Chasing My Shadows
and finding myself
Empty Intimacy
May 2nd
On Saturday, I had a discussion with my writing group about the book I’m currently writing (about a woman with dissociative identity disorder) and tried to describe to them what it’s like. (I do not claim to have DID. I have no diagnosis aside from ‘depressive disorder not otherwise specified’ at this time. But I know that dissociation is something I do have an issue with and I do experience symptoms of DID.) Many people often think that DID means that there is a ‘host’ or ‘core’ personality or person and that they have ‘created’ or possess other personalities within themselves that are split off from this original person – much like a tree and its branches. I suppose that may be what it is like for some. But I know for many (if not most), it starts before one is old enough to have really developed a sense of self or identity.
Who we are, our identity, is formed over the years of our childhood. Who we become is an intricate combination of nature, nurture, and circumstance. We are born with personality traits that we will likely keep our entire life – but our sense of identity does not develop fully until adolescence. And events later in life can cause alterations in our identity as well, even when it is well established.
Some children who repeatedly endure trauma are unable to fully develop their sense of self because they are forced to separate their day to day ‘normal life’ self from the self who is abused and mistreated. Their inability to understand and cope with what is happening to them, forces them to disconnect themselves from it.
Rather than being a person who has other people within them, a person who has DID is more of a broken person. A person who has been broken into many pieces. The ‘host’ or ‘core’ is more of an empty shell, a robotic non-entity that gets up and makes food for the kids and maintains the body and interacts with the world. A shell that contains the various pieces of self who may occasionally peek out – something that those who know the person may or may not be aware of. This is the most difficult thing to describe about dissociative disorders and why they can be so hard to diagnose – the complete emptiness the person feels.
Our pastor is currently doing a series on hope and how it affects everything in our lives. Yesterday was a sermon on Christian hope and how it affects our sexuality.
He did a really fantastic job on the sermon. I have no complaints about it at all. Very powerful. But still, sexuality in general can be a rather uncomfortable subject for me. I think that’s fairly understandable as most of the major problems I have had in my life have revolved around sex.
Rarely a day goes by that I don’t feel sorry for my husband for being married to me. I know that he would argue with that and insist that he wants to be married to me (which is something I have trouble believing… but that’s another post). But how can you want to be married to someone who’s not there – someone who doesn’t exist?
One of the things marriage is supposed to provide us with is a partner – someone to be there for us, support us, someone to be intimate with, someone to have a consistent connection with. But how can I connect to someone else intimately when I can’t connect to myself? It doesn’t seem fair to my husband to have little more than a vacant body as a spouse.
Anyhow, I was not in therapy long enough to really address any of this. But I’m sure someday it will change. I have tried getting more in touch with myself and my feelings and all that, but that’s what led me to therapy in the first place. It was more than I could handle and not something I had room in my life to deal with right now. Dissociation is what enables me to go on with my day to day life, smile, communicate with people.. even though, most of the time, I am screaming inside.
Hope is something I lack greatly. In a sense, I have given up on hoping. Hoping sounds dangerous to me, and seems more like an invitation for disappointment than anything else.
I have reached a point where I do not believe that I can bear being hurt again. My world has been shattered enough times that I don’t want to put it back together or bother building a new one again because I’m tired. I’m tired of doing all that work only to be undone again. I expect life to be painful and no longer choose to believe that the people in my life will not harm me or to think that good things will come my way. If they do – great. Fantastic. If they don’t – I wasn’t expecting it anyway, so I’m okay. It’s not as pessimistic as it sounds. I promise.
So hope tends to be a difficult topic for me. I am told I should be hopeful and I should rejoice in the hope I have in Christ. I’m looking forward to hearing more in this series on hope that our pastor is doing.. because, quite frankly, I don’t know what this ‘hope in Christ’ is. I know that I have eternity with Him to look forward to. And I do look forward to that. But I still have to deal with this life first. Do I have to be excited and joyful about that? Because I don’t see much reason to anymore.
I think I will listen to the sermon again on my own – when I don’t feel so compelled to focus so much of my energy on keeping it together because I’m in public. Perhaps I can gain some better understanding and reflect prayerfully on my own questions. I know that a lot of this comes down to trust. In order to feel real intimacy – with my husband OR with God – there has to be trust. And, I suppose, in order for me to ‘hope’ I would probably have to trust first as well.
Trusting is not something I am ready to do. Trusting would mean believing my husband will be good to me and not hurt me. Trusting would mean believing God will take care of me and provide for me. I don’t think either are things I can believe right now.
30 Days of Truth – Day 9: Drifting
Jan 10th
Day 9 of 30 Days of Truth is: Someone you didn’t want to let go, but just drifted.
This is a pretty easy one. I have all but lost contact with one of the best friends I ever had. Meaning, we recently ‘reconnected’ on facebook, but we don’t really actually talk. Prior to that, it had been years since we’d last had any contact with each other at all. We did not have a falling out, there is no ‘bad blood’ between us that I know of, we just sort of… drifted.
I met him in 7th grade, when my family moved from the Bay Area to the Sacramento area. We had all the same classes and were in band together. He actually moved to another town in 8th grade, but by that time we had taken up writing each other letters and talked on the phone fairly regularly. So we had no trouble keeping in touch with each other.
