So Tired

This is where I'm at, at the moment. So much trauma has come forward, so many memories of horrific things. Some days it's hard to function carrying that heavy heavy load. 

Independence

When the anger and frustration hit

What do you do? Life goes on.  We're learning to live, learning to make a life for ourselves.  We have come a long way.  We work much better together as a group. We feel there's a better balance in our life.  We are grateful for what we have achieved together over the years.   But still something isn't right.  Because we are many,  life is far more complicated than it is for others. Our health is suffering. Our body is becoming more and more disabled. Yes we have a wheelchair now,  dont need it all the time,  but we still need it. Regular drs appointments,  specialists, hospital visits,  pain management clinics,  tests, and medications.   Our body and mind went through so much back then, that they are now struggling with the after affects of all that.  It's hard living with this legacy.  What's harder is knowing that the people who made us broken in the first place have no remorse,  no acknowledgement of any wrong doing.  They even blame us for how we have made their life harder. There comes a time when that becomes too much. The anger builds and we want to see some justice,  some repentance, some vengeance even.  Yet we seem to have no outlet, no way to show how we feel,  no way to show them what they have done and continue to do with their actions.  Thoughts have entered our minds of action we could take,  but they seem to dangerous and not without serious repercussions for us. 

What do we do. How do we get to a place where we feel we have been acknowledged.  Karma seems to take too long,  if it happens at all.  Revenge seems hard to safely do and quantify. How do we find our sense of peace for this.  No action only makes us feel powerless! 

What am I fighting for now?

I know a lot of time has past since our last post,  we just haven't felt like sharing.  We have felt very betrayed and vulnerable, for various reasons,  so we have not wanted to be open with people.  

The body is 53 now,  our son is 28 and our other son is now our amazing daughter and she is 23. Both very strong amazing people we are so proud of.  They are achieving so much.  Having a multiple as a parent is not easy but they are amazing. We cannot praise their strength enough. They are our heroes. 

But we are struggling.  After a few good years of learning to find some freedom, and enjoying that freedom,  things are changing. 

As more of us spend more time forward and we switch more,  our ability to concentrate decreases.  We can't drive anymore..

Our poor body,  that went through so much so young, is starting to break down.  Our physical health is becoming debilitating.  We have a walking stick,  a walker and a wheelchair, all to help us get around when our body just can't.  We still spend many days in bed because getting up is impossible. We have chronic pain and fatigue.  Each day is a challenge to see what we can get done. 

In the depth of our heart we wonder what we are fighting for.  DID is an incredible coping mechanism, and it made us able to live through literally unspeakable things.  But now we live in a different world, where learning about love and trust is our challenge.  This life now is so hard.  We have the tools to survive incredible trauma but not to get through today.  It's so hard,  for many inside it is to hard and they don't want to come forward to face the life we live now. It's not something we ever thought we would see.  Many people have told us that,  most who have been through what we have, have never made it this far.  They have died way before their 50s. 

We know we are strong.  We know that we can totally fall apart one day,  then get up and start again tomorrow. 

But what are we doing it for.  We haven't enough time left in this life to even get a quarter of they way through healing.  Therapy just isn't getting there.  Every day we spend dealing with some past trauma,  takes more days away from us trying to live a new life.  I guess what I'm trying to say is that,  DID saved our life back then,  but it doesn't help much with now. 

What do we want to do with our life now?  

We want to find our son.  We want time to get to know him and give him all the love we haven't been able to give him.  I guess that's really deep down what we're staying alive for. Please please may we find him before this body gives out. 

An alien in this world..

I don't know how to cope.  I've had a day that everyone would say has been a good day with good news.  But for us it's a million new triggers and fears. Fears that date back to the beginning of our life. We don't understand how to live in this new world.  As we age it seems to be getting harder.  We can't explain it to anyone, because how do you explain the life we lived to anyone who can't even imagine it. I know we were made for a different world, one we would never go back to, but where is the manual on this world.

Survive

When you are born into, and grow up in a life of total abuse, you are not like other people.  Your brain is wired differently to others.  How you see and understand reality is completely different to those around you. Your normal is totally foreign to anyone else. And their world is totally foreign to you.  It is chaotic, confusing,  overwhelming and incomprehensible. 

This doesn't stop when the abuse stops.  Your brain still works that way. In time it can be rewired, but that is a very long process, with many years of misunderstanding and pain. These survivors of abuse don't mean to be weird or rude.  Sometimes they have honestly never been taught any other way to survive. Survive,  not live, survive.  Some from birth, must fight every day to survive.  These aren't adults with street smarts, or Bear Grills, with years of expert training. These are babies,  toddlers,  barely able to talk or walk and all they have ever known is abuse and how to survive. 

