Disappearing me…

I haven’t posted here since October. Some of that is because life has become immensely challenging and I simply needed down time. The other reason is that the changes that have happened have left me essentially co-conscious 100% of the time. The more that I shift into a cohesive self, the less I feel like I need to talk about myself as a system and just want to figure out who a singular “me” is. The dissociation hasn’t stopped entirely, the derealization aspects still happen when I’m stressed and I occasionally still have memory problems, but this is more due to inattentiveness to what is going on because of my internal emotional states rather than blackouts due to switching.

My two sons have spent the past two months sick fighting re-occurring sinus infections and I have been sick on and off as well. My immune system went into a flareup and antibiotics I was put on in October put me into a porphyria attack that left me mentally jacked up for a few weeks until I could detox from that.

I, for personal reasons, have had to back away from any real in-depth involvement emotionally in my roommate’s situation. I care about her and still want the best for her, but I have had to pull back a bit and let her make her own way with things, partially because I realized that I can’t really help her since my perspective is irrelevant. The way I would do things doesn’t apply to how she sees the world and thus I only confuse the situation with irrelevant details.  I’m trying to bow out gracefully, realizing my mistake, while still trying to be a supportive friend.

The truth is that I think that the letter from my property mgmt group will probably prove to be a good move for her, although it is stressful. I doubt being a late-rising and independent single woman meshes well for any length of time with the fact that my family and my children are up by seven, even on the weekends. While we are kind and open with sharing resources simply by our nature, and I am seeing that it only furthers a sense of helplessness and fear of becoming dependent on others in her. I don’t want her to feel that way and I’m sure that as much as she is grateful, she also feels trapped by the situations that led her to us to begin with. I certainly don’t blame her for any of those negative feelings she has, but hope that her next move will prove to be a better environment for her.

Right now, I’m just looking to figure out my own life, who I am as a singular person (as much as I ever will be at least). I know that there are sleeping alters that I can shake awake every once and again for information I don’t currently retain for regular use, but those have never been primary alters that would ever want to run things: They were specialized for specific jobs or specific parts of my life and find it better to just remain dormant until I need them for information.

For right now I am a singular and am doing my best to not fracture any further. I have healed regarding the people who hurt me and have come to terms with not only feeling that pain, but now having it be conspicuously absent when I look for it. I’m at a point where I can figure out what I want to put there without having that pain as a comforting teddy bear that I carry with me. It is scary because I’ve held onto it for so long, but I’m glad it is gone. I can cry again. I can be emotionally impacted by the world around me and while that scares me because it seems so vulnerable to the cruelties of life, I’m glad to see the world in color again.

Friends and personal responsibility

Tags

angry, friends, personal responsibility, pissed, rant, so-called friends, stupidity

I will admit that this is going to turn into a bit of a rant because I’m a little peeved right now about a few things.

I hold personal responsibility to be an extremely important factor in life: Whether you are taking responsibility to make more of yourself than what shitty life circumstances have made you or simply managing money properly so that you can eat at the end of the week.

To be clear, I am not in any way talking about people who read or are linked to this blog at all. I am talking about another specific “friend” who has invited me out for a few weekends in a row. She spoke of having extra money about three weeks ago, so we could afford to go out and get drinks. It didn’t happen. We tried the Friday after that, but she called me, sick and unable to go out. We tried last Friday, but with a late MRI in Cinci for my older son, Puppy put his foot down and told me to go home and sleep, not go out (something I’m extremely grateful for because he knows me well enough to know when I need to stop pushing myself).

So Sunday evening rolls around and this individual gives me a call and suggests that we go out and peruse some Halloween stuff and perhaps pick up some stuff for her costume. I have not gone out with her and feel kind of bad for ditching on Friday, even though it was necessary. So I agree to go out with her. We wander around Foys (a local legend of Halloween Specialty Shops in the area), and then head to the Party City Halloween place. She picks up a few things and I notice that they give a military discount. I flash my ID to help her get 10% off her stuff (no big deal there). Her total though, with the discount, ends up being nearly $40. I’m hungry and haven’t had dinner so we run over to Chipotle. She says she is out of money, so I offer to grab some dinner for both of us which wasn’t too bad of a cost: I don’t mind grabbing the bill every once and again with friends…no big deal.

