Carrying on a Legacy

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She may not have been a legend to the world, she was a legend to us. So was her husband.

Words that come to mind when we think of her are rebellious, young at heart, opinionated, and intelligent, stubborn.

Had she had her way, she would have went to University, would have taught English and writing to school children. She loved writing, she would write letters to everybody she knew. She loved getting letters, she always said she especially liked ours. We have a feeling we were one of her only grandchildren who regularly wrote letters to her, but because we had always been on the move and travelling after graduation, we usually had interesting things to write to her. Sometimes she would "mark" our letters, and show them to us when we would visit her.

Instead of following her dream, she changed her dream. She married and made a happy home for her husband, they had been high school sweethearts, had a marriage to pattern one's own from. She grew her own vegetables, tended flowers, and was active in the community, raising seven strapping children on shoe string budgets.

Today, almost three years to the day since Grandpa crawled down from his deer stand, was admitted to the hospital diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and within weeks passed away, she went to meet him in her heaven.

Her legacy was one of food, cooking, words, gardening. loving your neighbour. She wasn't perfect, of course, but she was a lovely woman.

We saw her about a month ago, our last memory of her will be sitting next to her in the nursing home, during an annual family gathering, holding her hand, listening to her talk about the people around her, and talking aimlessly about bits and pieces from the past. We are sure she was a bit confused with what she saw, our family has become very multi-cultural because of adoptions and foster care, and it had been awhile since she had even recognized some of her own grandchildren, us included.

Each time we told her we had to go, and kissed her cheek, she'd clasp our hands more firmly, indicating she didn't want us to leave. It made us giggle and smile, which in turn made her smile. We lay our head on her frail small shoulder one last time, and told her that we love her, and that we would see her soon. As we walked out we knew we probably wouldn't.

She went into intensive care last week, and family members went to see her but we were told too late to make the trip. We were told she asked for us.

Her passing is no surprise, of course. She has been in so much pain that they sedated her the last couple of days because even morphine wouldn't take her pain away. Her life will be remembered; her passing, the end of a generation that held traditions and values that are disappearing from this country; but the disappearances need not be a scary thing, like death, change is inevitable and part of life, and it doesn't mean that the new traditions and values will be bad, it just means they will be different.

Some, part of a Legacy, that will be carried on.

With the passing of our last grandparent, many of us shall continue to blend our own modern views and values, with their traditional practices of self sustainability and compassion for others.

Rest in peace, Grandma. You shall be missed by many. (P.S. and just in case you are right, give Grandpa a hug and kiss for us)

~ Frank et al

Some of the other stuff we've written over the year about Grandma:

• January 15, 2012 A Visit With Grandma http://just-call-me-frank.blogspot.com/2012/01/visit-with-grandma.html
• June 23, 2012 A Family Picnic Day http://just-call-me-frank.blogspot.com/2012/06/family-picnic-day.html
• October 6, 2012 Just A General How Do You Do http://just-call-me-frank.blogspot.com/2012/10/just-general-how-do-you-do.html

Dissociating Happy Memories

To start, if you are not familiar with dissociation read an entry from last year The 'D' In Dissociation http://just-call-me-frank.blogspot.com/2011/08/d-in-did-dissociation.html to gain a better understanding of what it means.

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Today, yesterday, were bad days, despite being able to squeeze out a great blog post about our weekend. We have a general method of allowing ourselves to feel our feelings, on a mental health level we think it's a healthy thing to do...to a certain point. Running away from them means they keep coming after you, and wallowing in them will make one drown.

After over 24 hours of feeling like we wanted to punch everything, cry, stare at a wall, run away, belittle whoever was hanging out in our head from minute to minute...we decided to work through the feelings, in an effort to eliminate what was bothering us.

Yesterday we wrote about our weekend visiting Kerry and her family, a friend from Twitter, for the first time. When James (The Boyfriend) read it he commented on how much we were able to remember, to which we replied what had actually happened after we had written it.

We though we did a good job, working together to get all the things we could remember in written order, and between sips of coffee sitting in the cafe we pulled photos off of our camera that we had taken over the weekend, well over 200 of them.

As we scrolled through them we recalled telling Kerry we have a photographic memory, after which she had laughed and asked why, if we have a photographic memory, were we taking so many pictures. We gave her some reasons, like the enjoyment in sharing our travel photos with people who read our travelogue (as well as our blog where we display our artwork and other photography), and also that much of our immediate family hasn't been outside of the United States, so we liked to share with them the beauty we have seen.