It stays with you for your lifetime.  You learn to only trust yourself. You are constantly vigilant. You learn the world is a hard and dangerous place.  And you learn that even the nicest people can turn on you in an instant.

 And when these times come,  you can't go into your mind to find a safe place to hide,  because in there is every person who abused you,  every memory of the abuse, sitting, waiting, for you to see them again. There is no safe place in a mind built this way. Only the constant reminder that you have to fight to survive.  Every day.  And if you don't have the strength to fight today....... maybe you don't survive. 

Things my Mother taught me.

Im not good enough

It's always my fault

I make trouble

I exaggerate

She should never have had me

Im slow and lazy

Im fat

Im unloveable 

Im a disappointment

Im weak

Im over sensitive

Im useless

Im not attractive 

How to sew

No Hope

Today there has been no hope. No hope for help.  No hope for fighting for what we need. No hope for the support we need to heal.  When things get hard even the best people start to back away,  make excuses, pretend they aren't involved. Today we wonder if there truly is anyone that can help us heal. 

We have said before that hope is the key to survival.  Without hope there is nothing to live for. 

We don't want to die but we can't live our life void of hope either. 

Something will come up, people say, but they are merely empty platitudes to calm their own fear of hopelessness. 

We don't want to die never having left our mark in this world. We would prefer to see justice,  but that seems impossible. We feel to weak for vengeance.  We feel forgotten,  beaten down,  invisible . Please don't let us die this way.  Please may our life have meaning.  Please. 

Why do I feel so alone

No one is where I am and no one seems able or willing to help me. I feel lost in a world I do not understand, like an alien on a new planet.  No matter how hard I try to fit in, I'm not like everyone else.  And they know it too. I can't let anyone in to where it really really hurts,  because, ......... because.... it is not safe for anyone to be there, not even us.

Children of a lesser God

Omnipotent
Omnipresent
Omniscient
All knowing,  all powerful, everywhere.  All loving.

But for the children of darkness,  their God has no power to stave off the darkness of mankind.  A lesser God,  a god of no strength, no power, no will.
And what of love?
The children left behind. Never to walk this earth in light. Never to feel the son's love on their face. Left behind in darkness. 
THE CHILDREN OF A LESSER GOD!

Survivor not freak

After watching a woman with a disability, talking about the need for awareness and acceptance of people's different lives and abilities, we have thought about us and our situation. Technically our condition is considered a mental illness.  DSM 5. I guess they have to give it a category.  DID can be very disabling,  more for some than others.  We have spent days in bed unable to function when alters are dealing with their trauma. Then there are the accompanying conditions that are often in co-existence with DID, such as,  Complex PTSD, Anxiety and Depression. Plus illnesses like fibromyalgia,  IBS, and other digestive disorders.  These carry their own debilitating affects.
It is a complex web of conditions that can leave you overwhelmed just to think about them.
The woman on tv was born with her condition and although there is no cure, she has found a way to manage her symptoms and live a life she is happy with.  To the point where she doesn't wish her disability was gone. (Accept for her constant pain).
I guess the key difference here is that DID is caused by trauma.  For us,  physical, emotional, sexual abuse and torture that went on for most of our life, especially under the age of 20 years old. This trauma has changed the way our brain functions.  Because of it, we actually process information differently to others without the trauma. It's very easy to get weighed down with it all and get lost in a sea of flashbacks,  body pain,  Anxiety, depression and just pure terrifying fear.  But there is one key to remember.  DID is NOT technically an illness.  It is a very sophisticated survival mechanism that ment we were able to survive horrific abuse and not die. We know many who never made it through. 
We are survivors of absolute horrors.  I don't know how we did it but we did. 
We are now safe,  but still fighting to survive.  Fighting to learn how to live in this new way of life.  Fighting to understand how to NOT live in constant fear.  Trying to understand that there are people out there who will not hurt us. We are like a child learning for the first time how to walk. 
Love is one of the most confusing things to us.  Not sure we will truly ever understand it completely.
In all of this we are considered by the public to be freaks and creatures of horror movies. And to those who should understand the most,  the medical/phychiatric professions,  we are considered by most to be liars, frauds, and if they believe,  just to bloody hard to treat.
We feel disabled,  we feel broken and unwelcome. We feel unwanted by society.  If only they could see the horror of what we survived and understand this was our only way to survive.  We are survivors of torture. If only we could be seen through the eyes of empathy and compassion,  instead of distrust and fear, there is a chance we could finally begin to heal.

