The Inevitable Crash

Well, here we go again.  I was feeling so good.  I was living my life, and things were going pretty darn well.  I got to take a weekend trip far away and had an absolute blast.  I was really living high.  I felt so good it made me nervous.  And this is why. Because invariably, once I'm up, I must come down.  The better I feel, the harder I crash.  So based on how content-even happy-I was up to this point, this has the potential to be a real low.  I can look at the situation from outside myself and see that it's silly.  But I suppose it is akin to that feeling you get the day after Christmas when you're a kid. One day you're on top of the world, the next day it's all over and you just can't imagine waiting a whole year to feel that happy again.  That's where I'm at now.  It's the day after Christmas and all the good stuff has already happened.  There's nothing left to look forward to.  I can't see any reason to be cheerful.  I know it's terribly selfish of me to want it to be Christmas everyday, and indeed I don't really want that, as a special occasion would not be special if it occurred too frequently.  I simply want to be...optimistic.  Hopeful.  For what, I don't know. I just know that I need something to dream about, something to wish for, something to wait for.  During these downhill slides, I lose sight of everything good in my life. It's as though I'm wearing blinders and can't see what's right in front of me. The depression creeps in and wraps its icy arms around me. At least one part of me disagrees with what I'm telling you right now.  One of the K's sees the bright side of things and can always find something positive, no matter how crappy the situation.  But that's not me.  No, I'm the realist. Note that I did NOT say pessimist.  REALIST.  I believe that life is rough and slaps you around and most people are only looking out for themselves.  I believe these things because these are the things I've learned in my lifetime.  Maybe I'm just cynical, but I know that I've learned a few things in my time on this earth, and what I've learned is not necessarily of a positive nature. No, the world is harsh and cold and tough and there's always something standing in the way of your happiness. It's how you handle all of these problems that makes the difference in your life.  Take my current situation. I've been so happy for so many days in a row now that I'm crashing hard and fast back down to earth. I can either continue to free-fall and land in a jumbled, broken mess or I can try to fly, as silly as that sounds.

Skip ahead 2 days: I did not fly.  I crashed and burned. Yeah, I really fell hard this time, and lost my shit pretty hardcore. I've been hiding in my bedroom for the past two days and I just can't bring myself to come out. I have an adjoining bathroom, and I have a stash of Diet Coke and a box of Cheez-its.  I was separated from my pills, but my husband was thoughtful enough to bring them to me, and so now there is no reason for me to leave this room. Truth be told, I'm scared to leave this room.  I have been sitting on the bed for an indeterminate amount of time, watching the sky outside my window grow darker and darker, the clouds reaching out like fingers trying to grab me. Now it's pitch black and I can't see a thing. Normally I'd be far too paranoid to have the blinds open, but since I have no lights on anywhere, I know that no one can see me. I hide in the shadows. I am like a statue, I haven't moved in what must be hours...nothing except the hands on my keyboard that is. Twitter is my connection to the outside world.  It is the only way I will communicate-I'm not answering my phone or the door. The support I receive from people on Twitter helps us hold on, it really does. Sometimes a tweet makes all the difference in the world to us by letting me know there's someone out there somewhere, and I am not alone. I'm not sure which K is tweeting during this meltdown; probably a few. We are all over the map, personality wise. I am coming in and out of consciousness... I can't keep up with how often I'm switching or who's out when. I keep eating Xanax and Risperdal and Seroquel. Just feels like my mind is in overdrive and the pressure is almost unbearable. If I didn't know better, I'd think my head was going to burst wide open like a water balloon. There's a lot of arguing in my head. All the voices are yelling at me and each other and there's an ungodly amount of noise inside my mind. That's the reason I'm in seclusion. I can't tolerate any more stimulation of any kind-audible or visual. I MUST sit alone in the dark, in the silence.  This is my only respite.

Bad Twitter Vibes

We're struggling today.  Something happened yesterday or last night (we think) or at the very least it was quite recently, and it's upset us and we are unable to move on past this incident.  I don't know how to get over it without discussing it with my psychiatrist, but I don't see her until next week, and I can't wait that long for someone to console us.  So I'm going to tell the tale here, at the risk of embarrassing one or all of us K's on Twitter. That's where all this started. Twitter.