Then, she starts talking about how she has two dollars in her bank account (after calling to check her card balance) and won’t get paid until Friday and has less than a half tank of gas but has to drive to court and back for an accident from a month ago (she wasn’t driving but was a passenger in so has to be in court) and won’t have the gas to get to work if she’s doing that. So she asks me, since she has been driving me around to put ten dollars in her tank. I do it because I don’t want to create a scene about it, but I’m pretty pissed.

1. The distance she drove was less than one gallon of gasoline, even if her car gets shitty gas mileage.

2. If she didn’t have much gas/gas money why didn’t she ask me to drive my car around town?

3. I had just spent money on her voluntarily on her dinner because she didn’t have any money and then she asks for money for gas. If she had needed gas she should have asked me at the beginning if I could chip in a few bucks, not after I’ve already stretched my own budget by buying her dinner.

4. She didn’t have any money because she just spent $40 cash to pay for some stupid fairy wings, a cheap set of gloves, a necklace, and some earrings…if she didn’t have money to eat or get gas, why the fuck was she shopping?

Please don’t misunderstand me as saying people who don’t have money shouldn’t go out and have fun once and again (I know it is needed), but if your choice is between having gas to get to and from your mandatory life obligations/paying bills and getting stupid cheap bullshit, you pay the mandatory stuff first then worry about the other shit after that.

This pissed me off quite a bit. I’m very pissed when people abuse my willingness to help them out and the only reason they need help is because they were stupid.

This is in stark contrast to my roommate K who has extremely legitimate reasons to not have a ton of money: Missing work and having bills from the ER means no money. That, to me, says “I’m in a bad situation and doing my best, but life is just raping me in the face.” The other huge difference is that K offered to compensate me by doing some childcare which costs too much money, so that Puppy and I could have a night out. That, to me, demonstrates a sense of responsibility and willingness to work around a bad financial situation. I didn’t see that from this other person, it was like “oh yeah, I just remembered that I don’t have any money after spending $40 on shit…help me out because you have money…right?”

My family lives on a single military income with three dependents. Two of those dependents require constant shuttling to speech and occupational therapy appointments. We go out occasionally, but have drastically cut down, particularly with having utility bills increase by having a roommate that is having a hard time financially. These are things we are more than willing to accept because that is who we are: I’ve been homeless and won’t bitch about someone needing to be helped out who is responsible. Puppy is the same way: He will never be upset if he never sees a dime out of our roommate because he doesn’t expect kindness to be repaid.

However, we’re not a freaking charity. We’re not here to just support people financially who are being total dipshits. We make sacrifices from time to time so that we can help other people out, but watching someone blow money like that and then cry about not having enough money for gas and such just tweaked me to no end. I’ve tried to rationalize it out and be ok with it, but it just pisses me off right now. I don’t like thinking “you owe me” about people I’m friends with: I tend to treat my friends as chosen family who I would do anything for…but this girl makes me think “you owe me.”

 

Ryan

Tags

child support, children, DID, happy, Polyamory, ryan, support

To be perfectly honest I’m more okay than I have been in a long time. I know where I stand, and I know what I mean to Ryan (My younger son’s father). I hadn’t had this much time with him in four years, and even then it was only a few hours, stolen moments in between huge spans of waiting.

This was the third time that my son (O) has met his father. O is 3 and his father until this week has been stationed overseas in Korea and then Japan. The two previous times the O met his dad, we had maybe a total of an hour together each time. Both were related to Ryan’s deployment and us happening to live close to where he was shipping out and in from through the US. Ryan never seemed fully comfortable with the concept that this was his child, but always did well with O and was always sweet and comforting to me in those times.

Yet the chemistry never died between us. There is always this pull, this passion between us, despite him being the most vanilla guy I had ever dated. He was always a good guy, though not always a nice one. His biggest mistakes were trying too hard to please everyone, trying to not dig himself into a hole for loving more than one person at a time, but falling for people who were highly possessive. I was not really an exception to that rule as I am highly possessive, though not as jealous as many about sexual things.