Upon reflection,..... it's a horrible life that not many of us really even want to remember.  For society to acknowledge such truths about itself is not easy. But we need to.  The people who abused us are still alive, and there are many more generations,  even our current  generation of babies and children, who are living through what we did plus more.  It's time to face the horrific truth.
These people are amount us.

We are spent!

We started with a new psychologist about a year ago. She had been recommended to me after a lot of searching and asking around. We were unsure about seeing a Psychologist, as we knew we would only get 10 government paid visits a year, and we need so much more than that. But we needed to see someone and she was the only choice we had. The first visit went well, she was confident she had the training to handle our needs, and was even trained by an association we greatly respected.We were of course concerned about the ongoing cost and limited visits. She reassured us that it wouldn't be a problem. Her normal gap she would cut for us dramatically so we could afford to see her and she reassured that when the 10 visits ran out she would still see us at that price. She explained she didn't want to retire and this was her way of giving back to the community, pro Bono, work as it were. She also layed out her basic treatment plan. For the first time, we felt hope. Someone who was willing to help us, and knew about what they were doing. There was a plan, a path through this hell we had been walking through. For the first time we truly felt like there was hope.
As time went on, she went on to encourage us that she would be there for us. How she would go with us to the hospital if we her needed to. She kept telling us we  were not alone now, we didn't have to live a life alone and with out support any more. We found it hard to trust all this, but it is to be expected given who we are and what we have been through.
As time and visits went on, we learned many things to help us cope with flashbacks and our horrible anxiety. Slowly it seemed we were following an agenda she had planned. OK , not the end, but manageable, we know how to get around that.
Then we started to get behind on payments , not too bad but behind. We asked if we could stretch out our visits to every 3 or 4 weeks because the finances were getting a bit tight. She reassured us it was fine and not to worry about it, to pay as we could. She booked us in for another visit for 2 weeks
When that visit came, she made a comment that while we were getting skylight to help us with our NDIS application, that maybe we could see if they had a councilor or therapist we could see as well. Because the cost was getting a bit much for her. She said.." The money situation was not a problem for me to worry about but for them to worry about."( I have no idea how that even works as I am the one paying the bills and basically the one who has to pass on the message that my Psychologist wont see me anymore because I cost too much.How do I not worry about that!!!) Then to knock the final nail into the coffin, she says that we wont book any more appointments at the moment, and leaves it at that.
We are not good at handling things at the time, we were shocked but didn't really realize what she was seeming to do until we got home and had a chance to think about what had been said. We were shocked......"I think we have just been dumped.........again!"
We decided to give her a small benefit of the doubt. We slowly made our way through paying back the bill. We had hoped that maybe she would send a Christmas message to her clients wishing them the best for the season and New Year, looking forward to seeing you again in 2019, type of thing. But no!
We have had no contact form her in months. What do we do now? Do we AGAIN start the long, complicated and arduous journey of finding a new therapist, who would not only treat us but also know how to treat us? We were exhausted just thinking about it. It was hard enough to find her in the first place. We were back to hopeless. How do we survive this shit existence with no professional help. We are on the extreme of mental disorders, even for DID. If this were cancer or diabetes, Drs would be climbing over themselves to help us, to find research that could help us. But no. because our parents beat, raped and tortured us into a broken mess, through absolutely no fault of our own, we must continue a life of suffering alone. No one will stand with us and support us, help us, show us that good people really are out there.
We see so many TV shows about people who rescue abused and neglected animals and want to finally show them love. They want to teach these poor animals that there really are good people out there. Its great. But what happens to the beaten and abused humans. There is no one to help them, to show them love and to stand by them as they learn that not all humans are bad.
I am spent.

Have a day

We're trying to get settled in our new house,  Christmas is only weeks away and we feel so broken.  To much hard work.  But we want to scream..... look at me,  we count to,  see me, I'm important too.  When does the universe cut us some slack.  I just want it to be easy.  Just for once in my life. 

