An Animated Day

Today (Wednesday) has been quite a trying day, but interesting at least. We were supposed to be at therapy at 9:30 this morning.  I found out around 9:00 that the car wouldn't crank. Luckily, my husband was home and getting ready to go to work at 10:00...so I called my psychiatrist and told her I'd be a half hour late. Obviously I started the day off on a highly stressful note, and that is my greatest trigger, so it really came as no surprise that I had a rough day.  Hubby drove us in his car when we left, and he had to stop at the drugstore on the way to work. I waited in the car, and by the time he came back I was no longer in my body.  I struggled to pull myself back inside my head, but it was a hopeless battle. I dissociated and don't remember anything until he's getting out of the car, and I see that we are at his job, and like a robot I get out of the car and walk around to the driver's side and get behind the wheel... Hubby kissed me goodbye then disappeared inside but I just sat there in the car with the engine running for a long time.  I was trying to figure out how to make the car move. Everything began to physically transform and the inside of the car took on an animated appearance, like a cartoon. I began to operate on auto-pilot.  Driving to my doctor's office was exactly like being in a video game. I don't know how else to describe it. My hands weren't really touching the steering wheel; it seemed very far away, much too far for me to reach. I was looking through the windshield and it was unreal, everything was far in the distance and out of focus. I had the distinct feeling, nay knowledge that I was untouchable, unstoppable, impervious to harm. I knew I could not, would not wreck the car or have any sort of accident or run-in with the police. It wasn't possible, for all of this was just a game.  Not real.  I don't know how long it took to get to the psych's office; everything was in slow motion yet seemed to be flying by very fast at the same time.  I don't understand how that was possible, but that's how it seemed to us.  Once in the parking lot, I just sat in the car for a long time with the air blowing in my face. I pulled the visor down to look in the mirror and was quite upset to see that the reflection looking back at me was wearing bright red lipstick.

 
I do NOT wear bright lipstick, although we're aware that some of the K's do. I unceremoniously wiped it off with the back of my hand, then just stared stupidly at the red streaks coloring my pale skin. Decided I just didn't care-what difference did it make?-and just left the red lipstick smeared all over my hand.  Finally walked into the building but it felt more like I was gliding or floating or something.  I couldn't feel the ground beneath my feet. I made it inside and walked up to the counter and signed my name, but not without some difficulty. I was unable to write in cursive; I had to print my name, and the handwriting was shaky. I had taken 1 mg Xanax while in the car at my husband's job, and as soon as I sat down in my usual corner chair I took another 1 mg.  There were a number of people in the waiting room with me; I'm not sure how many because I kept my head down and wouldn't look at anyone. I pulled my legs up underneath me and tried to curl up into a ball in my seat... and the waiting started. I was antsy and anxious and very eager to see my psychiatrist, as I'd been under a lot of stress since our last appointment.  I got out my notebook and tried to make a list, but just couldn't focus...I was too distracted by the thought that everyone in the room was staring at me. I kept looking down, or took out my journal and flipped through it, or played with my phone, perhaps even tried to tweet I can't remember now.  I just couldn't think about anything except how things were in what looked like claymation...3D cartoons of sorts. I was looking around the room in wonder when this guy came in the door... He was younger than K's body but walked like an elderly person, all hunched over and wobbly and he shuffled across the floor using a crooked wooden can and his jeans were hanging very low around his hips, exposing his striped boxer shorts, and for whatever reason, he scared us. K's heart began to pound just as soon as she laid eyes on him (even though she never looked directly at him) and of course our luck would have it that he came over and sat down in the chair right beside us. Panic started welling up inside me. My body was turned away from the strange young man, and I was intentionally looking across the room, through the other people, staring at the wall with nothing in my head except the irrational fear I felt of the person to my left. I wasn't sure I could handle it, and thought briefly about going outside and sitting in the car, but I was terrified my name would be called while I was out and I'd lose my place and have to wait even longer to see the doctor.  So we sat there, panicking, in the middle of a childlike environment filled with caricatures of people...and then my name was called. The receptionist walked over to me and asked me to come with her. I was confused but did as I was told; I wondered if we were being scolded for some reason.  She walked us out the door and around the building to a back door, while explaining to us that the toilet had overflowed and how sorry she was for the inconvenience. It was bizarre to me, but so was everything right then. Now I'm in the psychiatrist's office and I'm trying to explain to her how everything feels like a video game...and she asked me if I was a different person. I can remember all these things because we wrote them down in our notebook. We take notes in therapy now and it is really helping us.  So she asked me if I was a new K, but I didn't know the answer to the question.  It's strange to not know who you are.  I really can't even begin to put it into words. You feel lost and empty and...like nothing.  I told her I didn't know for sure who I was at the moment, and that I felt "switchy".  I don't remember the rest of the session, except for one part:  she was telling me how to use a calendar to keep up with time, so that I can remember when things happen.  I guess that sounds silly to someone with a normal grasp of time, but to someone who struggles to keep up with what day of the week it is, this is a really big deal.  She asked me if something happened this past Sunday or last Sunday, and I didn't know the difference.  I admitted that I never knew when things happened, that I use old text messages as clues to how I spent my time. So she told me to get a calendar and take notes on it, like it was a diary. Write down when I go places, when I do things.  She said it'd help me put my lost time together.  I intend to try it.  I don't remember the rest of the session, nor do I remember driving home.  The rest of the day is scattered and disconnected. I can only recount bits and pieces of it...someone bought McDonald's fries and K doesn't eat at McDonald's anymore, hasn't in years.  I remember we decided that perhaps if we took a nap, that the proper K would be with us whenever we woke up.  I might have tweeted about that, I'm not sure.  Then there's a big chunk of time missing, where I'm assuming I was napping. Next thing I know, I'm putting on an act for my mother, and pretending everything is normal as I put her to bed.  After that, I found myself hanging out with my husband in our bedroom, and I remember him asking questions like "Which K are you?" and "Are you switching on me?". Again, I remember because I made notes about all these things. I found the questions intriguing. I don't remember anything else after that. I think his questions flipped some switch in my brain, and my reality shifted once again. Next thing I know, I'm waking up in bed in my clothes and wearing my glasses.  And that's when I began to write this blog post.

