Suffering with DID

I went back to therapy 4 years ago to deal with some new trauma, and some old trauma that was awakened by the new trauma.

I stayed in therapy because I had developed a lot of clarity about how inauthentic my life had become.

Honestly, I have never had an authentic life, as my family of origin and the community I grew up in robbed me of my life since as far back as I can remember.

My cup is currently overflowing with the amount of child abuse I experienced growing up. That may not make sense. Normally, my mind can only hold little pieces, but right now, it is in the unusual place of holding a lot of the abuse in awareness instead of dissociating it all.

It seems like the memories are never-ending, and they are not like memories I can deny or question the validity. They are memories I know to be true, but had somehow managed through my dissociation to forget.

Other people I know with dissociative identity disorder (DID), seem to be surprised by their memories when they get them. For me, that is typically not the case. For me, it is like remembering a horrible old friend you tried to never think of again.

I dunno, maybe I am just worn down with the shitty cards I have been dealt. The never-ending shame and depression I feel about the facts of my life. It has taken its toll.

I have lost all hope of living an authentic life. I have been staying alive these past 4 years for my children. I haven’t wanted to hurt them or ruin their lives by me ending mine.

Always the martyr.

I am suffering. I suffer every day trying to hold onto my life for my children. Jeez, I sound like a cry baby. But it is so fucking hard to hold on all the time.

I just want some peace, love, and understanding based on who I really am, not the imaginary many versions of myself that the world knows.

Almost no one knows me. Not even my kids, which especially breaks my heart. I never set out to be a fake parent. It is just what is best for them. 🙁

I don’t hurt people or do any awful things to deserve the horrible treatment I receive when others find out any of my truth, but I am rejected and tossed into the garbage or worse, just for being my authentic self. That is how we treat victims in our world.

Who is my authentic self?

I am a wounded survivor of horrific child abuse who developed dissociative identity disorder as a result.

That in itself is apparently enough to know about me to warrant the rejection of me.

My ex-minister and supposed friends tried to take my children from me when they discovered diagnosis alone. I hadn’t done anything. My kids don’t know I have it. In fact, out of both their parents, I am confident they would identify me as the saner one.

It doesn’t matter. People can’t tolerate the idea that my mind is what it is. They can’t tolerate believing I endured the level of abuse I have experienced.

So, they get fake me. The me that is probably copied from characters off television shows and people I have observed. And fake me, I really hate.

I don’t really know any other me than fake me, so that leaves me with hating the only me I know.

I hate me.

The world is an awful place, where perpetrators are protected, and victims are the bad guys.

I know I am a victim. I did not deserve the cruelty, extreme abuse, and lack of love I received.

It doesn’t matter, though.

My life is a shit show and I work hard to hide authentic me from everyone but my therapist.

This is no way to live. It doesn’t get better, but the cruelty remains because I am not allowed to leave. If I leave this shitty world, then I abandon my kids and hurt them in ways I don’t even understand, but know to be true.

Stuck.

My abusers. My family of origin. All the fuckers from my community. You have successfully robbed me of my life. I hate you all, and hope you burn in hell.

I will do my best to push through another day. It is getting harder. I won’t make any promises, but I will try with all my might to hold on another day for my kids.

Cruelty. My whole life. Nothing but cruelty.

That’s just the way it goes.

Advertisement

Abused again: Trying not to give up on myself

I woke today with a busy schedule ahead of me. I have been dealing with a lot lately, particularly a very chronically sick child. It was also the day I was going to slip in taking care of myself by getting an x-ray of my hip that I injured 2 months ago and have been dealing with chronic pain ever since.

I wasn’t seeing my normal orthopedic doctor because I needed to get in quickly as I don’t have many self care openings in my schedule these days. In retrospect, I should have caught the red flag of this particular doctor having multiple openings for a next day appointment at one of the top orthopedic practices in town.

Nope. I jumped out of bed to get to the appointment early in the hopes they would take me early so I wouldn’t miss my therapy appointment afterward.

Of course, I sat in the waiting room past my appointment time before the front desk even called me up to fill out additional paperwork. So much for arriving 20 minutes early.

You know those doctors always have more important schedules than the people, so let’s make sure that is reinforced.

