Team Nine

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And away we go . . .

My name is Nine.

I have nine clearly defined parts. That’s what the therapist calls them, although we all tend to think or ourselves as people, more or less. (See how confusing that is?) Or, put another way . . .

Hello. We’re Team Nine, and we have DID.

Dissociative Identity Disorder is what used to be called Multiple Personality Disorder.  We just tried to surf up some basic info for you, but we came up with crap, more or less. The diagnosis–phenomenon–what have you–is still more or less flexibly defined. Generally–

OK–you know what it’s like? It’s having an entire team of weisenheimers staring over your shoulder and kibbitzing while you’re trying to write something coherent. YOU try it sometime.  Geez.

As I was saying: Generally, everybody agrees that the central feature (or bug) is that at least two different identities/personae/whatthefuckever exist in one physical body. There are nine of us.  As far as we know, barring something specifically neurological going on, this only happens under some severe childhood trauma (primarily sexual abuse). The child can’t contain the psychological experience, and starts to form layers of identity around it.

That’s the basics. For everybody, it’s different–there is a big YOUR MILEAGE MAY VARY attached to all of this.

I guess (please just deal with the pronoun shit) that most people flash on Sybil, or Truddi Chase, or the Three Faces of Eve. It’s not always like that. The classic model of substantial fugue, of losing time, isn’t always dramatically present. The disorder is something of a continuum: The people who have lots and lots of parts and who fugue dramatically between them are at the far end, and most average people are down at the other. What we mean by that end is that sense you have of being, say, in parent mode with kids and earthy centered mode in your garden. Et cetera.

You can quibble about the terms if you like there; betting that there may be some resistance to thinking about an average person being attached to this at all. Resistance on the part of the average person–and also on the part of the DID who needs to feel special about it. (Don’t worry, hun, you are. Trust us.)

Anyway. We’re doing this blog for a bunch of reasons. Partly because Sam wants to write. IMHO she’s not all that good at it; I do most of the writing-type writing: Our creative project and our other blog, etc. Sam does the more academic writing.

And partly because all of us, in our different ways and for our personal reasons, want to be heard; in the words of Tori Amos, we’ve been silent all these years. We entered the serious heavy-duty once a week for at least an hour type of therapy two years ago, and our clever and perceptive therapist began getting the clue after only 8 months or so.

It was really, really hard to hear. We had already had to sit still and be good for the bipolar diagnosis. Hey, everybody’s bipolar these days. Even *shudder* children. (In our opinion, we overpathologize our kids to an enormous degree. Take it from a crazy person.)

But, <==, yes, did you see back there? Crazy Person. That’s what DID gets ya: a free trip aa-a-aa-ll the way to the back of the bus, where it’s just us and the paranoid schizophrenics yelling at the invisible mailman yeti.

So this blog is anonymous. Nobody outside our care team knows what’s up besides our bestest friend. I can’t imagine what’s up with the people who go public and go on talk shows. We’d choke ourselves with our own intestines first. There’s a lot of comorbidity with more intensely discrete psych disorders (uh, “different kinds of crazy overlap”), and we sorta think that there’s some histrionic stuff there: Need the attention, because inside sucks so bad in a particular way. Nope. As we put it, we’re not coming out of the dormitory for nuthin. Except here.

So here we are out here shivering anxiously in cyberspace.

Cast of Characters

How we’re set up, if you can call it that:

First of all, we reiterate, you need to keep in the back of your head that one human being is typing everything in this blog. Her name is Nine. (No, not really, duh.) Nine is who we are. She is every one of us, and we are all part of the Nine system, as it were.

Part of having DID is knowing that as soon as people find out, they’re going to always want to know who they’re talking to now. (You’re talking to NINE, dipshit.) I mean, average people. Hell, I know I would. So we’ll try to run down the roster. I’m going to try to just do an overview of a couple of sentences per, OK, guys?  … OK. No major anarchy. Let’s go.

For keeping attendance purposes, we have a mental image of layers, or a tree, going down from Nine’s outside all the way down to the brave little bit holding onto the memories for all those years. In reality, we’re a lot more egalitarian–well, that’s our story and we’re sticking to it.

Sean: Sean is Nine’s everyday face to the world. Already a tad problematic, there, because Sean is a dude and Nine’s body isn’t. He’s a good, patient joe with a long fuse. He holds the anxiety and the day-to-day shit.

Sam: Samurai is our wild child. We’re all brilliant, but it’s Sam’s thang. She wrote the dissertation (well, most of it; I helped; I think we all did) and she is Scary Doctor Nine with bells on. Sam, interestingly enough, holds the mania.

Connie: Connie is in her mid to late teens. She’s Nine stabilized at a comparatively safe period: high school. Connie is our creative. She draws, she sings, and she plays.

Eight: Eight was the dominant personality for pretty much Nine’s entire adult life. She and Connie faded into each other. She did the really hard shit–had the kids, got us into grad school (with Sam, of course) and survived a really hideous marriage. That marriage is the big thing Eight has; she is the only one of us who tends to be what’s called depersonalized–when she’s out, she feels like a ghost.

The Narrator: You are here. I’m male too. I’ve been the smartass voice in Nine’s head who watches things and people and takes notes, does voiceovers to cheer her up, and writes the personal things, including the novel I’m working on. (With help from all, and accompanying nagging.) In a way, I’m one of Nine’s more stable pieces; we’re pretty sure that I’m going to be the person meeting the new therapist. Let’s say that I hold the center, and leave it at that for now.

