Oh, What A Relief It Is: Deep Tissue Massage

After a year and a half we were finally able to get it together enough to find a massage therapist. Luckily the connection came through James' new job. She does house-calls too. And the price is beyond reasonable for the service (deep tissue massage).

While we prefer male masseuses, (it has to do with how deep, large, numerous, and hard the knots are - requiring considerable strength to maneuver), she was able to do some good work to start, and together we created a regiment to alleviate 75% of the pain over a six-to-eight week period. (it's understood it will never be all gone, but at least it can be managed a bit without OTC or prescription pain relievers)

Once again we're back on the table, just in time. It wasn't as bad as it was in winter (January to April) of 2011 yet, but some days and nights it was getting close in the same level of excruciating pain, with the perpetual headaches, tension, knots, head-to-toe body pain, sleepless nights tossing and turning. It only took about 45 minutes to the pain to start creeping back, but at least it was something.

So, there's hope...once again.

We're almost going to feel human again. Almost.

(P.S. still waiting for all the names of the sellers to be inked on the purchase agreement for the house *fingers crossed*)

Accidental Optimism

Collectively we're not the most negative people in the world. Which might be surprising to a lot of people who don't know us well.

This "accidental" optimism causes disappointment pretty often, especially since we're prone to trying new things and forging forward with living. It would be so much easier if we just became content with staying in the same place and becoming a zombie and burning our dreams at their birth.

We have too much hope, is the problem. And not the problem. It probably has something to do with having survived despite so many strange odds, mishaps and types abuse. Hopeful must just be in our blood.

It probably drives James crazy, because he is a pessimist. It does drive him crazy. We get hopeful, and he gets opposite. While some might say he is just being a realist, to our shades of optimism sometimes his approach seems defeatist. He hates seeing us disappointed, which is probably the part that drives him the most crazy.

Of course he experiences much less disappointment, like most "realists", or "pessimists", than we do, on average. If one thinks the worst of every situation, then when it turns out bad like how they expect then they're less disappointed than if they had held high hopes for it to turn out good.

But then, there is far less happy hopeful feelings overall in that situation. 

This is a lot of off the cuff babble, but we're trying to work through a potential disappointment that we are teetering on the edge of (which we wrote about on our Tumblr blog last night: http://jstcallmefrank.tumblr.com/post/33929804945/exhausting-resolve) and it's going to be a long weekend. And we need to just get stuff out and work through things, and it's always easier with words on "paper", than words swimming in our head, being squished and tossed back and forth between the players in our head.

It's hard to walk a solid line of pessimism, but we're not sure if that walk looks like something we are even capable of. We just want hope. We always want hope.

Without hope, there is no need for strategy, without strategy there is no moving forward.

That's just a philosophy of sorts, we suppose.

Home Safe and Rambling

Made it home safe, after driving through many a countryside with water washed over the road. The exhaust system on the car cacked out on the first long dirt road we hit early in the day, and so now you can hear us coming half a mile away, literally. The car is old though and we've put over 5,000 miles on it this month, so, the poor thing, what can we expect.

We have pictures of the water covered roads, but honestly we're a little to tired to go look for the cord to attach to the computer to take them off of the device.

Saturday we might be on a mini-roadtrip again, a family picnic.
We haven't been to one of those in...years. Grandma is ill, one of the aunts has given her a week or so to live (a few of our aunts are nurses). She was found passed out this last week in her room, blue. She's been on oxygen for awhile and hasn't been doing well since Grandpa passed, she's been slowly getting worse.

We did some more property hunting before getting home, looking at four in total, two we really liked (one had just gotten an offer, however), one that was a straight "no", and one that may have been too far in the country (not near any "large" city) to meet our complete needs.

Our dream property, which we plan to put an offer on, is 40 acres of trees, pasture, and a nice sized yard with a big beautiful oak tree and a horseshoe driveway. Nice buildings and a house that was under remodel that needs to be finished. It would be nice if it turned in our favour, but we plan to start with an embarrassingly low offer. We can almost hear them laughing hundreds of miles away in the future. It's worth a try, though.

Mostly we've been good, mentally, from what we currently know. Quite a bit of anxiety, and a little anger, but it's all the usual really. No day is perfect, we just don't feel the need to say that the day was "only mildly suckie" most every day. There is no point in dwelling on the mundane misery, especially when we are creating a future for ourselves.

For now we dream, we dream big, we dream hopeful, we dream about our future, and we will not let disappointment break us down. At least not with this dream, right now. (We're trying to be inspirational for each other...)

