Flashing

Flashing? Not like showing my naked body. More like showing you my naked mind. Also as in "flashback" I guess, but I'm not even sure. I just know it happened..... like this.....

He was petting the dog on my lap and his hand brushed my breast. I became upset, compounded, because it's stupid to get upset over my husband's hand brusing over my breast. Upset as I was, I went to my room to relax. I cried instead, and he didn't know so he went out to the garage to do man stuff. My brain kept saying "He touched me, then left. He touched me, then left." I argued with the intense feelings of molestation followed by abandonment, but feelings sometimes cannot be argued with. My mouth began to scream. Up from my chest came the sounds, animal-like, expressing the sadness and fear and confusion. As much as I tried to argue with those fucking feelings, they kept on coming and the argument only added additional confusion. In the middle of being lost in time and space and emotion and logic I saw clearly that what happened back then stripped me of a normal sexuality, stripped me of a normal marriage, stripped me of a normal emotional life. Sadness and fear and confusion multiplied. One part of my brain understood what was happening and another part was screaming from being raped and another part was kicking the shit out myself mentally for not getting a grip and another part was grieving for paradise lost. Lost. I got lost in the screams. I needed to pee and I was terrified of getting up out of my bed in my own fucking home to go pee because I wasn't sure I was in my home. My brain told me I was safe. It also explained that indeed I was touched without permission by a man who was supposed to love me and then that man left. That happened. When I was little and today. No amount of argument could stop the screaming and no amount of argument could get my entire self to understand that it was seriously no big deal today, not like it was a big fucking deal when I was little. I couldn't separate the two, not totally, like the two experiences shared neural pathways, crossed wires, black on red when it's supposed to be black on black and red on red and BOOM! the brain explodes in firey fucked up-ness.

Now That I know Its Name, I Can Overcome It, Right?

God Bless my psychologist for telling me, over and over, that he believed there was a physical reason for my tiredness and to go to a doctor relentlessly, 4 times a year. My Tiredness, my Nemesis, the Enemy....I have discovered after years of trying to cope with mental illness that when I am not as tired I have fewer/less severe symptoms. So, I sleep a lot. My entire life is structured so that my sleep is protected. It is the single most important factor in my health, possibly second to my sobriety but not necessarily. Now I have the results of a sleep study that tell me the exact NAME of my Tiredness - Narcolepsy!

Narcolepsy. Possibly caused by genetics and trauma or virus or bad luck. Narcolepsy. Causes excessive tiredness, hallucinations, and cataplexy (loss of muscle control - especially during intense emotion.) Narcolepsy. It is the reason I wake up 59.6 times per hour all night long. Narcolepsy. I know Its name and WebMd has given me all sorts of information so I should be able to overcome It, right? Yet here I sit, crying, because it's only 5:38 P.M. and I'm exhausted and I didn't even work today and tomorrow my family is coming over so I need to clean the house and I can't, I can't, I can't because I'm too tired. Tiredness, I know your fucking name and it is Narcolepsy and Fuck You.

Why is it okay for me to be angry I have narcolepsy, okay for me to share with people that I have narcolepsy, but not okay for me to share that I have DID? Why can I say to a close co-worker that I have hallucinations due to narcolepsy, but no way in hell should I ever disclose that I have hallucinations due to PTSD? Can I tell people now that if I am overwhelmed with emotion I piss myself, because one symptom of narcolepsy is cataplexy (loss of muscle control)....or it could be an emotional flashback due to childhood sexual abuse. I'm angry at No-One because I have narcolepsy, and angry at myself that I have mental illness.

But now that I know I have Narcolepsy, I can surely use the secrets revealed to me through the internet to combat and overcome. Only the treatment is what I already have - a prescription for stimulants. And at 5:38 P.M. I shouldn't take more stimulants because I need to go to bed at a decent hour and get my sleep (interrupted every fucking minute by Narcolepsy). So nothing has changed and all the Knowing in the world doesn't help me get out of my chair and clean the bathroom for guests. No, now that I know Its Name, I CAN'T fucking overcome It. It still makes me tired.

PTSD and DID and the internal Game of Thrones

Political intrigue as each tries to control the realm. Sexual intrigue as each use their bodies to create new alliances or express lusty desires. Twisted actions follow twisted thoughts follow twisted childhoods. Flashes of gore capture attention and punctuate the pure rawness of the landscape. If you watch Game of Thrones, you know of what I speak. If you have DID, you probably do too. If you have PTSD, it's all too familiar - no matter the trauma.

