In and Out of Ice/Glass

There's a lot of mystery surrounding Dissociative Identity Disorder. People automatically think "Sybil." But here I am, a professional in the community, a contributing member of society, with a disabling disorder that "flares" up every now and then, incapacitating me for a while. I want to share my story with you.




Smith/Ice-Glass

In and Out of Ice-Glass

Living with Chemical Dependency and Dissociative Identity Disorder

By Sarah Smith

Prologue

Nothing could stop us. “Ride the Wave” was our motto, and we began to believe that our path lay in following it to the shores of fate. We finished off the beers, paid the tab, and jumped in the car. Laughing, we stopped on the way home to buy a 12-pack. Windows down, smokes in our hands, we drove down the highway drinking and throwing the empties into the ditch. We’d leave our husbands, move in together, and do exactly what our egos demanded. We felt free. The sun dipped below the horizon on our way home, and I chose to drive to the lake so we could talk in private just a little longer. I blacked out somewhere on the dirt road leading up to the lake and woke up as the car was flying through the air and Wendi was screaming. We had hit a chunk of ice wedged between the road and the lake, and we were on our way to a crash. The airbags deployed as we hit. In retrospect, Riding the Wave during winter was just not a good idea. Wendi lost sight in one eye from the impact of the airbags, the car was totaled, and we had to lie our way through the emergency room protocols in an effort to avoid a DUI for me and a violation of probation for her. The seriousness of the situation stunned me. I drank more, and more, and more, the next week. I started as soon as I got home from my teaching job and stopped when I passed out in the evening. I don’t remember talking to Wendi, I remember only a gripping fear that life had spun completely out of control. I had almost killed myself and my best friend, my soulmate.


Book 1

And I hate disintegration, watching us wither, black winged roses that safely change their color.

-Tori Amos


Chapter 1 – Chemically Dependent


1-5-02


I am full of empty wanderings. Half-full glasses of vodka. There and here and no-where at all. Such are the meandering streams of consciousness that work their lazy way through my mind. I wish I could explain their presence by simple categorical entries, but it’s not that easy. I am trapped inside an egg shell. I am the embryo. Blood flows into the cavity in which I am curled, slowly filling the space around me with warm, salty liquid that will eventually steal my breath. I am comforted by the blood. How do I categorize that? I don’t know if I am curled up on the floor or inside an egg. I can’t distinguish the real images around me from the images inside my mind. I only want someone to take care of me, to tell me what to do.




1-06-02


Disaster. The egg shell cracks. I repeat to myself “you are born alone, you die alone” and I don’t see how it’s possible to get up in the morning to teach my classes. I don’t know how long I can manage this way of life, this constant drink and constant image of blood interrupted by eight hour shifts teaching children ancient history. I have to change, it’s obvious, but the question is HOW. Trying to control one more variable is just too overwhelming. Alas, as much as I have become, have overcome, I’ve hit a brick wall and a dead end. Twenty years ago I survived a suicide attempt and I remember thinking “But I’m not dead yet, as long as I’m alive there is a chance.” Ironically, hope is supposed to be the value I focus on this year in my life, and hope has completely slipped through my fingers like water through a sieve.


1-11-02


Watch them pop up one by one by one in shots of memory that jump to the front as a twitch, an ache, a tear, a fear. From curled up catatonic lump to twisting, writhing, screaming ghost with flesh but having no soul, I was captured by the men in pressed uniforms and guns and billy clubs. The Police cuffed and hobbled me, while my husband Luke stood in the background yelling “Rae! Rae! Don’t fight! Please don’t fight!” But I did. The police handed me over to the men in white, the psych ward orderlies. Confined in the Rubber Room, I saw eyes watch me as I lay on the bed strapped down for others’ safety and mine, and the eyes looked through a watch door disembodied and curious. Other mental patients on the ward bugged me and I was ashamed I was there. I heard the pop….pop….pop…..like pieces of a puzzle, like popcorn all the same color and all the same shape but fitting together without forming a form. I felt a twitch in my eye, an ache in my chest, and I traced the path of my tear back to its origin – my blind eye.


