Tag Archives: ptsd

The compartmentalized life

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With dissociation, life is so often only partially lived, 1/10, 1/3, 1/2, 3/4, depending on how we are coping with our condition. I might even be at the 2/3 point right now. It’s eye opening to realize that some of my choices have not been fully my own. I realize that all of these parts are part of me, but I consider true choices as ones that I make as Beatriz and no one else.

DID has kept me from a full life. Dissociation does that. It compartmentalizes your life in such an organized fashion that you don’t experience all of it. You are shut out, but you don’t even know it.

Yesterday as I was driving I had another revelation. Doc has said that they will come if I am open to them. It sounds like that is indeed coming true because yesterday was the first day I’ve been truly and fully open to memories and answers.

I was driving to get gas, and I felt Letty start to cry. It’s such a strange sensation to know that I, Beatriz, am okay and calm, yet another part of me, Letty, is upset.

“Letty, honey, what is it?”

“I am sorry. I am so sorry. It’s my fault … It’s my fault that we ran out from the place in New York with Michael.”

And in that instant I knew what she was talking about. I knew she meant the night almost three years ago I ran out of a club on the Lower East Side with Michael, the night I was so dissociative that I didn’t know what was going on, just that I was in a fog and in a state of fear that made no sense.

As I grasp this realization I also have a flash of Sabrina and Belle before me. I learn that Sabrina was the one who desperately wanted a drink. Belle wanted to die during that entire situation. No wonder I was such a mess at the time as I was a musical chair of selves revolving in and out at that club. It is no wonder I felt like passing out at times that night.

I’m taking all of this in when I realize that Letty is still crying, and still trying to talk to me.

“I am sorry, sorry, sorry … I am the one who ran out from there. I scared Michael …”

“Honey, we all scared Michael, not just you. It was a scary thing that happened for everyone. It’s no one’s fault. I didn’t know about you guys so that I could help you. If I had known I would have helped everyone. I am the one who is sorry, sweetie. We didn’t know what we didn’t know. We have to forgive ourselves sweetheart because no one meant any harm that night, not you, not Belle, not Sabrina, not me, and not Michael. Everyone was just doing their own job. Your job is to keep a look out, and make sure everyone is safe. You were trying to do that. Sabrina’s job is to escape from what is happening using things like drinking. Belle’s job is to hold all of our bad yucky feelings, and she was doing that very thing. All of you did your job. How can you be in trouble for that? Now that I know about you guys we are working together so that things like that don’t happen again.”

“Will Michael be mad when finds out?”

“I really don’t think so, honey. Remember how Michael told you the other night that real friends understand? I think this is one of those situations where a real friend will understand what happened. He’s a real friend. There may have been times when he was scared, but, even in those times, he was always our friend.”

Over and over again in my mind I have regretted that night, and blamed myself for the way things played out afterwards. With this revelation I learned that our night on the Lower East Side could only end the way it did. Not knowing about the system meant that everyone continued to operate and do their own thing. There is no other way that night could have ended given the knowledge I did not possess.

I may not have ever learned about my DID if I did not go through all that pain and confusion.

It had to happen they way it happened.

You are the weird one between the two of us

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Let’s get one thing straight: You are the weird one between the two of us.

I was encouraged by your “wink” on Match.com last month. You had a certain cute nerdiness that I like, such as the fact that you knew right away which David Foster Wallace essay I was describing to you. “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again” confirms my belief that a cruise vacation should never be in my future. Ever.

When your profile mentioned a liking for David Foster Wallace, how could I resist such a like for literary brilliance?

But then I noticed what you wrote under occupation: therapist.

Crap and fuck, as there would be no way to gloss over the details of my DID diagnosis. It gave me pause as I wasn’t exactly thrilled at the thought of dating a therapist, but you liked David Foster Wallace!

We had a brilliant first date of nerdy talk for 5+ hours at the coffee shop.

I loved the fact that though you majored in film in undergrad you had never seen any of my favorite movies. Of the five I listed, you had only heard of two. I loved that I stumped you that way, though I didn’t do it on purpose. Those movies really are among my favorites: Happy Go Lucky, Pane e Tulipani (Bread and Tulips), Spanglish, Johnny Stecchino, and Vicky Christina Barcelona.

Sometimes it’s fun to be weird.

And then, other times, it’s far less fun.

For example, admitting to you that I have dissociative identity disorder was certainly less than fun. It was one of those moments when you feel all of the weirdness inside and outside of you like a Cloak of Weirdness you can’t shake off no matter how hard you try.