In July of this year things changed. Raina came out and fussed at him, told him how he was a complicated issue to her, how he had shown care and interest in her but never really addressed the issue that O was his, that he couldn’t just show interest in me and expect me to be ok with it when O was being neglected. Surprisingly, it shook him and he started paying child support voluntarily at the end of July. It scared the crap out of us to have him suddenly so interested in being a dad because of the loss of control with O’s life, but he came here yesterday to sign and file an affidavit of paternity to legally assume responsibility for O.

Our time together was good. We curled up together and talked. He admitted to still being in love with me and that we would have to work something out with his wife about his time with me and our son. I know it won’t be easy on her accepting me as part of his life, but I know that I need him to be a part of my life, particularly his son’s life. I know that she will have a hard time sharing him, but I made sure to write her a nice message on FB yesterday after he left to thank her for letting him come on his own, to invite her to be a part of O’s life because she was such a significant part of Ryan’s life. I really feel much more secure about where I am with him, even though I know his wife has a long way to go to be really ok with the situation.

At least I know he loves me and loves our son. That is the most I could ask for in this situation. I don’t want all his time or affection, his wife is far more compatible with him for that and I would probably go nuts with all his little quirks on a day to day basis. Puppy is far more compatible with me for a long-term relationship and as he and I discussed last night, he knows I’m always coming home to him, that I won’t leave him and that I need him in my life. Puppy’s way of handling my situation with Ryan has been exactly how he should have; he has given me space and let me come to my own comfort level with things. He has never pushed me to get child support from Ryan, even though it would have helped us out quite a bit. He has never pushed me in one way or another whether I was involved with Ryan, even knowing the complexities of Ryan dating and then marrying the other woman he was involved with who has never been fully comfortable with my presence in his life.

I have to be thankful for both of them right now, Ryan for being able to mature enough about all this to volunteer his support for our child and want to be more involved in his life, and Puppy for knowing me well enough to let me make my own decisions and judgments without pushing me and making me do something stupid because I felt trapped; he knows that creating limits for me or pressuring me to do something is a huge trigger for me to do whatever I’m not supposed to do.

I was smiling yesterday, genuinely, happy. I still feel that today, just a sense of being ok with this, of really being ok and that things in my life are going better than they have been in a long time.

Anxious

Tags

dirty little secret, emotional support, lack of time, travel, younger son

Words really cannot describe how I feel about what is about to happen this week. Whether my feelings about this are rational or irrational I’m dealing with the fact that the father of my younger son is coming to visit sometime this week. I have seen him exactly twice in four years, for maybe a total of two hours. The first time was a brief lunch towards the end of 2010 on his way to a deployment in which he met his son for the first time. The second time was six months later in 2011 in which he happened to need a place to stay when his flight plans changed suddenly and needed a place to sleep for a few hours when returning from deployment.

Our contact outside of that has been minimal. His wife dislikes me and he works constantly. He has been on the other side of the world (rather literally) for the past four years so matching up for actually discussing things, having skype sessions or anything like that has happened few enough times over the past four years I can count them on one hand. Yet we have had a few IM discussions when one of us is up late and we both end up online at the same time. The tension is still always there, the fact that we both feel this chemistry with one another doesn’t change.

Nothing played out during those times we were alone, partially because of a lack of time, partially because the kids were around, partially because I have too many conflicted emotions about him in general. I gave in a bit and did cuddle with him both times because I needed the emotional support, needed to feel ok, to feel loved, but even that just fucked me up more. He can’t give me what I want and can’t be what I need him to be. So I am stuck with someone in my life who loves me but can’t/won’t acknowledge the fact that he loves me and that we have a son together.

I am his dirty little secret: I’m the woman “on the side” who his wife knows about, but none of his family. She tolerates my presence in his life only because she can’t stand the thought of losing him. It has been easy for her in the past four years, easy because we’ve been on opposite time zones, we’ve been on far ends of the earth from one another and he had been neglecting all responsibility regarding his son until two months ago when I bitched him out for it.

Now, he is trying to be a decent person, trying to make up for it, trying to do the right thing, but it only makes it that much more complicated for me. His presence in the local area due to his job moving to WA and him visiting family in the area now that he is back in the U.S. only makes my anxiety that much more intense. The fact that his wife is demanding to join him on this little excursion to see me is even more disconcerting.

