wall of ignorance down; 20 new walls up

I guess I got a bit of insight today in therapy. A lot of things are still fuzzy and unaswered, and I'm doing my best to not fill in the blanks b/c I tend to catastrophize when I do that, but it's hard not to.

Yesterday I blogged about feeling clueless about what's going on internally and wondering if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Today I learned that the reason I can't hear anything internally is that a part I haven't heard from in over 2 years has put up walls among all of us. We are all isolated from each other. A younger part managed to find her way out during therapy today and explain to therapist how scared and alone she was and that she couldn't hear anyone else inside. While this part was talking, I actually did a little bit of internal exploration (I know. Shocking that I would do this on purpose.). It seems as though we are all walled off from each other and even moreso that I am the only part that has access to the external world easily.

Therapist started talking about possibly moving these new walls or finding ways around them to restore internal communication among parts. Her theory is there is fear and adjustment issues regarding some of us doing so well and other still struggling so much, thus the seperation and changes inside. I could go along with that except that I switched out to another part neither of us has heard from in a couple of years who stated that the walls were not to be moved and were to be left alone. She was adament about us not meddling with things.

I am sure this part isn't purposely trying to hurt us. Last time she was present, she appeared as an introject and put our safety into question multiple times. With a lot of work and extra therapy help, we were able to get to her true identity and understand that he had created her to do and say such things should we ever reach a certain place in healing. We helped her understand how he had manipulated her and that what she was doing was actually hurting the body not keeping it safe. Once she understood the differences, she was very amiable and wanted to be helpful. Then she just went quiet.

With her back again and causing a complete blackout on internal communication, it's hard for me not to think she's been triggered to "sabotage" again. I do believe like last time we can show her the truth and we can work through this, but I don't trust her at all right now as far as acting out goes. And if this does play out this way, husband's gonna get a good does of DID dysfunction rather quickly into our marriage. It's strange that I fear more for him right now than for me. Not fear as in I/we might hurt him physically. But my gut is telling me that the purpose of what's going on internally now is to disrupt what is currently a very happy marriage.

See, when I fill in the gaps, I do sort of catastrophize, but it's really hard not to when I'm going off of past experiences. The major thing I do have going for me this time around is that through prayer and the examples of friends, I am more convicted than ever to turn this over to God and let him do the major battle.

I have full faith that things will be okay on the other side of this and that my marriage is safe. It is founded on Christ after all. However, I think the next few weeks may be a really bumpy ride that I really don't want to sign up for.

But, one day at a time, right?

Not slowing down

I thought things would slow down after the wedding was over and I settled into a normal routine. So far that hasn't been the case. We got married a month ago yesterday and I'm starting my 3rd week back home in "normal life". I had hoped I'd have more time to blog, more time to catch up with friends, more time for hobbies, more time to focus on my internal world and thus use therapy time more "appropriately". Unfortunately, I don't seem to be doing any of this really well.

I'm not quite sure where the time goes. I do know that I'm not dissociating it away. I'm sure my lack of routine keeps me from being as efficient as I could be. I know that I'm sleeping alot more lately. I slept 12 hours last night. At this point, I'm not sure if my body needs the sleep or if I'm letting myself oversleep. I do know that on days I only get 8 hours or less of sleep I feel very groggy and want nothing more all day long than to be able to lie down and take a nap. Even now I wouldn't mind a nap, but I know I don't need the sleep.

Maybe it's being at home more often right now. I don't know. It's not like I don't have tons to do around here, so it's not because I'm bored. Maybe it's laziness.

Obviously, I'm completely not in touch with what's going on inside of me right now, but I'm not quite sure how to get there. When there's some sort of mini crisis going on inside, parts for sure let me know and we can deal with things. When there's not something pressing, asking inside is like asking an empty room. No response and it's so quiet you could hear a pin drop. I haven't been very concerned because I must say it makes life a bit easier right now only dealing with my stuff.

I guess I'm starting to feel gipped now though. I don't have access to all of me in regards to feelings, old memories, and I'm back to almost faking some things like I did before I ever knew I was DID but there were things I thought I should know and feel b/c it was "normal."

Sometimes I really can't tell when we're progressing and when we're reverting. I know we've made progress overall, but recently I can't help but wonder if the silence is more a way of keeping things peaceful and relatively easy moreso than b/c things internally are going that smoothly.

Is this progress calm or just the calm before the next storm? And how do you tell the difference?

feelings without qualification

I talked with therapist this morning about my blog entries from last night. She hadn't read them, but I told her about them. One of the things I realized during our conversation is how hard it is for me to let myself have genuine feelings (whether they are justified or not) without qualifiying them.... especially if they are negative feelings or if my feelings are hurt or if I'm feeling angry.