We'll go now.

Going The Distance: An Internet Love Story...for Valentine's Day

We weren't really going to do a Valentine's Day post this year, except maybe some romantic dinner ideas, etc...which we'll probably post tomorrow...because romance can happen on any day.

Valentine's Day, like Christmas, doesn't really hold much appeal to us. The only real holiday we enjoy is Halloween, even then...*shrugs*. We believe that if you love someone you do little things for them everyday, and those are really the big things - not some gesture forced on a day that was originally created out of true love, now deemed a holiday by candy and card companies in the interest of profit.

However, we were asked by our friend, @singlemomdate (SMD) of Single Mom’s Dating Diary  (check out her blog, it comes recommended) to write about our romance with our boyfriend, James, the man she introduced us to on Twitter, back in May of 2011, for her blog, even though we are neither single, nor a mom.

The plan was to wait until we got to that point in the writings about our life, abuses, mis-diagnoses, experiences, things we remember, what we've done with our lives; which is currently at part 10 (It Spins Madly). We've gotten as far as about December 2010 and wanted to try to keep it in a natural progression, while other memories return to us (it's part of mapping therapy, part of wanting to have a solid way to chronicle our memories for each other). But like we said, SMD asked, and we obliged...we owe her so much really.

Most of us are not the mushy type, but in honour of Valentines we will do what we can to paint you an accurate and romantic picture of the progression of our relationship with James, the love of “our” life. <insert *gag*>

First of all, if you don’t know who the “we”, in we is, then you should probably read more of this blog. In short we struggle, live with, sometimes enjoy, a life with a mental condition known as Dissociative Identity Disorder, also known as MultiplePersonality Disorder.

James, our boyfriend, met Single Mom when he started reading her blog the early months of 2011, he started to follow her on Twitter, we know very little on the specifics but she subsequently directed him to our blog, because we had been writing a lot about dating in the later months of 2010, where he read about our life and all the other strange and odd things we write about daily.

The story on his end goes like this: James read many entries in our blog, absorbed our writing, and then started following us on Twitter. One day he got up the nerve to leave us a comment on our blog, thereby drawing attention to himself. We started watching him on Twitter, with all the other followers we had, we only paid him minimal attention. At first we were only mildly curious about him, honestly we thought him odd. Turns out he’s just British. <insert laughter>

At the time we were going through a bought of un-medicated insomnia so our six hour time zone difference didn't seem so bad, he flirted with us occasionally, and we flirted back. He’d send us e-mails on occasion, commenting on things, asking questions, agreeing with us that Natural Born Killers was one of the better romance films he’d seen; continuing to read our blog daily. Eventually we began to talk about potentially meeting, and then decided we should have a date on Skype.

We had planned to not pursue relationships any longer after the last one we had, with Significant Other, ended, decided to come out publicly about our mental illness and work slowly toward helping raise mental health awareness, and writing about our life. We knew we would never be able to keep the Us, and our “illness” a secret from any man we ever dated again, realizing it wouldn’t be right to date a man, then after weeks, months, tell him we were ill. We resolved to a life of being single and only casually dating men, having “alternative” styles of relationships. We also didn’t want a relationship for reasons to do with privacy (we like being alone), and complications that might arise because of the way we decided to live, honestly, with no more hiding, so we could heal, come to terms with our history of abuse, and work towards a healthy life for us.

We agreed to a Skype date with James, deciding “why not”, he lives so far away after all, and if we were seriously going to have him visit in the future we should get to know him on Skype. On our first Skype date he drank red wine while we enjoyed a bottle of white, and ate our dinner of pork chops, 6 hours in a different time zone, thousands of miles apart. We had a good date, and he asked to see us again. We told him maybe in a couple of days; days later we had our second date. It quickly turned into seeing each other every day, on Skype; we would talk, getting to know each other, play on the computer together, he would stare at us all silly on the bad Skype connection.

For weeks it went on and we started discussing meeting in person and then we invited him to come visit us. He was excited and did what he could to fly to us as soon as he could. We were still not interested in a relationship; we couldn’t look past the distance, and the difficulty not only with our illness, but also immigration issues. Being the adventurous type, and willing to try anything we thought why not, he was nice enough, and willing to pay his way.

In July 2011 we met James at the local airport; we were excited, slightly nervous. He was better looking in person than on the computer. Our first kiss was seconds after see each other, in the international arrival room of the airport. Someone nearby made a snide comment about “kids”, we didn’t care. After weeks of dating online we couldn’t keep our hands off of each other.