As I am finally walking back to meet the doctor, who incidentally wasn’t seeing any patients but me, I noticed in the paperwork they handed me to give the doctor that it has all the prescriptions listed that I have filled at my local drug store. On it, a long list of many types of psychiatric medications.

Great. I am going to get labeled a psych patient and treated poorly, as I have been through that scenario more than a few times.

The doctor pops in and spends 95% of the appointment time talking about himself, his health, the death of his brother, his age, how he doesn’t suntan anymore, what he watched on tv last night, his experience with his last colonoscopy, the cost of medications he takes, and how he treats his his rosacea.

I am feeling really grounded, but taken aback by this strange doctor showing no interest in me, and the clock ticking in my head for my next appointment.

I do my best several times to bring up the pain I am feeling on my side.

Finally, the doctor comes toward me to examine me. He starts touching me and says over and over as he moves his hands around my body “does this hurt?” When he found where it hurt he pushed in really hard and I almost jumped off the table. He says he knew that was where the pain was coming from. It was high up on my left side.

I continue to feel grounded but focused on trying to accurately answer this man’s questions about my pain as he touches me. I am so focused on trying to accurately answer him I don’t realize he is now touching me in my vaginal area and talking about bones in the pelvic area—that have nothing to do with why I am there.

I hear a couple of voices in my head calling me stupid because I don’t realize this man is touching my vaginal area for no reason and talking about how my pelvis bones touch each other.

In a slowed reaction, I realize the voices are right and this man is touching me inappropriately. And I do nothing about it.

I freeze.

I don’t stop him or tell him to stop.

It’s as if it is not happening to me, but I can hear this man’s words and feel his touch that it is happening.

Fortunately, the man seemed spooked for some reason and jumped up to go get an anatomical dummy to show me the bones in the pelvic area, which again had nothing to do with why I was there.

I couldn’t hear him so well any more as my internal world was starting to come undone.

I knew I had to get to my car before I acknowledged to myself what had just happened, so as soon as he asked me if I had any other issues I wanted to discuss, I said “nope” and raced out of there.

I tried my best to drive to my therapist’s office without coming completely undone. I made it there and then felt dead.

I let it happen again. My therapist probably doesn’t even believe me. How can these things keep happening to me?

I lost hours of time in my therapist’s parking lot as I switched between parts trying to process what had happened. I fought tooth and nail to not let other parts cut open my throat. The rage inside me is at its worst when this idea is present.

I am extremely angry at myself this happened to me today as I was just speaking about how this happened to me with another doctor some years ago, and I thought I had grown so it wouldn’t happen again.

My therapist asked me if I wanted to file a complaint. I didn’t. I know full well that my list of psych meds alone discredits anything I might have to say happened to me, which is probably why he targeted me to begin with.

I told 3 people today this happened to me. That is progress, but still I am awash in confusion how I keep letting this happen to me. Where are those strong parts of me when this happens?

Will it ever stop?

Drifting

Drifting toward health.

Drifting toward death.

It doesn’t seem like this should be so confusing, but it is.

Some days ago, a little girl, maybe 4 or 5, stood in my childhood bedroom watching in freeze mind as my mother threw out her toys into the big green dumpster my mother had wheeled into the room.

This child did not understand, as any reasonable person wouldn’t, why her mother insisted on stripping every bit of humanity out of her.

She caused no trouble in the house. She did everything her mother or brothers told her to do. She had sex with whoever wanted it. She tried not to breathe as she was afraid it would upset them. Her existence was so minimal.

Still, with trying to do everything right, her mother hated her with such sadistic pleasure.

Her mother had made sure to strip her of everything.

Decency. Humanity. Love. Free thought. All gone.

She was forced to live in a room that only had a bed and a piece of office furniture. There could be no signs of a human child living there. Only nothingness, so she would always know she was nothing and nobody.

The little girl is stuck in this place, long past trying to understand her life.

Confusion, obedience, and an ounce of pain belonged to her.

I watched her for days. She was stuck there. I was stuck watching her. I had no explanation to give her. Yes, it was all vaguely familiar to me, but I wanted to keep it “not me” because that looks like such a painful, awful existence. Who would want that?

Feelings of suicide had been circling us as a system. I was not in as much control as I usually am, partly because watching this little girl made me want to die.

So I let the others inside me deprive the body of oxygen until I reached an altered state of consciousness. Here, I could go to the little girl in the bedroom.

