Being believed is healing.

That time when you tell someone close to you a bit of what you went through, and they look at you like you are crazy and say "I don't believe in all this memories stuff you keep saying, but I will support you."
That heartbreaking moment when you realise they are humouring you. Their support is great but belief would be better. Being believed is healing. It is someone else saying it is real, and helping you to feel normal. The greatest healing comes from when we can be open about the truth of what happened and be believed.
We don't want to have these memories, we don't want to be making them up either. We don't want to know that our mind is crazy enough to just go making up random and horrific memories about the ones we love, We don't want to be many when we can be one. If we have DID we have it is for a reason. We didn't get it by stubbing our toe on the couch, There had to be serious abuse that happened in childhood or we would never have DID in the first place.
Having DID, and remembering things I never want to believe about family members, who I thought loved me, is heartbreaking. It takes ages to come to terms with. You DO NOT WANT TO BELIEVE IT EITHER. But there it is on your mind. and when your body shows signs of this abuse being real, you begin to wonder if maybe it is. Them comes the earth shattering realization the the people you loved and trusted were the ones who did this to you. That takes weeks, months, years to come to terms with, and you try every explanation you can to try and make it not real. But slowly more evidence comes forward, and slowly you lose more and more hope, that is is all a dream or some confused thought process. Slowly you realise that these memories ARE real, and you did live that life and you are now forever changed. Those people you loved and trusted.....were and are the very same people who hurt you so bad that you now live with DID.
Your sense of trust is broken, your view of the world is shattered. The world is a totally different place now, and always will be . If you can't trust them, who can you trust. Life is never the same again. And those memories you have inside you...they stay forever, they are as much a part of your life as learning to ride a bike.
This is NOT  a life I have chosen. This is NOT a life I wanted. Because of these memories I have no family except my remaining children. I have had to leave those people I don't feel safe with in order to heal. Yes it has helped a lot but it comes at a price. A very high price. This is not a game I am playing, this is not a way to get attention. If you want attention break your arm, you get heaps more sympathy and attention for that than you ever will for being a trauma survivor. I want to live a life just like anyone else, have friends, hobbies, laugh, live. I DO NOT want to live with this amount of trauma every day. Why would I choose this life and hold up this charade for so long, to only be shunned. There are no benefits spending years in therapy remembering horrific things. Having your body relive these experiences. You are left a broken person. Even in the off chance you are making up these very sick and disturbing memorise, what is so very wrong with you and your mind that you would do that.
I end this by saying....I just asked Miss 18, my daughter, if she believed my memories were real. She said yes, I asked her why....she said "because I have repressed memories" I knew she did. but just that little piece of validation made me cry. She had no idea what that little affirmation means to me.
It is Real.

Newton's Third Law!

Newton's third law is: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. 

www.physicsclassroom.com/class/newtlaws/Lesson-4/Newton-s-Third-Law

It feel like this in life too. Days of feeling we are getting our life to head in a
productive direction, and there is an equal and opposite reaction. The last two
nights have been hell. Self harm has been up, and last night we were in crisis
mode. We knew we could not be left alone or we would end up in hospital at
the very least with stitches in our body. After calling every friend we knew who
could at the very least understand the concept, we had nowhere to go.

No safe place to hide for the night. In the end we were forced to stay home and 
depend on our daughter, Miss18. She has done this sort of thing before with 
friends, but never for us. We HATE having to be the one she looks after. We 
don't like putting that sort of pressure on her. She has many other things she 
is trying to deal with. In the end she handled it very well.

She is very understanding and supportive, something for which we are eternally
grateful. We have a wonderful treasure in her. 

Looking back on the last 2 weeks I can see why we have hit the wall, so to 
speak. We have had several flashbacks and triggers into deep things, like the
death of Babies we had in our teens. We have had our period this week too, 
and without going into too much detail, it has been very heavy and highly 
triggering. To the point we went to our GP to get medication to stop it or at the
very least slow it down. Thankfully we could, and now have a way to keep it
manageable and hopefully a lot less triggering each month. 
We have also had trouble dealing with matters of the heart. Never an easy one
for anyone. Made much more complex with the many of us involved. 
We had to use a far whack of our medication  to help sedate us and make us 
sleep, but we made it. We haven't slept at all well the last couple of weeks and
that is not going to help matters at all. We feel a little better after getting a bit 
more sleep lastnight. 
Today I think we will spend having a self care day doing things we enjoy, and 
slowly come to terms with the things that have been brought us this week. 
We miss our babies so much, and just want to hold them. The realization that
our daughter may have lived longer in the group than we first thought has been 
heartbreaking. To die young is better in these groups. The longer you live the 
more abuse you go through, especially as a girl.
We have also been opening up a lot more with our therapist. This is great, but 
it sets off triggers and programs inside to try to stop us. These can include self
harm. So i guess that was a really big factor too. 
This feels like a very very hard life at the moment, and I'm not really sure how
we are doing it. One bonus that did come from last night, was that we weren't 
suicidal.We have been that way for many years, but the changes we have 
made in our lifestyle over the last few months has decreased that dramatically.
Even with all the triggers and everything we went through this week, we didn't 
want to end it.That is a MAJOR ACHIEVEMENT. 
We will just keep fighting, one day at a time. That's all we have left to do. 
Thanks for reading.

