My Not So Random Return

I don’t have a lot to say today. I’m back, which is nice. Who knows how long it will last. James is pretty happy, he figured he wouldn't be seeing me again until after we left The Mothers house in January, when we set out for a couple of months in Europe/The UK.

He gets so soppy (that’s our/his word for romantic) whenever I am around. Today I told him that if he cries I’d punch him in the stomach, it seemed to keep his tears at bay. He's such a beautiful man for putting up with some of the bullshit some of the Others put him through. But as he is fond of saying "It's a good job you're pretty", always with a happy grin.

I imagine I am back because I have some writing to do (none of us have been able to figure out what triggers all of us, only some of us), and they (the Others) need my assistance since I am one who carries some key memories of the last couple of years, particularly the last year. They have been having a difficult time writing the final portions of our life story (found over there to the left under ☟THE CHAPTERS OF FRANK/HOW WE CAME TO BE US/ADDRESSING WE☟ Now located here: http://just-call-me-frank.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/stories-of-us.html)...and it needs to be done before the end of the year. 

There isn’t much to say today. While driving around a bit this afternoon we came upon a pink Ford Ecoline…the type of van we plan to use to travel the United States starting in the spring. I squealed with delight when I saw it parked in the dealer lot…the price is right, and it's in great shape...but it’s too soon to purchase it, given the house is still in market transition...but if it stays long enough...

"I can't wait to be seen driving a pink van", James stated, but we know he's actually pretty excited at the idea, probably he would prefer it to be blue, or green...

It did give us a great idea for the trip, if we find a white one in as good condition…it’d be awesome to have a pink van (or one that has some colour), and put big flower decals on it, or bullet holes...or slash marks...and just make it awesome, because why not (we'll be living in for a year, after all). It'd be easy to locate in those WalMart parking lots we plan on hooking into (*rolls eyes in disgust*)

Ivy would love it, she could have her pseudo-hippy experience complete with flowers (potentially) all over the van, which was actually The Father's idea - a bit of joke of course, but he knows parts of us; and traveling the USA in a van (granted it's no VW van...), and camping/staying at campgrounds just sounds like a relatively inexpensive but great adventure for us to write about. Don’t you think?

We’re starting to approach the planning stages, like acquiring a generator so we can run the laptops (and the coffeemaker, mus'nt forget the coffeemaker...) from any location. We’ve got the mobile hotspot device purchased so we can get a plan for wireless coverage all over the United States...without a phone/texting plan, because honestly...who uses a phone as a phone anymore? Not us.

It’s a nice diversion, planning this trip, but it’s going to have to hit a back burner for a bit, and I’m going to need to carve out a chunk of precious time to focus on writing…in case anyone wonders about our intermittent absences in the next weeks...hopefully we can work together, and write fast, because we tend to miss out friends who exist on Twitter...and Thanksgiving is right around the corner.

Cheers, for now…I have a deer to skin pretty soon (yes, James will be making a video of it...)

~Frank

Frank Gets Candid, About Memories...and Bethany

Bethany's bubble picture...

DISCLAIMER: Please be aware. Some posts cover information about Us and our life with Dissociative Identity Disorder/Multiple Personality Disorder. This is part of writing therapy and an attempt to raise awareness and reach out to others who deal with this in their life. If you have not read us thus far, you will be confused, perhaps angry. You may discount this as bull shit. We don’t blame you. You don’t have to keep reading. If you continue on, however, you might want to check out the story of our life, to give you context on why we are who, and “what” we are.

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We’ve been trying to find our memories from before we were 8. This is an important step in finding the ones who might be hiding in the recesses of our mind, where some of the others have been, others who we have found, but not yet wrote about.

I had known that Bethany (who you’ve all heard me to refer to as Bitch in the past) was there, but the more writing I did, the more we went back to it, the more I realized it was not possible to be attributing all the qualities, and out of body experiences, that I felt were not part of me, onto a singular alter (DID speak for another personality). There was no way that Bethany, who I had always know to be a child, was the one who was taking us over and causing all the things that had been happening to us;  and there were a lot of adult themed experiences that no 6 year old is capable of.

Marissa, who has dealt with this same issue in her life (DID/MPD), and who is guiding us with her experience, says this is normal, and actually how she had dealt with it before she started therapy, before her therapist worked on helping her figure out how to find her others. You can’t imagine how much relief it is to find out that what is happening is DID/MPD “normal”, at least to one other person who has been there. It’s not always the same for everyone; at least we don’t think it is. It’s hard to find people willing and able to talk about it, or able to articulate what it is that they are going through.

We don’t have any memories that we are aware of before 8-10 years of age. No matter how hard I have tried I can’t seem to find any on my own, and have not been able to find any with the help of Bethany. We know that Angry Brother, being only two years younger, should be there somewhere in the memory bank. We don’t seem to remember anything before Baby Brother was born, when We were about 8. As a matter of fact the oldest memory we have is our dad coming to pick us up from the Christian private school we were attending, the day that Baby Brother was born.