A memory – Blood dripping down the water faucet spigot- help me eat the roast beef crawling with bugs. Stop this lonely feeling locked in the walk-in pantry. I think it’s my soul. Read to me – the Mighty Mouse book- who comes to save the day. Read it again. Read it again. I hate the dank, dark basement. I hate the half-done screen house. I got lost in the alley by the trash. I’m cold, Mommy. My stomach feels funny. I’m so fucking tired.


Bubbling up from brackish bogs of still water sitting in long forgotten hollows – memories. Mist that evaporates so quickly, like smoke from fires dead ages ago. Fires not started by me. My brain is fertile with decomposed dung rotting over the years. If you plant a thought, I’ll help it grow. The shadow of the past can earn bones and blood and flesh.


Coiled, tense, rattle shaking, alert to every sound. This snake is dangerous to all who enter the bubble of her space. She strikes at threats true and perceived. She taunts and teases to entice an innocent victim who might (oh please!) wander close. All hell then breaks loose; she bites. The strike hits and the flesh hurts. Venom rushes out and infects the bitten one. But my soul is encased in stone. Poison is running, running, running.


I dreamed of goldfish in a bowl that was too small and the water was murky. There was a big drawer of containers and I was trying to grab a bigger glass bowl – more appropriate. But by the time I got it under the spigot it became the small plastic bucket again. So I grabbed another, and it too became small, plastic, and colored. I tried to grab another and it became a used oil container and the poor fish were dying in the small, polluted bucket. Then I dreamed another dream. I was sleeping in a hotel on the floor. Mom and Dad were sleeping, too. I woke up and there were cats on my bed roll. At first I thought they were “cute” but then I realized they were ishy-dirty-diseased. They crept up on me and I ran. Mom and Dad slept through all this, unaware of my intense fear. One cat bit me and another scratched me. I was yelling and terrified but I knew I was on my own. Then I got pissed because I realized I would have to miss the whole vacation in order to get rabies shots.


I remember how I got here, to this psych ward/treatment center. I drank so much! Luke was getting annoyed. I began drinking straight from the bottle. I ran for a knife and managed to make two deep cuts. I ran to the bathroom and tried to drink rubbing alcohol, I remembered hearing it could kill you. But the time frame is sketchy. I ended up on the floor – catatonic – while Luke, ever my protector, always level-headed, dialed 911 and tried to get my boots and jacket on my limp body. Of course, the limpness was a trap, a game I played to sucker the poor mother-fuckers who might show up to help me. I was ready to strike like the rattlesnake and strike I did. They cuffed me and put a hobble on me and I bit and screamed and kicked and hit. I fought like a wild cat. All the way into town, locked in the back of the squad car I banged my head against the window. At St. Catherine’s General Hospital they were ready for me with two more big guys and still I was tough to handle. Mostly I remember screaming, the primal scream crap that comes from deep within. One cop asked for an HIV test, as I drew blood when I bit him. Seclusion and restraints. Safety. Now I’m in the semi-crazy ward with the Chemical Dependency patients and so be it. I don’t want to go home. I don’t want to go back into my classroom – teaching kids. I’ll stay here in the nut ward getting treatment for my alcoholism. Really, I want to die. I want sedative drugs. I want intensive one-on-one treatment. I want to cut my flesh. I want to bleed. I want to be high. I want to fight.


Showers of emotions rain down into the crevices of my heart, but fall off the stone around my soul. It’s a rain shower – the water of Life meant for me. Yet my center is a desert and that refuses to drink. The cactus is a strong plant, reaching deep and storing necessary moisture. Even a desert blooms and is beautiful but only for a short time. I am both, unforgiving and harsh, a thunderstorm and a fragile cactus flower.