What we couldn't explain, and what came to us later, when scrolling through the photos was that while we can see something and immediately recognize it later, our recall without photographs is not good.

For instance, we can take a new route, to a new location once, and manage to return to it with no map, aided only by visuals. It's a skill that has impressed some of our boyfriends. However...if you ask us to recreate that route on paper from memory, we're crap. If that makes any sense.

So we finished writing the entry yesterday and went to find some photos from our collection to add...and then realized we had completely blocked out Mount Ida, both the first day when Kerry had taken us to view it across the valley, and the following day when we spent over two hours going up, walking around the top, and coming down, the mountain.

We felt distressed yesterday and it bled into today. It's something we know that happens, has happened, will happen...with bad memories. That we dissociate happy memories makes sense, we suppose, particularly since we were not all there (sharing consciousness) for the weekend, but because we journal now and record our lives for each other, it's not something that would have noticed in the past when we didn't write.

When we think about we hope dissociating happy memories is why we have very few happy memories from our life, because there has to be more...some...other than flitting images that are gone in a flash, barely graspable...ones that even pictures don't help some of us recall.

We know being forgetful is normal for all people, but to have not shared with each other, not all been present for, or remembered such a beautiful experience a mere two days later...guess it makes us sad and angry.

Taken from the top of Mount Ida - March 11, 2012

So, we spent the last 24 hours feeling icky beyond explanation, and when we explored the feelings we were having on our walk to the grocery, fighting back tears and anger, the first thing that came up was that, dissociating happy memories and feeling shitty about it.

A couple of us may also be having issues involving our stay in England being extended by an additional month, but for most of us we are happy about that.

Obviously there are positive and negative sides to Dissociative Identity Disorder...but so are there to being anybody, singular, plural....alive.

Random Memory On Replay

We've been having a random nice memory play in our head, flashes of two images of a single day, like a broken record, skipping, playing over and over. Like we're trying to copy it into our memory. Figured might as well release it onto "paper", so it might stop.

We are standing in the library of the private Christian school we were attending (from first to fifth grade), it was small, and the shape of a circle, with one window facing the parking lot. We can recall the smell of books (old books, we love the smell of books), silence, no thoughts. I imagine we were feeling excited, it seems like the only feeling we could have been having.

Standing, watching, waiting for The Father to pick us up. It was the day Baby Brother was born (our second brother, youngest brother).

Later, on a stretch of road during the forty-two mile trip to the hospital (it was twice the distance that home was, from the school), where there was an old heritage site, with a church and a playground, we can see ourselves sitting in the backseat of a blue Ford Escort. <not sure why we would be sitting in the back>

We don't remember anything else, no feelings we might have had, no conversation with The Father, nothing before, nothing after. Not usual, we're sure.

We see that little girl, such a pretty little girl, from outside of our body, like we're watching someone else. We want to hold her, and hug her, and tell her that she has to keep being strong for a long, long time.

It was 1987*. We were seven and a half years old*. None of us remember a time before Baby Brother, except maybe Bethany...and she's apprehensive to share anything, ever. So far I have no access to most memories before our physical age of about 12, other than this and vague portions of the bad ones; at least this is a happy one, even if it is, collectively, less than 30 seconds.

~ C & C

[*corrected after The Father read the blog entry, we were a year off, thinking baby brother was born in 1986, and thinking we were six and a half. He says he remembers us being very excited, and that Angry Brother (who would have been about five and a half) was less so. (we don't remember him being there, maybe he wasn't)]

Non-Memory Memory

Some of us have had this obsessive memory of a non-memory in our mind ever since the day it happened, it scares us even though we know these kinds of things have happened to us always, but we've never had clear confirmation through confrontation of it until this past summer. In reality most people shrug off other people's memory lapses, at least from our experience. Obviously "lost time" is something we are accustomed to (common in Dissociative Identity Disorder/Multiple Personality Disorder), but unless you have someone close to you who immediately notices something "off", and confronts you about it, then it's likely to go unnoticed by the average person. It's what makes many symptoms of DID/MPD easy to mask, most people are not observant, and don't care.

A day this past summer, when James was visiting us (of course now he lives with us), we were hugging at the dining room table, being affectionate and touchy, ect, We were planning on leaving the apartment so we decided to go to the bedroom to change clothes. As soon as we turned away form the table to go change, apparently James slapped us on the butt. We kept walking, and just as we got to the bedroom door we turned and said "Booooo" in a disapproving manor to him, and then disappeared around the corner.