Trauma. My mind is broken by trauma. The Landscape of my memories is trapped in a variety of seasons with little to no security and absolutely no promise of a stable future. Aren't memories the stuff that makes a person? What is the relationship between memory and personality? If memory is stored with fluctuating borders, than it only makes sense that personality will fluctuate as well. Like the royalty in Game of Thrones, the people in my system fight for control of my mind, sharing memories at times and then walling them off. My personality shifts as their control shifts.

Right now, I have a dark prince rising to control my entire mind. He has blood red eyes and will sacrifice anyone to reach his goal. He has the anger and the drive of someone who has been traumatized, without the memory of the trauma. He is PTSD, he recognizes the other identities without compassion for them, and his game is to claim the Throne. THE Throne - the center of control, the memories, the limbic system, nervous system, rational thought. I don't know what he thinks will happen to the emotion. He doesn't want the emotion. Perhaps he seeks to destroy the emotion so that it is no longer a stumbling block to preserving the realm.

War is beginning.

"What If" History

I am a history teacher. As such, I hear the phrase “what if” many times a year. I used to tell the students “it’s pointless to play ‘what if’ history.” I used to steer the conversation to what actually happened. Something changed this year. As a class, we play ‘what if’ history a lot. What if the invading Europeans and Native Americans worked together to figure out how to peacefully co-exist? What if John Brown had been successful in his attempt to free the slaves, one plantation at a time? What if women were valued as equal partners in the world? What if we figured out a way to share the abundance of food our world produces so that no one anywhere went hungry? I used to always say that we study history to learn from the mistakes of the past so as not to make them again. Now I say we study history to understand the dynamics of cause and effect so that we can make choices today that will produce the effects we long for. We study history so that we can understand how we came to be where we are today, with huge national debt, continued racism, and poverty…as well as the high standard of living that enables us to enact measures to protect the environment, the freedoms of speech that allows us to question and protest and support what we feel passionately about, and the leisure time to blog and check facebook.

I’ve begun to play ‘what if’ history with myself, as well. So often I hear people with dissociative disorders say that they would not trade their life for one without parts. I used to say that as well. I used to say that the trauma of my past has made me who I am today and that I like who I am. I remember a woman in the hospital once get passionately irate about the term dissociative “disorder” because she did not feel it was a “disorder” at all – it was a logical and helpful way to cope with an illogical and painful trauma. All I could think was that she was sitting in a mental hospital, stripped of her rights, shoeless. If the “disorder” was so awesome, why wasn’t she out doing something she enjoyed???? Surely if someone is so fucking happy with how they turned out after being sexually and/or physically abused then they would be out fucking 3 year olds and making them eat dog shit so that they, too, could have “dissociation.” Obviously, mental illness is called an “illness” because it causes some kind of suffering. A disorder is called such because it puts the individual or society at risk in some way, it’s out of order, abnormal, pathological. It sure isn’t fun.

So I play “what if.” What if I had not been raped? What if I had been molested, but my parents found out and got me help right away? What if I had not been molested? What if I had grown up in a secure, functional, stable home environment and my intelligence and creativity had been nurtured and I never, ever, ever was sadistically tortured during the crucial childhood developmental stages, or ever? I bet I would have been happier.

What has trauma and the resulting pathological dissociation taken from me? Would I trade who I am today for someone who could have sex and enjoy it? Would I trade who I am today for someone who never spent weeks or months trying to convince themselves not to commit suicide? How about someone who could work a full work week, visit friends over the weekend, get their house cleaned, take walks, read books, listen to and play music, get a Master’s degree, a black belt, worship god with a clean conscience, bake cookies, and not worry about getting too exhausted and spinning into an emotional mess or having a psychotic break? Would I willingly erase the burn scars and knife cut scars on my arms if I could? How about never having to feel like I need to burn or cut myself in the first place? I would. I would trade who I am today for someone who functioned more within the “normal” parameters of American society. I not only grieve that there is a negative social stigma to being abnormal, I grieve that I am abnormal.

But “what if” history is only useful if it leads to an understanding of today and to choices that bring desired effects. “What if” history is fiction, and I am living in non-fiction. So I have to accept that I am who I am and move forward. Accepting who I am does not mean embracing the abnormal/disorder/illness and telling myself the lie that I would have it no other way. I would like it some other way. That’s why I’m working so fucking hard to have a “more” normal life. I am deeply sad that I will never erase the scars. I am deeply sad that what happened to me has made me who I am. I am crushed that the “I am” who could have been was murdered by trauma and you and the world and I will never know her. The choices I make today are not so that I can be some fictional “what if” person that is normal. The choices I make today are so that I can suffer less with who I am. And that is sad.