We remember standing in the window of the tiny circular library that day, waiting in anticipation for The Father to pick us up in the little blue Ford Escort; waiting for him bring us to the new arrival of our family. There is nothing that we can gather from before that day – no single memory of time with just Us and Angry Brother. The first 8 years, and many from then until we were 12, are missing.

In addition, most of the memories we have are not of things that happened to us, but times when we would have been called to action as protector of The Brothers, times where there may have been drama, sadness, anger, fear…a sense that we somehow had to protect them – like when baby Brother “fell” out of his highchair and split his head open with The Maternal Grandmother was taking care of us one day; she also had mental illness issues.

Last night we were doing what we usually do when not painting or writing; chatting with our “virtual friends” on Twitter. What happened in the hour leading up to our sudden departure is hard to explain, a departure noticed by a couple of the people who are our regular friends, those we try to remember to interact with on a daily basis (they usually end up in The Exclusives list; sometimes we forget to put them there right away though). Our memory, even now, is shit; but then, when it comes to some things….it’s crystal clear. Annoying, and depends on the day.

This may seem strange to those who chat with us on a daily basis, but there are times you are dealing with me, and Bethany (and sometimes those of us you don’t know about that only we know about)…they, and we, go back and forth, sharing "my" consciousness. Sometimes our interactions include adult content, and Bethany starts to feel uneasy and leaves; sometimes she stays around and asks me to stop it from happening. Either way, adult time, and kid friendly time, is important in our Tweeting.

I could feel Bethany wanting to play, as I tried to maintain some “adult time” (which is restricted to the open timeline, we do not partake in funny business behind DirectMessaging (DM) doors). I could tell she was sneaking out, because we often say our Tweets out loud when we are at home, and as the hour grew on I felt like I was being pulled away and as Bethany started Being/fronting, and I let her…our Tweets became embarrassing.

As I watched her Tweets: *running in circles* because of “many cookies for the many us” and yapping about a picture of bubbles that she posted on Tumblr, bubbles being one of her favourite things, tweeting “bubbles are happy”, I decided it was time to shut down the social networking. I realize that what amounts to a 6 year old should not be playing with the adults, lest we get confused, and confuse others who view us as always being an adult, I convinced her to go play with the cats.

While she laid on the floor talking to the cats and letting them purr and rub against her, trying to get them to play with their cat toys with her, they can tell some of us from others, and the cats like her (some of us they do not like); I tried to get her to talk to me about the memories she has. All she kept saying is she wanted her “blanky” back; a comfort/security item that The Mother says was made for us before we were even born – an item that The Other Girl took away from her after the car accident when we were 25. That blanket went everywhere with us before that, even on our missionary trips to Mexico.

She kept playing with the cats, she tried coming up with the memories but I guess I was rushing her, and she ultimately started crying, rocking, crouched on our knees, our head in our lap, on the carpet, and she went to hide.

What happens after we have these experiences, experiences that many have a hard time grasping? Different things, usually if we have been on Twitter and it was only mild, we sit back and watch what’s happening until we feel comfortable enough to talk to people; this time we took a shower, crying because when things like that happen it is scary and it makes me think I am losing my mind, even though I  know we are not because I used to be in there with them, and now I am out here.

We were trying to come up with a way to describe what it’s like, the We that is us, how that works. Imagine living in a two story house, and you are usually on the main floor hanging out. There are other people who are on the second floor. Sometimes you can hear them like they are yelling down to you from upstairs, or the top of the stairs and you can see them; sometimes you cannot hear them at all. On occasion they come down to the first floor to hang out with you (in DID called co-consciousness), to see the things you are seeing, to talk to you more, to “hang out” with you (which is what Bethany likes to do, a lot). Sometimes more than one comes downstairs to hang out and it gets noisy, and then other times you go upstairs and somebody takes your place on the main floor, and you have to yell down to them, or watch from the top of the stairs. When you are not on the main floor someone has to tell you what went on when you were not there, and sometimes they won’t tell you right away, sometimes they tell you later, sometimes they won't tell you at all. Sometimes you are all by yourself on the main floor, and you can't hear anyone on the second floor, and if you are us, or me, you get lonely.

After Bethany went to hide I e-mailed The Father to ask about things from the past, a couple things that I remember, but needed to confirm my age on, even though we already know we were over the age of 10. Things like taking care of a horse we once had, who had cut its chest wide open trying to run through a barbed wire fence, a horse we took care of every day with the help of The Father, cleaning its wound and spraying iodine on in, back when we wanted to be a veterinarian.