Thoughts After Therapy

I was very angry before I went to therapy yesterday.  I mean, I was really pissed at my doctor.  Her office had said last month that they would call me to set up an appointment, and they never did.  Subsequently, I ran out of medications and then proceeded to lose my mind.  I really thought I was going to let her have it when I got there. I was scared she'd dump me as a patient, for I intended to cuss her out big time. My stress level was very high when I walked in the door...but things didn't go as I thought they would; someone sad took the place of someone angry when I sat down.  It felt like 15 minutes, but according to the clock I was at my psychiatrist's office for nearly 2 hours (30 minutes were spent in the waiting room, 15 minutes in the lab for blood work).  Can't remember all that we talked about, but that's not unusual.  I do know that I complained (without the use of swear words) about the fact that her receptionist had never called me after our last session to tell me my next appointment time, and since I have trouble calling people, I just kept waiting on her to call me and 2 weeks went by. So not only did I run out of meds, but I went quite crazy by the second week. When I finally got up the courage to call her office, I found out she was on vacation and the office would be closed for another week.  I had a major crisis (my mother was hospitalized and could've died) while she was on vacation and had no medication to help me, so she felt really bad that I'd had so much trouble. She was determined that I never be put in that situation again, so she gave me an emergency contact number for her. I am so grateful for that! In all my 20+ years of therapy, I've never had a doctor give me a 24 hour emergency number. She said I can call that number any time, any day, and they'd be able to contact her and/or refill my prescriptions. That is fantastic and I couldn't have dreamed of  anything better.

For some reason, I asked her again what my proper diagnosis was, and she told me-again-that she doesn't put labels on her patients.  She would only verify that I am experiencing frequent dissociative episodes.(Duh!)  At one point, however, she asked me if perhaps a different K had been taking care of me for the past few days; doesn't that indicate she knows about the other K's?  (She brought it up when I made a casual remark about the fact that I didn't recognize the clothes I was wearing, that it wasn't something I would normally wear.) Isn't that an indication that she's leaning toward a diagnosis of Dissociative Identity Disorder? I'm feeling more hopeful now that I know she believes me. I asked her if I could ever get better, and she asked me if I was sure I wanted that.  Made me think.  On the one hand, it'd be nice to be more stable and on less medication, in other words, more normal.  On the other hand, I don't think K could handle the stress of our day-to-day life with only one of us in control of her brain and body.  We help each other, we keep an eye on K, you know?  Each of the K's has a specific job to do, a specific area of our life which they handle for her. K needs all of us. Dr. H thinks the other K's are for my own well-being and protection, and she doesn't seem to think that integration (the blending of all the different personalities of someone with DID into a single identity) is the best goal for me.  To be honest, I'm glad I don't have to integrate.  I am fond of a few of the K's and would miss them were they to be fused into my core personality (whomever that may be). Not to mention the fact that if, say, The Good Daughter goes away, then K won't remember everything she needs to know to take care of our mother.

