here. There is much father to go yet and we need to take very thing and every one with us if we can.
We are still having difficulty with Black Widow (3). She is very angry and tends to take it out on others of us, especially Tir (1) and Shell (1, 2)l. We think she feels threatened by their existence. She knows Tir is the Original Person and thus will probably not “die” if we do a proper integration. And she thinks Shell has some kind of power because of her role in the system. It seems likely though that underneath her anger is fear, the fear that she will or has to “die”. It is a common thing that alters fear and it makes sense. But Black Widow is angry about other things too. She is mad about what was done to her and the role she was forced to play. At times it fills her with unbearable guilt and she wants to kill herself. She hates who she is.
Tir has been quite distraught lately. She is terrified of life and of living. She retreats into her own inner world often, trying to evade those feelings of fear. She is quite good at it too but it causes her to become very confused and disoriented to time and place.
Although we are all in the Cocoon together many of us still try to separate, or to be in smaller groups. It’s as if there is a light above us when we are together and it is too bright for some, too intense, forcing us to face things that we don’t want to face yet.
Ariel (1) is maturing quickly, going from an angry rebellious 13-year-old to more of a helper in the Web. For a while she kept an eye on Tir, as others have done too, but when Tir began to retreat and withdraw more she couldn’t handle it. She has turned her attention more to Shell now, helping her through day to day things. Also, Ariel does not “do depression”. When we become depressed she gets us out the door and off to the library or for a walk, anything that will take us away and distract us for a while.
Sure enough, we move on. Information comes through a willingness to read, write, think, talk about being multiple. A sweet relief for some of us. Denial is lower however it is still an issue for some. For Shell, the Miss Angry (1) part of her carries that denial. Letty (2) is also somewhat in denial and Flash (3), even though it doesn’t look like he is. He is. Anna, the woman who ran the education and support group for multiples, said that denial has its place and purpose. It’s like putting the brakes on, slowing things down and digesting only small bits at one time. Denial is a psychological coping mechanism. As a child, we had to have denial. We wouldn’t have survived emotionally, mentally, otherwise. At the same time, we have to chip away at it, reduce its size gradually. We need to come to terms with who we are and what has happened to us. Then we can move forward in our life, begin to look at our dreams and ambitions, develop a quality of life, go from surviving to thriving.
Letty’s shell is cracking. She is terrified when we are in a car. She fears someone will hit us. Even the skytrain scares her. And for some reason CF (1) is picking up Letty’s fears and is now, herself, afraid of being in a vehicle and of being hit by another one. At least Letty is talking to Patience. She has tried for so long to hold this stuff back but her wall is crumbling. Her tears roll along the strands of our web like little drops of dew. So much sadness, fear and anger for all of us. And we are sad for all humans, for all pain and suffering. Yet it is the manure for the garden, helps us grow.
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A sound pierces the air, coming from Dead Center. The sound of terror, horror and rage. We hope it stays Inside. We fear Outsiders will hear it and we will be committed to hospital again. We must carry our pain quietly if that is even possible. Isn’t that another form of silence though?
Wind storms. A flurry of activity in our daily chores. Doing the laundry, our bookkeeping, preparing meals, having a shower, calling schools, all of it is busy, busy, busy. And doing it all at once. At least that’s what it feels like. Different ones of us doing the activities, then losing time, makes it feel like we are doing all of our chores at once. If anyone can even understand that. Truddi Chase would.
Gabriel (3) does The Shout for Power at Dead Center. This is what it does to us ....
Gabriel calls and Tir becomes scared. She phones Lyn. Why don’t they realize that without proof they must take the facts from the child? The child is not lying. Black Widow talks of power to Sarah and cackles. Who has disrupted everything? Can we not do whatever we want? How to stop all the violence. There is such chaos and pain, screaming and calling to the spirits, our skin our physical body keeps us separate.
That is what it does to us and more. Our brain screams.
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Now that we are Dead Center things are changing. It feels like we are waking up. Our energy is enormous.
This is new territory .... every day.
The heart grows bigger as it reaches for the heavens. Therein lies true power and power for all. Not one over another but power shared, spread equally among us. Em-powerment.
out of this world her dreams exist
she needs to reach them, up there, in the stars
pushes her tiny chest forward
exposing her heart to the universe so it can see how much she wants
how much she wants to touch.
sun reaching down
finger rays lifting her up, up, up
towards ever opening door of sky
time embraces her
space cradles her
my black angel child.
The Shout continues and we hear the sound of hope, the sound of being bigger than oneself, the sound of courage, the sound of unity. And all sounds come together.
This is what Dead Center does to us. All of it.
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