Where the rubber meets the road
Okay, so this is going to be a difficult couple of posts to do. I am crossing my paws I manage to do it all accurately and with as little observer bias as possible and in a way that doesn’t cost me any more friendships.
Whoever you are, you might want to start with Assume Good Faith. I don’t want to add any more pain and fear into a system (Earth) I already clearly see as having too much.
However, let’s talk about the deep dark past first, when my intentions might not have been so well formed. I feel the need to bring up the past because one of the reasons for one of the things I wish was different in the present *is* the past.
In particular, I’d like to start out by talking about my sister, who I think is probably the victim of a mental illness at least the size of mine. Now, at this point I have forgiven her for everything she has ever done. But, in my young-Sheer adventure, she was weirdly and scarily violent. I later discovered there was a lunar cycle thing going on there, but at the time it just seemed like sometimes, I got my hair pulled, I got punched, I got kicked in the stomach, often for apparently no provocation at all. And she had.. well, still has, last I checked.. this way of talking to me that made me feel about three inches tall. She was a master of word choice and tone of voice and all the things you need to make someone feel tiny and she used them.
Now, at some point in our cohabitation, I did something which I still (Sort of) regret and which is still (apparently) quite in her memory.. she was pregnant, and she had been attacking me pretty much whenever she wanted, and I threatened to kick her in the stomach. I don’t think I would have actually ever done it – my parents check my memory (or at least claim to) that I wasn’t violent towards *her* generally. But I had reached that mental and emotional place that I think is often referred to as “Enough”.
It had a dramatic effect on her. At the time I was quite pleased. she moved out! I think she didn’t trust her ability to not attack me (not something she had a lot of practice with) and she wasn’t sure she could still get away with attacking me whenever she wanted.
Anyway, I’ve never been proud of that particular moment.. as I said, I don’t want to add more pain and fear into a system that has too much..
Somewhat recently.. about five years ago I think.. my sister decided that she’s terrified of me and wants me to stay as far away as possible. As far as I can tell she thinks that at some point I’m going to end up raping her. This is difficult for me to credit insofar as A: I’m really militant about this whole nonviolent thing, B: I wouldn’t want to have the memory of having done it and C: This is so far out of my core personality that people who know me often laugh at the idea. But I guess if you’re 3000 miles away and learning about all my exploits via the internet it sounds credible, and I think there’s a little group of people in that position that have started passing the idea that they should be afraid of me around like a joint. And my sister is definitely a big part of that. Okay, for me this has been mildly annoying, insofar as she can’t be present at any family gatherings that I’m present at.. at some point I started realizing that it is yet another way for my sister to bully me, which resulted in me rolling my eyes a bit and sighing and wondering if she’s ever going to get over her Issues.
But lets move to nearer times for a minute. As most of you know, I have this repeating issue I’ve been having where every six months or so I go manic, black out, and end up in jail or a mental hospital after sending a bunch of emails to one person who wishes at this point I would go away.
Now, let’s get a few things out on record. If I had one wish without wishing for more, at this point, it would be to have my friendship with this person back. And I undoubtedly in these emails say a few things which are inappropriate insofar as a lot of my internal censors are not working correctly. They’re never threatening (because that’s not the person I am) or graphic, but clearly they make her unhappy and my inability to just stop has been upsetting everyone, myself included. Now, it’s possible if my sister wasn’t ostensibly afraid of me, this person would be willing to just talk to me and everything could come down from defcon 1, but that is not to be.
Obviously something inside me is not working right. For a long time, I went through the motions of going to shrinks and doctors and taking pills and surely this will fix me. Of very late (the last few days) I’ve started to ponder whether I need to take a somewhat more self-directed and aggressive approach insofar as I do have this sinking feeling that nothing is getting any better and it has been not just years at this point but a solid decade.
Anyway, so, it’s gotten to where friends can tell when one of these events is about to strike me.. I recently came from SoCal wound tighter than a clock spring and decided, if such a word really describes how things happen in this state (I think maybe the words “it eventiated” ) that I was going to go, not for the first time, to Virginia.