Griselda: The patient. Grizzi (she hates that, but it’s what we tend to call her; for obvious reasons, she prefers Zelda) holds the body. Nine has had a lot of physical problems–some somaticization (physical manifestations of psych/anxiety things) but some real mechanical shit–kidney stones, for example. So Zelda has a major pain tolerance. She also does the automatic process stuff like shitting, waking up, eating, etc.

Harriet: is the therapist. We’ve got to stop calling her that, now that we’ve got reasonably outside therapy–it’s more like she’s other people’s therapist. She’s really good at it. Just wish those clients would pay. She’s the mom to Sean’s dad; she’s a good mom. We have mom issues, which is part of why we’re having assorted crankies at her. Harriet holds  the wisdom, the calm, and the spirituality.

Klaus: Affectionately known as the Psycho Killer. Klaus keeps Jill safe; that’s his primary job. He holds the rage; holds the violence.

Jill: the baby. She’s un-babying somewhat. If that makes any sense. She and I did a major team-up with the memories about a month or two ago, and she’s relaxed a lot.

And that’s a wrap on that front.

Free at Last–at least a little bit

This is Sean.

Our meds are off a bit (we need to fill a prescription) and I woke up at 3. After half an hour, I got up. Like I think most people, or at least some people, I can tend to think of horrible things when I do this–reliving some trauma, or maybe a bunch of traumas.

For some reason a flower in today’s bouquet was the traumatic job we had–I had, really–well, me and Eight mainly–several years ago. That job triggered our collapse. It broke something, and although Sam got a brief consulting job and a similarly brief job at Macy*s the next year (we got physically sick on that one) we count the horrible job as when we really fell through the ice.

We didn’t know we were “us” then, although it’s when I came out. Literally, in a way–I thought I was trans. (Which is obviously something of an odd question, if you think about it–I’m not all of Nine, and although I’m the “dominant personality” as it used to be called at least, I’m kind of outnumbered by the girls.) And I came out to the boss on this job.

I thought it was safe, because we were at one of those touchy-feely gender & sexuality based places. But I think a part of the eventual problems we/I had was that we thus became “queerer than thou.” I mean that wasn’t my attitude, but she was the sort of person who had to be at the very front of the line, and she was “only” a lesbian. So it made me already very vulnerable on this job.

I can’t begin to talk about all of the things she did to me. She kept changing the rules. It was my job to run the physical facility, and she yelled at me for switching out the trash can in the kitchen without consulting her. She blamed me for installing Office incompetently because she could no longer automatically make PDFs. When the guy came out and *ahem* installed Adobe Acrobat, she didn’t apologize–he was the smart savior. Obviously, my trying to explain what turned out to be the truth just made things worse.

She freaked out when her several hundred name spam list “hung” in cyberspace and didn’t magically immediately appear in her inbox. Again my fault. Our mother organization has an incredibly complicated financial system, and despite the encouragement of the people coaching me in it, she treated me like a moron. The list goes on and on. No matter what, I was wrong. Abused by a client? All my fault, and an apology written to the extremely confrontative person who had yelled at me about a policy I hadn’t set. An employee missing a check because he had given the central office the wrong address? Again my fault for stiffing the poor kid (who wasn’t upset and appreciated the trouble I had taken to figure the problem out).

It was intensely triggering in so many ways. She was just like our husband, in terms of it being impossible to please her, no matter what. She forbade me to work late (without pay) to try to clear my desk; she set me up to fail. She finally fired me two days before my probationary period was up–because that was her last chance to fire me without cause. Although she brought up the check business to make it sound like I was incompetent in front of the HR lady. Thus HR marched me back to my desk–and confiscated the journal I had kept to defend myself against that sort of thing, saying it was XYZZY’s work product. So much for evidence.

(That single thing has me nearly as angry as all the things the boss put me through–I got tortured basically–and despite my earlier plea to the same HR officer, she successfully protected XYZZY from being sued. I hope that bitch chokes on something. She didn’t even have my boss’s excuse of a personal vendetta. She was just a petty little woman with a bullet-shaped head and a bad wig who got off on fucking over a PhD.)

It was the Monday of Thanksgiving week, and as it was my paycheck had been barely enough to cover the rent. We ended up getting evicted in March.

What has made it worse has been that I’ve had to walk past the place where I worked whenever I was (fairly frequently) in the area. It’s part of an otherwise very pleasant walk that I’ve refused to give up–so many other pleasures have been taken from us by other abusers. But every time my gut clenches.

Anyway, I finally decided this morning to go to their website and see if she was still there–and she isn’t. (Ironically, her replacement sounds like somebody I would have been really compatible with.) She had left this spring to go work for a less prestigious place. XYZZY isn’t the place you leave like that completely voluntarily, so despite their publicly stated handwringing, you gotta wonder. Especially as she apparently referred to herself as the most important woman there in a statement. Not a joke most people would make, especially when they’re a huge and important institution’s middle management, despite being in charge of a very, very small division. And trust me, in her own opinion, she was completely serious.

So I can walk past there now without the barely-conscious fear of seeing her. I’ve had this fantasy of going in there and telling her what a mess she made of my life–but she wouldn’t care. Before working for our division, she had been in charge of domestic violence issues. She knew I was a survivor; she knew how abuse works–and she did the whole psychological trip anyway. I looked it up, and such employment abuse indeed is regarded as comparable to getting it at home: Think of the power your boss has over you.