We do remember getting changed into an outfit and coming out of the bedroom, back to the table where James was sitting and waiting for us. We rubbed up against him and he acted apprehensive to touch us. Obviously confused about this we asked what was wrong.

"When I slapped you on the ass you turned and Booooed at me, you sounded upset...?" he said, looking at us questioningly, with a puzzled look on his face.

"When did you slap us on the ass?" we asked.

"Just now, when you went in the bedroom to change", he said.

We didn't believe him, we asked him what he was talking about.

He recounted the event that had just transpired, and we had no recollection of it, and after discussing it with him we still didn't know...but that day stayed in our head for months.

We've talked to James about it and he says it was a child voice, and since knowing us all he can only assume it was Bethany. 

It's not secret that Bethany is holding some of our past, memories that we can't recall...she is one of the only ones whose purpose/presence we are entirely unsure of since starting our mapping therapy, other than her being a splinter from Frank and The Other Girl at an early age; she is repressive and withholding in her memories, aside from a brief flashback this past late-summer when we had a switch mid-dream.

We're not sure why it took so long to record this memory of a non-memory, but it's been passing around to each of us and I wanted to get it out so it can stop, so we can try to stop being concerned about it.

This recounting of something we have no real memory of scares us, not because we don't know there are things we cannot recall, collectively...but because it's such a recent, and minor thing...that makes us scared about what Bethany is hiding from us...or if it should really matter. And what else the rest of us might be hiding.

James says he is scared for the day, if it happens, that Bethany is willing to share/reveal/whatever you call it, to us, the memories that she has...we can't say we're not scared, but also we don't know how much it matters. (though some therapist, somewhere, would likely say it does)

Uggg.

We've had a tough relationship day. We choose not to write about the things, for now, that go on in our relationship, to much extent...one day we will share more, but for now...for now it's a "kid gloves" approach...mostly because it's all very new, sensitive, and as James stated today "I didn't think it would be this hard...", of course he's talking about being in a relationship with us.

It's not easy being us, so why he thought a relationship with us would be anything less than a hard...well...who knows.

We can only hope that love can endure anything...even if some of us question it's existence.

Look at that, two blog posts today...we should get a trophy for that.

~Ivy (a sad version of me)

Remembering Grandpa

Two days and two years ago, today...at the young age of 79...

We've written about Grandpa in some of our posts this year, and in some of the stories about our life. He truly was an amazing man. Over the past 15 years or so of our life we've found out a lot about our grandparents, and the unconditional love had for each other. It's the kind that makes you believe that, for some people, it exists...or it used to when times we're simpler.

They were honoured as the local Heritage Couple in the community where they lived, and they were just shy of their 60th wedding anniversary...he was father of 7 children, grandfather to 17 and great-grandfather to 6; he buried a son, and a grandson. He was a hunter, a fisherman, a farmer, a gardener (always proud of the huge potatoes, carrots, and produce he grew), a christian family man that worked hard until his last days, when he diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and passed within a month. His passing had a huge impact on our life, and our decision to be open about our mental illness. We never got to say goodbye to him.

Memories of him will never be forgotten by any of us...; he always made a grumpy face when he had his picture taken; he liked to try to scare the grandchildren by pushing his bottom dentures out of his mouth and growling; how when we would kiss him on the check and he would giggle and pretend to be shy; how he would tease us about all of the boyfriends he imaged we had; he was a quiet and serious man, but silly and funny, he loved to play cribbage and socialize...and he sure made the best coffee...

This was the song they played at his funeral accompanied by pictures of him when he was young, as a high school football player, then as a husband and father, and a grandfather, visiting with friends, photos of him with the produce he was so proud of, pictures from hunting camp, and then holding his great-grandchildren in his arms.

He was the kind of man whose love for his wife and his family was the kind everybody should aspire to have, and makes us miss him, today and always.

~Frank et al

Note Post

This is basically a "To Do" post for us so we can remember on another day the things we wanted to write about soon. If it doesn't get written here, rather in word documents or on pieces of paper, chances are one of us forgets where to find it and/or trashes it.

So, today and tomorrow. That's all we have left of time to spend with our boyfriend James (@mr_jmm) before he heads back to the UK. We'll be writing more about things that happened behind closed doors after he leaves, about how we generally feel about the whole situation, about a long distance relationship and about what he and us have planned for the future - how we will manage a extremely long distance relationship being cash poor. (A flight here from the UK costs upward of $1500-2500 American depending on the day you leave, the time of year, etc.)