You said to me that you “didn’t know about that …” And it got all weird. You said something about waking up with a knife to your throat, or rather you “jokingly” asked if that would ever happen. You asked rhetorically when you really wanted an actual answer from me.

I let you sit with the discomfort of your stupid rhetorical question.

Get rid of your stupid hollywood images of DID.

For fuck’s sake, I’m a professional with a job with gobs of responsibility, and I am so non-violent I can’t even stomach many violent movies. So, no, you don’t have to worry about waking up with such a situation.

Why the hell did I let the words hang like that?

Why didn’t I say to you, “Hey! You’re a fucking THERAPIST. Don’t be all weird on me for something I never asked for, AND for something that I’m working on … AND get lost, lose my number!

That is what I should have said.

Instead I let it go. I understood the reluctance to believe because I had the same reluctance. I thought if you just see me as I am it will be fine.

But no, everything was colored with the DID, the remarks, the conversations, the non-verbals … it became the weird thing in the room between us.

Things were more fun before DID came into our conversations.

I fear that I will eventually lose my glass-half-full optimism.

And, then I learned just how weird YOU are.

For instance, there’s no plainer way to put this, but you’re a dick.

I said to you this week that I was disappointed because I lost my first case ever in my career. I wasn’t a mess about it, but I was disappointed, and surprised as I believed in my case.

You said to me if no one died then it was a good day.

That was a jerky thing to say. Professional disappointment is normal and okay. You just needed to be mildly supportive of me. Even a simple “I’m sorry to hear that” would have sufficed.

When I told you that we had a drug situation at work, and I laughed at telling you that I had no idea that the word “roach” was slang for marijuana you told me I should be embarrassed that I didn’t know what that word meant.

Really? I should be embarrassed? Hell no, I am fine with not knowing that. It’s not like I work in law enforcement or narcotics. I work in human resources, and I’m so legalistic I reel at the thought of doing anything remotely illegal. I would have been great for the military if I wasn’t such a pacifist and left-leaning feminist. They would have loved my propensity for rules and structure.

Nope, you are the one who should be embarrassed, mister. You should be embarrassed because you really aren’t very empathetic or kind or understanding. Maybe you use it all up at work, but from what I’ve seen, you’re all tapped out.

And, I’m out.

Then and Now

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Four years ago I faced the one year anniversary of my sexual assault, and I was barely in a better place from the prior year. At the one year mark, my PTSD was overloading my brain with triggers.

I was on a business trip four years ago that had me triggered beyond recognition. It was raining hard, the kind of hard rain that leaves very little visibility, and it was pitch black dark. The hard rain scared me, and I could barely drive. At one point I realized that it was taking all my energy just to drive 50 mph on the highway, not safe at all. I pulled over at a rest stop for a while, but I was still freaked out when I resumed driving. In the end I decided to find a hotel to stay in, though I was only an hour away from home. But I knew it wasn’t safe for me to continue driving.

That whole experience caused a barrel of stress after the trip, as my employer at the time did not want to pay for an extra hotel night when I was an hour away from home. I started getting more serious about my treatment after that trip. Eventually I left this job because I realized that all of the travel was getting in the way of my appointments.

Now I am back doing the kind of work I was doing four years ago, but with a different employer. This position has travel, though not as much as my previous position. Without realizing it, this past week, I was reliving the trip from four years ago. I found myself on the same highway with heavy rain, and a dark night. But this time I understood myself better. I knew that some of the peeps inside were scared, and this is why my body was in stress mode.

When the rain was coming down at a ferocious rate, and I couldn’t see a thing, and I could feel myself start to freak out internally something just snapped me out of the scared mode, and I just said “NO! We are not going to die like this on a road to nowhere with no one around. We are getting out of this, and we’re having room service when we get to the hotel. You hear me? Room service! We’re living through this thing!”

Blessedly we made it to the hotel without incident. I ordered a seltzer and a cobb salad for dinner, and we were so happy to be alive, and safe, and dry.

Then the next morning I had my meeting, and headed home with drier weather and calmer skies. I’ve traveled this road a number of times since that sexual assault four years ago, but this was the first time I noticed the hotel, THE hotel where it all happened. It’s surely been visible from the road all these years as I’ve passed it by. But this was the first time I ever noticed it since that day.

I blinked. Could this really be the place? I stared as I drove by, and, yes, indeed, it was.

What happened next surprised me.

I stared at it, and drove on.