“Why don't I have any memories of anything that isn't photographed or has been talked about repeatedly before I was 8-10 - was there nothing to remember? Do you have memories from when you were a kid? How do those work?”, we asked The Father in the e-mail we sent last night. (Haven't heard back from him yet)

It seems strange that there are no memories; perhaps that is what happens to everyone. We’ve talked to a couple of people about their first memories and we have heard ages from 3-5. So we don't know why we don't have any.

We understand now, however, that with a history of child abuse (and neglect), and with what has happened to the way our brain works, that these memory losses can be normal. What we are trying to do, while we obtain memories piece by piece and write them down, is find out if there is any being repressed, because maybe it will help us. There are times, however, that we think maybe we don’t want to know, because if the things about The Other Girl were so horrible as to create those of us we are already aware of...what others, and other things lurk beneath the surface? What are the things that cause us to wake up, knowing that the night before we had remembered something, and have already forgot, and it is the reason for the tears still fresh on our face?

After we e-mailed The Father, we sent Marisa some questions, asking her about what she experienced when she attempted finding the members of The Crew, with the help of professionals, because we still can’t get through an entire entry in her blog about how she dealt with this many years ago.

After reassuring us that what we had experienced last night was on par with some of her own, she advised us, “Don't try to force conversations about the memories. As she (and they) get used to being accepted as they are, the sense of safety will grow and the conversations will happen on their own.”

I agree with her, perhaps next time I will let Bethany play, instead of make her try to remember things that might be scary for her, then maybe, eventually, she will feel comfortable enough to share. Plus, the cats would like to spend more time with her too.

What I remember most are the great pains of my life.
The pleasant moments I have forgotten.” ~ Pierre from Delta of Venus by Anais Nin

Our DID/MPD Journey:

Frank Gets Candid (April 4, 2011)

**We Freak Out** (April 6, 2011)

We Are Fragments (April 9, 2011)

We / We Get Random / We Have Questions (April 8, 2011)

Marisa Answers Our Questions (April 9, 2011- second post of that day)

Read stories of our life:

Addressing The Issue of Frank: The Origins, History and Life Story of Frank, from "Just Call Me Frank: One Womans Endeavour At Being Frank"  (also contains our artwork and photography)

Frank Gets Candid

DISCLAIMER: Please be aware. This is a post dealing stricktly with how we are dealing with Dissociative Identity Disorder. This is part of writing therapy and an attempt to raise awareness and reach out to others who deal with this in their life. If you have not read us thus far, you will be confused, perhaps angry. You may discount this as bull shit. We don’t blame you. You don’t have to keep reading. If you continue on, however, you might want to check out the story of our life, to give you context on why we are who, and “what” we are: http://issueoffrank.blogspot.com/

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We thought about titling this We Get Frank…but then realized it sounds aggressive, to us; so we went with an alternative title that pretty much means the same thing.

While we laid on the massage table this evening, getting our weekly deep tissue massage to relieve some of the chronic pain that plagues our body from that stupid car accident a few year ago; we were given a good amount of time to relax and “meditate”, something The Other Girl avoided at all costs. Gee, can’t imagine why.

As I lay there, mind open, the Alters started discuss among themselves, their thoughts, and feelings, talking about ones who are gone, ones who are hiding. Tears threatened the eyes, and we held them back as the massage therapist said “pretty difficult stuff, hey?” He meant the massive blocks of knots and tension he was working on, as we squeezed our eyes shut, the tears threatening to stream down the side of our face, onto the pale blue sheet beneath us.

As they spoke up, I realized in my absence, out of those smaller times, when The Other Girl hadn’t needed me and all my strength, they had become many more.  They had hidden when I showed up each time, because they were not needed, and some of them were scared of me.

This makes no sense to you. We realize this. For some of you, those like Us, it makes more sense. And we know those like us are out there because we have chatted with you, we have read some of your stories this past week in blogs, we have seen some of your artwork; and we know there are others who stay silent, who stay tortured and confused and are in misery trying to control their lives and keep it all under wraps.

For our readers who either have never known about this disorder, Dissociative Identity Disorder/Multiple Personality Disorder (DID/MPD), or who have little knowledge of it, we have read a bit the last couple of days, so that we may understand ourself a bit better. While we have always been interested in psychology, it was the developmental and sociological aspects, how humans interact, not the mental disorders, that we became interested in University, after all of our mis-diagnosis’ of Social Anxiety, Manic Depression (Bipolar) and Schizophrenia.

Call it fear of confirming that we are who we are, and trying to avoid what happened last Wednesday when all our fears were confirmed, because until then we didn’t even bother looking into what symptoms would be involved in what we figured we had.

