Tag Archives: Dissociative identity disorder

Never ever again

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6

He had been nagging me that he felt “unequal” in the fact that I had not yet been in his apartment. I pointed out that we had been dating less than two weeks, but I think the statement fell on deaf ears. Finally, on Saturday, I felt ready to venture into his apartment.

On Saturday night I would have preferred to go listen to an Irish band play nearby, but I knew he wasn’t ready for that kind of outing as he does not go out a lot because of his anxiety. Still, I didn’t mind the prospect of having a cozy Saturday night with him.

There was an ominous sign from the start. For one thing, you could not fully open the front door. This was because a huge box that previously held a 60 some-odd inch flat screen TV was in the hallway leading to the doorway. It had been there long enough that it was full of paper trash. You could not walk in the door in a straight forward manner. You had to enter sideways because of the box that was in the way.

Right away, my peeps did not like this. But I was so taken aback that I did not notice the internal chaos inside of me. There was too much going on all at once. The way I had to enter his apartment reminded me of my childhood home that had boxes of magazines from floor to ceiling in every hallway. I always had to walk sideways in hallways at my house as a child.

Walking further into his apartment sent me into fuzzy mode. There was stuff everywhere, in every available crevice. When I finally sat down I had these 4 foot speakers with scary looking gargoyles on top of them staring back at me. The apartment gave me the sense that it was tightening its grip on me.

We watched a movie he had downloaded for me. But through out the movie I twitched and shook rather painfully. Mercifully, the movie was only an hour and a half long.

When I rose from the couch I felt shaky and dizzy. Once I got out of the apartment I had to hold on to the hallway walls in order to make it out of the building. I felt drunk, though that wasn’t possible because I had not drank a thing in that dreaded place.

He followed me out to my car. Surprisingly, once I got inside my car I started to feel like myself again. The drunk feeling left my body. I was no longer twitchy or shaking. I even got my voice back. In the moment my voice returned I turned to him, and said without thinking twice, “I can never go back in there.”

The abruptness of my statement shocked me, and him as well. But as soon as I said it I knew it was true, and my body relaxed even further.

He then said to me, “Why should I be surprised? My ten year old daughter won’t even spend the night.”

Then he commented that 5 am comes around quickly, and he needed to go so that he could get enough sleep for work tomorrow. And before I could respond, he flew out of my car, and ran back into his apartment building.

I think there’s the possibility that he expected to come after him when he ran off. But I don’t play those games. I drove away, and the further I got from his place the calmer my peeps became. No worries, kiddos, we are never ever going back in there again. I promise.

A strange peace

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8

Ever since I got under the table in Doc’s office things have been strangely more peaceful for me. I’ve no idea if there is any correlation to my last session with Doc, or if it’s just a coincidence. At any rate, I’ll take it.

I’ve been trying to find the gift in awareness of the extent of my dissociative disorder. I don’t see the gift in having it, but I do see the gift in now becoming aware of it. Although I don’t like that there’s another thing to add to my “crazy” bucket, so many things are now starting to make sense for me.

Now that I understand that the rattle of noises in my head is really various “inside voices” I surprisingly feel less crazy. I now feel like I have far less internal secrets. I never told a soul about the inner voices in my head, or the part of me that I knew was little.

I hope the good vibes keep chugging along for me because it is a trying week at work. I have a presentation on Thursday that will be brutal. It’s tough when you have a job you don’t like. I try to be grateful, but it is particularly hard this week. I also try to veer away from the feeling that this job is a punishment for my past sins. That’s the tendency my head tends to land when I’m hating this job, and missing Human Resources.

It’s nice to feel grateful, instead of the usual muck of despair. I’ll take it.

Under the table

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7

English: Wooden kitchen table and chairs

Today I told Doc what I learned from Cate last week. He listened, and then I just heard the world “trauma” and I started shaking badly. He then asked, “Is someone having a hard time? What can I do to help?” I could feel that “the little one” wanted to get under the table next to me, and I told Doc that I was aware of this. She really wanted to get under that table. But I resisted. It was weird, not normal. Loco. Loca. Loony. No! We will not get under the table.

But she insisted, and the more she insisted, the more I shook. The more I dug my heels in, the harder I shook. Something had to give. Then Doc said, “I invite you to get under the table if that will help.” You get to a point sometimes in life when you run out of the plausible normal-sounding options. When you reach this point you are at the end of your rope, and you start entertaining those options that seemed crazy and insane because you are desperate for some kind of peace. This was that kind of moment for me.

I leapt for that table like a lifeline, so much so that I almost hit my head on the table. I feared getting under the table because I didn’t want to “lose myself.” I was afraid of having a dissociative experience that I would not recall, like I had last week. Surprisingly, what happened is that my body became peaceful the very moment I got under that table. I felt peaceful, and then very sleepy. I could have slept under that table  for hours.

We continued our session with me under the table. It was weird, but it worked, and I shook a whole lot less. If someone told me this morning that I would end my day speaking to my psychiatrist from under a table, I would have laughed at the improbability of that scenario. You just never know what works.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)