Multiple Confessions

It's so hard to write when your hands are shaking...

Perhaps as long as the science of psychology has been around, people have prescribed art and writing assignments as ways of healing damaged minds. I've always used my writing to help me cope with painful emotional and mental difficulties that have come up throughout my life. Especially lately, as I've been preparing to re-enter therapy for real and seriously this time, I've been increasingly aware of the fact that I can neither be fair to you, as readers, nor fair to myself without being completely honest in this blog.

It isn't fair to YOU because you've come to read a truthful, raw, sincere blog. It isn't fair not to give you the complete picture, to skate over aspects of my life which I'm too frightened to discuss. For one thing, it may well leave you lost since you'll only be getting fractured glimpses. Beyond that this incomplete, bullet-style relation is boring, if nothing else. It's all the reasons for which I hate abridged books... and yet that's what I'm doing to my blog, for fear of the consequences of honesty.

Granted, whoever first said honesty was the best policy must have led a pretty damned sheltered existence at best. Complete honesty is only an occasionally wise move, subject to factors variable and diverse as the audience and the weather. I'm not endorsing a life lived entirely in lies, but discretionary disclosure and carefully tainted perspectives can still get you out of a hell of a lot of trouble. How many thousands of people would have survived over the years had they only told a small lie when pressed by the man with the sword?

So now you see a bit of the dilemma I face. Honesty for the sake of true, quality writing? Honesty for the sake of my recovery?

Lies for the sake of face, humiliation, security, friends...family?

As I've known since the first of my livejournals to this, my most recent and current blog, there are more than faceless strangers reading the words I type. Even through those periods in my life when I've tried to hide my words, I knew that if someone really wanted to, they'd find a way to read them (and often did). I'm sure of many who read this and suspect many more, ranging from lovers to best friends to siblings and parents, uncles and aunts and therapists, cousins, former teachers, coworkers, casual acquaintances, schoolmates, god knows whom else. That's a whole lot of an audience. I've now way of knowing if they read daily or when the fancy hits them, if they care about me as a person or find this an interesting read. I've had people find my blog by googling random subjects or being referred from and recommended by well-known sites.

...All that makes this blog seem a lot more impressive than it is, and the stakes much higher than they are.

In the end it boils down to me being aware that the confession I want to make is controversial even in some of the best of academic and psychiatric circles. Media portrayals, which adore any slightly comical, novel idea, love to misconstrue the realities of it to fit into their needs, to the detriment of anyone trying to come out about their situation. Popular opinion loves to snatch quickly at what they understand, add a liberal helping of speculation, a portion of doubt and ridicule, and a heaping of false facts and gossip to everything they hear and see.

All these things said, I wish to discuss a couple more disclaimers before continuing.

To my friends: please comment with your support, but don't do so without being informed. While this is an entry about something I'm frightened to reveal, I'm actually quite happy with it in many ways. It's not nearly as shameful as outsiders think. It's complicated, yes, and can be quite embarrassing, awkward, even dangerous, but this is neither a death sentence nor a mark of disability. Just an aspect of who I am.

To my family: you are the biggest reason I've hesitated; not gonna lie. Your religious views in particular make this an especially complicated thing to discuss because as much as you learn and are willing to research, many churches remain way behind the times on psychiatric issues, leaving you in an unfortunate position of being subtly or blatantly misinformed and not aware of it. I ask you now to show me the respect of not talking to me about this until I give you the okay. I encourage you to learn more; if you want, I'm happy to recommend books and websites and Crystal probably can show you even more resources than I can. But please, don't send me a long letter/email/phone call telling me you're praying for me and recommending resources of your own and encouraging me to talk to a pastor and that you understand/have answers etc, etc. Please don't be offended, but I don't want your resources. This is something I've been aware of for years, and I've done tons of research on my own. I've talked to doctors with specialties and degrees you probably don't know exist. Especially when I lived in DC I went to institutes with 'National' in front of the title to make sure I could get the best care possible.

...God, that makes it sound like I'm dying! Okay. Before I go any farther and make you think I've got some rare, bizarre brain dementia or fungus or am infested by sentient, parasitic slugs (Animorphs, anyone?), let me state first and foremost that aside from any previously mentioned health issues, I am fine. There is NOTHING organically or physiologically or otherwise physically wrong with me. This is completely mental, and even then I hesitate to use the common nomenclature 'disorder'.

My name is Tina Malament. I'm twenty-almost-one years old. I'm a waitress. I have major depressive disorder, anorexia nervosa, obsessive compulsive tendencies, various other diagnoses....