Mixed emotions and a mothers love

It's with mixed emotions that I write today.  I had lunch today with my two beautiful children. Now adults,  at 20 and 25 years old.  They are living lives I am incredibly proud of.  They both have autism, which has challenges for them both in different ways. They both work and have friends and live out of home.  They are happy and have their own pursuits and passions that they follow.  I could not hope for more for them.  I am more than proud.
Several years ago when I broke contact with the last of my family members, my mother,  my kids wanted to maintain contact with her.  They have done that.  I see her as no real threat to their safety.  But as I watch them live the lives I am envious of,  the life we could never have lived,  I see their relationship with my mother getting stronger.  My son spends more time with her than me.  At times so does my daughter.  If I want time with them over Christmas,  I have to organise it early so she doesn't take the time I want. 
Our life as a group is changing so much. We will not be driving for much longer,  as it is, we currently only drive locally.  We can't afford,  holidays, fancy things.  We live a very simple life with few friends and people we feel we can trust.  We are constantly looking over our shoulder, hoping we are safe.  We lose days to flashbacks,  body pains, and energy lows when we are bed ridden.  We are many after all.  It is not an easy life at the best of times. 
What hurts the most is knowing that one of the people who made us this way,  who helped to willingly break us beyond repair, is living the life we can only imagine.  What's more,  she's doing it with our children.  She walks free in this world to be exactly who she wants, and we fight for every day to be alive.  We still have days where we consider ending it all.  There are so many days it all gets to hard and we just want to live a normal life.  We haven't of course, because we don't want that legacy for our children.  Our love for them is greater than our wish for release. 
But it is hard, incredibly hard to see the guilty walk free while we fight for every breathe.

Survivorship

https://youtu.be/BONGdkCuSiw

A Long time, a lot to learn.

I know it's been the longest time since we have been on here.  There have been so many things happening,  both inside and outside. None of us have really felt like sharing.  We have changed therapists , and learnt so much more about how to cope in this new world we are living in.  Learning to live free from a lifetime of control is not as easy as it seems. There are so many things about normal human behaviour that we were never taught.  Love being one of those things.  We are blessed to have a wonderful person in our life to patiently lead us along this path.  But it is truly hard work, not only in practice but also to understand the concept of true unconditional love.
Trust is another tough one, man that's hard. Just when you think you've got it, it slips away. 
We are finally moving into a word that offers us more hope of a future than the past ever did. But we are also learning a lot about how we became who we are.  That journey is heartbreaking. The truth has been hidden under survival skills for so long, it is hard to recognise it when we see it, and even harder to accept. Realising that those who should love and protect you most are the ones who did the damage takes time and tears and heartache to process. 
To my parents if you are reading  this, please know that your insistence that you 'didn't do anything,' is a serious admission of guilt. It is your supposed, 'not doing anything', that let us get to the level of DID that is so severe only a few specialist around the world will even consider taking it on to treat.  You neglected our safety and failed to protect us from severe ongoing abuse. That is your job as parents.  Where were you when we needed you most?  You are not innocent, wether you admit to it or not, and unfortunately you had way to many accomplices . I don't know what you have gained from this sadistic behaviour,  but it has cost us a lot. Not that you would care.  But at least we do now. 

Still fighting

I just went back and read an old post from 2 years ago. The emotions and deep despair felt back then. We have come so much farther from then. We have seen so much worse since then. What strikes me though, is that we are still here. Still dealing with  the anxiety, flashbacks, body memories, pain, nightmares, sleepless nights and helplessness. Some things haven't changed, and maybe wont for a very ling time, but many things have. We are learning to accept the truth of our past, as heartbreaking as it is. We are learning to find a place in our day to day life for it. To find time and space to acknowledge our pain and past . We have put up monuments to remember those we lost. And we are trying very hard to remember that its OK for us to be broken. Its OK for us to need time to mourn that which we could never mourn before. Its OK for us to seek help and support when we need it. Its OK to take time to just be, even when others are working hard around us, we can still rest. Most of all we have learned that Love and hugs and safe kisses can heal so much. Feeling safe in the arms of someone we trust heals so much.
Its hard to fight for yourself after abuse, its hard to believe you are worthy of anything more than what life has already given you. But if you try, one step at a time, you start to see how truly amazing you are for just being alive today. How strong you are for making it through all that mess, and you start to believe that maybe just maybe, you can make it through a few more days.
Love still scares us immensely. We have no idea how to deal with it, but we are learning to accept it. Our brain just hasn't been wired for that, but it is learning. The brain CAN be rewired even at this later stage of life, and it is quite amazing.