What you should know, well there’s lots to know, but what we want to say is, that according to WebMd, “Statistics show the rate of dissociative identity disorder is .01% to 1% of the general population […], and 7% percent of the population may have undiagnosed dissociative disorder.”[1]

We won’t bore you with a bunch of statistics, or force you to learn about it, if you want to learn about it we’ve provided links at the bottom of the page. If you want to see a list of symptoms  you can find them in the info of the links below, if you want to know what ours symptoms are, you can go here: http://issueoffrank.blogspot.com/p/did-info.html, where we have highlighted the symptoms we have experienced, out of the list of general symptoms. Sometimes we experience them on a daily basis, sometimes between longer periods.

Many parts of our life, and The Other Girls life, at one point, or another, have felt like someone else’s life; we have actually uttered those words, as so did she, to friends and family on many occasions. “It’s like it was someone else’s life” “I don’t even know who that person was” or “That wasn’t me.” Even the utterance of such words is not enough to raise a flag, or incite questioning; most people think you are just trying the shirk responsibility for your actions. We’ll step up right now and say, that while all of us may not have been involved in every decision and mistake, they are our mistakes and our burdens to bear, because we realize that “the problem is that no matter who makes the final decision, we all have to live with it.” - a status we posted on our Facebook wall Friday, April 8^th.

You might wonder how someone could hide this, something that seems so severe. We are sure there are varying levels of severity, but in reality it’s not hard to hide. People in general are not very perceptive. We tend to be perceptive, and that’s how we know this. When concerns are raised many are quick to say, “Oh, well I do that too”, and in your head one of you is saying “You’re a fucking idiot, you have no idea”, while another tries to keep that one quiet and say “hey there is nothing wrong with us, see!” and then they bicker, and then you tell them both to “shut the hell up”. Sometimes it’s not unlike having a room full of kids in your head, running in and out (“don’t slam the door!”); which sucks, because we don’t like kids. Well, most of us don’t like them.

People have thought it funny when we have said things like “If I we’re [TOG] where would have put that”. Because we misplace things all the time, are not able to remember, sometimes from one minute to the next where we set things down. Humour of the people who surround us are the only way we have been able to be us be us, even a little, from time to time. The things we forget and the stupid act we put on when we are confused by things provides a good cover; certainly people who have passed through our lives at times have thought us an airhead. The Other Girl was an airhead, if only because she denied us, and made us look an unstable fool with all her cover up jobs. You’ve probably guessed that I am not a big fan of her; she made me take over her body and destroy her. I never really wanted to be fully out, I do not make a good host, both for our body and in real life. But here I am….full frontal, baby. (we like to make jokes, that was a joke…get it? No? Fronting is when an alter is in charge of the host…still not funny? Well, we thought it was funny, so…who cares.)

We don’t know if that’s how this shit works, an Alter being able to overtake the original host, but it happened; it makes us wonder who the original host was in the first place, if we are being honest about this.

People we’re involved in the process, we made sure to share with them everything we were going through, there were witnesses; if only so we didn’t get to this point and think we are completely insane. We are not insane.

More cover-ups? It is easy to pretend you remember things when you take massive amounts of pictures, like we have; or you have family members who repeat stories, and those become your memories, even though you do not actually remember any of them, like we have. You only remember a moment, frozen in a picture. Or you just nod and agree because people love it when they are right, and so you let them be, because they have to be.

It’s even easier to hide problems when “you all” run amok, and you high tail it out of dodge faster than nobody’s business, pets in tow, and start a new life somewhere, like we have many times. We’ve had nearly 30 physical addresses in 30 years, mostly as an adult, spanning 6-7 states and one province.

We have stayed far away from family, for years on end, we’ve ended relationships with friends and loved ones at the point where we realized we couldn’t hide anymore, we’d get restless, despite some of us still loving that person, or those people in our life;  we’ve done it many times. Occasionally parts of us resurface and desire to connect with them, but we hold back because we know better. We’re great at burning bridges.

A little of what it’s like for us:

The most difficult thing is not being able to recall things. “Yes, I’ve read that book”. We remember we’ve read it, but please, will you sit awhile while we try to find the one of us that actually retained the memory. Do you have fifteen minutes to wait to see if it comes to us? Come back in an hour, tomorrow…then we can discuss it – or maybe next year when, eureka! There’s the information.

Oh, what’s that word? We just said it 20 minutes ago…and now we can’t recall.

You just gave us a word, a number to remember…poof it’s gone, faster than our pen can reach the paper. Gone, just like the one who had the information in the first place. Awhile later they are back. Here’s the number/word, they say. 

Oh, what, we’re you on a coffee break? Please let me know before you leave in the middle of something important, lest my mind become empty waiting for your stand-in.

Hey, what happened to that thing we just set over there on the table? We just saw it….how long ago was it? It couldn’t have been more than five minutes! someone yells. Oh, maybe it’s over there….nope. Okay, let’s stand still. Deep breath. Slowly blinking while we wait for someone. Oh, well there you are and there it is.