I began using Twitter sometime in December of 2011, from what I can tell, although we had the account for much longer; I created my blog close to New Year's Eve. I used the account before December to occasionally tweet to my husband, and to myself.  That's right, I tweet to K.  It helps us remember things, people, places, events.  So I think I tweeted to myself for about 2 years before I ever followed or was followed by anyone.  I was completely anonymous on Twitter.  I told no one that we had an account or a blog. NONE of my real-life friends know I have a blog or Twitter account. I used the blog to empty my mind of all the crap that was pounding in my head at most every moment of every day. I wrote in our blog as a way to release my confusion, frustration, and tension. I could say how I felt, and no one would ever know or judge me.  But I was severely depressed in December, and someone in our head got the idea that perhaps we could find some type of support group online using Twitter.  Or at least, find another person, anyone, who understood what it is we go through everyday.  What I'm talking about is our dissociation.  Hallucinations, voices, lost time, severe memory loss.  All of these things together make my everyday life quite a challenge on many days.  We have good days and bad days.  Sometimes we forget we're ill.  Other days we are so ill that we cannot function at all.

So anyway, I began to search Twitter for someone "like me".  I don't even know now how I found anyone at all....I can't remember.  But somehow we found some people who were at least similar to us, for example a woman with OCD, and we began to follow them, and this led to people following me, and so on and so forth.  Now I can't recall exactly when this happened, but at some point I came across a person on Twitter who had a blog and who wrote about the same kinds of experiences that I have.  This person described symptoms just like mine, and I was thrilled to know that I'm not the only one.  I began to read her blog from the very beginning; it took me weeks, even months, to read all her posts from the beginning of her blog.  But I got to this one part in her blog where she talked about finding someone online who was "just like her".

I was elated-this woman had gone through a situation exactly like my current one.  She had found someone who seemed would understand her and her illness.  Of course I'm not giving any names, but this woman contacted the other woman she'd found, and apparently they ended up becoming friends.  Now let me say this first and foremost-I was NEVER expecting to be friends with the woman with the blog.  I was just hoping she might answer a few questions, or give me some advice about how to handle my symptoms or at least what to say to my shrink.  I was first diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder way back in 2004, but shortly after that I had to move and so I lost both my psychiatrist and my psychologist, who was helping me explore my diagnosis and treatment options.  When I moved, I forgot. That's right, I forgot my diagnosis. I guess it was just too much for us to handle and so we pushed it out of our mind.  I forgot about the therapy sessions in which I'd "switched" and I forgot about all the different "me"s who had shown up for therapy.

What was left in my memory was my prior diagnosis, which was Schizophrenia.  I'd been diagnosed with that around 1998, and that was the label I wore for all these years.  I saw different doctors, but they always assumed that my diagnosis was correct, simply because I heard voices in my head.  I know now that this is not indicative of being Schizophrenic, it's just a classic symptom.  So basically, what happened was I'd been going through my day-to-day life thinking I was Schizophrenic.  I certainly had some of the same symptoms-hallucinations, delusions, loss of train of thought, social withdrawal, and paranoia, in addition to the voices which I heard in my head.  So this diagnosis seemed to fit, and it was assumed by each doctor that I saw that this was the proper diagnosis.  No one had ever explored other options, except for that one psychologist who'd finally identified the real problem but whose diagnosis I had forgotten.

I'm telling you all this so that you understand how it is that I believed myself to be Schizophrenic when in fact I wasn't.  I wore the label for years, as scared as I was of it.  I told only a couple of people whom I trusted, including my sister.  Fast forward a few years, and K began dating a man who was in college, studying psychology.  It was he who first declared my misdiagnosis.  He said he simply did not believe I was schizophrenic, but rather that I had some sort of dissociative disorder (Apparently I had "switched" in front of him before).  I knew nothing of such disorders, but it was only a few months later when my psychologist threw out the term Dissociative Identity Disorder.  I really don't remember too much from that period in my life. It feels like a hundred years ago. But I've lost my place in this story and to be honest we don't even remember what it was that we were writing about.  I hate when that happens, and it happens frequently.  Oh yes, now I remember.