To just say I'm hurt or I'm angry and leave it at that doesn't feel okay. For some reason, there is the need to qualify why I'm angry and to also always state that it might be unfounded or irrational. In essence, I'm sharing my feelings and undermining their validity at the same time.

But how do you just feel things if someone else does something that makes you mad or hurts your feelings and be okay with that when you've been in that other person's shoes before? When to some extent you understand what may have driven them to do what they did? It doesn't make it okay, but I guess having feelings of hurt or anger towards another person feels condemning to me. And how can I condemn someone of something I've done before?

Am I making any sense??

more hurt than I realized

I got a phone call from a good friend the Thursday before my wedding weekend. She had made plans to travel a great distance to come to my wedding. That evening she called me from a hospital to tell me she wouldn't make it to the wedding. She'd been admitted to the hospital and would be there for a few days then transferred to a Psych hospital. I didn't ask any more details than that. I didn't want to know more details. I was already in my hotel room in the destination city where we got married knee deep in wrapping gifts and doing some last minute wedding prep.

This friend has lots of struggles, is in a bad situation, and has a similar past to me. As a result, psych hospital visits and s*ic*de attempts aren't all that uncommon. I truly hate it for her that she is in so much pain all of the time, and while my situation is different than hers, I do understand the feeling of thinking and believing you can't live one more minute.

When I hung up the phone with friend, I was briefly ticked off b/c my assumption is that this was another attempt. I say assumption b/c I haven't talked to her to ask her for sure. I quickly had to push those feelings down and get back to wedding stuff and made up my mind that I would not let her incident keep me from enjoying my wedding weekend.

In all honesty, I really didn't give it another thought until today. Today was friend's birthday. It brought back up all of the feelings that I didn't "endulge" in during wedding weekend, and I found myself not even wanting to wish her a happy birthday b/c that would mean contact with her. I do care about her, and I really do wish her a happy birthday so I sent her a message.

I guess I have more anger around this issue than I've wanted to admit. It hurts that she couldn't wait 3 days to attempt. I know that sounds so selfish and so harsh of me. I also know I'm basing things off of my own experiences and not hers. While that is probably not fair to her, it's where I am right now. We managed to stay alive for 5 months strictly because of sister's wedding a few years ago. I don't/didn't mean enough to her for her to wait 3 more days to end her life? And what if she had succeeded? How could I have enjoyed my wedding day with the knowledge that a good friend who was supposed to be there supporting me was now dead?

It really does piss me off! Right or wrong it does. I don't want to be understanding of her situation and say it's okay and I understand how awful things are. I want to be mad and selfish and ask her why she couldn't pull her shit together enough to make it through one freaking weekend?

Wow, my crazy train really is taking a trip around the world tonight. (Read previous post for explanation).

air bubbles in a water cooler

So, you know what it looks like when those big air bubbles make their way from the bottom of office water coolers? It can be a big or small bubble, but it makes it's way all the way to the top of the water and sort of pops, then it's gone. Sometimes it's more than one bubble too, especially if someone is actively draining the water cooler.

This is the best way I know to describe the anxiety I've been feeling the past few days. It starts in the pit of my stomach, and slowly rises up through my chest and eventually exits my mouth in the form of silent screams. It's incredibly intense but is fairly short-lived and has been happening at a greater and greater frequency. Typically it occurs during downtime, when I'm not actively engaged in something.

I have no doubt it's coming from a part(s), but I don't know who or why. My guess is that it has to do with being married and some issues that may be triggered that I am unaware of, but this is just my guess. I'm sure therapist and I will talk about it tomorrow, and I'll be grateful if we can figure it out, and I can lose these anxiety episodes. However, the anxiety is so intense, I don't really want to look at it and talk about it either. I want to push the bubbles back down or rush them through and out of my system. I don't want to look at/examine/understand their meaning, origin, etc. I wouldn't even be posting this now, but my latest bubble seems to be stuck between my diaphragm and my throat. I'm hoping that blogging will get it moving again.

Does anyone else ever get tired of always having to be introspective? Functional is good. I like being functional, but there are moments when I'd rather not be proactive and introspective and just walk around screwed up thinking I'm perfectly sane like so many people in this world do. I get so tired of there typically being a deeper or alternate meaning to everything I feel and experience. Why can't green just be green? Why does it always have to be a mix of blues and yellows and any other number of colors that actually make green what it is?