1-12-02


Craig came to see me today. He pulled up a chair in this dark hospital room and asked “How are you, Rae?.” I wondered how I should respond to this question, how I could manage to be appropriate with this former colleague turned private psychologist. I spoke but I don’t know what I said. I cried and hid behind my bed, but I don’t remember what we talked about. Afterward, I regressed. I engaged in self-mutilation with a pop top twisted to have sharp ends and I cut, cut, cut. Finally, some blood. Isn’t cutting supposed to be some adolescent trick to get attention? I’m pathetic, bleeding to find love in a psych ward. I want to be held. I want to cry on someone’s shoulder. I’m an empty box, wrapped in festive birthday paper and a big yellow bow. Exciting to look at, fun to unwrap. But there’s nothing inside! Space. Empty. Blank. Not even any words to explain why. Who would love such a gift?


1-15-02


A resting soul wandering through the darkness of a crowd sitting still and reading – energy expended – energy taken - and the angels laugh at our feeble attempts to reach peace. Temporary rest, but I know I will rage again at the unyielding space that encases the essence of my soul. I cannot protect her forever. Daily she dies. She screams for the freshness of light and air out of the shadow. She cries for the unity of self. She grieves for the lost years, the songs never sung. How did it get so dark? We’re frightened.


Shadows flit across the table, brown little memories catching my eye, rushing by the consciousness of the Formica. None fall into my hand.


I had to call the University of MN today. Imagine trying to explain why I wouldn’t be able to start teaching the Middle School Social Studies Methods course to aspiring young teachers-to-be until two weeks past the start date. Imagine! I made the call from the fucking PSYCH WARD! I said I was having medical issues and would start in February, and would plan with the students when and how to make up the missed classes….presented options like holding extra classes or lengthening the classes….oh God. I can’t believe it went okay. I’m hardly able most of the time to make sense of the echoes in my fucking head and I go and make professional arrangements with the head of the education department. I’m not even sure I made sense.


1-22-02


Streams of consciousness make waves through my body, or could it be the Effexor? What pain and humiliation hides behind the rage? Closets with dolls and then a shut door. Boom Boom Boom on daddy’s knee and I thought it was naughty but why? Dreams of dark rooms and more shut doors. I’m a princess in a tower locked up in stone and no one touches me so I can be free. Birds out the windows, a glass bottle on the pane. Pain. Grey room with hardwood floors – she’s just a little girl and she’s so very sad. I finally understand Sylvia Plath stuck under the bell jar. When it rings it cracks and she pours out like red jello – brains that spill onto the floor filling up the cracks with gooey mess. I want to lap it up like Hannibal Lechter. Can’t, ‘cause it drips down into the other rooms of the house.


TOO MUCH INFORMATION.


Here is my version of a bunch of sorry alcoholics living their days in a chemical dependency/psych ward and attending daily rehab: We’re lost in the lightning of souls waking up with a start, or a moan. All in pain, afraid, tearful. Ready now to not die. It doesn’t really matter how we wake up. The sleep gets wiped off our eyes and we take turns pissing. Then maybe breakfast, words for our souls and bread for our bellies. No one can feed us what we truly hunger for; the past that is gone, the present that is shrouded in fog, the hope of an easy future.


My thoughts wander in rehab class. I remember a friend; we were so close. In those last days of drinking I was hammered (!) and went to his house to sleep it off. We fought. No, I don’t mean we tossed around some angry words. I mean we fought. I hit him, kicked him, bit him until he had black and blue marks all over his arms and shoulder. My God! I WORK with this man – he teaches down the hall from me! He wrapped his hands around my neck and choked the breath from me until I passed out. I came to as he was leaving. Terrified at the prospect of being left alone, I begged him to sit with me for one more minute. He tucked me in. And now, I have severed a cord and I’m free-floating. He can pat my leg and say “everything’s back to normal” all he wants but I know I scared him. That was my reflection in his eyes, with all the craziness and fear that drove me over the edge. I’ll miss him. Our friendship will never be back to “normal.” After all, he finally saw me, and he was afraid.


I became angry about this lost friendship, and I took my anger out on the fucking chemical dependency counselor. He was telling us in group to be more positive, laugh a little, see the fun in life. And he said it in his usual detached monotone voice, devoid of emotion. I called him on it, called him a mopey mother-fucker. He got up, told me to never use that word again, and said if I did I would be kicked out of rehab. Did I touch a raw nerve? Or was he just drawing a line in the sand? Playing off my cries for attention? Curbing my obnoxious venting? Who says I didn’t mean what I said? Maybe he should learn to laugh at himself, the mopey, dull, son-of-a-bitch.