The team suggested I blog about it here. (Catching up on our blog was another thing we were thinking about this morning, but nobody really wanted to.) I guess I feel better getting it off my chest, but really I’m just looking forward to walking past there with a different feeling. It’s still the site of the trauma, but the demon has been exorcised.

I’m finally getting sleepy, so I’ll stop here, especially since I’m pretty much done. Like a lot of what we write, I at least don’t want to look at this in preview mode because I don’t want to re-read it and have it all go back into my head. But I feel better. As I said up top, in a little way, I am free at last. At some point I think Klaus should talk about all of his desires to kill and torture that woman, who’s on a really, really short list. Of one, actually. Maybe that will start to heal too. I hope so.

Trigger: And if all this weren’t enough . . .

(I’m putting this in “Harriet” as well, because she did the talking to the kid, but this is Eight.)

I don’t know if this has been mentioned elsewhere or not, but we had a horrible marriage with the very worst perp possible: a psychological abuser. I’m not saying that there wasn’t some physical violence, but it was subordinated to the headfuck–he’d corner me until I triggered and tried to hit him, and then he’d grab my wrists and wrestle me onto the floor, kneeling on me until I started to suffocate on my snot and beg for mercy.

We dealt with this for fifteen years, and they we/I left. After more sturm’n’drang than I care to go into–maybe another part of “What Happened to Us?”, we lost custody of our son. We kept our daughter because Daddy gave her a Scary Hug, and needless to say, that was that. Her trying to commit suicide and cutting (at 13) sealed that deal. Although the judge said he’d take her too if I hadn’t already damaged her so much. (Um, sir? Sir? Aren’t you supposed to take children away from horribly abusive parents? Sir? ) There was no reason. Really. Dr. Satan doesn’t know about Us; it was just your basic men’s lawyer thing. We were too poor to have a lawyer of our own, and there wasn’t a public attorney in that state for family cases.

(Oh God, I can’t get into this in any detail at all. I hold these memories; this is the piece that I’m working on with Grey. So horrific. So completely horrific.)

For six years (11 1/2 to 18) we had two brief visits (we live on the East Coast and he lives in the Midwest) and weekly half-hour phone calls which were listened to and timed by our ex-husband. It was just another way to keep abusing me. He didn’t care about what it was doing to the kid at all.

What it’s done to the kid is leave him depressed, very dissociative (not like us, just no memory at all of anything remotely stressful) and on the edge of failing out of college.

He goes to a small private Midwestern college which is more than willing to work with him (Asperger’s and severe ADHD too) and is in his sophomore year. He just went home for spring break, and his dad left him a to-do list directing that he 1) look into transferring to a state school and 2) actually fill out an application.

So the kid understandably freaked. He’s a 20-year-old with above issues–and of course, yanked from his mom and sister.

Harriet calmed him down (I’m putting this in her outbox too)–she and I are experts on how the sperm donor headfucks–and at this moment, he’s on Skype. Apparently the talk went well–Harriet sent him there with actual notes to handle the dissociation thing–and he’s sending over the recording (yes! clever little devil!) for dissection.

But it completely and overwhelmingly triggered us. We were here at the keyboard anyway, and we agreed that this was my deal. I feel much, much better now that it’s over. I felt like, “Hey, you can’t torture me any more. Let’s take it out on the kid.”

But we’re safe; I’m here in Cambridge and Dr. Satan is in a fairly thumbless part of Wisconsin, and for the moment, the kid is calm and in a decent place.

I suppose it helps to write about it, too. I rather hate to admit it, but I can hear Grey (and the ghosts of the other two) saying things about the team helping each other out. Grrr.

HI! We have a headache.

I suppose that’s not world shaking news. But the Narrator asked everybody if anybody had anything to share (after we just posted What Happened part 2)and we’re all feeling pretty subdued. Only of course, I notice that we have a headache. sort of. We’ve ben under all sorts of weird stresses lately and as a result we’ve been having sort of chronic migraines. By chronic I mean that we’ve had several days in which we’ve had thm. Of course I’m not ocunting mainlining chocolate, because that’s our own fault.

Anyway, you wouldn’t believe how sick we got when we checked back in and realized that we had to finish that damned post. Hmm. I wonder (I always wonder)–hey, maybe?? All of a sudden this morning, we got really nauseated. Not to the puke part, but enough to jsut go lie down. Really suddenly. We were writ9ing to the friend who is editing the novel, and we had just emialed Grey about our transportation screwwing up and our not getting in to see her. (It was really cold this moring. The hands are still feeling it. I was totlaly pised off at us. >:-( ) So anyway, I am wondering whether there was sort of a chain of unconscious thinking? We knew that we had to get this material to Grey, and the friend was about writing, so maybe at some point it was all ohhhh shit.

We took a nap (and not even a PRN) and we felt sort of better. We did stuff. Funy, but I wasn’t paying attention, but we watched some tv on the computer (hulu) and then we checked mail, and there was Grey getting bac—no, we saw that earlier. never mind. Anyway, we felt we had to answer Grey’s email (did I say that we emiled her about not coming in? I don’t think so.) So Grey got back to us, and then we explained about the taxi, and then we knew that we had to send her the stuff we promised we’d send her. (She’s really interested in the blog. Much more wired than the other two therapists.)

