Tuesday, June 21, 2011

The Other Girl

We probably had to be drunk to write about her; probably I had to.

We understand that there might be confusion for a lot of people reading our blog for the first time, or those who have read our blog for weeks, or months, when we talk about or mention “The Other Girl”. There are likely some questions about who she is, who she was, or even, in some cases, if she still exists.

The Other Girl no longer exists, that we are sure of. She was the person born into our body; in Disassociate Identity Disorder she is referred to as the Core*. (Not familiar with this disorder? There are some links in the other post from today that discuss that)

Even though I hated her because she was weak, and a failure, many of us didn’t hate her. Sometimes they miss her and they hate me for having a large hand in making them destroying her; sometimes they are happy because now they can be themselves; though it is new to them, and sometimes very hard for me, and very hard for them.

I don’t actually know if it is normal for alters*, or AN alter, to destroy their core and take over. I do know we did it, systematically and finally in the end, we destroyed The Other Girls very being, her existence. It’s a story that we’ve mentioned in a couple of posts here, a story that is yet to be written because there is a lot involved (and when we try it make some of us cry a lot, like writing this entry), and there are a couple of years to fill in before it comes to where her history meets my re-emergence.

Girl Crush asked us once, recently, how we knew The Other Girl was actually gone. I told her that the reason we know is because she never, ever, ever, would have let us be…us. They can all be them, because I let them be, and no matter how hard and painful it is for the rest of them…I do not hold them back. When they (The Others) want to front*, I let them; though sometimes there is resistance and I pull them back because I won’t let them be hurtful to others outside of our system, and some of them try to be.

The Other Girl, in her life, would have appeared happy to most people, her friends, who thought they knew her; in the last couple of years she used a lot of pot/marijuana to silence the rest of us, even when she got flack from her friends about being high, she would not budge, she simply drew away from them.

When she socially drank it gave her freedom to let some of us be us, if we so chose, because it was always a good excuse, being drunk, in the face of others, none of knew or would understand. Towards the end when we drank some of us hated The Other Girls’ friends, and made her sad and miserable for being with them and making us be with them. We would make her cancel plans and stay home because we disliked them a lot, we did not understand why she liked them, other than they partied a lot and helped her keep us at bay.

The Other Girl had a touch of OCD, she had control issues; probably for her she thought that having control of her surroundings was on par to being in control of us. The Other Girl used to have issues with germs, always washing her hands, always trying to keep things clean, organized. She obsessed.

The Other Girl wanted to be married to the last man that we had a long-term relationship with (Significant Other), even though he had lied to her (something that we will write about sometime soon). The Other Girl and Significant Other had even planned on having a child; she had gone on a low-estrogen birth control in preparation, they had a date planned. If she had had her way, we would have a baby in our arms right now. Quiet frankly, that is a horror to imagine.

While I may not have been in the picture again until the last year and half of her life or so, she tried to control the rest of them, the us. The Other Girl wanted, for once, to have friends who were “normal”, who thought she was “normal”. She knew from our history that we had made her move away from cities she had loved, people she had cared about, and she had wanted to stay in the city that she had moved us all to, the place she loved, for some strange reason; she was scared. She did not realize that this place that we all cannot help but call home is a place we never would have made her move from. The Other Girl tried to fight us this last time, unlike any time before, and some of us, I, wouldn’t stand for the fighting.

The rest of us knew that what she had wanted a baby, a marriage; this was not a smart thing. That she had wanted these things so she could appear normal, so she could feel normal; so she could show the love to a child that she felt she had never received, but the rest of us knew that this was unhealthy. We knew that none of us, including her, was in a position to raise a child, to pass on our genetics to a person that would grow up to be damaged. We were okay with admitting the secret that she was not okay with admitting; that there were many more than just her in this body, and that meant we were not healthy. It was the secret she held her entire life.

Some of us grieve in the privacy of our apartment, because it’s easy when nobody can see our face. Its easy when most of our time outside of work is spent sitting alone on our side of the computer screen talking with people who can’t see our pain, our tears, our sadness; cannot really see our problems, second to second, day to day; at all. It’s what makes us, for now, scared of forming a relationship…that someone would have to witness our day-to-day life; or, that we would have to work to suppress it.

We’ve talked to The Father about The Other Girl, the girl he’s only known as his only as his little girl, his daughter, and the fact that she is gone, on more than one occasion. He, like others who knew her, can’t really accept she is gone, though at least he has tried; but with family you can’t disappear like we have in the past with so many others that thought they knew The Other Girl.

She wasn't a bad person, The Other Girl, she just wanted to try to be normal for once. She wanted people to think that she was the same as everyone else; she wanted to forget us, forget her past, and forget who she had always been. She would try to imitate others behaviours, she would try to dress how she thought other people dressed, acted like and tried to convince all of Them, all of the Us, that they wanted the same things as everyone else.

Finally, in the end she fell in love with Standby, man who didn’t really believe in mental illness, which resulted in her tragic end. She fell in love with a man who didn’t believe in doctors, who would have never believed in us; a man who hated me, Frank, and told me so, even though he struggled to believe; a man who loved her and refused to understand that she was ill at all, until it was too late.

