Epidsode: Who You Truly Are
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[Short piano piece is played, lasting about 20 seconds]
I have spent the last year ignoring what is happening, not wanting to stir the waters. I thought I could study my way out of this, I could research my way out of this, I could learn my way out of this. But what I learned was that it is a relational injury, and that's why it feels so terrible. And that's why there are different parts of us as a system trying to find the right way to be, trying to find the right who to be, to be safe, to be well, to figure out what whole looks like. I don't know how to stand with solid ground under me, knowing what I know, and also feel what there is to feel. It doesn't feel like mine, or part of me, and I don't know how to put us together again.
But this morning, a colleague emailed me their own coming out story. Someone very high up in our church community, telling me the story of how they learned, and realized, and came to terms with them being gay. He's married, has children, soon will have grandchildren, and his family is famous in that culture. He talked about how difficult it's been to hide, and how difficult it's been to stay away. To lay low with the things that matter most to him, with such big pieces of who he is. I told him that I loved him, reassured him of our friendship, and supported him in his journey of learning these parts of himself.
I wanted to be helpful, I wanted to be present, I wanted to show up in the way we've learned to show up in friendships. Even if how I hear about it is light, distant conversations, on the other side of a library door. And I took to heart what he shared, because it felt familiar to me, having parts of yourself hidden away that can't come out in public. Having parts of yourself that don't feel like you, wondering if you yourself are the part or the whole, and not wanting to be caught in either role. I so often try to ignore what's going on because I have to function, I have to work, I have to help the people depending on me. And do my best at that, even when it's not always perfect. I've become more comfortable with not being perfect, actually. Learning that mistakes are part of the process, and owning up to them is part of becoming more comfortable in my own skin. If it is my skin. I don't know how it works, but it's been pervasive in the system, with Emma less anxious than before, and Em less stressed out by the children and more flexible with them. In that way, I think the time together during the pandemic has helped everyone relax a little bit. I'm curious to see if that's something we can maintain on the other side of Coronavirus.
But tolerating Courtney's tirades has been difficult for me, using up energy that I need for work. I'm causing problems with friends who just want to help. It's like a shaken bottle of soda, with everything about to explode and nothing but Taylor's poems to let the air out. Slowly trying to alleviate the pressure and mitigate the crisis. I spent the year feeling disoriented and confused, trying to even know where my computer was or which office I'm supposed to work in, or how to maintain my job during the pandemic, with the children and everyone in crisis.
But talking with my friend this morning, someone who also has spoken for our church, and interviewed me on occasion, and became a colleague with me when I lived in Israel, speaking with him left me wondering about these parts in a new way this time. Because he said to me, "You can never know you are truly loved until you share who you truly are". And that knocked the wind out of me. I don't know that I've ever had the desire to feel loved, and I think I've only loved once, and lost, as the poets say. Mostly I feel alone, but it's my preference and I don't notice it, and perhaps ironic when my greatest challenge is that I'm never alone. Because that's what it's like when you have DID. And while I dont understand how it all works, I do know that when one of us learns something it can often impact the others in good ways. Like the whole system settling down and learning to relax in ways we couldn't before the pandemic.
So while I may feel alone, but use that time like quiet hours in the morning to do my work while I am alone, making my own symptoms adaptive so that I can be functional, I can see after talking to my friend how the same trait may not work for everyone inside and that same alone feeling may be maladaptive, or destructive even, to one of the others. Like the children whose only safe connection was to the therapist and then we took her away. I hadn't considered that and while it wasn't my choice I feel badly that I was not aware of the impact, and I've since learned that maybe not being aware is more detrimental than I realized. I don't know how to be aware and also function, and so work intently not to be aware. But the scope of that functioning is so narrow that I don't see the impact on the other areas of our life as a system, and that maybe needs to be addressed.
If there is a part of us who is brave and bold to feel what there is to feel, then she should have every right to do so, and I could even be grateful that she can in ways that I cannot. But, we also have to acknowledge that even in discussing things like the birthday party, we could not have done so safely if those people who were there had not been as safe and good as they are. Like wrestling with angels, Molly said. Not many people can sit with you in something like that, in the depths of it. I cannot, myself. I don't want to feel and I don't want to know , because I need to work, is what I've said. And I think that's true, still. Obviously even as we try to provide for a family of eight during the pandemic, literally with a caseload quadruple what we could manage before people were in crisis from the pandemic. But I think it may also be true that I work to avoid feeling. Not just that if I stay busy enough, I don't have to feel and using that as its own dissociative process. But perhaps also that it also was work that got us out. Our education and our career was our escape from what was. From what was not safe.
A way to externalize a world we had already created internally and make it real and possible externally. I can see that now in a new way, and realized it as my friend was coming out to me. But even acknowledging that connects me in a new way to a trauma that is not mine, that I don't want to acknowledge, and yet it is mine as much as theirs. Which means even to accept myself means to accept the trauma as well. Even if that process looks different for me than it does for them. It was as if, for a split second, for only a moment, all the pieces were on the table and I could almost see how they were connected before they spilled to the floor again. There are specific traumas, memories I guess they say, that are starting to leak out - ooze out, Courtney says - with safe people, and our friends, and the new therapist.
