Is anybody there?

Is anybody there?  I don't know if I'm asking that question to the outside world or to my internal world.  I've entered one of my 'vacant' phases; where I'm watching everything from behind a glass wall. 

Reaching out to others feels unreal as though it's something I used to do but don't do anymore.

I dreamed last night of 'losing time'. It's not something that happens much with me but in the dream I lost about 15 minutes of time and couldn't recall what I had done. It had consequences that affected a lot of people and I had to put up with their judgement of my behaviour and I could find no way of defending myself that made sense.

Maybe it's significant. Right now I am fighting to keep control, to hold on to my  co-consciousness but I feel stretched and ready to snap. What's happening at one end of my personality is not the same as what is happening on the surface.

I don't know if I'm making sense or not. Feel like I am babbling - but maybe that's better than being silence.

To update on the last post: I didn't get an interview for the job which was really disappointing. I think I've got over it quite well though (helped greatly by a week off work!) and feel pleased that I asserted myself.  Criticism is still so difficult for me to cope with but maybe there are little, small changes on that front.

Anyway that's it for now. Just relieved I've managed to speak!!

Work & DID

I'm locked inside my silent prison again.  Comments and events experienced in the last fortnight are swirling around me like dead leaves in a gale until they turn into tiny knives that cut through freshly healed scars.

I had just begun to feel okay about work again, after going back after sick leave to diminished hours and (I think) responsibilities. I'd found some peace , but then a job opportunity raises it's head; a promotion, a chance to show them that I'm capable of more than the 'diminished role' I currently have. Only my manager immediately says I'm not suitable.

She's wrong. I know she's wrong because she hasn't taken the time to know my full work history, instead has looked at my time with the company and come to  her conclusions. At first I slinked back to my place, tail between my legs, chastened and embarrassed. I was going to let it go by but then I changed my mind. They had asked someone else to apply for it -someone I know has less experience than me - and that gave me the courage to fight back to put myself on the table. And it worked! She listened and put me forward to be shortlisted.

Now I'm waiting to see if they will interview me, give me a chance and the discussions, the events of the last fortnight are swirling with ever increasing force inside me cutting me down to size, reminding me that the world is no friend of people with DID, so why would this job opportunity come my way. Sometimes i think I'm paranoid, assuming everyone is against me, but just as often I have alters to the fore that have an inflated view of our abilities and expect everyone to agree that I am very capable and skilled. The abilities exist sure enough but so do the other alters, the ones that go into melt down because my IBS is so bad and it triggers memories they'd rather forget. That's the other half of my fortnight, a week of pain and fear because my body is failing to cope with the emotional stress of therapy and raking through the past.  Can those alters cope with a more demanding job? More hours? More pressure? And how the hell do i make the decision???

I don't know. But I do know that I want that job. I'm laying my heart on the line. Is this what 'normal' life is like? Sometimes i seem to feel so much less than other people but at other times I feel so much more. It's exhausting.

I should find out on Friday if I have an interview and I don't know how I'm going to stand it if i don't - so fingers and toes are crossed, everything is crossed!

Depersonalisation

I keep so silent behind this wall. Hoping it will all go away, that risks won’t be necessary again as they were in my 20’s. Feeling so wise and mature as I head for 40 – in control of the past and how I let it touch me. I graze the truths that make up my reality from time to time, let the power and stench of those memories subsume me. My  girls of 6 and 7 ride in to my body with horror on their backs and they nail their experiences into my psyche. And then I take my ability for dissociation and I douse them away, flush them back to the dungeons until weeks pass and  I feel so ‘unreal’, so ghost like that I welcome them back again to remind me I am alive.

Two extremes, one oscillation between them and I have myself a life that is dull and lifeless but spiked occasionally with horror – the flashing images of giant spiders dangled above me to make me perform sexual acts, the flash of young flesh belonging to my brother, hovering above me. This is my reality.  I feel Nothing, absolutely. Nothing at all for these events. Maybe the echo of fear for the spiders but nothing about my brother. Absolutely nothing.

I need my life back. I know it’s going to hurt but I need to be in it to heal it. I’m a spectator behind smoky glass. I sit in dark rooms and numb everything just in case something bad jumps out to swamp me and destroy the fragile hold I have on my own collection of events and functions that make up my life.  I fear that not only the bad painful stuff is trapped but the good things – childish freedoms and playfulness, impulsiveness, the ability to inhabit a moment without thought for the future.  Something is wrong because I can’t find those things.  IsaBell has been so marvellous, trudging with a relentless determination through the destruction of my childhood and adolescent. she stands resolute hands over  ears telling me that ‘it didn’t happen to me. I can cope, this didn’t happen to me, it’s not happening to me.’ She saved us from crumbling away into self destruction and rage. You are amazing.

But there was a price .  All the natural stuff that should have been ours was locked away too. Child parts need to be let out without being censored at all time. They want to be free to make a mess, a mistake, an embarrassing gaffe. To cry when they hurt, laugh when they are happy, play when they are bored, be creative when they are inspired and affectionate when they feel warmth. They have many and varied impulses. Not all of them will feel good. Experience, feelings, emotion have been the enemy.

Hold it all in, resist the instinct to lean and give into emotions, to reach out to the mother for comfort or help. IsaBell almost always stopped us from going for help and she was right to do that. 'Mother' didn’t help us – she hurt us, damaged us and made things worse. She demanded the wrong things-attunement to her needs (not ours), scaffolding for her life not scaffolding for ours, anger on her behalf, not for us, comfort for her needs, not ours. Safety for herself not for me. She demanded our affection, our creativity, our love when she needed it, when she needed to feel she was a good mother. We were a performer and and to do it we kept our emotions hidden, our temper tamed, our passions drowned, our interests never even developed to be hidden, they just were absent. 

And to cope with the lack of 'mother'  an alter developed and looked after us. It's taken me a long time to accept this alter, to see her, to not just look past her but she is here and I do see her and I do accept her. I want to help her to become a free child, not one fettered with responsibility.