We’ll spare you the sexy details that followed, but after weeks of online Skype dating; and no, there was no naked Skype escapades, in case you were assuming, only one of us is that kind of girl, and we kept he under control as best we could; and not being able to touch each other, connecting on a level uninterrupted by physical touch…need we say more?

He stayed with us for five weeks, ”fortunately” we had gotten fired from our job the week he was to arrive, and so the first couple of weeks until we found another job we go to spend a lot of time with him, and got to know him really well.

He told us he loved us one day shortly after he arrived, sitting on the sofa in our apartment, a day he’ll likely remember forever, because he professed his love to the “wrong” one of us (Cassandra) whose response was expressing her desire for a hotdog.  He laughs about it, but we are sure it wasn’t the way he’d seen that going.

A couple of days later he asked us to be his girlfriend, and we told him “no” at first. We are adventurous, but also logical on occasion. After some emotional conversation over it we decided to discuss it and talked out the semantics about how it might work, living in different countries, and neither of us being wealthy to afford several flights a year. In the end we decided it would be something we could try.

We spent the next few weeks as boyfriend and girlfriend(s), it was both amazing and difficult, difficult because it caused a lot of headaches, literally, for us, as is sometimes common in our particular disorder during high activity, stress and changes.

The day came when he had to get on a plane. Saying goodbye was hard. He promised to try to come back as soon as he could, ­he cried, we held tough, holding him at the international departures door, reassuring him he would be back soon, and it would be okay; waiting until he entered international departures, and we turned away, before we allowed the built up tears to stream down our cheeks.

It was only a month before he made it back, a long month for some, and he promised he never wanted to be away from us for that long again…and the rest…well, the rest is history, and the future. Seven long and event filled months after we made our relationship with him official we now find ourselves living temporarily in England with him. We’ll be going back to the states in the spring where he plans to immigrate, to live with us permanently.  He calls us his angels, and he is, for some of us, our knight in shining armour.

The most important thing we did, looking back over the months we were single, was finally dealing with a lifetime of baggage, condensing it, eliminating some of it; working on ourselves, and changing the way we approached dating and relationships. It’s important to be happy with you, accept whoever you are, to not go into every date thinking they “might be the one” because in doing that you are doing a disservice to the one who is truly “the one” …not to mention putting immense pressure on the situation.

We try to have a fairly open and transparent relationship with him. We value honesty, even if it’s hard, it beats the pain of the opposite, the pain of secrets. James knows a relationship with us isn’t going to be easy, but he loves us, he loves who we are, and is willing to work at it. He knows we don’t all love him, he knows when he feels the urge to tell us he loves us, he may not be getting an “I love you” in return. He knows that a good relationship required work, and communication, just like a friendship. No relationship is organic.

We are happy we took the time to start dealing with our issues, to be stronger together, to be who we are, to learn to love ourselves, because how can you expect someone to love you, if you don’t love yourself.

Love yourself.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

~Frank et al

We, most of us anyway, want to thank Single Mom  for introducing us to the love of our life. For her beautiful soul we can only wish the same.

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Some of the stuff we've written about James:

·      50,000 Tweets and All We Got Was...

·      A 'State of the Union' Re: The Visit of Our Twittercrush James

·      James and the Giant Peach Pit...Of Despair

·      A 'State of the Union' Re: The Boyfriend Moving In

·      Our British Invasion

Imported From Our Boyfriends Blog:

·      'I Meet Cassandra And It Doesn't Go Well' 

·      'A Rough Night, Not The Good Kind'

·      'Who's Here Today'

·      'I Talk to Cassandra'

·      'Nine of Nine'

·      'Meet Catherine, Not Bethany'

·      'Today Was A Good Day'

·      'They Are One'

·      'They Are Nine'

·      'An Emotional Night For Us All' 

·      'Brooke Gets The Better Of Me'

·      'Perfect Ten'

Pretty Things: A Poem

With a tough weekend under our belt we didn't have much to write about, and we still don't, except the past; which works for us since anytime we can gather a memory and get it down on paper, we are that much closer to whatever it is we are supposed to be getting closer to.

Following this entry, with luck, we will be done writing specifically about FNA, he will be referenced when we start compiling our recent history, to make sense of what has happened in the past year or more; but he is now part of our past, he has chosen no future in our life. So, unless we create more poetry to deal with the loss of him - the final chapter of FNA ended with A Mistress With No Cutlery.