I don’t want to deal with her. I don’t want to face her. I don’t want to have to play nice and act distant from him when I really need to talk frankly about things regarding him wanting his name on our son’s birth certificate and what he wants out of that action. I don’t want to have to worry about saying the wrong thing or dealing with that tension I have with him when she is around. I don’t want to feel like I can’t even get a hug from him because of her being there. I don’t want to feel like the scared alone little kid that I do right now because I can’t even seek comfort from someone who has been a friend to me in some of the worst times I’ve gone through.

Whether or not we are more than friends. Whether or not we have a physical connection together, which I’m sure we will never lose, we are still friends. He is still someone I love and still someone I want to feel ok with. However, with her there I’ll never be able to say what I need to, never be able to express what I want to him. He is the father of my younger son; the truth of the matter is that he and I are forever connected because of that. Yet, this harsh truth of being in love with someone who can’t/won’t acknowledge me or our son to anyone hurts beyond words I can give to describe it.

Part of me wishes that he would just not want to be involved…then I could demonize him; then I could just have him out of my life with no complications. He could have his wife and his own life and I would at least be able to heal because he wanted nothing. Yet, he isn’t being a jerk and isn’t trying to distance himself from his son. This fact is both great and is killing me at the same time: His interest in his son only makes it that much harder for me, that much harder for me to handle the complications and drama of his wife and her hatred of me. It is that much harder for me to handle the fact that he is still here, and still admits to loving me, although he wants the stability of having his wife and loves her too.

I’m not monogamous so I can understand loving more than one person at the same time, but his wife doesn’t understand that, and thus we are stuck. She is jealous, concerned, bothered by the fact that he and I still have a connection. She wants me gone, is angry that he has volunteered to pay me child support (technically less than what the state would demand if it went through the courts), is unhappy that I’m still involved in his life at all.

Now she wants to be here, wants to be present when he is with his son. What do I do about this? I don’t know. I understand that she thinks he will cheat. I understand that I can’t guarantee it wouldn’t happen because I know how he and I are together. I know which one of us is drawn to him and she is hard to control when she has been denied so much sexually for so long because I (Raina) have enforced standards for sexual partners for the body.

Now, this woman wants to be here and I can’t even cry about anything or expect him to be honest and forthright about how he feels about things because he will censor himself in front of his wife so as to not hurt her. Yet, if he says that she can’t be there he is digging himself a hole of suspicion and more drama at home for himself. Either way I’m screwed because if she is here then I have to control myself to a point where I’m going to break down as soon as they leave and won’t get good feedback from him about any questions I’ll actually be able to ask with her present. If she’s not there then I am dealing with the fact that I still have a connection to him and will likely be switchy as fuck and will emotionally break down as soon as he leaves whether or not he and I do anything together.

I can’t even put all of this feeling into words no matter how hard I try…I’m overwhelmed, lonely, frustrated, hopeless, despairing, and feeling like no matter what I do or what he does, I’m always going to be the one who gets screwed over by this mess. I’m not looking forward to this week.

Anger and Frustration

People don’t seem to realize that I’m a person who gives all of myself to the people I love. I calmly and (at least usually) happily give to the people I care about with little concern about my own needs and wants. I tend to believe that the needs of others come before my own and it makes me happy to make them happy. This normal feedback loop has been disrupted of late because of how miserable everyone has been around me.

Puppy is working 60+ hrs a week, usually closer to 80 hrs a week, particularly if you count his continual Saturday shifts at Habitat. K has been sick for nearly two weeks now and, while getting somewhat better, is still being hit hard by the combo of creeping crud hitting her when her immune system is already weak. The kids have been sick and have alternated between extremely sick to the point of crying, whining, and being miserable, and being sick but bouncing off the fucking walls crazy. I have been doing exams, finals, term papers, school bullshit that I have another eight weeks of starting Monday.

This is what I see in regards to the people in my life compared to me:

K has friends and she is constantly being asked places by people. I’m glad for her in this regard as she needs the happy distractions. She is kind of like me in the fact that her friends can also be very emotionally needy at times that becomes more of a chore, but it is an understandable part of the whole friendship gig.