And dissociative identity disorder.

Commonly misinformed, many people call it multiple personality disorder (which is an outdated term).

I don't have a good side and an evil side. (Please do me the courtesy of not relegating me to a coin or a comic book villain!) I'm not demon possessed. I'm not bipolar, I don't alternate between highs and lows born from a chemical imballance.

To clarify on my pet peeve, I DON'T HAVE F-ING SCHIZOPHRENIA! I don't hear voices the way you might think; I don't have a false perception of reality or hallucinations or a savior complex. Dissociative Identity Disorder (hereby: DID) is often portrayed/labelled in mass media events as schizophrenia. See also: Heroes, Me, Myself, and Irene, Fight Club, etc. Some of those have elements of DID which are pretty accurate.... Others are completely bullshit off the mark. (Actually, I really liked a lot of the way it was portrayed in Heroes, beyond the artistic licenses taken... The way she looked when switching personalities and the way she described the amnesia are pretty good. Fight Club, on the other hand, sucked. Great movie, but sucked.)

If you've seen/read Sybill, you should know that I have no desire to be hypnotized and integrated. It would probably not help, for one thing. That book, while seen as a sort of media authority on DID, is roughly fifty years out of date when it comes to the actual assessment and treatment of the disorder.

Yes, I have more than one 'personality part'. They're called alters. Yes, they have names, genders, age ranges, complete memories and life histories and very diverse opinions on life, the universe, and everything. Some of them often appear more harmful than others; some are sweet, some tend to be very angry, some exist for very specific purposes and can seem simplistic because of this. Many are good at things which I'm bad at, or vice versa. We have different opinions about freaking everything, speak differently, have different typing and spelling errors, different tastes in foods, even different health problems. We hold our body differently depending on who's out. We like different clothes and colors and activities.

Probably you'll get introduced to everybody as they see fit. Several have already written the entries in this blog; you may or may not have noticed when writing styles shift, vocabularies and sentence styles vary. Maybe you'll notice now that you're looking for it; who knows. Maybe when you expect someone to be a single, cohesive person it's harder to realize when they aren't.

I think we're going to cut it off now. That's probably enough to think about for one day, right?

Here are a couple of websites for you to look at since we barely covered the basics of what DID is... We've been over it so many times with so many people that it gets really tiresome to discuss after a while, particularly when there are so many valuable resources on the internet!
--->Merck - fairly awesome for overview purposes, except for the treatment goals part.
--->Religious perspectives and misperceptions answered. Sort of.
--->Surprisingly good FAQ section on a random AOL-sponsored information site.
--->The Significant Others' Guide to coping with DID

Oh yeah, one final thing... Please, please, do me a personal favor and DO NOT go to wikipedia for information about this. Their entry on the subject was so inflammatory and ill-informed that it made me write a nasty letter to wikipedia about it and create an account so that I could try to go in and edit the entry. (Which I never got done, but still, I worked on it. The entry is so riddled with error that it needs to be completely rewritten and we haven't had the energy for it.)

Shannon, thank you for all the support you've given us since we told you. Probably if you hadn't taken the news so well we wouldn't be able to come out here and now... (Are you proud?)

Readers... We now humbly await your thoughts.

Reflections on self-injury

Sigh... After an eight AM meeting, I opened this morning... And now, coming on briefly after I got off, Crystal closes tonight. So no baby all day. Makes me sad.

Feelings of instability have increased markedly lately. My feelings about eating (if not quite my habits themselves) have begun to improve, but the depression and anxiety hang around as they always have. It's been about four or five months since I last cut and the urges are strong again. They never really go away.

I don't talk about my cutting much. I guess that it's something which feels like it's always been with me and still feels more like a friend and companion than a bad coping mechanism or dangerous, destructive habit. It's one of those things which therapy has yet to talk me out of. So far most, if not all, of my previous therapists have wanted me to go to an inpatient facility to tackle the issue.

I've always argued around aggressive treatment/inpatient as primarily a matter of affordability (after all, right now I can't even afford therapy in and of itself) and secondarily as a Not Really Major Issue. Somehow the infrequency of my indulgence makes me think it's less of a problem. (Isn't it?) Things have never been so bad that I'd cut multiple times a day (well, not usually) and as a general course have been once every few weeks at most. Over the past year and a half or so, once every few months. That's not a big deal. Right?