And why am I in a "oh pitiful me" mood right now? Our life is going really well. We're actually doing a lot better than I expected us to be doing right now. We have so much going for us internally and externally. We actually like our life right now (well, most of us anyways). So, why am I feeling sorry for myself and feeling frustrated about doing a little extra work to alleviate anxiety?

If I'm honest, I know a part of this may be somewhat self-destructive simply because everyone in our life believes we're doing so great. And we are doing really well. But we still really struggle. There's still a lot of pain, a lot of untouched memories. Our past has shown me that when we start to think people are forgetting or not recognizing our pain, we start acting out in ways so that they know it's still there.... sometimes it's just physical symptoms - anxiety, loss of appetite, diarrhea... (this is where we are right now and hope to stop things before they escalate).... sometimes we progress into unhealthy coping skills that make it harder for people to not notice or ignore our pain - self injury, purposely not eating, etc.

Lord, we don't want to go back there at all. Why is it that if people acknowledge the healing that's happened and the progress we've made, that (in our minds) negates any pain we may still be suffering? Why can't we let others acknowledge both? Are we not able to acknowledge it to ourselves? Why are we so afraid people are going to forget our pain? Therapist knows. If no one else knows, therapist knows.

In a way it's good that husband is working the 4:30am-2:30pm shift right now because he goes to bed early. Feeling like I'm having my first real post-wedding mini meltdown right now, and I'm just not sure I'm ready to share that with him. I have no doubt in his ability to handle it, but I think it's more my pride that doesn't want him to see my "crazy train" this close and personal yet. He's definitely seen it, but only in flickers since we didn't live together before we were married. Even though he's never put any pressure on me in any way, I guess I just don't want to "be crazy" only 2 1/2 weeks into our marriage. Like I said, my pride, not his inability to be understanding.

I need to go. I'm just rambling now and this post is getting long. Hope my crazy train doesn't crash too hard tonight and I can park it at the station by tomorrow morning.

A couple of pics

I got a couple of photos today that show me in my wedding gown while keeping our anonymity, so I thought I'd share them. Hope you like them!

Married and Home!!!

Hey everyone! I'm finally back! The wedding went off without a hitch and I am now happily married! Our honeymoon in Costa Rica was amazing, and I must say it was actually nice to not have internet or cell phone access for 10 days. Now that I'm back, I'm wondering how I functioned, but when I didn't have it, I didn't really miss it. Interesting, huh?

So, the question I would expect most of you to have if you've been reading my blog for awhile is: How did I survive my honeymoon and sex since I'd never had consensual sex before in my life???

Well, my husband was amazingly sweet and patient and did so many things to make me feel safe, that it actually wasn't that bad the first time - a bit painful, but I know that's to be expected. Most of our struggles came over the next couple of days. We stayed sore most of the next day, which was a trigger to always being sore as a child and the numerous bladder infections we suffered growing up. We texted therapist a couple of times before boarding the plane to Costa Rica, but we were on our own after that due to no cell or internet service for most of our vacation. That increased our anxiety. The other major factor was the realization that this was going to become an ongoing part of our relationship with husband that was not apart of our relationship over the past 2 years. There would be no more "playing with fire" without fear of having to go all of the way. The realization that sex was now going to be a part of our normal life was rather triggering and anxiety provking as well.

Thankfully, husband was around us all of the time and his presence continually reminded us that he is a safe person. He never forced us to do anything before we were "ready" (sometimes we kinda forced ourselves b/c we did want to make him happy), and if we told him not to do something b/c it was triggering he readily complied. He really helped us do a good job of seperating present, new, and good experiences, from the past, painful, and horrible ones. All of these things, plus our body getting used to sex and being less sore helped to make things manageable and sometimes even enjoyable. I think it was also really good for all of us to see how much time husband and I will still spend together and how many things we will still do together that don't involve sex at all.

I'm going to therapy for the first time tomorrow in almost 3 weeks (since before the wedding) and I feel like I'm walking in with a loaded gun of issues to drop a therapist's feet. I hope she's prepared!!!!! And I am so grateful that I have her to ask questions of and help me sort through all the mess that's circulating in my head and may not make much sense yet b/c I haven't talked to anyone about it. For some people I know 3 weeks probably don't seem that long, but when you've been meeting with your therapist twice a week for 4 years, going 3 weeks without sharing things with her - huge things - feels like mounds of information and I have no idea where to start. Guess it's good I get to talk to her twice this week. :)

Okay, back to unpacking, cleaning, and setting up home. It's nice to be back to my blog!