Wow, I have  a lot of typos to correct here. I type fast, but not always really coherently. I think it’s because I sort of follow where the brain takes me.

So we got together the URLs and the chapter of the copy-protected–ok password protected whatever can you tell I like games and stuff?–memories. I mean the direct first person memories just as Jill told the Narrator, which is more intense than the stuff we have here.

Wow, I took some tylenol for something else, but as soon as I realy let us think about that horrible thing (which happened to ME, I remind you) we start feeling sick again. So I’m ging to stop rambling (i.e. being me,) and go do the most of my spell checking and then we really are going to do something else.

This being honest about shit is exhausting. I really really hate that going back and correcting Everything you do wrong. So I’m not really bothering. The Narrator thinks it’s my charming style, but fuck him. Wow, I am really in a bad mood, I think it’s left over from the just putting up with the stupid cab and getting too cold this morning.

Trying to Breathe

Just published the second part of “What Happened to Us.” I really should go grab it and send it to Grey. She can’t access the blog from work; apparently this is forbidden, even though one might think that I/we aren’t the only patient who has one.

But we already sent her a piece of the password-protected material, and there’s only so much stuff we can paw through per night/day/lifetime.

Grey is (supposed to be) mainly working with Eight (and the plan was Connie, who isn’t out very much) on the domestic violence in Eight’s marriage. We’re in year 4 now; the post-incest was years 1 &2 (Sean’s Therapist) and DID in year 3 (my New Therapist.)

Perhaps needless to say, we’re very anxious not to re-visit years 1 & 2, although some more (comparatively minor) memories are bubbling up here and there.

We’re all pretty freaked out now, and so will go do something else for a while. Either something fun, or more working on my novel. Which is sorta fun, but not fun-fun, if you know what I mean.

Love yas, don’t ever change. We/I will try to be better about the blog. But with that draft hanging over our head, can you blame us for running like a desperate rabbit fleeing from a blood-drenched hawk?

What Happened To Us: Part Two

Years passed. Horrible years. But at the time, only Jill knew what was really happening to us.

Nine’s parents split up. She went with her father because he was the lesser of the two evils. (Again, we didn’t know how evil the evil was, but that comes a bit later on.)

Nine’s mother was mildly physically disabled with a number of health problems, one of which being that she weighed somewhere in the neighborhood of 400 pounds. Thus, after the divorce, she went into a nursing home. Nine was under a steady guilt trip from her grandfather in re the sanctity of motherhood.  So every so often she went to visit. The visits weren’t all that bad; she had some pleasant conversations with her mother. In fact, one of them actually proved useful.

Nine’s mother and grandmother and countless Irish ancestors before them were Catholic–but Nine’s mother had Left The Church and become a Unitarian. (This was before they merged with the Universalists; they still professed a belief in God back them.) She had made Nine’s dad become one too–he was raised A.M.E. But they never went. However, at the time (well, still) the public schools in New York were a disaster, and Nine went to Catholic school. So her religious upbringing was an uncomfortable mix of the Catholicism of her grandmother and school–and a defiant knowledge of being an outsider–a “Prodistan,” as she wrote in a 5th grade essay.

But after some high school retreats, she wanted religion–but . . . not quite Catholicism. In one of those nursing home visits, she told her mother about this–to make conversation, really; and her mother suggested that she try the Episcopal Church. Nine hadn’t heard of them, but she looked them up in the phone book, and a week later, she got a very nice letter from the quite lovely Bishop Paul Moore–and she has been an Episcopalian ever since.

(Of course, she had to suffer through the shame of having her mother attend her Confirmation afterwards. You’ll eventually twig to the “shame” part when I get to it.)

So at that point, Nine saw her mother as having something positive to give her, and the nursing home visits had a tiny sparkle of hope of non-awfulness. We haven’t thought of them in years, but now I can remember the dry-swallow feeling of dread with which we approached the home. But like most teens, we didn’t really pay attention to it. After all, we were also shy and nervous at the prospect of meeting strange adults–it of course didn’t occur to us that our mother was not a stranger. But we were very good at making those logical circuits.

What follows is the most horrible thing we have in our head. That said, it’s as well that it is in our head, possibly; because without it who knows how long we would have we been tumbling through an increasingly unhappy life like a drunken bumblebee?

Our mother was born on Christmas Eve. The year we had just turned 15, we went to visit her. We brought her a Carvel ice cream cake; we brought our guitar and played her Queen’s “You’re My Best Friend.” It was the only vaguely appropriate song we knew.

(We of course cannot listen to that song now–and miserably, it has slowly eaten the wonderful Queen themselves. Moreover, it occurs that perhaps this is part of why we eventually slowed and stopped learning and playing the guitar at all. We have a mild deformity–missing about a half-centimeter of the flesh pad on the top of our left pinky, making normal fingering agony–so we had an excuse. Anything rather than face another memory; another realization of something taken away. God, we hate this blog. )

I think we brought her flowers too. Daisies? Mums?

Our mother was once a nursing student, and she knew how to give good neck/shoulder rubs. So I think we asked for one. I don’t remember. We sat on the floor between her feet, and she pulled up out Peter Pan collared school blouse and then unhooked the back of our bra. I remember being a little puzzled at this actually quite normal backrubber’s request, but it did make sense. (Although of course Jill was pulsing a frantic warning up through the bottom of our psyche.) Then she was rubbing our back–and then reached around and started playing with our right breast.

