My granddaughter spent the night last night; I'm slowly easing into my day (okay, I've been up for about 4 hours), trying to recover from her chatter. I didn't know anyone could talk that fast! My head is still swimming. But she is completely charming, and having her here after years of her not being allowed to spend the night is quite a treat.

As much as I am enamored of Shelbie, the girl worries me. She's 13, wears full make-up (which the old Tim would never have allowed), has about 30 guys' phone numbers saved in her phone.

"Oh, I met the hottest guy the other day," she'll tell me. Or, "My next door neighbor thinks I'm a stalker but I'm not, I just like to spy on him. So now everyone calls me The Stalker."

She told me that in the neighboring town she's getting quite a bad reputation.

"Now, that worries me," I told her, being as tactful as possible.

She looked surprised. "Why? What does 'bad reputation' mean anyway?"

"When I was a teen it usually meant a girl who was slutty."

Her eyes widened with alarm. "Oh! No, I meant everyone thinks I'm a stalker."

"So you don't . . . ." I let my sentence trail off, hoping I wouldn't have to fill in the blank.

"Ewww, yuck!" She shook her head vigorously. "All I do is stalk, Nana, but not even that, really. There's just a few boys I like to spy on and play practical jokes on, that's all."

Later, after hearing her refer to me during a phone conversation as her "tight nana" I had to laugh.

"Hey, I'm not drunk!" I protested.

"Huh? I said you were tight."

"That used to mean drunk," I said.

"Nope, now it just means you're cool. You're my cool nana."

I look at her with her kohl rimmed eyes and perfect skin and think, "Oh Lord, thank you for not giving me the daughters I wanted so badly."

The other day Tim called up, all agitated.

"Shelbie just told me she has a boyfriend!" were the first words out of his mouth. "I'm so angry. She's just a little girl!"

I tried to calm him down by assuring him that it was most likely all very innocent.

"But what if he hurts her, or tries to get her to sleep with him?"

Oh, I fear for all my sons who have daughters. (I have 4 granddaughters.) My son, Ben, overheard Shelbie during the picnic this weekend talking about her boyfriend.

"See," he said to his wife, "that's why Maddy doesn't need to be wearing make up."

Well. She's not even 2 yet!

I feel sorry for my sons having to deal with all this when the time comes; on the other hand, I'm thankful that my grandkids even have fathers who are looking out for them and protecting their best interests. How different my puberty years would have been if I'd had a bit of that.

And now I must end this before Izzy and Shelbie get back from the park. We're going to do some kind of crafts together. I'm so exhausted I could cry, but I won't. I'll just do the best I can and continue marveling that she is here spending time with her "tight nana!"

Friday night my eight year old grandson, Eric, spent the night. This is his first visit since Christmas and it was like old times having him around.

Tim had asked Chris if he'd buy T-bones so he could have a picnic at the park with his kids and their mother. Somehow everyone* ended up going, although the rest of us settled for hot dogs and chicken. I haven't seen Tim's kids since he broke up with their mother months ago. I was pleasantly surprised when his 13 year old daughter said we should chill some time. (While Tim was in a coma last year, the kids' mother informed me they wanted nothing to do with me, and that they now called me by my name, rather than Nana. I don't know if this was true or not, but the reconciliation with my granddaughter has been a long time coming. She phoned a bit ago and said I love you before hanging up.)

"Chill?" I repeated stupidly. "What does that mean?"

"You know," she said with a shrug. "Have an all girl slumber party or something."

"Really?" Since she never contacts me you can see why this would be such a surprise.

"Yeah, and we could do some crafts together."

It was settled then. "How soon can we do it?" she wanted to know.

I told her Tuesday would be good, forgetting that I have an appointment tomorrow to give my deposition for Tim's trial.

Did I mention Tim spent Saturday night? I can't seem to get my bearings--too much going on at once. Not bad stuff, just busy busy busy.

To top it off, Squarespace totally revamped their services and it's taken me all day to get on here and post something. My Internet keeps messing up too.

Not that I'm complaining or anything . . .

(*Click on Summer Fun on my sidebar to see photos.)

You’d better watch your step, sister.

How stupid are you?

Stop crying, I’m not hurting you.

You’ll understand when you’re older.

If we send him to prison we’ll have to go on welfare.

If you don’t stop walking so heavy, no one will ever marry you.

Make sure you have babies with handsome men, so they don’t turn out ugly.

2.

The boy in junior high who had (an alleged) crush on me

wanted to meet me behind a building after school

only so he could molest me. 

How could I fight back when I was out of my body,

flying on the wings of a dove to a lonely housetop?

3.

I love you, I love you, I love you . . . .

You’re not a virgin?

I don’t want a slut for a girlfriend.

4.