I found the woman with the blog who had the same symptoms that I had.  I thought, after reading her blog, that I had finally found the answer to all my questions about what was wrong with me.  I've been called "mentally ill" since I was first hospitalized at the age of 16, and I've been diagnosed with a dozen or more different disorders, but I've never had a doctor give me a satisfactory explanation as to why or how.  This woman's blog opened my eyes to this new term, which was somehow strangely familiar to me.  Dissociative Identity Disorder.  It seemed to ring a bell somewhere deep inside of us but I just couldn't put my finger on it.  But what I did was this: I began reading everything I could find on DID. Every book at the library was checked out and read.  I Googled and Wikipedia'd and read any information I could locate on this disorder.

Around this time, I found an old diary which talked about my diagnosis of DID, and it was a tremendous help; I took it to my psychiatrist.  But what was most informative to me was this other woman's blog.  She described my experiences perfectly, although of course we lived very different lives.  I decided that I absolutely had to contact this woman, just as she'd done when she'd found someone else "like her".  I figured if she could do it, if she could find a similar soul and communicate with them, then so could I.  Again, I never expected to become good friends with this woman, I just wanted some advice from someone who suffered from DID.  I got her email address off her blog and I guess it took me days to get the courage to write the email, I can't remember.  I just remember that when I sent the email, I was excited.  I was excited by the thought of her emailing me back and telling me she understood.  That she'd been there, that she'd gone through the same things.  When she didn't respond to my email, I realized that I'd told her about the blog but forgotten to give her the address, so I sent another email, this time with all my contact information as well as my blog URL.  I thought maybe she would read my blog and agree that I was DID and that perhaps she could help me figure out what to say to my newest psychiatrist, who had not yet fully diagnosed me but who was in the process of doing so.

Well, I waited for what seemed an eternity, and I never heard from the woman.  She never responded to my emails.  I thought I must've come across as some psycho stalker or something; I couldn't remember what the emails had said.  I was discouraged but determined to make contact with her, for she was the single person I'd come across in my entire life who seemed to understand the symptoms we have.  Months had passed since we sent the email, or at least I think so.  One of the K's is very bold and wanted to send her a Direct Message on Twitter.  Well, that's how we found out we'd been UNfollowed.  Now we know for a fact that she had followed us at one time, for we never delete our messages and so we still had the email from Twitter, telling us she'd begun to follow us.  That could, in fact, be how we found her in the first place; I just don't know (damn this memory loss!).  But I tried to send a DM and that's how I found out she was no longer following us. So without thinking about it much, I sent a Tweet, saying she'd begun following me in January and I wanted to DM her but she must've unfollowed me because I couldn't do that and she responded, very coldly I thought, "I never followed you back. You have our email."  So my feelings were hurt.  I admit it, I'm overly sensitive. But for her to assume that I'd followed her first really pissed me off.  SHE followed ME first, and I had an email to prove it.  Anyways, I took this straight to heart and got my feelings hurt and I never did send her another email.

However, I continued to read her blog.and learned how she'd been able to better understand her illness through her writing. So I wrote. A lot.  I blogged, I had a diary on my laptop, I had a hardbound journal, I had a sketch diary.  I wrote and wrote, and indeed began to learn things about myself and my symptoms.  The first time I read a blog post that had been written by one of the other K's, it really freaked me out.  I mean, there was now solid evidence that I was going through something major.  Still, I didn't mention it to my psychiatrist. I just continued to research, to read, to learn.

I don't know how I had the courage to do it, but I actually went so far as to contact the other woman with DID, the one that had advised my blog writer when she'd written her an email.  I was scared to death that she was going to be mean to me, like I felt the first woman had been.  But she wrote me back and was very nice.  She told me a few things about dissociative disorders and said while she didn't have time to be a great source of support (she's very busy), she'd do her best to answer the occasional email or Tweet.  I have since made contact with her a handful of times (we think) and she's always been very nice. However, I found out, upon reading her blog, that she considers herself to be cured.  She no longer suffers from DID-she'd gone through something called integration, in which all of the personalities merge.  So I was back at square one. The one person I'd communicated with was no longer suffering from the illness I was trying so hard to understand.  So I continued my search. I was successful in finding a woman who has a dissociative problem, but after I emailed her I found out that she does not have DID.  Still, she became, and remains, a tremendous source of support for me, and I owe her so much for all the advice she's given me since I first contacted her.  She's the person who told me how to create a blog actually.  Her blog is brilliant, and I'd post a link but again, don't want to embarrass anyone.