 I'm blogging too much, or at least spending far too much time online.  My husband says I'm obsessed.  Big shocker there. And my shrink stressed that she really wants me to hand write a diary which I should bring with me to therapy every week. Of course, I forgot to take it with me yesterday.  I did start a diary, but I find it difficult to remember to write in it everyday, and a lot of days I just don't have the mental energy to do it. Plus, while there are some diary entries which are obviously written by someone else (I can tell by the handwriting, the grammar, and the language) some of the K's refuse to participate in that activity.  I think maybe there are parts of me who are still hiding from the outside world, or even from myself.  Apparently, this blog is worthless to my shrink, and that just sucks.  "Blog less," she said.  But this blog is my outlet for my madness!  Some of the other me's blog sometimes, and I think that's important.  I can't talk to anyone in real life (other than my psych) about my mental issues. My husband has never fully recovered from the shock of seeing me become a different person right in front of him.  I feel like he looks at me differently now.  That's why I worked so hard to hide it after we got married.  I thought I was doing better at that time.  I really did.  I seemed happy and safe and stable and I kept the other K's hidden from him for 2 years.  But it was not meant to be.  I have crashed and burned, repeatedly now, since January.  Yet I still asked my shrink yesterday if I could cut down on some of my medications; instead, she increased my dose of one of them. She explained that each pill has a different function and that if I were to stop taking the meds, I'd be bombarded with all the hallucinations and voices that I now experience to a "lesser" degree, plus I'd be likely to fall into a dangerous depression.  I don't think I'd want it to be any worse than it is.  I can get used to the dissociation, the depersonalization, the derealization for the most part, now that I understand what is happening during those times.  I guess I must just accept the fact that I'm always going to see and hear things that are not real, I'm always going to have anxiety attacks, and I'm always going to be prone to depression.  The other issues I still need a lot of help with. The paranoia.  The self-harm.  The suicidal ideation.  The self-loathing.  The fear of people.  So I guess there are plenty of things for us to work on in therapy, even without a specific diagnosis.  It still frustrates me though.  If someone asks what my disability is, I don't know what to say. (How about "Pick one"? LOL)

Groundbreaking Ceremony For Our World

We've been thinking a lot lately (that should come as no surprise-our brain NEVER shuts itself off) and have decided to make a list (yes, the ever-popular list-making, a hallmark of K's OCD) of topics which would be good to write about in this blog.  I'm still learning how to blog, and I've been obsessing for a few hours now over the look and feel of this one.  I'm not satisfied.  I KNOW we can do better, and I'm angry that it's not perfect.  That particular K (or K's-or is it ME?!), the perfectionist, is having a fit about all of this, and is really nagging us to edit the blog or redesign it or just DO SOMETHING that will give it a more polished and professional appearance.  I, on the other hand, just want to write.  I don't care about particulars really, I just wanted to use the blog as an outlet for our usually-overflowing mind.  It was the other K's who got all obsessive about the blog and began focusing on every minute detail, down to the little things which NO ONE would ever notice (well, no one but K).  So I left them to fantasize about the "new & improved" blog, while I chose to come over here and write.  Just write.  I've been hungry to write since...well, hell, I can't remember (damn those pills!) but it seems to me to be a very long time.  I feel like I've been hibernating all Winter and have just come out of my cave to find Spring has sprung and there is new life all around me.  This makes me happy, this newborn feeling we now have.  Clean and fresh.  Renewed.  Yes, good things are happening here.  I believe that for the first time in her life, K is actually traveling down the correct path, the road to recovery; that's the dream, it's always been the dream-to NOT be sick anymore.  I just want to be "normal", even though I don't really have a grasp on what "normal" means, (compared to other people) seeing that I've never been what is generally considered "normal".

K was always different, there was just something about her that didn't match up with the other kids around her, and she felt like an outsider, even way back then.  We can remember being in kindergarten (I was about 4 or 5) and we were all sitting around, coloring.  I remember looking at my picture, and comparing it to the other kids' pictures, and one couldn't help but notice that my picture was painfully perfect, with not an inkling of crayon outside the lines of the drawing.  The other kids had pictures with crayon scribbles all over them or else were just a mish-mash of colors smeared onto paper.  I recall listening to those other kids, laughing and being silly and talking nonsense, and I thought to myself, or rather, someone inside me said, "These kids are SO immature!" and it was then that I first recall my feeling like I didn't belong, like I was in the wrong place or the wrong time or something.  It was a weird feeling, but since I was just a little kid I was able to let the feelings and thoughts wash over me like a river and I could continue on with my life inside what eventually became my own little world.  By the time I was 6, this "world" had news correspondents, and sports broadcasters, and celebrity interviewers, all following K around and asking her questions and filming her and narrating the story of her life.  It's very similar to the reality television programs which are currently so popular, except this show wasn't always glamorous-K often looked like crap in fact-and it "aired" 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, which means there were plenty of "boring episodes" of this TV show.  K didn't realize this was abnormal, since these "people" had always been with her,  and besides that her parents found it amusing that K had so many imaginary friends. Other children outgrow imaginary friends; K did not, but she never told anyone.  It was her biggest secret and after she got to be old enough to realize that this probably wasn't "normal"  (after college),  she was too afraid to tell anyone, for fear of being locked away in some psych ward.  Besides, she was pretty used to it by that time; she couldn't imagine being any other way. 

