It's been ages since I've written on here and the fact that I'm here now validates a decision I've had to make this week.
Last October I started a Creative Writing course with the OU. This weekend I decided it was time for me to stop - even though the course hasn't finished yet. I was doing the course for leisure - not towards a qualification- and whilst I've really enjoyed working through the workbook and learning all sorts of great new things the assignments that have to be regularly submitted are absolutely torturous.
I've done well enough on it (not as well as many of my alters would like of course) but if I continued with the last 3 assignments I'd probably come out with a good grade but for reasons that are all about DID I have finally decided to stop. The parts of me that want to do the course are not present enough of the time for me to keep up. I've fallen further and further behind because I just can't make myself write when some alters are around.
The other problem is the subject matter. The constant back and forth about whether I write about my own life (which is really want I want to do) or whether - to ensure I don't feel overly exposed - I write about something that I feel nothing about. I haven't been able to do this seeing it as a compromise of my selves but to be authentic is to write about subjects that don't easily cope with a random man, who knows nothing about me, commenting and criticising on what I write. I know criticism is the way to learn and all that, but really that is just blah, blah, blah to me. Cricitism destroys me. I feel like a hand grenade is going off inside me and I decimate. I want to sob or scream or both when I'm criticised, or at least I do once I've stopped being frozen in terror (as you can see I cope really well with it!!)
It's taken 4 weeks to decide to stop - which is progress. I didn't rush at it and just duck out whilst the pressure was at it's greatest. I did the last assignment amidst much crying, therapy and general misery but the thought of going through it 3 further times has finally defeated me. Writing that last assignment was liking climbing through treacle, every word I wrote was forced out and I've stopped understanding why I am doing it.
I haven't told them yet. I'm really looking forward to that! Maybe nobody will be bothered but I'm sure it will be like when i have gone sick at work in the past and not been able to return to certain jobs. 'But why are can't you come back?' they say 'you're so good at what you do!' The irony is I am good at things but that's the point of DID isn't it? It separates the personality into strands - some of which can be almost pure in their abilities and focus. I have done jobs that I have been exceptional at doing ( that sounds really big headed but i don't mean it to). I feel like a cardboard cutout that is full of life and colour at the front but if you view it from another angle there's no substance, no colour and nothing keeping it up. I can be exceptional at any number of things but the range includes things that other value, like work, getting along with others etc, but it also includes an exceptional ability to be frightened or depressed or angry. I am these things too and they are not so acceptable in the wider world.
I feel sometimes like I am all the ingredients of a cake lined up in little bowls waiting to be blended together. Each bowl holds something necessary, something complete in it's own right and often something that others value but to live like the majority of others, to be able to sustain life I need blend everything together, let feelings in to join the 'ability'.
I love writing. I've realised that it's one of my closest friends. It talks back to me, is a world I can escape into and yes, sometimes i want other people in there with me, I want to share something of what goes on in my head but I don't think I can ever hold it up on a regular basis for others to critique again. Not yet anyway.
So the upshot is that i am looking forward to writing more on here and finding other venues for my musings. But this course will have to join the pile of other 'unfinished projects' in my life that have not been completed because I find it so hard to manage the needs of multiple selves all at once.
And I need to learn to accept it.