It was a gradual process, but I began to find others like me, other people who heard voices and lost time, and I even found a few with DID. Now it's extraordinarily difficult for me to talk to strangers, as I suffer from Social Anxiety Disorder, and I fear most people.  So just sending an email to someone I don't know is very difficult for me.  Which is one reason I'm proud of us-we actually reached out to some people on Twitter and met some folks with similar disorders and symptoms and we attempted to be social and supportive in the hopes that what goes around would come back around.  And it did for the most part.  I met some wonderful people, who didn't think less of me because of my mental illness, who didn't judge me, who understood moodiness and depression.  Still, it bothered me that the DID woman with the blog never wrote me back.

Then one day, she wrote a blog post, and I gained some insight into her feelings.  She blogged about how much she appreciated her readers, and that she was so happy to be able to help others struggling with similar disorders.  She wrote that she loved getting emails from people who'd been helped through her blog.  So I decided to once more send her an email-I thought since she said she appreciated the positive response from her readers, well I thought she'd like to hear how much she'd helped me.  But before I could find the courage to send such an email (I mean, this would've been the third email sent to her, and that was like stalker material), she wrote another blog post.  This one stated that she didn't read the blogs of other mental patients, because she found them to be triggering. Well, that certainly made sense to me, as I am often triggered by things I see or read.  So I never sent the email to thank her for her help, the help she doesn't even know she's given me.  I'm afraid of her now.  I really am.  She hurt my feelings twice, and I can't risk getting hurt a third time.  I began to focus more on the people I'd met on Twitter, and on my own blog.

I was starting to communicate with a number of Tweeps and actually, for perhaps the first time in my life, I felt accepted in spite of my psychiatric condition. I gained confidence and started initiating conversations with people on Twitter.  This is unbelievable to me as I write these words-I have NEVER been able to approach a stranger and start a conversation.  So I seemed to be making progress, getting better.  Plus, I was sometimes offering my support and experience to help others on Twitter, sometimes a young girl who was cutting, sometimes a man with an anxiety problem.  I felt like I was doing something that made a difference.  I felt like I was helping as well as being helped, and this made me happy.

At last I had the courage to bring up the subject of dissociation with my doctor, and was happy when she agreed with me, that yes, I had a dissociative disorder.  She didn't say I had DID-it will take a long time for her to positively identify my disorder-but she told me I was on the right path.  So I continued my reading and researching, and talking to people with DID.  They all seem to think that DID fits me like a glove, and I have come to believe that too, but I won't know for sure until my doctor has treated us for a long time, probably years.  I am impatient but understand her point.  She wants to get to the heart of our illness and see what's really going on in my head.  My biggest fear at this point is that we'll have to relive the childhood trauma which she believes is the cause of this illness.  Otherwise, I'm feeling more positive and confident and social. I even got an invitation to join a DID support group, which I did. The people there seem incredibly supportive and understanding. Hopefully I'll be courageous enough to participate in the group.

But now here's where the bad part comes in again.  One night, maybe last night, I'm just not sure, I was on Twitter, just lurking really, not talking to anyone, just reading the timeline, and I noticed a person with whom I'd communicated several times was on there and seemed to be having a very difficult time.  So I thought I'd reach out and let her know that she wasn't alone.  Well, I'm not sure how it happened, but she misunderstood me and got all upset and accused me of yelling at her.  I was shocked. I'd never had a disagreement with anyone on Twitter.  And, as is my nature, I took it personally.  It completely smashed my self-esteem and I was crushed at how mean she'd been to me when I'd only been trying to help.  I guess I'm not very good at offering help or advice.  And so I've come to a decision.  I've decided that I won't be using Twitter as I had been doing up to this point.  I'm not going to try and help people, for it only sets me up for rejection and ridicule and failure and pain.  I'm going to take some time off from Twitter; my husband says I'm obsessed and spend far too much time online anyways.