Like I would do with my own wounded outside children, I reached down and picked her up and held her. She had never been held before, but she did not resist me and gave in to trusting me and let me carry her away.

I held her tightly against me, with her legs wrapped around me, and I could feel her pain and confusion. It is stuck in my heart.

I wanted to promise her that she would never be hurt again, but I knew I couldn’t do that in this very imperfect world.

She had endured more pain and suffering than a nation of people.

She would experience it no more.

I delivered her to the angels in heaven as I knew of no other place that promises the end of suffering. I told her she would be safe there, and the angels would love her and take care of her.

After I delivered her, I gasped for breath to get some oxygen in my earthly body. I was barely there. I was barely making it out alive.

I struggle to care about the damage done to my brain, or my almost lost life. It seems unimportant in the scheme of things.

I look to my childhood bedroom everyday since then, and it is empty. She is gone. She is free from the cruelty dealt to her.

I am relieved to have set her free. And uncertain as to what this means for me.

Namaste

Lost and alone

I have been quiet lately, feeding off my mom’s voice in my head that if I don’t have anything nice to say, I shouldn’t say anything at all. So, I am breaking the rules.

Lost would probably best describe how I have felt most of the time lately. I can’t remember things, much more so than usual. My sense of “time” is completely off. Can’t tell you if it has been one week or 2 months since things have happened.

I am living day-by-day, not knowing if I will make it through the day.

I plan for my future and my demise all in the same hour.

I am suffering from wicked thoughts of suicide that are in my brain but don’t feel like my thoughts. It’s confusing.

I try not to act on any of the suicidal plans, yet at times I find myself getting up to go do whatever is my demise of the hour. Most times I catch myself when I am getting up and am able to stop myself. Sometimes I haven’t been completely lucky with that strategy.

Some days I feel morbidly depressed. I have resorted back to hiding in my bedroom as much as possible. I spend countless hours staring out the window, and suddenly I have an extreme depressive feeling, which follows with a graphic idea of killing myself.

I don’t know where these graphic suicidal ideas are coming from as I am much more practical than to think of these ways if I was suicidal.

I imagine there is extreme anger and pain behind the graphic ideas about my demise.

As I said, it gets so confusing. I think parts of me are “leaking” into me in a way that I cannot distinguish me from them. As such, their thoughts seem to make perfect sense to me.

Yes, I should stab myself with a butcher knife and lie down in my bed to bleed to death over night.

That is so not me, but yet it is me.

I would never do that to my children, but in my head it feels as though I will.

The world is so lonely for me right now. I am fortunate to have a spouse, therapist, and friend who know about some of this and are trying to get me help.

But, I worry no help exists.

In my life in the mental health system, there have been times when I know if I just went and worked on “x” I would stabilize or feel better. Honestly, I have no idea what x is for me this time.

Lost, pushing through each day hoping to gain some clarity the next day. It doesn’t come.

I am wasting my life, lost, never feeling grounded to this earth and my life.

The clock ticks, and ticks, and ticks. My dilemma stays the same. My fragility about my life continues.

I must have some hope hiding in me somewhere, but it is well hidden. The confusion in my mind keeps it from coming to surface. It is amazing to see the mind work so intensely against itself.

I plan for the future. I plan my demise. I don’t know how this will play out. I hope for the best, whatever that turns out to be.

The slowing clock on my madness

I have been trying. Really hard. Trying to get my life back. Taken yet again November 2014.

I feel like a failure. I fail myself over and over. I fail my family. My friends. My therapist. Most importantly my children.

Stuck. I have been stuck so much of the time over the past 3+ years. I can’t move. Can’t get out permanently for any length of time.

I am supposed to be the master of my own life. I try, but can’t feel it or make it work. Sometimes briefly, then it crashes down on me hard.

Frustration with myself. Sometimes I know what is wrong with me. Those times I eventually fix it. Climb back to looking semi-normal for those that need it from me.

Lately, I have no understanding. My preoccupation with death. My daily internal conversations. My fantasies about it. It doesn’t end or slow.

I try to be positive. I take the pills my DNA says should work for me. I take the supplements they recommend for me. I do my best to have movement in my life. I try to keep my stress level down and reduce the toxins in my life. I go to therapy.