And then we disassociated. I will talk about that later. (This is Griselda. Everybody else is cold and floating now. I will try to type slowly and not make my usual mistakes and tell you what happened to our body that night.)

Remember (if you have read elsewhere) that until recently I could not talk at all.  I think I remember thinking, “This stuff is supposed to happen with a dad. But your mom?” We had no data; no reference point.

Anyway, we/I froze. Nobody had ever played with our breasts before–never let a boy get to second base. It was an intensely pleasant sensation.

As I write this, I am aware of the team’s lingering horror and shame and self blame: of Me blame. Griselda, Griselda–why did you let it feel good? Why didn’t you leave? What kind of whore are you, to do this to us? Note here that all of a sudden, this is all OUR fault. And that is the way survivors of abuse work.

The obvious answer is that it felt good because it’s supposed to. Unless the abuse is rough enough to cause outright pain, the nerves do what nerves do. And, as I/The Narrator said (with his last typing breath, as it were)–we disassociated.

Everything stops. You get this sort of floaty feeling. It is rather like a local anesthetic, only over your whole body. You get sensory input, but you sort of go blank. Right now, as I type (and remember that I am the only one who can do this at all) I am watching my fingers. So was The Narrator as he slipped away.  It is a hot day, and the A/C is on, and we were getting cold, but still I was watching my fingers and thinking; “They are cold.” And mind you, I am the body. I am bringing things back online now–but that is what it’s like.

All we knew was that this wholly unexpected thing felt good. We always felt it was an excuse, because I wonder if we will ever shed the self-blame–but at least intellectually we know it is true, but we sat back–me too, and we watched Nine’s body experience this.

She played with the breasts for a while–nerves: pleasure, us: numb–and then she suggested we get up on the bed. At least I think so. I don’t remember what she said, or if she merely sort of nudged us. So we got onto the bed and lay on our back. She did indicate the position, and then she smiled.

She rolled up our bra and our shirt and began sucking our nipples. And it felt enormously good. She was sucking all the innocence out; taking the last seconds–which were the first seconds. I sort of knew that nipple-sucking thing happened during sex, but I had never really known why. The idea had never been real. Now I knew why. It felt really, really good.

Every so often, she would stop, and look up at us. All we really remember is the sensation, and her face. Her happy, smiling, excited face. Wasn’t it fun? She was so excited. I think that face was the worst thing of all. It wasn’t fun. I was–way down deep–terrified, on some abstract disjointed plane. I remember the sucking, and her hands fondling the other one, and I was not-there; just the sensation of disembodied pleasure. I don’t think our shirt was over our face–else how else could we see hers? But this sort of grayish white–the ceiling?

She unbuttoned and unzipped our pants. They were our favorites–forest green brushed cotton. I remember thinking, “Pants don’t come off in this position. I must lift my butt, or else sit up and help get them off.” I didn’t want to do either–but at the back I was curious: watching, taking notes. I had always been curious about oral sex. Hm. This had some potential for being quite spiffy. I saw the future/possibility/whatever thing of what had to be done to take off the pants, and I did not want it. I was scared.

Realize that all of this was happening–our reacting/thinking/watching–way down deep. Under water, sort of. Like the hands on the keyboard thing. My thoughts are forming the words, and as if by magic those thoughts correspond to letters–the letters on the keys. I notice that I am barely breathing–maybe the lightheadedness is part of that. But I am consciously deciding to stay here, because here is where the memory is; here is where it is being kept.

But it was magic. We had this best friend Ginnie, who was a roughly affectionate bossy older girl who pretty much owned me. Our mother unzipped our pants. Her fingers started sliding down our belly. Her hand was warm; we were icy cold. Her fingers started to slither down inside the first narrow bit of elastic. We were wearing our favorite panties–they were printed with a strawberry basket–basket on bottom, strawberries on top. And finally, oh magic sweet God finally–we had something real to anchor what was happening: Ginnie said to not let them get into your pants. She was very firm about this. Top, negotiable. Pants, no.

So my hands reached down away from her hands and pulled my basket back where it was, and zipped my pants. And then Sean took over, because it was over. We didn’t make eye contact, mumbled something, took the guitar and left. She offered us the leftover ice cream cake, but he knew it would melt, and said no. She said–happily; normally–as if nothing out of the way had happened–as if it hadn’t happened–that then the nurses would be very happy to share it.

And then we left. We were thinking on the way home: “Wow. I just had sex with my mother.”

(Sean here: And this is what disassociation is like. I feel warmer–ok, yeah, the A/C is off, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I feel it right now. It’s so weird–I know this writing bit happened. To give you some sense of how we work, “I” remember writing it–but it’s like . . . the closest way to describe it is having woken up. From a sort of waking nap with a nightmare. Poor Grizzi. She’s such a sweetheart. She is crying now. “I’m sorry. I can’t stand it. I can’t stand any more.” She’s mainly sorry because even I can feel that the body is pretty fucked up right now. Tense, headachy.

But we needed her to do it, because it’s her memory. We always figured this as a Connie memory, because this happened during the Connie time period. But apparently not.

I just did that thing where we put pressure on our eyes, because they feel like swollen grapes, and we squeeze a little of the juice out. (Ewww.)

–The Narrator returns; it is almost two months after the above was written.

And at that point, home came the daughter. We went zamcat, and got this draft saved and the incognito tab of Chrome closed just in time. I mean seconds.