Love

One of the greatest questions or problems we face as a multiple is Do we deserve Love?

As an outsider you may say "of course you do, everyone deserves love and you have been through so much, you especially deserve love." Good in theory, but in practice it is so much more complicated than that. 

You learn to love and be loved as you are growing up in what is theoretically, a loving caring family environment. Or at the least, with one die hard parent, aunt or grandparent, who is determined to show you Love when no one else does.

But what happens when you grow up in an environment where you are taught shame, disgust, sex, abuse, rape and torture. Where love is portrayed as nothing like what love really is. What if as a 3 year old you are told that by a man having sex with you, that is love. Or by being beaten because you didn't listen, that was love. When you hurt yourself there were no hugs and kisses to make it better. but instead you were told you were never good enough. 

It doesn't take long to understand that a child, or anyone really, in this environment would believe that they don't deserve love. That they were one of those people who are too bad or evil to ever be allowed to be loved. Yet their deepest ache and longing, is that maybe just maybe, someone could love them anyway.

As adults trying to heal, we must confront this awful thought. Are we truly loveable. As a singleton survivor of abuse that is a hard thing to overcome. When you add multiplicity it becomes even harder. Multiples are seen as freaks, and anomalies. That's if we are believed at all. If the Psychiatric community can't decide if we exist or not, and then if we do, how to treat us, how does the layman stand a chance. Strangely enough, better than most professionals. When by our very existence we feel broken and rejected people, it is hard to argue in favour of loving us, even though that may be our greatest desire. 

We see love everywhere around us, from small children being loved by their parents, to old couples who have been together for 60 years. But can we do that, can we have that. 

We have been watching so many multiples around us and the lives they have. It appears to me that people can know who we are and still love us. It is not about how many of us there are, but more about how we present as people. Do we generally come off as caring loving individuals or strange moody people. Can others see in us a strength and love, or do they see the chaos. Chaos is part of multiplicity I find in many ways, but we don't need to take it out on others. 

Our system is what most would refer to as high functioning. We have survived in society pretty well unnoticed, raising two children as a single parent for many years. We are financially capable, friendly, organised, tidy and generally show little external signs of what lies beneath. When we look at our day to day lives , we see that we are really not that horrible. 

I guess what I am trying to get to is that maybe, just maybe, we can be known AND loved, it's not within the realms of science fiction, but a very real possibility. It's going to take a very special person themselves to be able to love us. But I have seen enough of people out there to know that there are people like that out there. Maybe just maybe we can find someone who can love us how we so desperately need to be loved. A glimmer of hope in what seems a hopeless situation. 

We are trying to stop seeing ourselves as broken hopeless people, but instead as amazingly strong people who survived so much and are still fighting today. We shouldn't hide, we should be proud of the strength we have together and the wonderful things that can be achieved. We have fought longer and harder to survive than most, and we shouldn't be ashamed. We have value! And so do you!

New Year.

With Christmas and New Years over, we have finally slept again without medication. Quite a pleasant achievement. While inside we were a mess for Christmas, outside we had one of the best christmases we have had in a very long time. We spent it with our children and friends. Probably too much alcohol, but it helped us relax and enjoy the fun.
This year we are trying to head back to part time work. Only as far as our head and recovering wrist can manage, but we will give it a try. Having some spare spending money would be very nice.
At the end of last year we hit a break through with our therapist, in that we finally were able to switch in front of him. It was awesome, and while that was happening I got to see a bit of the kaos that was happening inside. We are hopeful that we will be able to continue with this and improving throughout this year. Now he has a chance to talk directly to those inside, it will make a lot of difference to our ability to heal.
I hope that you can all find a reason for hope in this year, no matter how small it is. Hope is the key.
Thanks you for reading our posts, we are grateful to have people out there who are interested in how we are going and what

we are doing. Take care.