Therapy

I don't know if we have ever written much about therapy, so here we go. We have been seeing the same therapist for about 5 years now. He has had quite a bit of experience with Multiples before but never with a system as large as ours, or having been through mind control. We have been quite a challenge to him, and I know at times he feels out of his depth. We found a specialist in Canada who is happy to consult with him on our needs and trauma. There is also another Psychiatrist in Australia that he is connecting to, in order to get some assistance. We have recommended several books on the subject which seem to help. He is learning a lot from us as well, and often asks us about how things work inside.
For us the challenge is Trust. It is never an easy thing to do as a survivor, but I think even more so with a man. (for us) It has taken us a LOT of time to feel we can trust him and open up. It is never easy and even after all these years we still don't switch in front of him very much.
With all that said we have come to rely on him immensely. He literally knows our darkest secrets. We have told him what we would NEVER want others to know. Things we have been through, things we have done or been forced to do. Things that still horrify us, and that we do our best to lock away deep inside. The things that we know our friends just couldn't cope with, no matter how willing they are to help. We know that our Therapist is trained in how to deal with, and where to seek help, if he finds it too much. He has at times found what we have told him to be shocking. We can see the look on his face. He admits it is shocking and overwhelming. But he never sensors us. No matter how horrific the truth is, he listens and takes it in.
We have learnt to trust his advice, when he reminds us that we had no choice, we were forced to do these things. He reminds us that even now the actions we take are very normal given how we were raised. He has become more than a trusted friend. He knows us so well. That gives us comfort and reassurance that he is here for us and will help us when things get beyond what we feel we can cope with. He hears our 'craziness' and finds the sanity. He is the stable rock when everything else seems so unstable.
I guess we are writing this today because we cant see our therapist for 4 weeks and haven't seen him for 2 weeks prior to that. He is on personal leave. We do not begrudge him leave as I know his work is exhausting, but it has definitely taken its toll on us so far. When we first found out about his leave we were shocked. It is  the longest we have been with out him ever. Then we felt abandoned. So left alone with no explanation as to why he was leaving us. Then we worried about what if he never comes back, what if he is seriously ill and cant return to work. What happens to us then? Will we even be able to find another therapist who will take on a Multiple let alone us. We also worried about how we are going to cope during this time of separation. (I had a feeling we would end up posting on here again...and here we are lol) Our friends have been great, and our partner keeps us as cuddled and comforted as is possible. But we know that the secrets are waiting inside. There was a flashback we had just before we found out about our Therapists leave. We know it was going to be one of those times we were leading into confronting secrets we did not want to face. Dark truths about family members that no one wants to remember. But for now that has been taken back inside until a better time. I don't know when, but I hope it is when we are safely back in Therapy.
This has been a long post, but I guess we needed to get it out. Without someone to hear our truth, we do feel alone. One day at a time.....that's all we have to do.

Dysfunctional

We've been awake for a couple of hours.  Lost in our thoughts. Lying here listening to our best friend sleep. We feel so dysfunctional,  as if we are too many to make sense of this life. We fake it a lot of the time but the truth is we really dont understand, or feel like we fit in. Our world just seems so different to yours.  We are so used to fighting,  what do u do when there is no war.

The Black dog and the Bear

As mother day approaches we find depression creeping in. We have been working very hard in therapy over the last year, and have been able to pull ourselves away from many of the negative influences in our life. We have been working hard on having fun (as strange as that might sound)
Life has felt so much better. We used to live with almost constant suicidal thoughts. They have been gone for over a year now, and it has been a great feeling to be living with enough hope that we are not constantly suicidal.
Up until a 3 days ago. I had noticed that we were slowly losing enthusiasm for life and lost our energy and interest in things we normally enjoy. We really just wanted to sleep or veg on the couch all day . Three days ago the thoughts of suicide came in like thunder. We were dissociating much more, and we were struggling to take our medication without taking too much. Even after a therapy session, where we had spent the whole time crying, we still had no answers. Our therapist suggested spending a few days with our friends to help us get through until the next session. Fortunately we have some really great people around us at the moment. Our best friend( for the sake of his anonymity we will call him Bear)  insisted we stay with him until we were feeling better able to cope. He confiscated our meds and let us have what we needed when we needed it. He kept us busy helping him with work, and he gave us time to be hugged and loved . We didn't have to worry about our life and it stressors. It was  like a small vacation at his house for 2 days. By the time we came home yesterday we felt very delicate and emotional. We were so very tired but we felt better. We still don't have access to all our medication, but we feel far less like we would use it improperly anyway. We are by no means better, but I hope that once mother's day has passed in 2 days things, will improve dramatically. We are forever grateful to Bear, His love care and support kept us going. We normally would, at times like these, hide at home, fighting to survive, sacred to move incase the wrong ones came out and did something permanently dangerous. With Bear's help we spent those really hard days  actually laughing and living. It's amazing how easy it was with help. This is the first time we have experienced such support, and it is unforgettable. Maybe this is what the outside world refers to as Love,,. ...we are still learning about that. I guess that some people are just born to be a blessing . Bear is one of those people. Thank you also to our other friends who have prayed, and talked to us, and reassured us that we are not alone, your input is greatly appreciated.
Maybe we don't have to be so strong standing on our own...maybe it is ok to be weak and let others help us along the way. It sure feels great when it is there but what happens when you put the walls down and it's not there. That's what scares me.....deep into my soul.