3.5 months later (this was started on 10/22/10): And that’s pretty much it.

I have trouble even finishing this now that we’re done with the yucky part. So–the next morning being Christmas, I was pretty much a basket case in church–well, actually, super-depersonalized. It felt like I was in a warm, fuzzy vague cocoon. I told my friend, whose mom was a nurse, who told me to talk to the curate, who was sympathetic but that was about all anybody could do.  It was what, 1977?

I need to post this puppy out after three months, so I’ll start working on (or will mean to start working on) a part three, of aftermath.

So, How Have *You* Been?

We’ve all been depressed this past week. OK, that’s a lie. Klaus is Klaus–but he’s not big on any feelings other than “Klaus smash.” Harriet is taking refuge in introspection–but gloom, gloom. And Griselda is pretty positive; she’s been distracted by some recent mild issues, but the body seems to more-or-less be on track. But the rest of us–me, Sean, Sam, Eight–and Jill–have been pretty bummed out.

Too many little things, that’s been the story for a while now.

I’m trying not to spaz over the oh-no-not-gonna-get-published thing. But that’s a matter of patience and perseverance, and we’re good at that.

Sean is upset over the usual quotidian stuff: bills, rent, going through hoops trying to get our student loans forgiven. We owe $163,000 on an education that has ultimately left us on Social Security and fretting over what food stamp roulette will shell out month by month.

Sam is with me on the publishing pity-party, and is also feeling sad and angry because we (drumroll please) have a wrinkle in our forehead. Meaning we finally look forty. Seeing as we’re 48, that’s probably not too bad, all things considered.

Connie is picking up on the general stress. Choir as always is a major anchoring point, but she’s the one who’s feeling most immobilized. She and Sean shared an anxiety attack yesterday.

Jill feels sad and scared. Her big people are exhibiting signs that used to mean that she wouldn’t be taken care of.

I think to sum up here, Nine is having an episode of autumnal tristesse. We’re getting older, and feeling dissatisfied. And despairing: What next? Are we going to live hand to mouth, day by day forever?

The getting older thing was pushed over the top by the recent issue of Time which focused on Alzheimer’s. We foresaw imminent cognitive decline. Nine’s grandmother got a bit dippy at 82, but that was after a stroke. (And 82. Hey.) On the other hand, her grandfather was going strong until he dropped dead at 92. But it’s always so much easier to focus on the negative. Curse you, homo sapiens vigilance! The cherry on the sundae was a movie review of something involving a bunch of retired spies or something. (Red?) Anyway, the rugrat writing the review implied that it was a vehicle depending on the piteous sympathy audiences have for the aged–including the heroine, who is a creaky 46.

Did I mention that we’re 48?

It’s kind of a theme–Sean is worried about getting life insurance: Hope is fucked without us. But when looking at the good ol’ burden on the children coming up, it looks like she’s fucked with us as well.

This is Team Nine: Aging, hopeless, poor, and crazy. All aboard the anxiety bus for eternity!

On top of all that, we had a major trigger this week: Our city holds random inspections of multi-unit dwellings (at least that seems to be the premise, as we don’t recall any such when we lived in smaller places) and we spazzed. Housework is not our strongest suit. Only Sam really enjoys it, and she’s not out much. In fact, we are (I think) what is now being called “chronically disorganized.”

Mind, our skills in that area have vastly improved over the past several years. It only took a little over an hour to make the place look as if we have opposable thumbs and own a mop–it used to take three or four. (Upon a moment of reflection, this is one of the clearest signs that the meds and the therapy are working on previously unappreciated levels.) But for years we lived in a situation that was on the lower level of hoarding, and the terror of essentially having The Man come in and threaten us with humiliation and dire consequences for not cleaning our room was omnipresent.

When we first left the abusive husband, and had the kids (9 and 11) living with us while we were under enormous stress, we had two separate housing complexes jump our shit over it. (Bear in mind that in Columbia, Maryland it is actually illegal to have a stained carpet. Really. On the citation.) The second time was the entrance into our first foray into homelessness, and our daughter was understandably scarred for life. We didn’t get evicted over it per se–but we had one of those bizarre adventures that can only be triggered by family–and these were the comparatively normal parts of our family. That time we were turned in by a maintenance worker.

Thus, the concept of somebody entering our home is enormously stressful and triggering. We had a vision of these people entering our unit (“Don’t worry! If you can’t be there, we’ll just go in without you–a member of management will be there!”) — and we couldn’t. Just couldn’t. I cannot imagine a home tidy enough to automatically guarantee safety–and even if so, the sense of invasion, of not being in control of who may enter our space, is overwhelming.

In other news . . .

The new therapist is working out well. We had to bail today over the inspection thing, which is too bad: I think we should have brought up some of the angst. Sean did last week; did a sort of State of the System check-in which I think is a good idea. The therapist, a lovely young woman whom we shall call Grey, is nice, smart, observant, and all that good stuff. The vibe is excellent, and we are relieved.

Out With the New; In With the . . . Newer?

Let’s see:

The move went fairly well. Very expensive. Used up all our last Social Security backpay. Hope and I/we wanted to cry. There are ongoing money wrinkles to work on–more rent than we expected; food stamps having mysteriously fluctuated and dwindled to almost nothing.

That said, we have come to love the new apartment. When we saw it, the bedrooms were tiny, compared to our other place, so I at least was thinking mournfully that it was too small. Well, it’s not; especially after filling two dumpsters with crap. (Can’t believe that we lost almost everything we owned only six years ago–and have cut down both the other times we’ve moved. That stuff thing.)