We'll also be writing about "Brooke" - that's the nickname we, and James, gave our bitch alter who hates us, who has withheld her name from us and generally tries to get us to do and say things the damage ourselves. For some reason she wants to keep us from happiness.

Also on the agenda of writing is to talk about some of when we were first aware of each other, because we had a Follower the other day ask about it and we were very general (Only so much can really be said in a 140 character format); not all of us were aware of each other at the same time, and some weren't even until this year. As far as The Other Girl was concerned she was only completely aware of Bethany and myself. We'll talk about it more later.

In the meantime, we'll be on Twitter when we can today, but we're going to spend some time with James. We're sure you'll hear bit and pieces of what's going on throughout thge day, plus, you know...he has to make coffee and breakfast for us when he gets back from the grocery, so we're going to go play on Twitter.

If you haven't read yesterdays guest blog post you should, it was written by our guest blogger Kerry Stott: 'Our Guest Blogger Writes About The 'Us & Them' Mentality' http://just-call-me-frank.blogspot.com/2011/08/our-guest-blogger-writes-about-us-them.html

Also you can catch up on here: Our Recommendations...Weeded from our Feeded or in our "What We've Been Up To" section on the left (full archives)

Oh, and tomorrow we'll be posting a link to and discussion about the Podcast interview we had on Thursday night.

Happy Saturday, beautiful people.

~Frank

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/

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)

We / We Get Random / We Have Questions

This is in response to yesterday event: 
We Freak Out - If you haven't read it yet you probably should. A little straight up context to better understand this one.

We're sitting at work, our head is swarming with the things we want to say, with questions we have. So much excitement. It's like we are in a fever....

We talked to her, after we finally got done writing yesterdays blog. (if you don't use twitter, read from the bottom to the top of each section/image)

@IAmTheCrews comment above is in response to a Tweet we deleted, that we had written while sobbing on the floor of the living room last night, that stated: 

"she hates you, she doesn't want us to follow you, She is scared"

We are still scared to read too much of her blog. Like we always do, we want to figure things out for our self. It's too hard for us to focus. Plus, we don't want influence, even if we could read it. It's why we don't read about DID anyway. We already knew what was going on. We're just not used to being that right. We will have to start to read about it eventually. Maybe.

We had questions for her, so we're posting them here for her, we read a little on her blog (we read a new entry she posted last night), and related with it, so it's going to be a weird set up here.

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That's where Bitch left off this morning. There was a started sentence of three words that we could make no sense of, where it was going to go, what she had planned to write. She started this entry; she was so excited this morning. She actually skipped to work, danced on the sidewalk a little. She was in a good mood. Not sure where she went, but "we're" sullen now. 

We figure she was going to set up this entry differently.

The Jeans walked into our office right after we hit the wall, and was being all smart assy and said "What's wrong? Did someone unfollow you on Twitter?"

“No, jackass.” That's what was in our head. 

"No. We're just in a bad mood." We said, as we sat, chin in the palm of our hand, glaring at the computer screen. Our head felt funny. Not like right now. Now it feels like there is pressure in it, it’s full of cotton, and our neck hurts a lot today. Stupid car accident injuries. We're going to have severe chronic pain forever, unless we continue the deep tissue massage therapy. That shit hurts too, though. Our entire back is destroyed; at 31 years old no less.

Honestly it was like a dive, and she was gone.

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We make sure that our "manger" sends us an e-mail about everything, so we have some markers.

"Can you send me an e-mail to remind me of that?" we said to him on Monday, in regards to being put in charge of taking the company vehicle home for a week.

"But, it's only a week away...." he trails off.

"Please, just do it. Trust me. it will sit in my inbox so when I open it up I am reminded." What else do you say? Sometimes saying you have a bad memory just doesn't get across how bad it can be sometimes.

We’ve only used “we’ once with the “manager”

"Well, on Thursdays we do menu planning" we begin, in our talk with him on Monday about our job duties because he really doesn't know what our job entails.

"You mean you and [The Jeans]?" he interjects.

"Uh". We had just gotten done telling him about the MPD (Multiple Personality Disorder)

"Nooooo." We make a face. Our eyes shift to the floor. We do something funny with our lips, half chewing on them. "I know that's confusing". We look at him.

"Yes. It is" he looks off into the corner, doesn't make eye contact with us and continues to talk.