Puppy doesn’t have a social life really: He is like his mother in the fact that “relaxation” means doing another project. I don’t have a problem with this as he has made a friend of the contractor he works with at Habitat and normally has eight hours a week where he can go build houses and do what he is told and not have to worry about the drama and politics of his workplace.

The kids have school: While the kids have missed school the past two weeks on and off because of illness, generally they have some time a week where they are able to be out and see people their own age. They thrive on this and really seem to hate the weekends because they can’t be with friends.

Then there is me: I’m at home all but maybe two hours per week when I take the kids to their therapy sessions. I walk to the bus stop each morning to take the kids to school, have to be home before noon to pick up the younger one from his half-days bus. Have to be home again before three thirty for the older one’s bus. Have to make dinner, have to get the house picked up or Puppy comes home and gets overly upset about everything because he hates coming  home to a messy house.

I have to do my school work, a full-time course load. I have to clean. I have to cook. I have to sort and do laundry. I have to clean up after two small boys. I have to care for a kitten and dog. I have to make sure that everyone has everything they need for the next day. I have to do everything and I don’t get a break.

I am hitting my breaking point: Who am I kidding? I hit my breaking point a while back and am just barely keeping my head above water long enough to gasp for breath, scream, and go under again. I’m handling remarkably well considering, but I always do: I’m the one who has to have it together because everyone relies on me. Nobody wants to see me angry, nobody wants to see what happens when I break, nobody.

The cracks are showing though, the anger seeps through. I can’t control it as well when I’m sick, when the z-pack making me itch and feel awful. My GI tract is a nightmare right now, a side-effect of the z-pack as well. I have three more days of the pills and hopefully after that I can start returning to normal…well whatever fucked-up approximation I can have thereof.

The Creeping Crud

I apologize to all who take the time to read here regularly. The past two weeks has been full of suck. The Creeping Crud has descended upon our house and everyone is sick. The kids have been bringing home every virus, cold, and bug known to mankind from school. Puppy works in a hospital and has been bringing home everything there, and between that cesspool of germ-breeding, is K and myself who both have weakened immune systems.

K has been in and out of the ER twice this week. The first gave her fluids and sent her home, the second went “Holy shit your throat is majorly jacked up!” They gave her a “peanut butter” shot (i.e. hip injection antibiotic) and threw some steroids her way to help her system combat the massive number of things going on. Essentially the diagnosis was “Strep throat…potentially mono…and other stuff.” I’ve already had mono so I’m less than concerned about it (probably why I’m doing better than she is) but I went in and got put on a z-pack of antibiotics for strep and “other stuff” since the NP I went to realized that I had similar symptoms to someone else in my house who already was DX’d with strep.

I’m now laying in bed typing, needing to do finals but unable to focus enough to do them.

Long ago in a land far away, a time of my life I refer to as living in “The House” (i.e. the abusive cult-like situation) we deemed consistent and never ending colds to be “The Creeping Crud” when most of us got mono that fall and also every other virus and bug known to man due to the horrid conditions of the house: little heat, fleas, cockroaches, and various other issues of unsanitary and toxic living issues.

Since then, I’ve called it as such and it seems a reasonable term because it seems like this never ends: One of us gets better for a few days only to have a fever, GI issues, or problems keeping food down reappear a day or two later. It is creeping along fucking with us in horrid ways and the kids have already missed more than six days of school in the first month of school.

I’m exhausted and I have to do finals. New classes start Monday.

FML

Four miles of Anger

Tags

alters, Anger, DID, drill sergeant, exercise, health, healthy-living, kids, mental-health, school, weight

I walked four miles last night…I’m paying for it today.

I got angry and switchy last night and couldn’t stay in the house. One of the alters I haven’t seen in a while (The Drill Sergeant) came out and started berating me for the fact that I’ve let myself get to this point physically, a little over a hundred pounds heavier than my “best” weight while I was Active Duty.

What that alter fails to recognize is that I was working out two hours a day six days a week and eating nearly nothing during that time to maintain that weight. The fact that I’ve been severely injured and have hardware in my left foot is irrelevant to that alter as he views anything other than pushing through it and “getting over it” to be excuses. 