Of course... There is the porning. Like I used to food-porn with anorexia, I cut-porn now. Most recently, the scenes in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix with Professor Umbridge's wicked little quill have provided both a trigger and feelings of satisfaction, at least to some degree. The internet teems with triggers and 'porn'. The imagination fills in where my physical actions continue to refrain. While physically I may not have cut for months, I guess you could say I'm a total porn addict. A few times a day, maybe. Constant daydreaming, sometimes.

Here's the thing, though. Technically, I'm not harming anyone by this. Beyond that, I'm not sure how to stop it. Beyond that, I'm definitely not sure I WANT to stop.

I never 'gave up' cutting as a personal resolution or a decision to recover, heal, overcome. I never have wanted to stop. (This was another reason I argued against inpatient: most places, unless you're a serious medical harm to yourself/others, require that you sign a contract certifying you're entering the program of your own initiative and with a strong desire to recover.) I suppose it's a sign that my thoughts in this area are still ruefully unhealthy or something, but no one's ever managed to convince me either of how cutting hurts me or how I'd be better off without it.

The reasons I've physically stopped are simple: other people. Namely, Crystal, my little brother, and total strangers who see my body and look horrified. Were I completely alone and able to ignore others better, I'd probably continue to self-injure on a weekly or daily basis.

I don't know how to deal with the sense of loss. I don't know how to cope with the feelings of self-hatred, anxiety, loneliness, emptiness, self-loathing, inadequacy, helplessness, mania - even just boredom. These are all some of the things which drive me to self-injury, physical or imaginary. When I'm not self-injuring regularly I feel a loss of identity and a lack of completion. Something is MISSING. I grieve for it in a way usually reserved for close loved ones. In the same way that I get confused about who I am if not an anorectic, I don't know who I am if not a cutter. (God, how BDSM does that sound?)

There's a hotline that I've often been referred to and never called - 1-800-DONT-CUT. It's supposed to be really good; I've read much of the book written by the people who started the line and they actually run the only inpatient program I've so much as considered for self-injury. (The reason I've never called is that when I'm to the point that I want to actually self-harm, I don't want anyone to talk me out of it, deter me, or break my mood.) Lately I've been wanting to call them just to talk about this in lieu of a therapist: how do I face the sense of emptiness that comes without cutting?

I wonder a lot if this is a normal feeling. More and more the Powers That Be are looking down on calling self-injury an addiction, opting instead for a more learned behavior, benefits/rewards approach, but I still feel like 'addiction' may be the best term. After all, don't recovering alcoholics, smokers, drug addicts reference this feeling of confusion, lack of direction, etc? (Hell, isn't that part of what AA and its higher power teaching is about? Just redirect that passion!) I don't know. It's one of those areas that I'm left aware both of my personal lack of knowledge and the communal lack of understanding in this area.

Therapists have given me dozens of worksheets and thought pattern charts and you-name-its to fill in, to understand the thoughts and emotions that drive my urge to self-injure. These charts often backfire and, instead of helping me to break it down and understand my feelings, lead me to think that I'm either too damn crazy for a chart or just plain have a glitch in the system. I've got so many filled out charts with reasons ranging from the classic 'anger at' whomever to things the docs can't understand (or accept as truthful) like boredom, feeling 'too' happy, feeling distractible, and missing someone.

Several docs have been adamant that all my urges are simple: anger turned inward. ...even though anger is rarely a motivating feeling.

Several tell me it's frustrated sexual energy, or sexual fear, or sexual something. (Freud is aliiiive!)

Others still insist I just want attention. (After all, I gave up a long time ago on trying to hide all the damn scars where most cutters will still opt for long sleeves no matter the weather.)

In the end, I often have to wonder if anyone truly has a solid understanding of self-injury, its triggers and motivators. Maybe that's why it's so hard to want to give up: if no one can help me understand what it is and how it works in the first place, how can they convince me it's an altogether 'bad' thing?

------

In other news, August 1st my new insurance kicks in. I stopped seeing Shelley about a month ago and have been (again) out of therapy since then. I've been unmedicated since February due to the whole insurance cut-off fiasco. All improvement, stagnation, or backsliding has been the result of lack of any sort of treatment whatsoever beyond the self-nurture I've learned to give myself.

I have the number for another therapist with whom I'm supposed to call and set up an intake... She has a lot of extensive, varied experience and works with an organization which seems to have really good policies toward medication... So I guess that once August rolls around we'll see what's what with that.

...insert witty title here...