I must express this whole chemical dependency treatment experience like this: Shallow platitudes, expecting no challenge and accepting all nods and smiles as affirmations of the TRUTH. Your world is so black and white! You make such simple moves on the checkerboard of life. I never quite fit in, chess is much more suited to my idiom, with its three-dimensional figures and a variety of moves. Too bad my life is not your game.


Men….Gather together the pink crystals of my pussy, sweet folds of hungry flesh, wet anticipation of you. Arms enfolding, legs entwining, hearts together, drifting off to sleep.


1-25-02


OK, now I’m scared. In “spirituality group” yesterday (yes, this chemical dependency program has a weekly spirituality group!) Steve saw a rainbow on my forehead, a reflection of some stained glass and sunshine. First of all, I was feeling very ‘lesbian’ at the time, so the rainbow thing is a little weird. Then, even though I didn’t know what Steve saw, and while the meditation was in the unguided stage, I ended up actually holding Sarah – in my arms – all in my head but also very real. Sarah, that little girl who lives in a grey room with hardwood floors and one window (all in my head), has been quietly angry for years. I wasn’t imagining holding this blond haired, thin waif; it was too real to me to call “imagining.” While we meditated, I carried Sarah through a rainbow. She had never seen colors before and as we walked through each I told her its name; green, yellow, orange, red. It amazes me that Steve didn’t know what was happening in my head, but he saw it anyway! As I carried Sarah, we waded into a pool of water. I held her tight. She’s so very alone and so very pissed. I’ve left her for far too long. I locked her in the room in my head, and forgot I had the key. I drank her into nothing. But here she is, sobriety the key, and I held her in my arms. What happens now? I finish treatment and just go back to work, teach, start my life again?


Wash out the stains and hang the laundry to dry. The Russians use hand soap and rub the hell out of their garments to get out the dirt. I use tears and words, my soul and breath, and then fold it. Put it away. To wear again.


3-1-02


Well, I did it. I worked for a week. I look good. I function. I’m done with the chemical dependency program. Instead of discussing the history of my alcohol use I took roll, gave lectures, assigned homework. I did my regular job teaching those adolescent bundles of energy. I started at University of MN too, the night class for college students/teachers-to-be. They didn’t even blink when I told them I had some medical issues but now was ready to get some work done. At my regular school, lots of kids asked where I had been, and I told them “I was sick,” which isn’t so far from the truth. Many staff hugged me. They all ‘know.’ But me, I’m confused as hell, acting one way and feeling another. I want to die. I do and don’t want to go to school tomorrow. I want “it” to be over quickly. Done. Finished. So I trot about the house, smiling, acting like everything is fucking great and inside death boils, ready to bust open my bowels and spill my brains. I’m ready to off myself or I’m ready to take a fucking bath, either one sounds just as desirable.


My cold hands grip the steel barrier, limited access to the walkway beyond the lighthouse. Its beacon calls me to peruse the options out there. Pursue the options I don’t dare express….way to slamming waves, frothy tomorrows. Cold water pulling me under and dragging me out. So many symbolic endings, leading to fresh starts….to ache. Out to being who I am, or out to death, or out into faith, or out to the sea. Cold watery grave, with nothing but a lighthouse flashing warning strobes.


3-9-02


Stars and seas and black holes and a maelstrom. Emptiness and timeless violent turbulent spinning unraveling storm that tosses victims. Arguments in my head. Questions of identity. Obsessions, compulsions. Impulses. Screaming for an answer, begging for peace.


This is not just the way I am today, GOD, this is the way I was. When was young, seventeen, staring out at the stars, waiting for the glass to cut, waiting for the blood to run. The same imagery is all still there. Same song and dance, only now I’m thirty-five and more desperate, closer to death, less inclined to fight. I throw my arms up and get sucked under, in, around, to spin the same old same old same old record.