“In other news today, three kazillion lawsuits have been filed against the Catholic church,

claiming that one of their priests, Father Grubby-hands, molested them

during the years they served as choir boys.”

5.

Long before pigs fly

hell freezes over

and the 12th of Never,

when my kids are grown strong and fierce

and my grandkids full of spunk and well-protected;

Oh long before they lay me in my grave:

when some pain stubbed morning I awaken one too many times

with that old sickness churning inside of me

the sickness of being me 

so will it be that I rise with all the wrath of being muted

(subdued
overpowered
mocked
abandoned)

and I will not stifle myself;

no no, I will simply

abandon age- old lies,

mock the lies of those who have mocked me,

overpower their messages of worthlessness and stupidity,

subduing them by my final act of revolt:

I will (at long last!)  Say When. 

It hasn't helped as much as I hoped it would.  What I experienced with the spilling of the beans is that most people, when first told of my multiplicity, are intrigued and full of questions. This gave me hope. Finally I was speaking truth and being taken seriously! I don't want to give the impression that my family are callous. It's more like everyone is so busy living their lives, providing for their families, etc. that the sharing of my reality got lost amid the responsibilities and stresses of daily life.

I wonder what I expect? That every time I talk with someone who knows about my DID the subject will arise, and we'll enter into a long, soulful discussion? Well of course not. What though?

No one need remind me that the world doesn't revolve around me. And I wouldn't want to do nothing but talk about what makes me so different from singletons.  How would I expect someone to approach the subject anyway? I mean, it must be awkward to know about someone's DID and wonder if it should be brought up or not. I imagine it's something like how it is when someone loses a loved one; I've heard people complain after such a loss that no one even spoke to them of it, that everyone acted as if nothing had happened. I can only think this is because it's hard to know what to say in the face of such devastation. Could this be the same type of awkwardness, I wonder . . . my loved ones not knowing what to say (if anything) regarding everything that my multiplicity implies? I did make a point to explain to them that usually DID is the result of severe childhood abuse. Who wants to focus overly much on the implications of that in reference to their own mother?

I know I put an awful lot of pressure on myself to act normal. My family doesn't require me to do this, I do this to myself. While other multiples I know do what they can to make their DID reality easier to handle, it's as if I do everything in my power to keep from dealing with mine. How then can I expect others to take my multiplicity seriously if I hide it as best I can?

I'm alone with something which by its very nature separates me from everyone in my life. I'm not one of them, in the      fullest sense. They are not like me. This is one more repercussion from childhood abuse. It's not simply a matter of what it does to the victim; it continues to affect others for decades, if not generations.

I've no answers for my dilemma. I'm not asking for any, either.  

 

Lately I feel lost, unable to articulate what has me so hollow inside.  A sort of dullness has crept into my soul and mind, a dullness which reminds me of some other time(s) in my life--but I don't know from when or where.

Nothing much interests me, and I know it's not simply the heat which has sapped my desires and motivation.

I want too much maybe and, fearing I will get none of it, retreat into greyness:  the drab dungeon deep inside of me into which I've been retreating far too much lately.

Oh, to be done with days piled upon days, hours spent trying to maintain, survive. Oh, to be loosened from this bondage to merely getting through with as little fuss as possible. (And why with as little fuss as possible? So that others won't guess the depth of my desolation . . . ) 

As I write this I begin to realize a little of what has me so dispirited. I want a deep, abiding friendship with someone. Someone who will go the distance and who will be so empathetic with my struggles that I will feel total freedom to act out whatever needs acting out in their presence. I don't think I've ever had that with anyone--of course I haven't, or I'd know.

Figuring out this much only emphasizes my emotional angst, for immediately I'm painfully aware that I've most likely never experienced unconditional love with anyone because I don't let anyone get close to me.

It's been a long, trying hot day. What I need to do is get into bed as my sleeping pill kicks in and eases my troubled mind. 

When Sissyface gave me this photo, I knew in an instant that my memory wasn't mistaken. There I am cuddled up to my brother (a year older than I), hands clasped as if in pure bliss.  As the only female child I idolized my siblings: they were smaller versions of my dad, and just as outgoing and brave.

I remember the cold winter nights when we had to wear layers of clothing to bed because our electricity had been shut off. My brother and I, as the two youngest, got the happy privilege of sleeping on a bed in the living room in front of a roaring fire. We giggled from the novelty of it all, goofing around in happy abandon until Mom called out for us to knock it off and go to sleep.

The last time I saw my brother was at my dad's funeral 9 years ago. He was a meth addict, and I suppose he still is. A year before Dad died I lived with him and my brother and aunt for a few months; every now and then my brother and I would click, usually when one of us brought up some funny childhood memory. We'd laugh uncontrollably, tease each other, and it seemed as if our earlier bond was being renewed.