Still, my feelings of suicide rage through me. Every day.

I try to act as if it is not happening in hopes of fooling myself out of it. It doesn’t work. It waits for me and grabs me solidly every time my mind has a moment to itself.

People say you should get help with this. I want to say, oh, ok, let me go do this so I can get on with my life.

I know help doesn’t exist for me, which is the scariest thing of all. I want it because my family needs me to get it, but I cry inside knowing it doesn’t exist. It is not there, just as I am barely still here.

I know you optimists, or those unfamiliar with particular kinds of madness, don’t agree. You think I am giving up. I have lost my way and just need to find it.

I am doing everything I can. Nothing is working.

I am smart, yet I fail myself. Stuck in the maze. I have always hated mazes. A weak point for me I guess.

No one can save me but myself. But I can’t figure it out. Though I try to look stronger on the outside for those few who are paying attention, I am actually weakening on the inside.

I want to see my 13 year old develop into the amazing child she is. I want to help my 6 year old make the baseball All Star team. I hold these feelings for short moments, then they escape me and I am back in purgatory.

There are those that care for me, but at the end of the day they don’t know what to do to help me. Most of them are barely holding onto their own lives with mediocre sanity.

It doesn’t matter the back story of how I got here because I am here, and the backstory changes nothing.

I love those of you who say you are not giving up on me, but truly have neither the time or energy to try to help what appears to be something not to be helped.

I am not seeking your pity. Don’t feel sorry for me. Feeling sorry for me has never helped. Changing the world does. I wanted to do that, but my inner demons have stopped me dead in my tracks.

Feel pity and empathy for my family as they deserve better than me.

I think they know how much I love them, but maybe they won’t understand the failings of my mind, my inner turmoil about the person I am. The person my family of origin made me into.

I pray my children and spouse have more faith in God than I have been able to hold. I have fought it my entire life, trying to understand why God has not been merciful in the torture he has brought into my life.

Children don’t deserve what you have given me. You say you love me as your child—this is not love. I will not accept man’s free will over your ability to love and be powerful. You did this to me, without mercy, and you expect me to believe you love me.

You have hurt my kids. You have ruined the life I was given. And for what, some lesson about mankind that only a few people will know?

Though God has decided my worth, I ask each of you to pray for my children and my wife. Give them peace and love and understanding.

I have tried so hard to do this for them. I have tried unsuccessfully to get help for my complicated madness.

The places to turn for help are evaporating. The seconds on the clock are vanishing. The madness of the mind wearing out.

My heart has beat for my wife and children. I have fought for them. My battle is losing. I hate myself for not being able to outsmart it.

Hold my family in your prayers and wrap them in the love they deserve.

Blessings to you and yours.

Is my overwhelm just an excuse for laziness?

I am confused at the moment. I continue to struggle with who I am. I mean, I know who I am and what I believe usually, but the other pieces of my identity don’t always back me up.

My family really needs me to work so our children and the adults can get all their needs met. We are struggling financially, and not too long ago I was bringing home a good paycheck.

These days, I feel like I can’t work. I am working at getting through the days and taking care of my kids, making major changes to my health, and keeping myself emotionally stable.

The fact that I am functioning by getting out of bed and going out into the world, and actively taking care of my kids everyday is a miracle that didn’t exist 4 months ago.

Yet, there is increasing pressure from my spouse, myself, and our mounting debt to get myself back to work in my old job so I can bring home that money again.

At the same time, I still find myself getting overwhelmed by little things from my old life that were easy then.

Today, my major accomplishments were to make myself breakfast, pick up my son from camp, take him to a park for an hour, and check Facebook a few times. Those few things literally took up my whole day and felt like all I could do.

I hear inside my head “you are so weak. Quit complaining and stop being lazy and get back to work.”

I never considered myself a lazy person, but maybe I am. Maybe the overwhelm I constantly feel is just an excuse to get out of work.

I like giving my family money so we can live a good life. I just don’t know if I can put myself back into that position of doing what I do to make good money.

I am good at this work when all parts of me are working together, and anxiety doesn’t hang close by. Sometimes I miss it, so sometimes I secretly dip my toe in the water and feel overwhelmed like I can’t do it. Then I feel completely inadequate.