It's funny when we are with The Jeans, or FNA, or Fabulous People and The Pup, and we blend/switch, which is when “we” slips from our mouth these days. Not so much in front of the "manager". We are getting too comfortable with the idea of being able to be “out”.

We were telling Standby, a recent ex of sorts, that we wanted to write our stories, but "I" didn't feel comfortable to use. We hadn't yet revealed anything to him in a clear way.

He stared at us dumbly. 

Of course he did.

He was the first one who really knew, but he refused to take it seriously because his pride was hurt. The only good thing he did was help with the destruction of The Other Girl (TOG). She would have spent the rest of her life with him, wrecking the possibility for our future. She was a threat to us; so was he.

On Monday afternoon when the "manager" sat down with us to discuss a potential drastic  decrease in our hours, "we", lost our shit. That was a bad situation. Our trucker mouth came out that day. We actually said something about our "employers", how they could "Fuck themselves in the ass with a hot poker". We swore a lot in that hour and a half.

Don't you wish you worked with us?

Some things we don't need to ask Marisa, this mother/wife/grandmother, this recoverer of Dissociative Identity Disorder that we met just yesterday. Like what triggered her switches before she recovered, because we know that those things are unique to the individual - what her triggers were, while they may have a common theme, will not be the same for us.

We know the negative triggers: irritation, stress, frustration, confusion, a smell; like Unpleasant Woman’s perfume. Lately we think there might be a color that is setting us off, the room we spend a lot of time in on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Those are the days we seem to typically have our worst days. It's usually okay until we get in that room.

The room in question is large and open, so it’s not a space issue; we can't really get into too much detail though. This room however has the most putrid peach colour walls that you can imagine, akin to a minty green that hails from the same era as the building, straight from the 50's or something.

Until recently we hadn't noticed how angry it made us, we just knew that being in that room for a long time made us angry. We don't know why. We do know that this Tuesday we didn’t have to be in that room for one of the first times this year, and we had a good day. The Jeans even commented on how well we had performed that day, how much better we had kept our shit together. We didn't have to stand behind that desk, with all those people milling about, and that disguising colour fuelling our anger.

Wrong noise can trigger us too. When we try to write there are times, not days, when the music just cannot be on, because it makes it so we can't get our thoughts out properly; when paired with a cat meowing, we spew obscenities; yelling at the them; calling them names. Later, when we are done writing we are sad and we hold them in our arms, apologize, and sometimes cry. 

You are a horrible person, we say. But which one of us is horrible? 

When we are not trying to think much, music makes us dance. Even in public. We dance in the grocery store, when we walk down the street. I say that's Bitches department. She likes dance, and yoga, and things of that nature. 

Smells are triggers in good ways too, like that slightly musty warm scent of aged paper. It brings to mind the yellowed pages of the books that The Father used to read through the winter, when he was around more because there was no field work, and we would be snowed in for days on end, in the country; every winter, as long as we can recall, he would read the Laura Ingles Wilder The Little House on the Prairie series to us. The only time we ever saw him read anything. The time when we could be safe from the reality of The Mother, and people at school.

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This morning we read Marisa's newest post, it was a Questions post from one of her readers.

Here is the question in Marissa blog that got Bitch the most excited.

She sees it and yells “That’s me you’re looking at!” I know immediately what she is talking about.

Did you have co-consciousness? Was it as if you were out of body, watching one of the others do something? Are two alters ever able to talk to each other and be "out" at the same time?

Yes, yes and yes. Stay tuned for answers and examples to be posted in the other blog. (this is linked to Bittersweet Gestalt, Marissa Feathers blog, an after recovery blog)

With every ‘yes’, Marissa answers a question we have, each time confirming what we suspected.

Bitch got excited and in Marissa comment section we wrote:

"OMG, it's like you explained our whole life! (we wish we would have met you sooner...thank god for Twitter!)

The out of body experience*; The facial changes** ("you look different today""you have death in your eyes today") 

The Jeans can tell just by a shift in our eyes...we have an aura and what has been termed "expressive eyes" by many.*** 

We still wonder if there is more of us, and I wonder if I am just assimilating all of them to Bitch, just to make it easier to understand...

How did you figure out how to separate them? Did a doctor help?

We just have so many questions...so many...

Did some of them exist together? For example Bitch and I seem to be together most of the time but then there are clearly times when it's just me, and there are clearly time when it is just her...or not ME...and then there were times when it wasn't me at all, like we've written about; and it was The Other Girl and Bitch....