To be honest, K stuck out like a sore thumb back then when she was young, and always has actually, because of her being so very "different" from others.  (DISCLAIMER: The following information is in no way intended to sound arrogant or conceited; we're just stating the facts as we observed them)  When she was a baby and a toddler, she stuck out because she was not only "the pretty one", a title which I believe stemmed from her long, thick blonde curls  and big blue eyes, (a title which K still hears only not nearly as often) but also "the smart one".  The "smart" title was easy enough to trace back, as K was reading bedtime stories to her parents by the age of three, (according to our mother) as well as writing and drawing and, by age 6, keeping a diary.  These monikers-"pretty" and "smart" were something K would carry with her for years.  As far as physical appearances go, adults were forever calling her "pretty" and "beautiful" and she garnered a lot of attention wherever her parents took her, simply because of how she looked. I believe this could be the reason that one (or more) of our "alters" is narcissistic.  (K continued to play that "pretty" role until the end of 3rd grade, when her mother cut her long hair quite short, like a boy's; this was very traumatic to K and she mourns the loss of her hair to this very day)  Being "the smart one" was a title which would follow K around until after college, when she finally realized that boys simply don't date "smart" girls and so she came up with this persona who was pretty and charming but not that smart.  K would slip into this personality whenever she was in a social situation with guys, except for the intellectual types, whom she loved so much.  (K was into geeks before it was chic.)  But I'm getting off the subject.  She had it in her head by that time (it was learned through experience) that for the most part, guys don't want to be with a girl who is smarter than they are.  So this new K was born, this pretty and funny and sweet K, a girl of average (read: normal) intelligence, who was certainly no threat to the men around her.  I'm jumping ahead in the story, let's go back a bit.

The "smart" K excelled in pretty much every area of her life.  She made straight A's without even trying (note that she had a "photographic" memory back then), and whenever she entered a contest, such as an essay contest or an art contest, she almost always won, or at the very least placed in the top three.  By the time she reached middle school, she had a closet filled with trophies and plaques and awards for everything from science to photography.  She was always the first person in class to finish a test, or a math problem, or an English assignment; people grew to expect such behavior from K, and for a long time K was able to handle it without problems (after all, she had people inside her as well as around her who could help with homework and learning) and continually pushed herself to be even better. I don't know what caused her to push herself this way. It was definitely NOT her parents; they were so afraid that K would grow up to be conceited that they NEVER praised her for good grades or a new trophy or any other accomplishment. In fact, I believe that K tried so hard to get her parents' attention that she developed certain psychological problems, e.g. low self-esteem.  I can't recall whether or not someone else (the other K's? Switch Kellie? ME?) was encouraging her or promoting this "must-be-the-best" behavior, I only know that K was stressed out at a very early age and so new K's came into being.  These "others" would be K's saving grace, the only reason she was able to survive and move on with her life, the only way she could continue to "make her 'movie'" and thus fulfill what was at that time her life's goal.

I'm not sure which one of us is responsible for this information, but the Smart Kellie went into hiding after K dropped out of college, and only made appearances whenever she was needed.  For example, when K was in the presence of intellectuals, older adults, friends of her parents, or whenever it was necessary for K to sound intelligent or well-read or somehow special, such as at a job interview or on a first date. We were in college, majoring in studio arts, when we had our first "breakdown" (even though this one would later seem much smaller, at the time it was huge).  Kellie's World crumbled down around her and she went someplace dark and empty and stayed there for years, although you'd never guess it from looking at her because she was being taken care of by someone else, possibly me...(I just can't remember anymore-too much time has passed.)  It took a lot of people, namely a lot of K's, to re-establish Kellie World and make it feel safe again. We had to rebuild everything pretty much, and it was an enormous task, but K never left that world;  instead she changed the way she existed within it.  This is all terribly difficult to explain, and I'm only succeeding in making myself sound foolish, so I'm going to stop now.  I think I've filled an encyclopedia with these ramblings; I wonder if anyone (including K!) will have the patience needed to drudge through this post?  DAMN-at this point, I can no longer remember what the hell we were talking about anyway...