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.