So I will continue to blog, as it is something that I do for myself, not for anyone else. The blog is my outlet for my madness.  I'm always surprised if someone reads it, and delightfully stunned if I get a comment.  But it seems to help me better understand the different K's, we communicate with each other through the blog you see. So that's pretty much all I wanted to say.  That I was blogging and using Twitter to help myself get better and find support, but that I'd been hurt and felt like I failed. And so I'm not going to do the Twitter thing for awhile.  At least, I'm going to try and stay away from it.  I DO have an obsessive personality, so it will be nearly impossible for me to give up my current obsession cold turkey.  But it must be done.  My feelings are hurt and my confidence is blown.  I'm scared to use Twitter right now.  I shall miss my new Tweeps, and I'll definitely miss the support I received from the other mentals out there.  But this is how I feel right now.  I'm hurt. It's going to take me some time to get over it.  I take everything so personally, it's a character flaw I have no control over.  So there you have it.  That's why I won't be on Twitter for awhile.  It's also why I don't trust anyone on Twitter anymore.  Too much negativity.  Too many bad vibes. Too much disappointment.

NOTE: Not all of the K's necessarily feel this way.  Some of us may continue Tweeting. And we'll definitely continue blogging,as it seems to make us feel more "sane". Hopefully, I'll see you Tweeps again soon. I just have to be sad for awhile, and we need to be alone to sufficiently sulk. That's all I need right now-just a private pity party for the girl who made a fool out of herself, not once, but three times.  I wonder if I'll ever have the courage to speak again to someone in need.  I wonder if I'll ever be able to comfort someone, cheer someone up, make someone smile.  I have my doubts. It seems everything I do now is wrong.

How I Became a Walking Drugstore

Since the diagnosis which I've had for years has practically been scratched off my chart, so to speak, I figured this was a good time to review what disorders we DO have, or at least the ones we've been branded with,  be them true or false.  Now my mind is still reeling over the statement Dr. H made yesterday ("I don't think you have schizophrenia") and I can't help but wonder if maybe some-or all (?!) of the doctors from my past have been wrong.

The first time K ever saw a psychiatrist was when her parents had her committed, at the age of 16,  to a psych hospital, for what they deemed my being inappropriate and out of control.  Bizarre behavior led my parents to believe that I was on hard drugs (which was ridiculous; I'd never even smoked pot) when in fact I was just suffering through major depression with suicidal tendencies.  I think I tried to kill myself for the first time somewhere around this time, but that memory just won't come back to me no matter how hard I try to remember.  So, I tried to kill myself plus my parents thought I was strung out on heroin, hence I ended up being committed to a hospital.  First psychiatrist of my life, Diagnosis: Manic/ Depressive (a couple of  years later called Bipolar II).  This woman put me on Lithium and suicide watch, then proceeded to tell me that I wouldn't be so depressed if I'd just wear more colorful clothing. The audacity!  I was hospitalized for 3 months, during which time I was given a handful of different medications and yet I continued to dress all in black, and I kept writing gloomy and dark poetry.  I think they released me after they decided that I was no longer suicidal, or else they were just sick of me.  I continued to see that same psychiatrist (she had a different sports car for every day of the week, and I can't stand people who are obsessed with money and possessions) until the day came when we had a family session, and my parents were told by this shrink that they, in part, helped contribute to my mental problems.  My father was furious, and my mother was angry and in shock. They were good parents, they really were.  They grabbed my arm and pulled me out of that office and I never saw that doctor again.  (although I realize now that my parents probably did have something to do with my problems, even though they always had good intentions)

The next doctor proclaimed I had Major Depressive Disorder and put me on a handful of antidepressants. I can't remember how long that lasted.  When I graduated from high school, I moved to a new city and was without a doctor for a while.  Bad idea.  Two intentional overdoses followed Freshman year at college.  After the second overdose, I decided it best for me to seek help with my mental "issues", and so I went to the local hospital and inquired about mental health services for low-income persons (I was just a student after all).  I don't remember that, but I somehow know that it happened.