We went to my freshman home coming dance together… as friends. Neither of us had a date that year. I was glad, going with him was an excellent choice. By our sophomore year of high school, we were dating. This friend was one of precious few boys that I was friends with or dated that treated me with kindness and respect at all times. He was there for me when I came back from running away from home. He was there for me when I lost my virginity and suffered through the guilt and shame that I felt as a result. He listened as I told him secrets about my childhood and gently pointed out the reality of what I had experienced. He supported me in my difficult times and laughed with me in my happy times. He was the first person I ever broke up with.
After that, we began the habit of drifting apart. We dated again during our junior year of high school, but it ended with us simply not talking to each other anymore. After that was when I became involved with a much older man. That lasted until the beginning of my senior year when he put things ‘on hold’ until I graduated. My friend and I saw each other again at a band competition that year. By that time my husband and I had started dating. It was actually my husband who encouraged me to go talk to him. He knew how much I missed him. And how important his friendship was to me.
My friend and I started talking again. We discussed why things had ended the way they did and had some very honest conversations. We kept in contact. At one point he even told me that he knew, while we were dating, that he could have had sex with me if he wanted to. He knew I would do it. But he also knew how awful I would feel about it later and that deep down, it was not what I really wanted. He did not want to hurt me in that way. So, despite his desires, he refrained.
So, I am sure, you can see why I so valued our friendship.
Over the years, my husband and I got married and had kids. He was dating a girl that he started dating his senior year. They got married a few years later. We went to church together, did youth ministry together, they babysat for us on occasion.. we spent a lot of time together. And yet, in spite of all that, he and I were slowly drifting apart. In fact, during those years, he was more friends with my husband than he was with me. So there was a bit of jealousy. But I was still thankful to still have him in my life.
We were not invited to their wedding. My parents were, but we were not. I do not know if either of us had done something to offend them, or if something happened that bore animosity. Or if they simply had reached a point of indifference or annoyance with our relationship. Or, perhaps, they simply forgot to invite us? I highly doubt that. I think that if they invited my parents, they would have thought about whether or not they would invite us. Last I checked, they weren’t exactly ‘close’ to either of my parents.. so that kind of baffled me.
Perhaps, someday, I will have the guts to ask him what happened. But, for now, I will be thankful for that last string to hold on to through facebook.
How pathetic.
30 Days of Truth – Day 8: Hell
Jan 9th
Day 8 of 30 Days of Truth is: Someone who made your life hell, or treated you like shit.
Okay… I want to make sure this post is not just a “Dear so and so, you’re such an asshole” post. But I’d like to tell you a bit about my brother.
My brother is not quite a year older than me. When we were toddlers, people frequently asked if we were twins. We look a lot alike. In our early years, we were actually very close. Perhaps it was because we were so close and, in a sense, were each others ‘built-in playmates’. We were best friends. Practically inseparable.
I don’t know when things changed for us… I think it was around the time we started school. Perhaps a little before or a bit after.. I’m not sure. I don’t know if it was something in me, or something in him that changed.. but he became constantly irritable and frequently violent. It seemed as though every. little. thing. set him off. Before long, we all felt as though we were walking on egg shells with him. There were therapy appointments – for him, for me.. for us. There were pills. There were notes and phone calls from teachers and principals, there were lost friendships. And there were so many times when we were less than honest about what went on at home.
By the time I was about 7 or 8, I learned that staying away from him and leaving him alone was my best bet.. By 9 or 10, I spent more time in my room with my door shut than out in the rest of the house. By the time I was a teenager, my mother told me I was being an anti-social snob because I would never spend time with the rest of the family. Of course, there were other things that were happening by that time and my room became my safe haven.
There were years of my childhood, there were many diary entries that I wrote, where I expressed my utter hatred for my brother. And, since we were so close in age, school was not an escape from him. One year, we were even in the same class. I spent quite a bit of my childhood in fear. The two of us ended up in the principal’s office together on more than one occasion. I swore for years that as soon as I was old enough, I would be gone from my parents’ home and he would be excommunicated from my life. I promised myself that I would never let him know my children and that I would never speak to him again as soon as that were possible.
But that’s not how it went.
By my sophomore year of high school, we were indifferent towards each other. He left me alone the majority of the time and I extended him the same courtesy. We had a lot of common friends, and I think that helped us to work towards being more amicable. He got a license and a car, and had to drive me to school. I occasionally helped him work on his car, when he was in a good enough mood. And slowly, we became friends. The day came when he had graduated high school (a year ahead of me from 4th grade on) and had only a couple months left before he left for the Army.
I was shocked by my own tears on the day he left. I never imagined that I would cry – for anything but joy – on the day he left home. But I did. I was sad. And I missed him. I still miss him. Our relationship is not what it was during his last year of high school or what it was during his visits home while he was in the Army, but I’m sure a lot of that had to do with being home sick. Now he is married and has kids of his own. I know that he still has problems and still needs medication. But, odd as it may sound, I kind of wish we had more of a relationship now than we do. But, perhaps, it’s better that we don’t.