Saturday was our last day to talk to him about the things we needed to say, so we could looked him the eye when he told us the things we needed to hear, in hopes of seeing him as the terrible person we should see him as; which was a huge fail.

With tears accumulating, threatening to spill out onto the wooden table of the restaurant where we talked and drank for over four hours, he seemed to be amused over the anguish he should have been seeing, making us look off into the distance...

"Stop laughing at our pain" we pleaded to him.

His response was that he was not laughing at our pain; so what the fuck was he laughing at. 

People tell us we can do so much better, but love isn't about wanting to have something better - love is about loving, and wanting what it is that you love, feeling a need for it, because you cherish the "object" of your affection; despite it's broken or damaged parts, despite it's flaws, despite it' pretensions, despite everything that tells you "no".

Inspired by a quote, and a dream FNA shared in one of our last conversations with him this past week; we give you yet another poem in dedication to the fucker we stupidly fell in love with. 

As we tell him, and will tell you...the person we are mad it is not him - it is not his fault we fell in love - we knew the score going in, because he is a married man, and knew that there was no winning in this game. When we fell in love, we only hoped that there might be, a hope that in reality was just a wish. 

We are only mad at the We.

"A dream which is not interpreted is like a letter which is not read.” ~The Talmud

Pretty Dreams

Distracting yourself with pretty things,
even in your dreams;
Pretty squares of fabric, and pretty girls,
it seems.
Is it a dream, a reflection of reality;
your real life;
Those pretty things wanting you;
easily dismissing your wife.

(c) 2011 Franky Ly

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If you like poetry, we have archived works. The tabs are at the top of this page. We've been writing poetry to deal with the pain and confusion, the love and anger, in our life for nearly two decades; we are 31 years old.

When All We Have Is Hope

We were in the shower this morning, thinking about our day; a sick day from work – we just found out we get two a month! We began contemplating what we might write about today, because some days it’s hard to follow up some of our previous posts…like the recent one about TDF (Ass Face) and our entries about Standby (The Villain). We are working on another Emergence of Frank entry to carry over to the “side-blog”…yeah, there’s another entry; this time about The Other Girls’ ex-husband.

Last week we were “approached” by an organization that asked if we would be interested in writing a blog entry for them, about a topic of our choice pertaining to mental health. We thought about it for a week, after saying they could use any portion of our blog, the already written content, as they see fit; making sure to inquire about rights of use, and other legal matters.

We made our decision this morning. We understand that this might be an opportunity to further our writing and our reach to the world in the attempt to help stamp out negative stereotypes, and show people what it’s like to live with a mental disability in society as a seemingly functional human being; even though we have other hurtles making us less than a perfect example - notably rage fueled by physical pain from a terrible car accident. We concluded that we are going to decline any offer that comes with a guideline, as theirs did; if simply because it contradicts our mission of frankness.

One of the guidelines, the only one actually, was that we were to abstain from using profanity.

Fuck that.

The whole point of our writing, and our life on Twitter, is so WE can be who WE are…we’re not going to be subjected to censorship when one of the points to our writing, in the first place, is to be able to be Us in some forum that will accept us.

Every day when we go to work, we have to struggle to keep our mask on because we know that’s what society wants of everyone; conformity. Given that, we are not about to make our anonymous-self someone we are not.

The Other Girl spent almost her entire life trying to be someone she wasn’t, just so people would like her, in the hopes that someone would love her in a way she always heard about. In doing that, she had opened herself up to abuse; mental, physical, emotional and sexual, and at the hands of many who were supposed to love her. People treated her like a door mat, and it caused her pain; pain in the face of her already existing mental anguish. It caused her to have to call on me again, even after I left her in her early young adult life – she managed about three years without me, before Bethany called for help. That’s for another day though.

So, back to the shower; we were thinking about our hopes. Not wishes. Wishes are different, and we don’t have those, because we only want the attainable for the future.

So, we came up with hopes:

1. We hope you understand us and others like us, as much as possible.
2. We hope you can accept us, even though it can be hard.
3. We hope we live until tomorrow.
4. We hope we don’t live until tomorrow.
5. We hope one day we will know life again, without so much physical pain.
6. We hope the world will not fear mental illness, someday.
7. We hope we can make a difference, somehow, in our lifetime.
8. We hope people will be kinder to themselves, to others, to the world.
9. We hope children of the future will not have to know the face of evil from family members, from friends, from strangers.
10. We hope we heal, before it’s too late.

Source: http://www.merriam-webster.com/