Does this make sense??

Do you think it would be helpful for me/us to try to separate out and figure out who's "in there".

We feel like screaming in excitement from meeting you; especially now that I'm better about it.

Anything you can share from your experience, prior to the recovery would be great; we want to understand our self better....finally.

Thank you Thank you Thank you!!

Much <3!!!

There were some real consistencies that we had always been curious about. Finally some clarity.

*The out of body experience: This is something that usually only happens when we are outdoors, walking listening to our iPod. It's the strangest feeling. Literally it's like we are looking at our self from above, or at an angle. This probably doesn't make sense to some of you, others it may. The other time we recall this is during an unsanctioned session, a significant event we will be writing about.                   

**The Facial Changes *** Our Expressive Eyes and Aura: Marissa said the members of her family knew "The Crew well enough to know just by the look on my face." People around Us can tell differences by our energy when we walk into a room. We give off something to people who pay attention. 

Our face changes, our eye color can change. Sometimes it's like a cloud over our face.The Jeans has been witness to many of our shifts/blends. Last Friday Bitch was enjoying her work day, she was giddy and happy, and The Jeans made a commented "where is that girl I went drinking with yesterday." 

One day when we were out for a walk discussing where to eat and upon suggesting a place that upset us The Jeans immediately mentioned a cloud that passed over our eyes, a severe shift in us. He notices a lot of things in our face, he can read shifts, we know he can because he comments when it happens sometimes and we try to blow it off, he just doesn't know that's what he sees. He does now, because he not only reads our face, he reads this blog.

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We, of course, had some specific questions for her. She answered some of them openly in Twitter:

We asked her if we could post the other questions we had on our blog, so she could read them here. She agreed. This made us happy. 

We got interrupted in the middle of putting together the questions, and by the time we came back to them we had misplaced them, again. *sigh*
Salvaged:

Question for Marissa Feathers, of the DID Recovery Website, The Crew

• ·        How did you come about figuring out separating the members of The Crew; or figuring out how many there were?
• ·        Do you think it's beneficial if we try this (providing it doesn't involve a white coat...) 
• ·        How did you come up with ages?
• ·        What is the most significant thing you gained from separating/categorizing your personalities?

This is all we know about us:

Sometimes we are confused when an emotion/feeling just seems too extreme. Like hyper-sexuality, or anger, excessive silliness; and they swing. Within seconds we are somewhere else.

There is a male influence we are currently more aware of. He's very mean, says mean things to us and tried to heavily discourage our writing and sharing. He makes us yell out loud and we tell him to shut up. We mentioned him briefly in a post from the other day about relationships and love. in response to a reader/follower question. We asked Fabulous People to find out if this is normal, at this stage, to hear something so different. We have not discussed it too much with her. We searched the pockets, trying to figure out if it was different, if we can recall him.

We had three that we know of. Myself, Bitch and The Other Girl. We disposed of TOG; that’s something we have been working on writing about, the whys and events of that weekend, but it leads us to bad places. It's a slow write. We have to start with the event that made us strong enough to do it in the first place.

There was a witness the day I emerged completely again; the man involved, FNA, will remember that day for the rest of his life, we can only imagine. We had to ask him some questions a couple days later. We only remembered it up to a point. It was one of those “out of body experiences” with a lot of fuzz, and a lot of strange events, emotions, thoughts...and results.

That story will come at some point, and we will have to end it with the series of events that made The Other Girl weak, because she shattered that day. FNA was with us when it happened, when The Other Girl splintered into fragments of something new, one that made her just weak enough. We felt wild and out of control that day, and the weekend that ensued, that we had blogged about, in a very vague confused manor, was the weekend we did it; the weekend when we killed The Other Girl.

We have out shit together better now, as far as learning how to work through our events and write about them, so when we can finally find the strength to finish writing about it, we will.

---------------------------------------------

This is ending abruptly, we know. We're tired. It's been one hell of a week.

Marisa has made us more comfortable it talking about our DID openly. We will try to continue to work this out in the open, because it might help others who are just as afraid of doctors as we are. We have a feeling we've been misdiagnosed several times in the past, mostly because past trauma never made it into our therapy sessions. No doctor ever had the full story. 

Even though we were terrified about it yesterday, after deliberation, we decided that Marisa is a blessing, in so far as we believe in such things.

Links to IamtheCrews DID Glossary: http://reflectionsinaprism.blogspot.com/p/about-did.html