Most of the time I was living there, though, my brother was either gone getting drugs, or locked in his room for days at a time, getting high and talking to himself. He was a stranger to me, the very sight of him twisted my heart in pity. Why had he come to this? Why couldn't he get a hold of his inner demons and turn his life around?

"Are you happy?" I remember him asking me once. We were in the kitchen giggling while he made Dad a huge sandwich for lunch.

"Hmmm," I said, stalling. "Well, not exactly. I wouldn't say I'm happy--at least not all the time. Content, though. Yeah, that's it:  mostly just content." (What did I know? I had no clue about my DID back then, and hadn't really begun dealing with my childhood.)

He gave me a searching look before going off on one of his comedy routines. Humor, the great distracter!

I found an old snapshot of my brother and I while I was living there, and had it framed for his birthday. He didn't come home for several days, so I laid it on his dresser with the card I'd picked out with great care. I felt slightly foolish, for the card was the sentimental type I wouldn't ordinarily buy for anyone, let alone a brother I hadn't been close to in who knows how long. But the photo brought back those childhood days of intimacy, and I wanted him to know I hadn't forgotten them.

One day he came looking for me and upon finding me on the patio gave me a big bear hug.

"What's that for?" I said when I could get my breath.

"That photo and what you wrote on my card really touched me," he said, tears glistening in his eyes. "I mean it, I don't remember the last time something touched me like that. And I don't remember ever seeing that photo before." He swiped at his eyes and said, before turning away, "I sure love my little sis, I'll tell you that."

I've always been glad to have gone with my instincts in buying him the card. Beneath his rough exterior he still had a heart which could be touched. 

I don't know how many times I've stared at this photo of us, trying to recapture the sense of security I felt back then, electricity or no electricity. I gaze at my brother and I and think, this is what our mother stole from us. Not just this, for this is only one moment captured in time. What about all the other special moments we could have had during the next 8 years?

Oh, I've known for a long time that we kids who comprised Mom's first family were the throwaway kids. Why should it still hurt me so?

 
Would my brother have ended up a meth addict if the events of childhood had unraveled differently?

I'm so sorry, I want to say to him.  You didn't deserve what you ended up with any more than any of us did. But I love you forever and ever and ever.

I don't know if I'll ever see him again, and that's just one more sorrow to tuck deep within me, for there is nothing I can do to save him. All I can do is treasure this photo for the evidence it provides of the bond which once drew us together in sweet sibling love. 

I learned from Sissyface last night that after I left home (at the age of 15), our middle sister began wetting the bed. She would have been about 9 at the time. Was the bed wetting related to sexual abuse, I wonder. Did my step dad turn to her when I was no longer available? We also talked about the things I parceled out to my younger siblings before making my getaway. One of them was a wooden apple; you twisted it open to reveal the teeniest wooden tea set. I hadn't thought of that apple or tea set since I left home; instantly I yearned to have it back, to hold it in my hands once more.

I can't believe how stupid I used to be (as an adult) to believe my mother when she told me she hadn't known where my dad and brothers were during my 8 year separation from them. After all, during the first year that she was married to my step dad and I was brave enough to ask why I couldn't see them anymore, her response was always a brisk, "You'll understand when you're older." If she really had lost contact with them I think she would have simply said so. Obviously as an adult I needed to believe she couldn't be that cold-hearted. I still can barely believe it. I have a hard time processing deliberate cruelty. 

Maybe because I have a hard time accepting that others can be deliberately cruel, I am in constant denial about my DID. If I'm a multiple then it naturally follows that something pretty damaging had to have happened to cause me to multiply. I go in circles with this, loathe to admit that anything done to me could have been that bad. 

Because I don't think what was done to me was all that bad, I feel like a fraud, a colossal whiner.

Anger towards my mother keeps bubbling to the surface. This is new to me. An occasional angry thought about her, yes, but not this frequent experience of being incensed with her.

I think that I wil join her in preparing for her death. I won't be sending her photos and little mementos, though. I will be gearing myself up for that moment in time when I hear the words, "Mom's dead." I've been waiting to exhale for decades. Waiting to be released from something. Her death I think will accomplish my release from the tyranny of being her daughter. Even now, and with her living far away, I have this deeply embedded fear of disappointing her, of picturing that sour look of disapproval she always got when I didn't live up to her standards. I imagine Sissyface telling her something about me, and Mom tsking and shaking her head. My oldest brother does the same thing, just like her. He abused me too.

He abused me as a child, and when I went to visit him about 5 years ago he  said that he once was deeply involved with a woman who reminded him of me, and who has the same first name.  This conversation made me uncomfortable and squirmy; he implied that he was crazy in love with her because of how much she reminded him of me.