K found a psychologist who worked on a sliding-scale fee and who was near her apartment and she began to see this man every week.  Sometimes he would make us take tests, all sorts of tests, sometimes written tests with questions, other times it was puzzles for K to solve, and one time he simply asked us to fold a piece of paper.  Believe it or not, this was one of the more difficult tasks for us, for it had to be PERFECT and it took me a long time to fold the paper; these tests led to our new (additional) diagnosis of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and some new medication.  K's OCD is easy to spot, although she's not your stereotypical hand-washer or compulsive cleaner. (Actually, one of the K's is a cleaner who's afraid of dirt)  K is an organizer, a list-maker...with a compulsion to turn the toilet paper around so that it rolls over the top rather than being pulled out from underneath.  Silly things like that.  K saw this psychologist for about a year, until the day came when he told her that she needed medication and he was going to have to hook her up with a psychiatrist, but all of that would have cost money, money which K simply did not have.  So we left that place and went unsupervised and unmedicated ("all natural") for what seemed like a long time...but we can't be sure how long.

K had gotten married at the age of 19, and pretended to be "normal" and went "all natural" and thus didn't take any medication or see any therapist during the year that her marriage lasted.  After the messy divorce, K became very manic-her worst episode ever up to that point-and went a bit crazy and started partying and dating lots of guys and going shopping and doing a lot of risky, stupid things such as dabbling in drugs and driving really fast.  This lasted for a couple of years, and K thought she was happy and having fun, like a regular college student...and then she crashed at the age of 23.  She fell into a deep, dark pit of despair, the likes of which she'd never known and from which it seemed she'd never crawl out of.  Somehow, someone helped us find a new doctor.  I can't remember much after that, I know there were more pills and more labels (Borderline Personality Disorder, Social Anxiety Disorder, Bulimia, Panic Disorder) and this pattern of going from doctor to doctor and getting pill after pill went on until K abruptly disappeared and turned up on the other side of the country.

K didn't go there alone-she was much too insecure and frightened by being out in public.  She had a friend with her, who knew she had a history of depression but who had no idea the extent of K's illness.  They lived in this big, new city for a couple of months before K had a freakout and her friend had to take her to the hospital. (K got lost coming home from work; she totally forgot where she lived and had to call her roommate to come get her) They poked and prodded and questioned K all night.  When it was finally over (a couple of days later? I don't recall), K had a pocketful of prescriptions and the name of both a psychiatrist AND a neurologist.  The neurologist took pictures of our brain, and determined that K was having little mini seizures in her head, and I believe these seizures are what destroyed much of K's memory.

The psychiatrist made us fill out a mountain of paperwork and assessment tests and then there were hours of interviews and therapy sessions, and in the end, he gave K (who was 27 by this time) her new, improved diagnosis: Schizophrenia.  That word scared the living daylights out of K, and she went into a state of bewildered shock.  She turned up hours later at a girlfriend's apartment; apparently K had walked miles from the hospital to the girl's place (this was K's best friend, whom she trusted with info about her mental illness) and K burst into tears when she got there and had a meltdown and proclaimed that she didn't want to be schizophrenic, that it was too serious a condition, that it frightened her.  It took her a very long time (years) to come to terms with that particular mental health label.  How twisted it is that I've now been told I don't have this, after it took so long for me to accept that I did have it.  (sigh)