When she had talked to Standby about concerns regarding blood tests, the last December (2010) of her existence, something we will touch on further in the future; a test that would have relieved her mind if it had been positive in result, even though it would have meant our eventual death. It was something that would have eased her mind in regards to the struggle she had endured for so many years, a feeling of dementia.
                                                                                    
I knew that if she had ended up with Standby it would have been a forever relationship. The Other Girl loved him that much; and incidentally I had loved Fuck Face almost as much. I have always been the stronger one, the one to save the rest of them, the one to save her, and I was tired of being second, or worse, less than second; I was tired of her fucking up all of our lives.

I also knew Standbys last girlfriend, a woman that Cassandra wrote about, a woman who this past couple months committed suicide; a woman who was mentally ill. We, and I, knew, that if The Other Girl had perused a long term relationship with Standby it would only lead to suppressing us further, and would have ended up causing more years of pain to the rest of us; and possibly pain to him.

The Other Girl was herself, but like me, she was also the rest of them, the rest of us; the only difference is, she wouldn’t let them have control; she tried to suppress them over and over, with fleeing, with drugs, with denial…with medication; when all we wanted was a chance to be out.

There is not a lot more to say about her. I don’t particularly miss her other than it being hard to control the rest of them, the rest of us; and I don’t know, other than drugs, how she was able to do it - but I am learning every day. They take over, the others, like yesterday when I couldn’t control Sam…I had to struggle with him to remove him from fronting*, from being destructive, because he was angry and frustrated, for what reason I do not know.

While we are open about us in this blog, we don’t like talking about us in Tweets on Twitter; 140 characters is never enough, especially to those who don’t really know us. If anyone ever has questions, Twitter followers or not, about The Other Girl, (or even about us), we are open to answering them.

Last night @mr_jmm (James), on our Skype date, asked questions about The Other Girl, and we answered; we are okay with that. She is not a part of us anymore, but some of them remember her well, though every day the memory of her fades a little and we’d like to be able to chronicle her life somehow. The only way we know how to remember her in the long run is here, in this blog, because like anything else we have written…if others read it before one of us decides to erase it in some mad fury, at least someone would have known one of us, even if she is gone; even if one of us disappears, or one us tries to destroy another.

That’s all we have for tonight.

If you’re confused, which, if this is your first time here we are not surprised about, please read the other post from today, which might help clear some things up a bit.

We’re about to play on Twitter or maybe get more than the four hours of sleep we are accustomed to getting on the weeknight; we might be coming down with a bit of a cold.

~Written by Frank with some help form the "et al"
Note: Not familiar with some of the people we've talked about? You can find stories of them and who they are are in Recommendations - Weeded From Our ... Feeded?
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*Terms, some used here, some in general...:

DISSOCIATIVE IDENTITY DISORDER A.K.A MULTIPLE PERSONALITY DISORDER: TERMINOLOGY

Personality Specifics
Alter: alter states, selves, parts (a subjective term); distinct personalities; fragments alternate personality, personality state, ego state or identity with its own unique perspectives, abilities, memories or other traits that differ from the Host or Executive personality.
The Core: The original birth personality.
Host: is the alter personality who dominates the control of the body most of the time and is often unaware of the other personalities. The host is usually the alter personality who will initiate after experiencing symptoms of mental distress, such as, anxiety, triggers or recovered memories.
Executive: When a personality (alter ego) has control of the body.
Switch: To switch from one personality to another. The process of an alter coming out from the subconscious mind into the consciousness mind while the other alter (who was already in the consciousness mind) slips back into the subconscious mind.
Who's out? A common question used to determine which personality is executive or host.
Co-conscious(ness): (The Core) A state of being aware of what the other personalities are doing and saying.
Other Terms:
Acquired: Anything that is not present at birth but develops some time later. In medicine, the word "acquired" implies "new" or "added." An acquired condition is "new" in the sense that it is not genetic (inherited) and "added" in the sense that was not present at birth.
Triggers: Hysterical conversion symptoms or body memories. Physical phenomenon such as pain, smells, tastes, etc.; re-experienced again.
Dissociation: In psychology and psychiatry, a perceived detachment of the mind from the emotional state or even from the body. Dissociation is characterized by a sense of the world as a dreamlike or unreal place and may be accompanied by poor memory of the specific events, which in severe form is known as dissociative amnesia.
Re-live: A total memory recall (includes visual, emotional, physical and all other senses).
Losing time: Also known as a Dissociative Fugue, is the period of which an alter personality is in the subconscious mind and has no recollection of the time that is being utilized by the alter personality who is occupying the conscious mind. Therefore when the alter switches into the conscious mind they realize that minutes, hours, days, or even months and years have passed since they were last aware of time.
System: is the structure of relationships between the alter personalities who live within the internal world of a survivor with D.I.D.! Every system is created and operates in it's own unique way, just like every family living in their own homes run their households different from the next door neighbor.
Inner (Self) Helper: is usually the alter personality who has a good understanding of the system and how it works. The I.S.H. is also among the typical group of helpers or protector personalities.
Grounding: is the process of disrupting a dissociative episode and is accomplished by tugging on an earlobe, rubbing the hands together, or shuffling the feet back and forth. This type of physical stimuli can bring the survivors mind back to awareness of their surroundings, and helps to make them feel less animated.

Want more info? There is more about symptoms of Dissociative Identity Disorder, and what it is, at http://wearejcmf.blogspot.com/


2 comments:

  1. not confused at all. truthfully, had to shut off music... Was going to post it here, couldn’t find it, skew me

    ReplyDelete