The Snake and the Jailor

Today I want to write about the thinks that I turn away from. It’s so easy to kid myself that I’m together and sorted; in fact the longer I live with DID the better I become at showing only one face to the world. When I was younger all was chaos, flashbacks, triggers and terror. Now my older alters are mostly in control. They’re not daft, in fact they range from smart, logical and driven to accommodating, caring and diligent and between them they rustle up a life. 

But that’s as long as younger parts aren’t around.

And right now what I’m turning away from is a part of me that is in the shadows. I don’t know who she is but I’ve lived with her for as long as I can remember.  She is full of bleak, black thoughts that drag on the body  making it hard sometimes to even lift up my head. She doesn’t want to get up in the morning, or wash her hair, clean her teeth. She stops me doing good things for myself and even getting dressed is an ordeal.

I feel her as a burden but that seems so harsh.  I know she is hurting, sometimes she sinks to the floor and just cries when faced with anything dirty, like unwashed worktops and dirty pots.  Today as I washed up someone started yelling at her, demanding that she stop preventing me from keeping the house clean and tidy. That she just get over herself and stop being such a pain.  As soon as I shouted at her I felt better and then immediately ashamed.  It brought me back to something I was wrestling with in therapy last year that I described as the Jailor and Snake.

I don’t think of either as alters although I really don’t know if that’s right.

The snake is viscous, scathing and critical, ready to pull me down on every single thing I do.  The Jailor wants me to stay silent, to be boxed up and without a voice.

I suppose that’s why I’m writing a blog in the first place; to challenge the Jailor and to start existing outside of my box. Trying to bypass the constant stream of criticism in my head is almost impossible though.

But are they alters or just my internalised parents? My mother was a snake – a venomous woman who controlled my every move and my step father was the consummate jailor – silencing me, making me endure the most hideous things without moving or uttering a sound.

But how do I shut them up? And what do they have to do with the girl in the shadows?  Is she just the girl who put up with them? Accepted the criticism and abuse without uttering a sound, who tried to cope with no outlet for her emotions and no-one to help her feel better? I just don’t know….