The realistic view is that I should lose about 60-70lbs over time, but that I have significant limitations regarding my metabolic health, my injuries and connective tissue disorder, and my ability to consistently work out without flaring my auto-immune issues. Yep, I’m a fucking mess. Ideally I’d love to be out of the 200s and somewhere around 175-185, but it seems to be slow going. I’ve lost about ten pounds in the past two months, but am hoping to keep going and get myself back down towards a more reasonable weight/size. I’m not ashamed that I’m a size 20, but I’d much prefer to be a size 16 again where my joints are not constantly being taxed by the extra weight (despite 50lbs of it being a side-effect of the meds they put me on for the damn joint pain to begin with!!!)

I made it the four miles (two miles to the end of the sidewalk towards Kroger from my house and then 2 back), but today have had a hell of a time walking at all. I managed to get around Walmart because I used a cart the whole time, putting weight on my arms rather than fully on my legs. I’m hurting like hell, and have been trying to push through because I know tomorrow will be worse if I haven’t gotten up and moved around today.

The kids are still sick, although the older one has been fine with taking some cough syrup in the morning and heading off to school. Hopefully by Monday they’ll be themselves again and my last week of classes will be calmer. I finished one term paper and submitted it, but now have to finish the other one for the twatface Criminal Profiling professor.

 

Disappointed again…

Tags

BDSM, being social, depressed, DID, Kink, Polyamory, Raina, sara, sucking at life

Today sucked. To be honest, tonight was ok, but really the aftermath of it is sucking pretty hard. I had the kids home with me because the school system demands that if you get sent home for getting sick (like my older son did on Monday) that you have to miss the day after that as well so you’re somehow magically better.

It doesn’t matter that he got sick because he was anxious and had motion sickness, the school system assumes a virus and sends him home for a minimum of 24 hours past when he was sent home. So, instead of having one child half a day I had one child full time Monday (while trying to write two term papers), one half time. Today I said “Fuck it” and just had the younger one stay home too because I didn’t feel like getting him ready and fighting the other one (who isn’t sick) about not being able to go to school when it was pouring down rain this morning and he’s only be gone for two hours or so anyhow for pre-k.

Needless to say, writing a fucking term paper while having to constantly referee two children is not a walk in the park. I tried to help K out by exchanging an item that wasn’t working that she bought, but Petsmart is being a douche and wants a receipt despite us just wanting to do an even-exchange. As I don’t know where the receipt is, I spent time trying to get them to look up the purchase info so we could do the exchange and it still hasn’t been resolved.

I’m getting tired of doing everything for everyone and just having it fucking blow up on me the minute I do something for myself.

I went out tonight because I have been fucking stressed, switchy, and The Student/The Psychologist have been MIA in the system since I saw the lawyer and made my previous post. That fact has made it fucking insane to try and write papers on criminal psychology and criminal investigations when I don’t know what the fuck they do about any of this shit. I needed a break. I decided to go out when he invited me sometime this afternoon before anyone got home.

The guy was somebody I met on FL and seemed reasonable enough. However, there was no connection. This guy was friendly and ok, but really he had no real depth of character to him, nothing special or interesting about him that made me want to do anything other than pat him on the head and leave. Understand, he is a good guy and a good conversationalist, but I’ve not been in a good head space right now and he wasn’t the person I needed to talk to tonight.

In addition to all this, K got in a car accident today: It wasn’t anything major, but enough to stir up the system and freak her out (rightly so, its a fucking car accident). She got home and I felt like a bitch just going “oh ok, that sucks but I’m headed out now.” The FB posts about it made me feel like shit because one of her friends was like “oh yeah SD will probably be at home waiting with a strong drink if you need it” and K was just like “No, she’s going out.”

I don’t even think her intent was to be pissed about me going out, but it feels like a slap in the face because the minute I focus on myself, it is like I’m letting somebody down and not being there for them.

Let me clarify: I don’t go out. I used to go out once a week when I ran the spiritual group and earlier this year I was headed out maybe twice a week when I was doing a pub night with friends on Tuesdays. However, I’ve dropped both of those activities. I don’t go out, I don’t have friends, I don’t have any fucking life other than this 800sq ft. house with two kids, two dogs, two roommates (one being my husband), and a kitten. My life is nothing but taking care of people who come into this house, cleaning the house, doing laundry, doing dishes, dealing with children, and dealing with school things related to children.