I suppose I'm so obsessed with watching Frida because it in many ways feels like I'm watching my own life played out. Except that she's a lot older, the pain is more physical than mental, her anger is more outwardly directed than inward, and she had about five million times the talent I have. If I could have that much potential for the creation of beauty... I mean, damn. I'm more or less all right with words but my fingers lack any skill with a brush or pen. Sigh.

Force-feeding myself is getting a little easier. I can't say the depression is easing or the appetite increasing but I'm adapting to it a bit more readily, I suppose, and making sure to feed myself is gradually becoming a habit. It's so ridiculous, after all these years fighting my hunger, denying it's there, refusing to acknowledge it, I can barely recognize it at all. I can finally see the face of Hunger but can't recognize it.

Something I've noticed here is that Colorado seems to have an enormously disproportionate number of underweight women. Perhaps it's that Maryland is one of the 'fattest states' in the nation (which is true) and I'm accustomed to being The Skinny Freak, but it is truly heartbreaking to see so many women around me starving. What once would be a serious trigger is now something of a reverse; I get so upset witnessing their suffering that I want to prove I can overcome it. Even from a purely visual standpoint, the constant bombardment with fashionable emaciation repulses me as I can see how unappealing it is. The lanugo, the bones and bruises, the skin sagging and prematurely aged. I want to be sexy. I want my hands to stop shaking, freezing all the time, looking like they belong to someone twice my age.

I can't count how many times a day I'll witness girls bone-checking while staring at the dessert case, chewing gum like their lives depend on it, clearly terrified of so many calories surrounding them. How many times I'm asked for the nutrition facts in a certain dessert. (I know most of them but, thank god, we are honestly not supposed to tell.) More than once, women with bloodshot eyes and sores around their mouths have ordered cheesecake to go and I've wanted more than anything to refuse it to them. Or at the least, beg them not to do with it what I'm sure will be done. I'm usually trying to hide that I'm crying as I toss forks and napkins into the bags.

If I could afford enough medication to numb myself out, I'd go for it. Beyond depression these days, it's like I just can't handle the heartbreak of the world. Numbing me out might be more like ballancing me at this point. Everything sets me off. I have to stop myself, constantly, from saying something to all these girls. (As if I have any idea what to say, anyway. Please eat? I know you're hurting but it's not worth it? Are there ANY right words for a situation like that?)

At the same time, it's so impossible to fight against the non-hunger. Why force myself to eat when I'm not hungry? Shouldn't I be grateful? Shouldn't I feel lucky? It's to the point that I'll go all day and realize sometime around bedtime that I had nothing, or a banana, or a piece of bread. The old bruises are showing up along my spine and back hipbones. I'd gotten used to having warm hands and feet but so much for that. My body is again covered in lanugo, or at least, more covered than it typically is... Gah.

I wish I could afford to go inpatient. I need a break, some hard-core internal work to sort things through once and for all.

Saying goodbye to ye old life and family

So far, no new developments on the poverty front. Dad informs me that I'm what financieers call a "judgment-proof case" since it would cost more money to take me to court than they could possibly get from the settlement. So, essentially, as long as I'm broke and asset-less for the rest of my life, I should be fine. Yay.

One thing that really infuriated me about the AES statement is that the date I withdrew enrollment is listed, according to AU, as August 31st, 2006. That's why payments start in March. If you've been following my blog for more than a few weeks you'll know that I most assuredly lived on campus, attended classes, and all the other stuff which goes along with being enrolled in college right up until the 18th of December when FAFSA attacked my life with atom bombs. I guess that there's a six month grace period for dropouts... And since AU told them the WRONG DATE I get to suffer for it. Come Monday AU will receive angry phone calls courtesy of moi.

Why oh why does God hate me so much?

Tomorrow I fly back home to my girl in Colorado. It's an odd combination of relief and sadness here... I've been dying to get back home to my lady and the puppies and kitty and all my things but having spent a week at my parents' house it's been somehow natural to settle into old routines and comfort zones. I guess it may always feel like this: no matter how long I'm away from this house or how much I've been desperate to escape it, there will always be some strange element of 'home' when I return to it.

Last night Crystal asked me what I will miss most and after a while I determined it'd be my bed. My old room has been overtaken by their lives, transformed into a combination storage and school room for Jonathan, but my bed is the same as it has always been. When I'm buried under mounds of quilts to keep out the basement freeze and it's as pitch dark as a basement bedroom can be, there's no way to tell that it isn't my room anymore. The mental picture I have still has my things on the walls, my OCD arrangements to furniture and decorations, clothes, stuffed animals, books all in their proper places. I suppose that the place you lie in the dark completely vulnerable in sleep is the place which will always have the greatest sense of security and home attached to it.