And so that diagnosis stuck, and after that wherever K went and whenever K would change doctors, she'd fill out all the required forms and papers and she always had to list her mental problems and so she wrote down what the doctors had always told her, and for the most part, each new doctor simply looked at her chart, took it as fact, and prescribed more medication: anti-psychotics and mood stabilizers and anxiety meds.  This is how she lived her life throughout her young adulthood.  See a therapist, take medication, get better, quit taking the meds, have a meltdown, repeat.  In the spring of 2002, K had just found a new therapist.  This therapist she found listed in a local new-age magazine, and K, being quite superstitious,  took that as a "sign".  This therapist, Patty,  was the best one K ever had.  K liked her from the start, and they connected and K trusted her and she truly seemed to care about K's mental health and quality of life.  She worked in tandem with a psychiatrist who prescribed even more medication for K. This situation remained constant for 7 years.  During those years, K would get to a really good, stable place and then she'd quit taking her meds and have a meltdown and have to start over with the pills and she went from one extreme to the other-either drowning in a sea of despair or elated to the point of skipping down the sidewalk.  Patty was there to help K deal with her obsessive thoughts, or depression, or fears...she sometimes gave K homework assignments designed to provide insight into the mind of K and her subconscious.  One of these assignments was to draw a picture of what K believed herself to look like.  I believe this was a self-image/self-esteem test.  At the next session, K showed up with at least half a dozen different pictures.  Now I didn't realize this until just recently, but about 2 years after K first started seeing Patty, the term Dissociative Identity Disorder came out of her mouth.  K wrote about it in her diary, but then forgot about it.  Perhaps it was just more than she could handle, so she removed herself from the reality of this diagnosis and went on with her life and blocked out anything that had to do with that disorder.  Therapy during those years is difficult for us to remember, but I have little snippets of memories, like a few seconds of film; one of these mini-memories is Patty asking us what our name was.  We didn't know the answer to the question...we were K, weren't we?  In another partial memory, Patty is telling us that different people have come to therapy in our body.  All of this was news to K, or at least I think it was...damn this memory loss!  We were just starting to make strides in this therapy, these sessions which focused on who K was and what had happened to her as a child (she clearly had all the classic symptoms of sexual abuse). I believe Patty might have suggested K had Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, I remember someone said it.

Just when K seemed to be making progress, just when things were beginning to come out, just when K was starting to open up and be completely honest with Patty....well that's when the unthinkable happened.  K got dumped.  She drove to her therapy session that day, just as she did every week or every other week if she was doing well, just as she'd done for 7 years.  When she got there, she was eager to talk to Patty, she had a lot to say, but Patty sat her down and got all serious and told K that she had missed an appointment the week before. At this particular mental health facility, they had a rule: you can only miss 3 appointments. After that, you are automatically dropped for being a non-compliant patient.  Well, K remembered that one day she had been trying to call them to change her appointment but no one would answer the phone.  We called repeatedly throughout the morning and afternoon.  It was Memorial Day, so K determined that they must've been closed for the holiday.  This is why K missed that last appointment.  She really did try to call and reschedule, honestly she did.  But she was being dumped, and this HURT, terribly, K takes everything so personally, and so it hurt her feelings that Patty didn't want to see her anymore.  From somewhere deep inside us, this angry K suddenly appeared and acted like a total bitch and said horrible, insulting, rude things to Patty.  I watched from outside my body, and couldn't believe what was happening.  It just didn't seem real, it couldn't be true.  K stormed out of Patty's office, got into her car, and hauled ass out of the parking lot.  She started bawling almost immediately, and did so for the entire hour's drive back to her home.

K's world was turned upside down.  Since her psychiatrist worked together with her therapist, K certainly didn't want to see that psychiatrist anymore.  She called and cancelled her next appointment.  For the first time in seven years, K was without a doctor or a therapist.  She had some medication, but would soon run out.  She started frantically trying to find a new doctor.  But it is harder than you'd imagine to find a psychiatrist who accepts Medicare and Medicaid.  We were losing hope, then we called Dr. H's office, and the lady on the phone was so nice and helpful and we explained to her that we really needed to see the doctor, that we'd run out of medications and we were having some withdrawal symptoms as well as feeling unstable.  They got me in quickly, and even though my medical records had not been faxed from the other doctor's office as had been requested, the doctor met with me and we talked for over an hour.  I left feeling hopeful.

Our last psychiatrist, who'd worked alongside Patty, well, we hated her.  She was an evil bitch who didn't seem to give a rat's ass about me and how I was doing, she just wrote out my prescriptions; when I came in crying, she'd increase my dosage.  I never felt anything but distaste for that woman.  This new doctor, Dr. H, well she had shown me more compassion in one session than that other shrink had shown me in years.  I had medication refills now, and I was eager to start therapy sessions with Dr. H.  That was 2 years ago.  It took Patty two years to label me DID, and it took two years for Dr. H to find out about my dissociative disorder.  That brings us to the present day.  We have had 2 sessions in which we discussed dissociative states.  She's ready to get to work it seems; she asked me to bring the diaries which are the evidence of our illness.  I'm terrified, yet excited at the thought of beginning the healing process, of accepting what and who we are, and of learning to love K as she is, in spite of her faults.