But man, when we work as a team, we’re on! Fast as lightening we can put together words; we can come up with trivia answers off the top of our head. We know lots of information. Catch us on a day when we’re not working as a team, and we are lost in our head, unable to grasp simple concepts. Confused. We can hardly function in our body, we can’t type worth a shit. Everything slows down.

Sure, sure. You’re saying “oh, I experience that”. If you do, and that’s pretty much chunks of your every day, then kudos to fucking keeping YOUR We in check…we are not so lucky.

I have a hard time controlling the alters, and so we’ve been forcing ourself to stay indoors until we can figure this out. That and one of us is paranoid as all hell, and she pops in unexpectedly. Although, The Other Girl pretty much lived as a shut in the year or so before I showed up, she owned a business that she started on money from her car accident, a home based business that failed and closed. It may take some prodding of the other ones to figure out why she was staying in all that time way back then – only coming out for a few hours on the weekend, otherwise avoiding the public as much as she could.

We had an Alter join in co-consciousness today, she pretty much took over. She has been here lately, writing in the blog a few times. 

Sometimes we have to go back and see what was written, because we “forget” what we have said, and in doing so we hear the voices of those responsible. “Hey, that’s mine!”

Some of the Alters want to be talked about and recognized; some do not. Particularly Catherine, who came to me this morning and gave me her name, she’d prefer not to be talked about, but we’re going to anyway.

We had been wondering what her name was since she’s been throwing fits of paranoia a lot more lately.

A little about Catherine, what she has shared so far:

She feels threatened by people and their actions, and is obsessive and paranoid and anxious. She doesn't want people to know about us. Her paranoia is annoying. She hates driving, it makes her dizzy and she sees things jump out at her that are not there. The weekend of The Other Girls demise she made us close the blinds and has not let us open them since; she was also paranoid about all the cars in the parking lot the entire weekend, and paranoid about a cop car that was parked outside the building. She was the reason we didn’t leave the house for nearly four days.

She is the driving force behind paranoia entries, and gets angry that I make her write them. Her most recent works include Paranoid, and Paranoia: More Than A Soft Spot or; What The Hell Do We Call This Post. She is involved in all other entries dealing with paranoia – there are other posts from the past few months were we talk about paranoia and “lurkers” (<-these two are confusing to us), that’s all her freaking out in our head. She does not drink unless she is with more than one other Alter, meaning she’ll drink with Myself and one other. She will not tell me her age, or much more information, well, because she is paranoid. She hides behind the other alters most of the time. There is one memory she has, of when we were very young, about 10?, where we were in a doctors office and she was hiding behind the examining table.

When she talked to me tonight, while we lay on the massage table, she cried and asked why we have to tell people about Us. She is worried that people will hate us, that we will be alone forever. She is worried that no man will love us again. We try to reassure her that it’s not out of the question; that maybe someday we will find a man who is strong, and stubborn, with a sense of humour, who is single and willing to stick through the hard times, because he loves all of us. However, we cannot make her promises, and merely remind her that we will always love her, just like we always have.

That’s just one of us, Catherine. Fabulous Person said that the name fits, somehow that Catherine sounds like someone who would be paranoid. No offence if your name is Catherine.

There are others who have come forward to talk openly, we are looking for the one that can help write the rest of what happened after we got our final diagnoses in 2002, when we were 23 years old, I seem to have some holes in my memory; I've been working on it for nearly 2 weeks.

So far four have given their names, one of which is Bitch, who begged to have her name changed, screaming in her 8 year old voice, “But you let Esmeralda pick hers!” (the name actually makes my stomach turn) She stomped around in my head and threw a fit, so we’re letting Bitch change her name; she told me her name is Bethany. *rolls eyes*

[1] http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/dissociative-identity-disorder-multiple-personality-disorder

- Another source for you: http://www.minddisorders.com/Del-Fi/Dissociative-identity-disorder.html

Other blogs that deal with this disorder, both active and non active, some we’ve read, some we haven’t:

- http://reflectionsinaprism.blogspot.com/ (newly restored and active along side: http://sweetgestalt.blogspot.com/)

- http://mdmkay.blogspot.com/ (last entry December 2009)

- http://piecedbypeace.blogspot.com/ (last entry April 11, 2011)

The Emergence of Frank: Frank's Failure

We had finally fled The Ex Husband, leaving him in Chicago, and moved back to The Midwest to live with The Mother. The Other Girl figured she must have told her about the diagnoses we had received in the Northwest, and the experiences we had as a married woman, however, we have not asked The Mother; at this point it is irrelevant.

We tried to stay there, with The Mother in The Midwest, but it was difficult to find employment; turned out “housewife” on a resume didn’t scream “employable”. There were other difficulties, like trying to be happy living with someone who had hurt us so many times and was as hurt and damaged as we were; someone who we never had a good relationship with; someone we had hoped could provide us help by this point in her life, but she couldn't.