Who am I? Am I this smart, talented, strong woman who is a good provider for her family, or am I this pathetic, damaged, weak woman who gets overwhelmed when a door slams too loud?

I don’t know. It seems like this is my fate to be on a polar opposite pendulum depending on the moment.

One moment I am feeling healthy and strong with the health changes I am making in my life, the next I am falling down my stairs again and re-injuring myself, and feeling depressed about the state of my health and the hopelessness of not getting help or answers from the medical community.

I was thinking earlier today maybe the medical community is just writing me off because I am 50. I feel like I am 30 in spirit, so it is confusing to be thought of as old.

My life is frustrating and good. I am smart, but cognitively impaired sometimes. I am strong, but easily hurt. I feel really healthy, then chronic pain consumes me again. I am super stable, and then utterly disabled by the chaos in my brain.

The only thing I know for sure is that I am usually a really good mom.

Other than that, who am I?

The loneliness of my DID

For the past week, I have been struggling deeply with my Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID).

I have been rage-fully suicidal, and even a few moments of being homicidal. I don’t understand why I am having all these feelings and thoughts.

I don’t even understand why I have been making violent suicide plans that involve punishing someone who hurt me badly.

This is not uncommon for me, to not really understand what is happening within myself, but the degree of anger and extreme suicidality is unusual.

My brain goes from crazy, enraged to numb and dumb. It makes me feel less than human like this.

I have only one person who I can truly discuss all this with, my therapist. Yet, for reasons unknown to me, I decided to fire her this past week.

I went to session and asked her a question about how she knew a fact about my ex-therapist’s office building she mentioned in our last session, and I lost my mind with her attempt at an answer and I filled with mistrust and feeling betrayed, whether justified or not.

I switched through a Rolodex of parts who were losing their minds inside and outside my head. Suddenly, my whole system of parts seemed like they no longer trusted the therapist. This was unexpected for me, the one who tries to manage all of this.

In fact, I quickly found myself banished to a back seat in my own head. Instead, parts who are suicidal and want to punish the ex-therapist announced a violent plan to kill ourselves that they are convinced would wreck her life the way she did ours.

This feels satisfactory to them, but I try to remind them what it would do to my kids, and her kid. My system never wants to hurt kids.

I get it, she is such a fucking narcissist who has shown me no remorse for what she did to me or us. I get this rage. It is so similar to my own mother.

But, I don’t want to end my life to destroy hers. I don’t even want to destroy her perfect little life, but I do wish she would talk to me and tell me how sorry she is for what she did to me. We all know a narcissist isn’t going to do that.

I have been hiding my craziness from my spouse, children, and best friend. People would freak out if they knew what was going through my head.

Everyone wants to put me in a psych ward, and frankly, I am not interested in getting drugged and stuck in one of those places. I would rather risk it on the outside.

I have no one to talk to about this except a small group of people I know through the internet. Even some of them talked about me going into the hospital ☹️.

It’s lonely, trying to hide this madness, trying to keep myself safe, trying to contain the chaotic insanity going on inside when talking to my spouse or children.

Sleep is a good hiding tool, but too much and the spouse figures out something is wrong again.

I have found that really those who go through this similar experience of DID are the only ones who can really understand it. And even so, sometimes it is impossible to get adequate words out to describe what is happening inside.

I want help when I am at this dangerous level of distress, but I haven’t found anything helpful. Hospitals don’t help. They often times do more harm.

I wish my therapist could help me in this situation, but she is merely another human with her own life and trying to help people the best she can.

So, the answer continues to be loneliness, though I am truly thankful for my cyber friends.

Lost on Planet Earth

Some days I can lay in my bed all day and have little recollection as to what I did while in bed that day. I don't usually sleep. Sometimes I write on this blog or somewhere else. Other times I stare into a wall or window without really seeing anything for many hours at a time.

Time is a mystery to me. Has been my entire life. A sign of someone who has a Dissociative disorder is that they have a very distorted sense of time. For me, most of the time speeds up, and I don't know what happened to it. I might feel as though ten minutes have gone by, and really 4 hours have passed. This can frustrate those around me, and it often makes me late to my appointments.

I have learned recently in my haze of being disconnected from reality on this planet that although my body may be floating around on it, and even showing up to events in my life, I am often not really present. I am really somewhere else, which has always been a mystery to me.