The bedrooms are indeed small–ours has our moose desk, which means there isn’t enough clearance between the bed and the chair, so we have to slide the chair around like a box puzzle. But it’s all good. Except for the issue of our rarely having a floor at the best of times. *sigh*

Thought: Maybe we’re so insanely untidy because of the DID–too many people all making messes. Hmm. Perhaps we can work on that.

But the big change–bigger, perhaps–is that New Therapist’s fellowship has ended. We see the new one in a couple of weeks. Moniker as yet to be determined.

We also lost our charming prescriber; but have a rather likable old coot whom I shall dub the Pill Lady if she comes up again. She has changed our meds: We are now taking 300mg Lamictal, 75mg Seroquel, .2 mg clonidine, and one and a half  tablets (dosage?) of Risperdal every night; 15mg extended release dexedrine and a half tablet of the Risperdal in the morning (along with our vitamin, yay)–and .05 mg of the clonidine as a PRN.

These meds are to treat the bipolar disorder and the ADHD; obviously, these impact the Nine system and how we function as a whole.

And that’s a wrap. As always, see our individual categories to check for something new. I will probably go mewl about losing New Therapist now. 😦

–The Narrator

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Meeting: May 29, 2010

New Therapist wants us to have meetings. Actually, so did the other therapist. Maybe it’s DID chic or something.

We’re waffling about how to put this on the site–i.e., personal categories or what? But for now–

Griselda, who is eternally hyper about this blog, has offered to chair the meeting. (*sigh*)

Griselda: I don’t know why he is sighing. Hello, it’s me! Griselda! OK, I will try not to use too many exclamation marks. I just thought of the play thing where you know who’s saying what.

I dont know why everybody is so low energy–it’s sort of my bailiwick, the body, and I t least am tough enough to just man up and deal with being groggy. We have a Seroquel hangover, becasue we are running out of the 25 mg–which for God’s sake is a call-in, people–I’m sorry I wasn’t paying good attention last night. >:-(

Anyway. We’ve been mumbling about how ti stru ture these things, so I have decided to be like AA. OK, run it like AA. Although it would be comically amusing if I were like AA.

(Nobody appreciates my sense of humor. No-body–get it?) :o)

I am going to go around the room alphabetically, just like the list. Sometimes we sort of forget who’s on board. There are nine of us, after all. Sean wants that –OK, he’s mostly over that–wanted that to be a sign of our being fake, but I think it’s more a matter of who’s really paying attention at the time.

Anyway–I want to say, before we forget, that we are having some trouble about being cool in public. We are starting to let the “we” thing slip out. Although Harriet says that maybe it’s just that we’re noticing it now; and now we are coming up with a (possibly fake) memory of somebody having called attention to it in the past, and our laughing it off like a Queenie thing. OK, yes, I know, wrong queen.

So OK, this is me shutting up.

Connie: I have this feeling of a sort of gray blankness. I guess that means that I am still depressed. I don’t want to be here; I’m just not sure where “here” is. I’m not suicidal; just low energy.

We’re all reacting to the upcoming move, and I think we should talk about that. I want to say “I’ll pass”–OK, with that I’ll pass.

Eight: I just went over and deleted a wrong category–for some reason, and I think it’s interesting–they (well, we) had me down twice–the other one was “Ghost.” I am not feeling quite as ghostlike, so . . .

I do notice, as Griselda has, that my subjective experience is different when I’m “out” (doesn’t that have a resonance of out-of-the-closet?) than when I’m sort of sharing non-vocal time. Anyway, I think Connie is right about the move.

I am feeling a good bit of that good old free-floating anxiety we used to dump on poor Sean. I believe I recall him saying at a therapy session that he actually feels better these days; and that we are indeed helping him share the weight.

The problem with the anxiety is that . . . oh God, I don’t want this to fall through! I noticed that the leasing people barely scanned the paperwork. I can’t see any non-jump-throughable hoops; I share the determined optimism that it will, it must work out. But I am very afraid; especially for her daughter’s sake. I want this for her. We all do. (And guys? Let’s not forget to schedule a move date on Monday, OK?) They’re telling me to make a stickie . . . OK, there.) That’s it for me.

Griselda: I am very excited about the move!! I wish people would at least determine to ignore such negativity. Yes, I’m scared–I think we all are! But we should dwell on the positive. I can feel that fear welling up inside. But I am determined to work it through. We’ve been getting a lot of headache/migraines lately, and the doofuses don’t seem to realize why. Duh! It’s stress! Anyway, I suppose I should say that perhaps obviously my main concern in terms of my “department” is that we not fuck up the back again, OK people? Please?

Harriet: I notice that I am less physically tense than other people. (Another nod of confirmation/approval from Griselda.) I suppose it’s discipline. Althoug I do worry; I think I worry more about the team. That’s my job; I poked for the meeting. I think having them online here is an excellent idea.

I think the move is also an excellent idea. I share the “I can’t see any non-jump-throughable hoops” that Eight does. (Pause while I critique the current theme as difficult to read. We’ll work on that later.) I actually have confidence. I think the anxiety is normal and understandable, and I know we’ll get through it. Those people ate us up with a spoon, and I’m sure they’ll be willing to work with us. Ironically, I think this is actually an excuse to stall on packing; I think that packing is very triggering. As we said to the daughter–gosh, that kid needs a name! I’m going to give her one. Hmm . . . I’m skipping over her baby name . . . OK, there’s been some discussion about whether or not to leave her as just “Daughter.” But I feel very strongly that she needs a name; that she not just dwindle into a sort of placeholder/object.