Chapter 2 – Dual Diagnosis


3-19-02


I have a dual diagnosis. That means I’m twice as fucked up as the average alcoholic, because not only am I an alcoholic but I am also mentally ill. DIDNOS. It doesn’t surprise me much, but scares the hell out of me, now that it is a label glued to my forehead and written down on insurance forms. Dissociative Identity Disorder Not Otherwise Specified. Means I’m like a multiple personality, only I have quirks that most other multiple personalities don’t have. Like I’m more of a jumble of Siamese twins, sharing organs and parts of brains and some limbs. Whatever. It doesn’t really matter. I thank God for Wendi who has inspired me to write it all down. She and I sat at the computer, looking at a variety of diagnoses, trying to figure out which one Craig would slap on me….we were right. We came up with it before he announced it. But I still don’t believe it. Because if he’s wrong, I’ll hate him with every ounce of energy I have. If he leads me down a dead end path I’ll chop him into pieces and eat him for breakfast. If he screws up, I’ll die.


Timelessness as the world caves in….


I had a conversation with Wendi, in my head, to explain why I did what I did.


I was listening to Sarah M. and you said “No wonder you want to kill yourself, my brother and I call those CD’s suicide tracts.” I remember talking to you how many years ago? 20? Holy shit. We were in a study hall and hadn’t talked for ages, maybe all summer. Weren’t even hanging out together though we were still friends. I asked if you wanted to hear about the shit I went through over the summer. I was a senior and you were a junior. And you said “yeah” and I was a little nervous because I thought maybe you were too into being a cheerleader and being friends with the cool kids like Sue and Terry and Jill. But I told you anyway, how I cut my wrists and swallowed a bottle of Sominex trying to kill myself. How Mom and Dad threw me in a treatment center for six weeks of the summer, and they told me I was an alcoholic. An alcoholic! And you listened. As self-absorbed as I was, I don’t think I much listened to your response. But I knew you listened to me and you shared about your own hell, and we connected. God I was happy to have you back in my life! Despite the fact that we were inseparable during my freshman and sophomore years, we drifted for a year. I thought you hadn’t noticed and sometimes I don’t think you did, but that connection was still there and man, I needed you! That study hall was the start of the Black Climax – me and you and our two buddies– Angst Personified. What a crew, what a quad of holy terror, what sadness and anger. Sadness and anger. I thought back then that yes, I was an alcoholic, and I was gonna try stay sober, do the AA thing, find Jesus, whatever it took. It didn’t last so long. I am amazed at the similarities of what happened then and what happened this past month. I quit drinking, I attended AA, I worked the steps, and I was consumed with sadness and rage. Remember? I went to the Assemblies of God Church where my old boyfriend was, and beat the shit out of him. It was Sarah who did it, really, just like it was Sarah who tried to kill me, and Sarah who hit the cop in the nuts when Pastor Delmar called them over. And now, the same damn thing happened 20 years later – I quit drinking, did the AA thing, was looking for Jesus, and BAM – the cops storm my house and I kick one of them in the nuts! Okay, so the cops didn’t just waltz into my house, I had a gun to my head….but it’s still the same thing.


Wendi, I know how mad you were. I was home from school that day, called in sick, tired of teaching and tired of trying to stay sober and tired of being crazy. We talked on the phone in the morning, and I told you I was fine, and I really thought I was. You have since called me a BITCH for that, for talking to you and then hanging up and putting a gun to my head… That was the first time you really felt betrayed by me. You talked to me on the phone an hour before it happened…your gut told you something was not right but you wanted to believe it was okay. I know you thought, “How could she try to leave me to deal with LIFE by myself?”


Wendi, I want you to understand, the hour before I loaded the gun I was okay! That’s the whole dissociative thing – I flipped a switch somewhere in my brain and suddenly my hands got the bullets, the gun, and put it in my mouth. Thank God one of my hands called Craig. Thank God my first responder/neighbor came over in response to the 911 call. I would have pointed the gun at the cops, to get them to shoot me, because I was too scared to do it myself. It would have happened. I would have left you. I’m so sorry.

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