In those days I may have been there for The Other Girl, to assist in getting her away from The Ex Husband, but I just wasn’t strong enough to help her heal then. We were weakened by her sharing the stories of her marriage, and reliving our own painful past together, and not being able to understand any of it yet.

This is the story of how Frank, how I, failed The Other Girl.

I thought I had control of the situation, having been brought back into The Other Girls life again…we were going to try to heal.

Bananarama, a friend from high school that The Other Girl used to talk to on the phone with a lot while she was suffering through the unhappiness of a terrible marriage in The Northwest, and her diagnosed mental illnesses, was living in The Mountain States. After a couple of months back in The Midwest, after leaving The Ex Husband, we high-tailed it out of town to try to rebuild our life with this female friend we had known for years.

Bananarama was a gal pal from high school; we had had a very big crush on her all throughout school and even after, when we would take trips to The Big City to visit her – memories for other stories. What we felt for her in high school may have bordered on love, these feelings for her. We love her now, to this day, even though she is likely the person who had alerted The Father to our current situation. We love her in a different way now, in the way you love, and respect, a person that has been through their own personal hell over the years, has come back on the other side bruised and broken and still battles against the hell that life likes to provide the unfortunate.

It didn’t take us long after getting to The Mountain State to fall in with an interesting group of people. We lived with a Tattoo Artist, a Body Piercer and Bananarama; and her young son who was there only half the time. When we weren’t looking for work and unable to find it, we hung out at the tattoo parlour where our roommates worked with other tattoo artists. Our days were spent with these people, our nights at their homes drinking, spending time with their children, having fun; weekends attending tattoo conventions. They became a family to us very quickly.

The combination of all Us, and these new people, was a turbulent experience. The Tattoo Artist was dating Bananrama, but detecting our infatuation for her became very angry, untrusting and defensive. It didn’t help that he was an abusive asshole either. We were very protective of her, as we are with people who are special to us, who are broken in some way, like us.

Body Piercer turned out to be a kindred spirit of sorts, at first. In the couple months of association we became a team of chaos, driving to nearby cities and creating adventures for ourselves; both of us suffering from Manic Depression, something she had been knowingly living with for years; she had also come from a history of abuse at the hands of Adults and had also lost people she had cared about at a very young age, to unusual unexplainable tragedy.

The Other Girl started dating a lot, meeting men online, inviting them over. She started learning about Wicca, dyed her hair black and wore clothes to match. She got a few tattoos.

Bananaramas allegiance to Tattoo Artist, her abusive boyfriend, and his hatred for Us, hammered a wedge between Her, Us and Body Piercer. After only a couple months, it was time for us to flee, and leave behind Bananarama.

Us, and Body Piercer, packed up our belongings, Our dog, and her cat; with our Ford Bronco II and her car, we headed Southeast, driving for couple days on no sleep, to Florida. Body Piercer had family there in the panhandle and so we thought it would be fun to start a life there, in the sunshine, away from all the brown of high dessert.

It wasn’t more than a week and a half before we realized that we weren’t going to be able to stay there, in Florida, for a variety of reasons. So we packed up everything again, and headed back to The Mountain States.

Unemployed and living off of a credit card all this time; we, along Body Piercer, rented a renovated pool house attached to what had once been a motel, but had been turned into housing for drug dealers, prostitutes and low-income people. We would get a visit weekly from women asking to use our phone, or to ask if we had tampons to spare, or loose change. We remember the police being outside our bedroom window on several occasions, in the alley, to monitor the hookers next to the KFC, which was across the alley from our bedroom.

The Body Piercer was dating Drug Dealer, even though she was married to Stationed Military Husband. We smoked quite a bit of pot in those days, the access to it so readily available. One night we smoked opium, another night we smoked something we can only imagine was laced with a peculiar substance because we lay in bed that night, and every sound jumped out at us, everything was loud, we couldn’t sleep.

After a couple jobs like selling vacuum cleaners door to door; a job based whose income was based on commission of a machine hard to sell. The experience of this is the most valuable thing we could have gleaned from it, having made no money for months, but being forced to pretend we were personable and develop some communication skills.

All of us were unhappy living in that little pool house, so one day we decided to skip out in the middle of the night. We got caught, the details of which, for this story are not important.  We moved into a trailer park after that, Us and Body Piercer; who was still unemployed all this time and liked to overspend. We used to loan her (and before that Bananarama) money from our credit card, each time with her promise being paid back, each time with the realization she hadn’t given us money from the last time; but she was The Other Girls friend, I couldn’t control her and stood by while she began to realize that you could buy friendships with gifts, money, favours. She thought this was the way it worked. Eventually the debt collectors began to call.