Hope. I’m going with Hope. General consensus there. Did we mention that Nine changed her name? As in completely? We’re fascinated with names; the Narrator (no, I’m not capping the “the.” Get over it.) thakes them quite seriously. Hope it is. Anyway, as we said to Hope, this is our first move since we bought the house (pre-divorce) where we haven’t essentially been fleeing like Eliza over the ice. (Ooh. I get to make a link reference. God, but Griselda loves those. Her enthusiasm is so refreshing. She makes me smile. She is part of our Hope too. She happily pointed out that after all, Hope was housed in her/our/the body to begin with.)

What I meant from the above is that we have time to pack; to plan. I think that’s part of the general agony of the uncertainty. There’s no reason in the world why we shouldn’t pack, no matter what. It’s not as if we’re staying here. But still, the stalling. I think that bears looking into, yself; and I shall advocate for bringing it up with Therapist. (Come on, guys, she’s not “New” Therapist anymore.) Next!

Jill: I like the furniture. Everybody is helping me write this. I can read, but I think thsi is the first time I have typed. What I mean about the furniture is that I like the way the cat looks on it. It reminds me our grandmother’s house. I loved her so much. That is why Nine changed her last name to hers. I miss her all the time. Next to the old Therapist, she is the only good mommy I have ever had.

Wow, that backing up thing is fun. Making the letters disappear. I’ve watched, but I have never done it. Anyway, I want the move. It will be quiet. That’s what I like about the cat. She is surled up against the pillow, sleeping. She is a dark warm gray cat. They call her blue; I’m not sure why. Anyway, the couch is black, and she looks like a picture. I want to be all peaceful like at that house. I am going to ask them for lace curtains. It’s the kind of Irish we are. Our mother said that, but I’m not sure if grandmother cared. Maybe. In any case, I remember the curtains, and how they smelled. Kind of dusty, but I would wrap myself up in them and feel safe. It was like the quiet of snow.

Klaus: I think it’s high time the grandmother turned up in this story. She’s the only reason we survived at all. I think she knew that something was amiss. I know she didn’t much like our mother; that she would say that our father was the only person in the house with whom she had a good relationship. I rememember Jill being hurt by that, but I know what she meant. The baby isn’t exactly a person, in some ways; not an adult person with whom one can interact.

In any case, I see the move as a challenge, and as usual, I will fight for us. Fight for the sanity. We have a person in the Game now who is everything positive; I am trying to be that person for us. I myself have become conscious about my brooding. I think we’re getting better. Samurai?

Sam: God, but I hate this shit. OK–here’s what I think. I agree with everybody. I feel the fear; I feel the hope; I feel the almost nauseous concern for Hope’s possible disappointment–and I feel the confidence that it really will be all right. I agree that that’s the big thing: What if . . . it really does turn out to be all right? Part of all this is Sean’s determined reaching out for something to stress over, to go wrong. And yeah, we’re all right behind him.

I’m going to take a break to take our ADD med, and then it will be his turn. (And, oh yeah, I’ll be part of picking the new theme. Count on that.)

Sean: I am actually in a pretty good mood this morning. Go figure. I feel rested (despite the Seroquel groggy) and centered. It’s really good to parcel out the anxiety for a change. I’m obviously getting better at that.

My concerns this morning are mundane: making more tea; cleaning our glasses; picking up the refrigerator magnets (see, we have a lot of those poetry magnets–which, interestingly, never got put up here.)

I think that the above shows that deep down inside, we have always hated this place; seen it as the stopgap it’s been. I’ve been telling myself/us that it’s like being posted somewhere in the Army–sooner or later, our term of duty will be up, and we’ll get re-posted—or, in our case, sent home. And even if it falls through–we’re *still* not stuck in Iraq.

Anyway–God, we all need to stop saying that. It’s like it’s embedded into our language center–which the Narrator agrees–today I want to stay focused on the things which are, instead of the things that are not. Catchy, huh? I really liked AA. Over to you, boychik–

The Narrator: (Boychik?) Well, he’s perky today. I’m at the tough part of the book, but at least the killer is talking to me. (I’ve decided to redact the posts with the excerpts, or figure out how to password them for the Therapist, or something.) How humiliating if we get famous, and then somebody Googles it. Shudder.

(You know, I’m going to have to go through and comb for the above-mentioned “A-word.” )

In many ways, I’ll miss this place and the neighborhood. So much to listen to, to observe, and to feel. Another chapter in the long, strange trip.

I would like to point out that “The” Narrator is part of my name/label. Just saying.

Dear God in heaven, but those ferrets reek. Hm, I wonder if my sense of smell is more acute; perhaps I’m tied into the senses more. Maybe that’s why I seem to be on such good terms with Griselda. Who, by the way, has been an excellent moderator. A good choice.

So—I think we’ll get on with our day now. Let Sean do the tea and glasses thing–and the ferrets; and then settle down a bit. (And I believe I have a consensus that post-ferrets, we will come back and pick a new theme.)

And that’s a wrap, people! I was going to say, “Serenity Prayer?” as a sort of joke–but it’s not:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference.

Big hug, people!!

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