I go out for one night and both my husband and K are triggered for various reasons and now I’m triggery as fuck because of disappointment with tonight not going differently (i.e. having some kind of chemistry or some kind of spark at all) and because of some other scenarios that are playing out with K.

Let me state first that 1. I am happy for K in this scenario 2. The issues I have with this situation have absolutely nothing to do with her or how this happened and everything to do with my own insecurities and inability to feel confidence in my own body and appearance. 3. My astoundingly disappointed and depressive Sara is adding to this current state of mind because her needs have not been met and she feels utterly useless and ugly.

The situation is one that I’ll let K share if she so wishes. It isn’t my business to post her life on here, but what is relevant is that my not-so-great connection this evening has brought me to a place where I feel very much like the ugly and awkward person who can only attract goofballs, abusers, and losers rather than anyone that I’d actually want to be with or be attracted to. This isn’t to say that everyone I attract is bad, but that it seems that the ones who like me have absolutely no chemistry with me and the ones I like are looking for someone who very definitely isn’t me in looks, body type, etc.

I just want a connection, some chemistry and passion, someone who I can actually date and be romantic with, someone I can let out some of the kinky side with and actually have it work. But I don’t play lightly…the system gets fucked up when we play without having a safe emotional bond there and I’m not risking Sara or the other internals to get sex when I know that the emotional bond is what allows them to differentiate their kink from the kinky abuse we suffered. I desperately need the sexual chemistry with someone, but I need more than just the sex: I need the real devotion of a loving partner that happens to also like kink, not just kinkyfuckery in random play.

I’m depressed, lonely, and desperately want a Dom to curl up around me and let me feel safe and not in charge all the time for once in my life. I’m tired of having nothing but responsibility and absolutely nothing fun that works out for me. I’m tired of having all the duds and never the fireworks that everyone else seems to get. The last time I had fireworks and real passion and chemistry with someone it was in 2007…Its about fucking time that I get something fun in my life, not just responsibility and bullshit every damn day.

Total meltdown…

Ok, it had been some time since we last had a full triggered, curl up in a ball and just freaking melt down into uncontrollable sobbing. Today apparently was the day for me to return to such a feeling…I haven’t missed it.

We’ll start with the fact that this morning I had a meeting with a lawyer. I met with the lawyer because I have unresolved bullshit that pertains to my highly abusive and emotionally manipulative ex that I was with for seven years. Beyond needing to get my children’s names changed so that they don’t have his last name, I also have a shared property that was not handled as part of the divorce because NC law does the property settlement separately from the divorce decree. Because my ex is a sniveling douchenozzle he already has cause a foreclosure of the house we had owned together and fucked my credit that way. However, because of his unwillingness to do anything that might benefit me, even if it would also benefit him, I have 1300 in collections right now that is technically his responsibility.

The property is owned outright so it isn’t another mortgage, but there are annual dues that end up costing 1k a year for two weeks of vacation time. I don’t want the property, but neither does he and he is more than willing to screw me over, even if it screws his own credit in the process.

Nonetheless, I was talking to the lawyer about these situations, something that is already highly triggering to me in general. I held my shit together for the most part (I got a bit switchy at the end, but not in such a way that the lawyer thought I was nuts or anything…I hope!) I know that after that I was extremely switchy and we went for coffee at Starbucks. One of their machines was broken so I sat completely dissociated for half an hour waiting for my order to be filled and then headed back home in time for my younger son to get home.

I don’t really know what the afternoon entailed other than a trip to Sams Club, picking up my older son, taking both the boys to their speech therapy group, and talking quite vividly with another person in the waiting room. I seemed to be holding it together pretty well until my husband got triggered by the kids thumping/kicking the walls when they were supposed to be sleeping. He has PTSD from his deployments and any sound that is similar to explosions, gunfire, or is just a loud thudding noise will set him off. Sadly, him being set off by the kids and yelling at them very quickly shoved me off that cliff I’d been teetering on all day.