As if the walls are getting thinner, as if it's all math and simple problems we could solve. Not that we're finished, but that finding for X can find for Y, and if that were true then that means everything that we feel or experience is a signal, a trail to follow, a symbol of something else from the past that we're trying to work out. And so, if 2020 was all about feeling how hard things were, it means by default that things were bad. And if 2020 was all about fighting to acknowledge how hard things were, then it means that things were hard. And when Courtney said that she just needs someone to listen to her, and look her in the eyes, and to hold her face, and to say it really was that bad, and it really was that hard… maybe she meant me. Maybe in not wanting to know and not wanting to see, I also didn't see them, or know them. And maybe it's time.
And if a birthday was so hard, maybe that's because it's a trigger. And if having girlfriends who know you as well as anyone and love you just the same, and try to keep you safe, is so dysregulating, maybe it's because there's someone else who was like that once. And if it's scary to love them back, and to show up, and to stay in their lives - because you're so afraid they're going to leave, or disappear, or go away - maybe it's because that happened before. And maybe if your friends gather to honor the death of a child, and it seems impossible to comprehend, maybe it's because you went through it alone. And maybe that's what makes it so hard to see what you see, and know what you know, and to work together with the others inside. Walls get thin and the past starts to come back, because you can't keep learning and knowing and seeing, and not still not see and still not know. There's something about starting to know that makes it more difficult to not know. We can't unsee, we can't unknow, we can't un-understand, and maybe that's the truth about why I don't want to look.
Our new therapist says that this is why we need each other, because the parts that already see and already know, can keep holding those pieces. I can keep working without picking up their pieces, that's what she says. I saw our therapist on accident. I wasn't trying to, but our appointment time was early, during my workday, and she called and I answered the phone not knowing it was the therapist. That's how I met her. We talked about these things, which is why I wanted to share them, as they are wont to do. But she says the parts that already see, and already know, and already hold those pieces, can keep holding those pieces because it's what they do. She says that I can keep working without picking up their pieces, but that maybe seeing them holding their pieces, means they don't have to hold them alone, and that maybe I've been learning and working this whole time for the whole reason of learning how to help and work with them. She says that I have something to offer, without losing who I am. It feels daunting and exhausting, and I'm unsure and not confident, and it feels high risk. I told her I didn't know we could do that and still be stable. She pointed out that we've not been stable, but that working together might help stabilize, and that them not being alone would help them feel safe. She said that us connecting with others on the inside and on the outside, is what builds relationships so that healing can happen internally and externally.
I thought of what my friend coming out to me said, about not knowing you are loved until you've shown all of who you are, and I realized that in assigning one person to interact with our friends, to try to give a consistent front and keep things calm, isolated them from us and us from them. It didn't work the way we thought, and I brought that up in a meeting inside, and suggested that maybe she's right, that it's time to build bridges, because we can't unsee, and unknow, and if they already see and know, they shouldn't have to see and know alone. Saying this and thinking this does not make me feel loved. It makes me feel anxious. I worry about falling apart, about being crazier than we already are, about frustrating our friends, about disappointing our colleagues, about letting down listeners. But the new therapist said all of those people already care about you, and being all of who you are and letting all of you be seen only helps them love you more; more accurately, more fully, more often, more deeply. That's something I would have pushed away in the past, but I felt it with my friend as he was coming out to me. And I thanked him for sharing, and reassured him of our friendship. And I realized I was able to do that because people had loved me well. And I finally saw the math of it, how it gets passed on, and how every ounce of caring that we give ourselves or another person or system is exponential and passed onto others, and that maybe that could change the world.
That's why I called a meeting - the first one in a long time - and told them, it's time to build bridges. It's time to climb out of this hole. It's time to stop hiding. It's time to get our life back, and work together living it. Because, I told them, you can never know you are truly loved until you share who you truly are, and that is a risk, and it is scary, but it's the very thing that will make it real and different from the past. There's an end in sight for the pandemic, with a vaccine already being passed out and most of us in line, and the children waiting their turn, and we've made it through okay. We've provided for them, we've maintained shelter, we've made sure they had food, and we got them through school. So yes, it was a crisis, and it was a really hard thing that happened in now time - the pandemic - but also we handled it, and we did okay, and we kept ourselves safe, and that was enough. We were enough, to keep outside children safe and well, and we even got better at being a family and working with increased presence and healthier boundaries for ourselves and each other and all of that was good. So maybe that's one thing that we can check off our list. Not that we're done caring for the children, but maybe we can stop worrying about whether we will, because we did.
So, I can know that I can keep working even when life is hard, and I will be able to pay for housing and food, even when there's a crisis. And I will be able to keep learning and working even when there are others to care for as well. And maybe knowing that and having that lived experience in now time, we have learned that even when now time is not safe we can make things right again. So, it's time to let them out, and let things be, and get back to work inside, because we have already survived, and we do every day. We can trust ourselves as a system to keep ourselves safe and well, functioning and healthy, alive and caring for others, no matter what is happening to us or around us - and that's powerful. So, maybe it's time to share who we truly are, so that we can be truly loved.
Thank you for joining us with System Speak, a podcast about Dissociative Identity Disorder. You can listen to the podcast on Spotify, Google Play, and iTunes, or follow along on our website at www.systemspeak.org. Thanks for listening