We ended up getting a better job than stocking the shelves of a porn store and soliciting vacuums door-to-door. We became, once again, a security guard, like we had been before we were married in The Northwest. It was fun work, we enjoyed it. We didn’t have to work with people too much in the beginning and it gave us time to talk to each other. Then they transferred us to The Airport, in the wake of 9-11, right before the TSA took over. We were a security guard at the gate, flagging people and their belongings, searching for imaginary things that the government was trying to convince people we could find.

We, and Body Piercer, started a blog about being Bipolar, and being Two Bipolar Girls living life together. We had fun with that blog in the short period we were working together on it, she auctioned Us off for a date one day, in a chat room when we were working to promote our writing. We would stay up late hours, drinking pots of coffee and going online in chat rooms together, to pick at people, and call them sheep.

Gradually they increased our hours at work, being short staffed, and we were working long hours seven days a week. It happened gradually, the things we didn’t understand. We began hearing The Other Girls name, whispers from nowhere. Then one day we saw giant fuzzy spiders, and they began to multiply; things began to jump around at the corners of our eyes, we saw more things that weren’t there. We heard more than just our name being whispered. These things increased, our anxiety was raised. We got scared.

Luckily we had held onto our wedding ring, an expensive piece of jewellery. We walked out on our job one day, hocked that ring and locked our self, with our dog, in our bedroom of the trailer house. We avoided our roommate, only coming out at night while she was sleeping, or when she left the house.

We spent a lot of time on the computer, in chat rooms; it was how we spent most of our time. The irony is not lost on us.

We ended up meeting a nice young man, who eventually became Special Boyfriend; he got us to leave the house and meet him. He was quirky, and sweet, and different, and smart; he was attempting to study English but had yet to register for classes. He was also equally as ill as we were.

About a month after we had locked our self away in our room, Body Piercer, our only friend, having been abandoned by Bananarama after we moved to Florida with BP, approached us.

“You have to move out. You not leaving your bedroom is making me uncomfortable”

We called The Mother, we talked to Special Boyfriend; we packed up all our belongings and slept in our Ford Bronco II a couple nights, with Our dog, before taking Special Boyfriend back to The Midwest with us to, again, live with The Mother; where he would teach us a lot about life, people and love.

This was a year after we had left The Ex Husband in Chicago, and had tried to start a new life. When we got to the The Midwest we filed for bankruptcy to the tune of $30,000. We went to a State Department that offered counselling services to the low income and it was here we told them what had happened in The Mountain States, the spiders, the voices. It was here, in The Midwest, that we got the diagnoses of Schizophrenia, and became once again a test subject for prescription antipsychotic drugs.

We talked to Fabulous People about our past recently, we share with them before we share with others; and as the words tumbled out of our mouth we saw the patterns of our past. The Sheep had turned to Sheeple; the Bedroom we locked our self in has become our Apartment, our Fortress. The chat rooms… Twitter.

Now that we see and understand our life in a complete way this time around, and have gotten rid of The Other Girl, and are stronger, we can share the stories that continued to shape us; the stories that have made us who we are now, 9 years after our final diagnoses; 6 years after we got separated, unwillingly; to more recently, the last year and a half, trying to hide who we really were because The Other Girl never wanted to leave this place called Home, and never wanted to suffer the rejection of friends

Religion, You Say? We Have a View On That.

Being that today is Sunday; what would be more fun than talking about religion? How about a red hot poker to the eye?

We kid. (but seriously, how much do you love AND hate that "Inspirational" poster - apologies to The Father <-dad)

We don’t mind talking about religion; though it is “one of those topics”- like politics, money, sex, or other things people have a real view on. You know how it is; people are uncomfortable being told that you don’t agree with them. Well, we aren't. Clearly. So, at the end of this post we expect the people who are flaming angry about this entry to post a comment, weigh-in. Go ahead, you know what you want to try to do; but don’t come over to Twitter (or send an e-mail); we want more than 140 characters at a time and we are all about open-door debate.

One thing you should know, right off the top; we were raised religious – Baptist actually. We attended church every Sunday (weather permitting) from as long as The Other Girl could remember and until we were 17. We were even missionaries, and went to Mexico two years in a row at the age of 15 and 16 with a youth mission’s organization to “spread the good word of the Lord” by going door to door and telling locals that they’re religion was wrong, and ours was right, all the while reading from a Spanish phrase book designed only to get across this information (and thank them, or ask where the bathroom was).

So, we DO know what we are talking about, we are not some “heathen” or “pagan” who just needs to hear the word to be taken into the flock (or to be healed). We’ve got the information.

At this point, if you’re thinking…then when happened? Or…who is We? Then you need to hop over to our adjoing site and read some of that; the stories of how we came to be us. Do it either before or after you read this, to get the full understanding of why we believe what we believe, and why it may not coincide with what you think/believe; but don’t you dare try to attack us without knowing some of our story.