I have two new parallel scratches down my arm from my fingernails when I first dissociated and tried to gain control again, but I couldn’t do it: His anger was more than just a slight push, it shoved me hard and head-first into the canyon of emotions, pain, and trauma that I’d managed to avoid the whole day.

I don’t know how long I just lay there on the bed sobbing, sobbing like the world was ending, sobbing until I couldn’t breathe and then sobbing some more. He tried to talk to me, but it only made it worse at first, only made me more scared and triggered. Finally I managed to get control and calm myself down. I could talk a few words here and there and he made a joke, reminding me that this was him, not the ex who would do that and then just use whatever altered state he brought out to use me or push for sex.

The rest of the evening has been ok, but I’m still shaken up right now. I’ve not been that triggered in some time. Puppy told me that I broke down like this maybe three or four months ago, but I don’t remember it so it is hard for me to say: He’s not so good at reading my emotions or levels of them and even though I know I had been triggered by a certain dipshit stalker of K earlier, I don’t think he had me going badly enough that I was like this…even he doesn’t trigger me as much as dealing with anything related to my ex does.

I’m just a bit embarrassed and worried about how that interaction affected K, our roommate, because she was witness to one degree or another the entire scenario. I haven’t let anyone else see me or be near me when that kind of thing happens, and the fact that she was in the house makes me extremely embarrassed because I don’t like people knowing just how broken I am. I mean I know that she is a multiple too, but I’ve always been the one taking care of everyone else, having someone who sees me that vulnerable just scares the shit out of me and makes me want to hide all the more.

I guess this is just the life when you have three adults in a house, two who are multiples with PTSD and one who has combat-related PTSD. We’re bound to set each other off with our triggers at some point, but today was the first time I was set off this badly by Puppy, even though it was mostly the stuff from earlier in the day that really caused it.

“You’re different, mommy.”

Tags

alters, Anger, DID, fragments, kids, mom stuff, sara

The words “You’re different, mommy,” were uttered this morning by my older son (age 5) at the bus stop. He was right. I was different this morning. I was somehow triggered this morning and had a very angry fragment that was pushing out and being intolerant of the kids simply being kids this morning. Normally I have been in a reasonably good mood for the kids (usually because Sara does the morning stuff), have been tolerant, but the fact that my foot has been in constant pain with these weather changes, that I’m seemingly fighting off cold after cold with the kids being in school, and the fact that I had soy last night that I apparently reacted to allergically made for a shit morning.

It isn’t just that I was in a bad mood: A bad mood doesn’t appear and disappear this quickly. I felt the switch as I was getting ready. I was telling my older son to get socks for him and his brother and was putting pants on the younger one. I suddenly wanted to punch my son in the face for not doing things quickly enough, wanted to yell at him, to make him understand that I wasn’t here to tolerate such inadequate responses to my requests.

I didn’t do these things, but I was terse, was hurrying them out the door, wasn’t calm, happy, or ok with the pace they were walking to the bus stop. We got there and my older son did something he wasn’t supposed to. I told him to get back on the sidewalk and during this exchange I see him looking at me, evaluating. The angry part just wanted to lash out at him for making faces as me (as he scrunches his face when thinking like that). But he evaluated for a minute and those words came out of his mouth.

I was stunned: He knew. He knew it wasn’t me, knew that something was off. It scared the fragment back out of the front and put Sara back in control of the situation. It was the first time someone has recognized an alter state like that, and to have it be my five year old was just scary to the system. It freaked everyone out because they’re not used to being noticed and wondered just how much those little eyes are seeing in me, just how much he knows in watching me. I don’t mean that he understands alter states or the like, but the fact that he knew enough to say, “You’re different,” makes me wonder how much he is noticing. He saw the change, knew that the one who normally interacts with him wasn’t there.

The exchange knocked me back to baseline again and I’ve been fine since, being able to smile, wave bye, and see him smiling back at me before he went away on the bus. He seemed to know that his friendly mom was back before heading off to school, and that at least makes me feel better. He is too perceptive for his own good at times, but this time his awareness made me able to return back to baseline without a huge struggle to get there. I just worry now how much he will know as the years go by, how much he will see and realize, and how much I should tell him about these sides of me that he is bound to recognize as time passes.