Now, there were some signs from the beginning that this trip was going to be different. Normally, I don’t actually get there, and I think that my mom has a good time calling the person who lives in Virginia and gossiping / winding her up about how afraid she should be of me. (If it sounds like I don’t have a lot of trust in my family, well A: I’m paranoid, we know that B: I don’t C: I have DID. That doesn’t happen because you come from a great family situation). However, first of all, the ‘Blackout’ phase of this trip was a good deal longer than usual.. over a day is completely missing, and the resulting jump looks to me like a teleport from the west coast to the east coast.. second of all, I spent so much time with crosstalk among alters that I ended up with a blister on my tongue.. I was present for some of that, and it was delightfully weird, as crosstalk among alters generally is. Third of all, none of the usual thing stopped me. I got a ticket in Minnesota, that didn’t stop me. I got stuck in St Louis because of the usual confusion of why we bother to do resource allocation tracking for food. That didn’t stop me although it did get me a three day hold. I finally got to $CITY and carefully did *not* go to person’s house (I was really hoping person would come out and talk to me on neutral ground, and either give me a Last Goodbye or, there was a bit of me still holding out hope, return to being my face to face friend)
What I did do was go to a bar and sing “Little Pink Houses” and “When The Saints Go Marching In” – I actually got invited up on stage with the singer, which fit my energy just fine. I talked to some old timers about being patriotic. I went to a church.. twice.. and both times had some pretty authentic (not to mention awesome) spiritual experiences that I have yet to fully grok but make me think I should go back to some churches. The church service was in Spanish. I think that helped *a lot* because the words didn’t make me mad.. and recently at a class I learned that only 7% of human communication is the words.. so I was a lot more aware of the tone of the experience etc. The second time I went to the church (a day later) they had live music and I think they were expecting me and ultimately I cried my eyes out about the whole situation, which has probably been something that has been needing to happen for several years now.
And I sat in my car and I waited. When it became clear person was not wiling to come to me, I decided.. partially as a matter of a way to make myself even less threatening and partially because I had reached the point where I did not trust myself at all to be myself after trying to operate a car while peaking on seroquel.. to check myself into a hospital and see if *that* would get me some kind of something.
Well, it did. Last Goodbye was apparently the answer, but instead of showing up to deliver it in person, I got a court summons and a protective order. This was both good and bad, and I still feel like I should have done things a bit differently here. It gave me a chance to hear person talk (and I *love* hearing person talk.. the way she uses her voice and her hands when talking just pets my brain somehow) and it also gave me something I had been really badly needing, a 3d memory that wasn’t text of rejection. See, the last time I saw her face to face she was behaving as a friend to me. And knowing as much as I do about information theory.. not to mention having *had the experience* – I know it is trivially easy to hallucinate text.
And I will say, she wasn’t actively mean about it. If my sister were ever to take out a protective order, she’d take advantage of the time to also make me actively wish that suicide is something that woudl work. (Repeated testing has told me, at least in my case, there’s a hypervisor, suicide doesn’t work. Not that there aren’t times lately where I wish it would). I can actually sort of imagine my sister describing how sick, perverted, useless, stupid, ugly, weak, and other undesirable behaviors I am.. I guess I have a alter who is a software model of my sister. Now there’s something I could use to lose.
Anyway, protective order… initially my response was “Well, if that’s what she wants, she shoudl have it” since I’ve never been of the position that if person wants distance from me she should have anything *but* that.. it’s just the alters that come up during a mania that, I honestly forget, have no memory of the times between. But, it occurs to me, this is giving said alters a tool to hurt me a lot a lot since person can now have me thrown in jail for sending her a email. I wonder if person has ever worn handcuffs the way cops put them on, which always hurts you paws, or been in a cold room of cinderblocks designed by idiot humans who think punishing is a good idea to send the message “You’re a bad person. You deserve to hurt.”. I also wonder if person really does think I deserve to hurt because there’s something wrong with my mind. I doubt it a lot.
Anyway, I already do hurt because something’s wrong with my mind.
I’ve begged God for a early death.. like, now would be good.. bu that’s not the sort of wish apparently that we get. So I’m stuck here, wishing I wasn’t. Maybe if I had a better attitude you’d still want to be friends. I do have a lot of friends, and I’m grateful for them, and I’m loved, and I’m grateful for that, and sometimes it gets all the way into my core and that’s very nice, and sometimes it can’t and that’s not so nice.
So, I was talking about things I might have done right or wrong. I got a lawyer, which might or might not have been a good idea.. as I said, I didn’t really exacly want to win but I also was willing to admit that it would be a good idea for me not to lose. THe judge, not too suprisingly, sided with person – I can’t really conceive of the situation where the judge doesn’t, since person is there saying “I want this person not to talk to me”, which really is a reasonable request and something we should all be free to ask for. My position doesn’t look very reasonable at all, since it’s “If I forget and do talk to you, I want to not go to jail.. “. I keep hoping if I develop the habit of writing the things I would have put in the emails into blog posts instead, maybe the next time I go manic.. plus, of course, as I mentioned, I now have a very real, visceral, 3D memory of rejection. And the wish that I hadn’t dragged person through all the unhappiness in the spaces in between. Not to mention dragging me through all said unhappiness.
What I wish most is that none of the ‘be afraid of me’ club were convincing themselves of something that, as far as I can tell both from the way I’ve behaved my entire adult life and from the way my friends treat me, makes any sense at all. However, this is America, and fear is something we love to sell ourselves, so I guess I’m not surprised to find people convincing themselves that I’m a threat.
More later.
July 29th, 2015 at 4:55 pm
Oh, honey…