Having said that, The Other Girl also had a hard time believing in religion, but she felt the pressure of a family who did not take kindly to those with opposing views (and they still don’t). She did her best to blend in while hiding her secret; Us and the abuse; and conformed to the ideals of her family. She never did believe a word of it, how could she in the face of what her life had been, and was.

One of our favourite analogies of religion, which seems fitting in some ironic way…or maybe we still can’t grasp irony; but we will pose it as a question: When you were a child, at Christmas, and every year you asked Santa for just one thing, one very important thing, something you knew you deserved, and every year you didn’t get it; would you still believe in Santa?

Fairy tales are nice; they make you feel fuzzy and wishful, sometimes safe in the face of uncertaintly. Disney has the market corned on relationship fairy tales, providing that hope against hope that cultivates a young girls wish for a prince charming to arrive and save her….from something; depending on the story. Religion has “God”… let’s just leave that fairy tale to the adults.

We’ve had a few conversations with The Father (Our Father, not “THE Father”) regarding our beliefs. The most memorable, for obvious reasons, was about a year ago, after our grandfather passed away. It took place in a pickup truck, as many of our conversations have throughout life, and in the 5 hour drive it eventually came down to religion, and why we don’t believe in it. What transpired was an awakening of Me. With an admission from the father that he had forgotten about significant childhood events. Bitch kicked me harder than ever before.

“Wake up. You will not believe this shit”, she said after a final swift kick. (That coma was hard to get out of)

We were appalled at the fact that a father could forget such a significant thing, especially given his constant concern and prayer for us over the years.

After our tears, and his reach for our hand, we said, “Dad, If you can tell me why “God” would let a child suffer in that way, an innocent child. Then maybe. Maybe I’ll be willing to listen.”

He responded with a religious phrase regarding “the sins of the father”.

“Why? …Why does a child have to suffer for someone else’s faults and mistakes? What kind of “God” would do that?”

He was silent for a bit.

“Maybe that’s a question you should ask My Pastor”, he said.

After more debate, and more sharing, he still didn’t have any answers; we knew there would never be one we were satisfied with. Granted, until this blog (which he reads) he didn’t know a lot about our life. He has always been preoccupied with other things. Despite the fact that he says he knows “me”.

In a couple recent conversations with him it came back to religion once again. We’ve condensed the two into a manageable juxtaposition of talking points.

“You believe in demons, right?” he asked, following it up with comments on prayer.

We knew where this was going.

“You can pray for me all you want, dad; you’ve been doing it our whole life and it hasn’t gotten you anywhere” we said to him.

“It could have been worse”, he responded.

Now, this conversation went on and on, we discussed the counselling we had been given as a child, in the wake of our mothers’ departure, our parents’ divorce; and then eventually sexual abuse.

“You just sat there and you wouldn’t say a thing” he said to us. “It’s your own fault you wouldn’t talk.”

What was there to say? Physical abuse, sexual abuse; not to mention Us. The Other Girl never knew how to articulate her life, our life; even as the abuses went on, she could only describe events in very brief, obscure sentences. It was too hard for her to explain us...to explain everything.

Religious belief is a myriad of unanswered questions. The people who follow religion don’t like to be asked many of those questions; perhaps because it’s not comfortable to have to face the  realization you don’t have the answers or have someone threaten your ideals, and some people don’t like to think about those things.

We realize religion has its place. We don’t want to change anyone’s beliefs, for that would make us the same as those who try to change ours. We respect that some people need it, to live their life, to make sense of their existence. There are those among us who don’t need to know why we are here; we are here, we like it and we just want enjoy what is left of it, and for those people, "like us",  religion doesn’t fit into the grid of their life.

Perhaps those of us who are “non-believers”, these “Atheists”, have had terrible experiences in their life and have not had the charmed one that many (not all) religious believers have had. We understand that some turn to religion to save themselves, others do the opposite. 

Maybe we don’t feel comfortable for attributing good things in our life to "someone" who stands by and lets the bad things happen, over and over. Maybe there are other reasons people don’t believe. Whatever the reason, respect them, because like YOU, THEY have their reasons too.

We’re preparing another religious entry for the future. We love learning, and reading, and writing. We have some historical information on Christianity and its origins that is very interesting, “documents” to explain that Christianity is just a branch of many similar religions that came before it. 

[We recommend Zeitgeist – its a documentary that we will be writing about, just in case you end up missing THAT post; we are also studying some other documentaries too, currently we are trying to sludge through The History Channels God vs. Satan: The Final Battle]

We know there will be naysayers, but really….will you have proof equally concrete as a point of contention. We don’t want to change you. We just want you to know where we are coming from, and we want people to understand why religion is not going to heal us.