His grandkids no longer visit him. He moved clear across the country (after his second twin son committed suicide) to be near his grandkids. They adored him, calling him 'Papa.' Now, several years later, they don't come around anymore. I wonder why. Did he try some sicko stuff on them? I just bet he did.

I wonder why my brother waited until both his sons were dead before even meeting his grandkids. He left his wife when his kids were babies, and didn't see them again before their suicides. Then he moved close to his grandkids and acted out the role of loving grandpa. He never showed any concern or love for his own kids; they might still be alive today if he had.

I'm tired of making excuses for people. I know the step dad used to beat on my brother, and that had to have changed him in many ways. But he did stuff to me too and I didn't abandon my children, or turn into a pervert.

I know my mom's mother was an unpleasant woman, but is that an excuse for my mom to give birth to a bunch of kids and fail to protect them?

Too many deep thoughts for such hot weather! I hope it cools down today. I hope I can get my own little place soon, thought it isn't likely. I hope I reach the end of my days content to be the person I turned out to be. Oh, I sure don't want to be one of those individuals who hang in and persevere and go through growth and healing for years--and then suddenly loses her hold on life. I don't want to just fizzle out at the end, after everything I've been through.

I will get a tattoo on my arm of my maiden name, in my dad's beautiful script. No one will steal it from me again, short of amputation. 

Last night she gave me the photos my mother sent. Some of them I already had, but there were new ones I'd never seen, ones of me when I was about 2 or 3.

It angers me that I've never seen these photos before. During my childhood we kids would infrequently ask to look through Mom's photo album. These photos weren't in there. Where did she keep them? Why didn't I know of their existence until now? I'm angry that she so carelessly tossed them my way, as if they were nothing.

Do I want photos of me with my older brother, whom I adored and followed around like a little puppy dog--photos that are evidence of the normal life I had before everything exploded?  Photos of the two of us before we were lost to one another for 8 years? Uh, yeah, I do.

Why do I feel as if my mother gets satisfaction out of holding out on me, then tossing me a few crumbs before she dies?

Last night in the moments before sleep overpowered me, the C word echoed in my head. I hate that word probably more than any other in the English language. I've never used it before, I refuse to. But there it was echoing in reference to my mother.

It was also one of the first words the step dad tried to get me to say by bribing me with money. 

I looked at photos of you today:

a stocky, tow-head toddler,

my firstborn daughter who once held so much promise.

There you were in all your innocence--

but were you ever innocent?

Your toddler's voice called out for your daddy

with delight, or to tell of some misfortune:

a skinned knee or childish disappointment.

It was never me you ran to for comfort or cuddling;

I was the odd man out, hovering on the sidelines

puzzled by your total indifference to the one who gave you birth.

When I walked away from that marriage

it was meant as a good thing:  more financial stability.

One can eat only so many potatoes, after all.

Somehow my good intentions in starting a new life for us all

were overlooked, frowned upon:  misinterpreted.

I was an adulteress, a harlot! 

I put up with you as best I could

and though a mother should never say so, it was a relief when you went to live with your father.

No more reminders of my failure to bond with you 

No more piercing looks on your intelligent little face

And then he--the one for whom I destroyed two marriages--

spoke in my ear of little girls needing their mothers,

bewitched me with his smooth talk until I gave in,

until I picked up the phone to inform you you must come back.

Well, I'd decided when I knew you were moving back in,

If she's going to be here she can damn well make herself useful.

You became my own little Cinderella. What pleasure this gave me

to see you work so studiously while your friends played outside until dusk.

I kept waiting to reprove you for complaining of your lot, but you never did.

I nearly hated you for that.



Oh, had I only known what a little traitor you really were!

What a shameless thief, stealing my new husband's affections,

seducing him with your psuedo-innocence

your dimpled smile and winsome ways.

A thorn in my flesh

pebble in my shoe:  my firstborn daughter,

born to make trouble for me, to rob me of love's expressions.

Once you returned to me he never touched me again.

He didn't want me, because of you

and the promise of your young flesh.

I wish I'd never brought you back into my home.

I wish I'd never given birth to you.

But for you my marriage would have been happy.

I deserve happiness as much as anyone.

Looking at old photos brought it all back to the surface:

the resentment, the anger I felt when faced with my husband's fondness for little girls,

knowing good and well something was expected of me,

something I wasn't about to give.

I worked hard to get to where I was.

Did you really think I'd give it all up for you? 

I don't know why I held onto these photos for as long as I have

but they're yours now.

I'm cleaning out my life, preparing for death to come knocking on my door.

What need is there for these black and white memories?

Get what you can from them (they are meaningless to me!)

for this is all I'll bequeath the little home wrecker who stole my husband.