The therapist-types always ask me where I go when I go away, but I never have any answer other than I have no idea. I suppose they think I have some elaborate fantasy place I go to, but I don't. Just more nothingness.

I have realized as of late that I am more absent than present. This is disturbing to me, especially because I realized I prefer to be absent from life. Life has been cruel to me, so can you blame me from trying to skip out on it?

Yet, if I don't change my mind and decide that I want to exist in this world, I won't get better. It is so hard when a fantasy of nothingness is better than a potentially rich life of reality.

Oh reality. For the past 3 years real life has beat the shit out of me. Betrayal and deep wounds have been delivered to my soul time after time so much that I have lost faith in the loving God that I once knew.

It is impossible to make sense of what I have experienced other than to believe that God has wanted to punish me.

So, I drag my body through life so as to not hurt the ones I love by leaving this planet, but my compromise has been to not really be present. People don't really notice because they tend to be so focused on themselves.

I don't really hear the words spoken to me, or notice the beauty or ugliness around me. It is kind of like the walking dead. But sometimes I decide to connect, usually with my kids, and it feels good, but not good enough to give up my addiction to merely floating on planet earth.

My escape to nothingness beats the suffering I endure when I show up for life.

And that I don't know how to change.

Searching for life

Many days I find myself wandering, and wondering what I am doing and whether there is any real purpose to it.

Sometimes these journeys searching for my life take me far from home. Many of the times they have been clearly for nothing, and have just left me with the feeling of being further lost than when I started.

I keep searching for my life, and just can't let go of the idea that one day I will find me, and get to live that life that has been missing.

I read and study and talk and write about my search for my life. So often it seems pointless for me, but I stay inspired because I know I am slowly putting enough pieces together that I can help other damaged people suffering from severe trauma find their way back into the lives they were meant to have.

Being lost is lonely and pointless. Today I walked 7 miles along the beach and busy touristy streets, and did not really have a connection to it all. In fact, I had no idea I was even going to do it until I had done it. I still don't know why I did it.

My whole life I have been lost, and never meant to find my way. Living in confusion land protects me from feeling my pain, and the herds of people who abused me.

There are moments, though few and far between, in which I can reach through the depression and despair and believe I will find answers for myself and the others who come behind me.

We all deserve hope, but I realize sometimes it is just not there.

Each day I choose to wake, I know I still have a little hope. This little bit of hope keeps me searching for the answers for those of us who are lost and need to be found.

I am closer to the answer. Hang in there with me, and together we will find our missing lives.

The pieces to the puzzle are coming together. Have hope because I am going to put them together for us.

Then we will have life.

Knifes in your soul

I have come to realize this past year that even though I was for an extended time extremely high functioning and stable, that I am actually among the most severely injured from a childhood filled with abuse and other horrific things.

It is not cool to be in this club of the severely injured because with these injuries comes damage, lots of it. And I have found that the mental health system doesn't like messy, severely damaged people.

I am complicated. The affects of my abuse have left behind a complicated and difficult set of symptoms. As a result, my soul has been repeatedly ripped out this year by people rejecting me or my symptoms or my diagnosis of Dissociative Identity Disorder.

It seems no one who knows how to treat this disorder and my symptoms in a way that would be effective wants to help me.

Rejection. Rejection. Rejection.

Laughingly, I am not supposed to take it personally, or believe there is anything inherently wrong with me.

I am wished good luck in my future treatment and sent on my way knowing there is no future treatment to be had. I fear I have looked under every stone and have run out of options.

But don't give up. Stay alive. It doesn't matter how miserable your life is. This I am told over and over by those who reject me.

The injuries to my soul have been brutal. Especially since it is over and over. To be rejected your whole life, even by the so-called angels who are supposed to help those of us with these injuries.

It is hard for me not to believe that God is punishing me. I haven't had this kind of knife into my soul so much until this last year. I try to find hope, but then I get the knife in my soul again.

How many knifes to your soul can happen before it is completely dead?

But I am not supposed to give up. I am to keep fighting as if that has ever really gotten me anywhere. Big deal, I'm alive.

I would be better off dead, which is a hard sentiment to swallow knowing I have children I should live for.

It is a double bind. Live in torture or harm my children by leaving them.

Oh, but I am supposed to get better by some miracle that hasn't come for 50 years now……