Each day I've spent here has had a different internal set of goodbyes. As I've gone to this old hangout or that familiar grocery store it's been a little like a walking sequel to Goodnight, Moon. Goodbye, Starbucks. Goodbye, AU. Goodbye, old library with the red balloon. (Okay, so there was no balloon involved. But for the sake of rhythm it's kinda gotta be there.)

Yesterday there was a singles' meeting at my parents' church (basically really for all 18 to 25 y.o.s), so I went to that to say goodbye to my old family. I've never delved into describing my history with this church here, but most of it isn't good. At the same time, though, it was my family for quite some time. The members were uncles, aunts, brothers and sisters. No matter how much s--- they might have put me through there will always be some connection and longing for the sense of acceptance and belonging they used to give me.

It was strange and somewhat surreal being back there for an actual meeting. I'd gone to a couple events over the years, but it was the first service I'd sat through in honestly at least three years. It was bizarre how few people recognized me - or acknowledged me if they did. Sad.

Plus the hyper-friendly small talk about killed me. I'm not a small talk person. I really don't care to talk about my job or the weather or school. I mean, dude, these people used to know me better than any others and I them. Ask me how I'm doing, let's talk about your goals and interests and what's been on your mind most lately. Because really? I kinda don't care about what you ate for breakfast or how hard that test was.

The service was depressing, too. God, there was just so much about that place that destroyed me all over again! The preacher was speaking on sex and it brought back all these old memories as he talked about how every sexual act, thought, and impulse is wrong before marriage. From actual sex to masturbation, jokes, movies including anything suggestive. I don't want to start an opinionated rampage here, but this sort of church teaching is what results in the complete sexual disconnect I've had to deal with. Feeling dirty, ashamed and despised for the slightest attraction. I know sex is a...hehe, touchy subject...but still. Even should one choose to wait until marriage, I'll maintain that completely stifling every natural thought thereof is ridiculous. After all, didn't god give us those instincts? Just a thought.

The thing which completely put me over the edge and made me walk out before the sermon was over was when he started talking about how church members should relate to non-Christians. He said how members shouldn't laugh with them, but rather they "should weep for them, trapped and blind in their sins".

I wrote a note down saying, "If you want to help me, HELP ME. I don't need tears!!!" Tears don't pay my medical bills or buy me food. If someone is in poverty and can't afford to buy things like their medications, shaving cream, food, basic necessities, saying "Wow, that sucks... I'll be praying for you" DOES S--T. Stop praying and start DOING something.

After the meeting I was a land mine. When I'm pissed off...don't cross me. That place lays out such an abundance of food after every meeting - they had fruit platters, cheese and sausage, sandwiches, wraps, f-ing shrimp cocktail platters, chips, candy, soda, cookies, cream puffs, eclairs, pastries... Probably a good thousand dollars worth of food. At the end there was so much left over that the takedown people were walking around carrying trays, shoving them in our faces, asking if we wanted to take anything home.

When the fourth person tried to get me to take food I snapped. "Excuse me, but why don't you spend less time buying snacks for yourselves and actually give the money to homeless people who need it?" After she stopped reeling she tried for a snappy recovery comeback. "Well, we figure that these are college students and we're all pretty poor so we do need it!"Right. Because you can't afford groceries. And because cream puffs and shrimp cocktail are really going to nourish you for the next several weeks.

I know that some people reading this go to that church. I know that others of you are probably very religious. Let me please state that I have nothing against being religious or believing in god or trying to live one's life by a moral code. But I have a big f-ing vendetta against HYPOCRITES. Even I find ways to manage to help others out whenever I can. It's part of why I'm often strapped for cash - because I'll choose to give my five to some homeless guy instead of using it to buy myself coffee.

Don't slam the door in your children's faces because of something stupid like their sexual orientation, preach love and acceptance, and glut yourselves while refusing to help those in need. THAT'S what I'm against. That is NOT f-ing Christianity. You wonder why I left your church? It's because I see more spiritual, loving, moral behavior among all those poor heathens you weep for than I have EVER witnessed coming from the hands of your church members. I'm sick to death of the crap you spew. The only charitable donations you've ever given me are judgments, shame, and condemnation.

If I'm headed for hell because of not accepting what you preach, so be it. I would rather live my life to the best of my ability and bless as many people as I can in the process than EVER accept the vicious gospel you preach.