The Discovered Diaries

So much has happened that I just do not know where to start.  I can't remember the beginning, and we've not yet come to the end, at least I hope not, and so that must mean that this is the "present time".  I've been doing some research since my last blog post, and to say that is an understatement of tremendous proportions.  I've been obsessing over websites and news articles about dissociative disorders, to the point of not eating or sleeping; to stop and do either of those things would mean sacrificing our precious time, and I'd rather use however much time we have left here to seek more knowledge.  I hunger for knowledge, not food, I thirst for facts.  I cannot stop reading about these different conditions and their symptoms and I really feel that for the first time in what seems an eternity (to us) that I've stumbled upon something important, something that describes how I, we feel, something that makes sense to me, and to K. I feel as though I'm opening my eyes for the first time...although I have proof now-physical proof-that this is indeed NOT the first time I've had this sense of "clarity" as I've been calling it. Some time ago, we don't know how long ago exactly-could be minutes, could be days-we found a diary...

I was looking for something in the nightstand drawer, I can't remember what exactly, I just recall that I was very intent on finding it and so I was going through the drawer thoroughly. I came across a sketch diary, which I'd begun on my birthday in February of 1999 and which I used to remember important things and people and places and events by a combination of drawings and words. We've had our memory problems for quite a long time now, and so K has always tried to keep a diary, a journal, a sketchbook, anything which she could look at and relive experiences through, as well as just keep on top of basic information which other people seem to be able to hold onto in their minds so easily but which she cannot, things like friends' names.  She began her first diary around age 5.  It was a very small white diary with a picture of Donald Duck on the cover, I remember that well.  I'm not sure where that diary is located at the moment, but I'm almost positive that we still have it, since K absolutely hates to throw things away for fear of losing something important.  Something that she might need to use in the future. Also, she's very sentimental and still has, for example,  every love letter ever penned for her, every card, every poem.  We keep all these things in a box which has grown too full to hold anything new, but that's OK as we now are married to the man who will love me forever and never leave us, in spite of our illness.  At least, that's the master plan.

Now we're already losing track of the subject, and we've only just begun; this is terribly frustrating as well as inconvenient, for we once again are at the mercy of time and we seem to have so little of it right now.  There is so much which needs to be said and done before we run out of time, before I have to go away again.  I don't know how much time there is before that happens, I only know that it will happen, I will go away; not to a physical place, mind you, but rather to a different kind of place, on another realm of existence, or at least that's how it feels to K.  I'm not K, but am what our husband refers to as Switch Kellie, and I don't know how long I have been here this time but I can see from my notes that I've been doing a lot of researching, a lot of studying, a lot of prep work.  I suppose this is all because we go to see our psychiatrist soon.  Not today, and not tomorrow, but the next day.  I'm starting to work on these notes for the doctor now so that perhaps it will save her some time later, in helping her to properly diagnose K and hopefully, after that, put us on the road to recovery through the use of therapy and medication.  K takes more than her fair share of medication, that's for sure, but we were thinking that maybe if we had the RIGHT medication(s) then maybe we wouldn't have to take so MUCH...maybe we could get away with just a few pills a day or something much more "normal" than the current handful of 10-12 pills.  That's a ridiculous amount of pills for someone so young to be taking, and besides that, it makes us all groggy and sleepy (not to mention all the other dreaded side effects) and we feel as though our life is literally slipping past us and if I don't stand up and ring the bell to tell the bus driver that I want off, then I may just miss the whole thing-life I mean.

Now according to my notes, there happens to be some information which is of vital importance to K's recovery, (that is the current, and most important, project) inside these diaries. (Yes, plural-we have found three now) K always has a number of projects going at any given time, or at least most of us do, but not the K that's been around here lately... No, she's done nothing but sleep and be lazy and depressed and embarrass us and make us angry, not to mention the fact that it just downright looks bad in front of our mother and husband, both of whom we love very much and want to make happy.  This sad and lazy K has been with us before, oh it feels like we've met her a number of times over the years, although I don't believe that she ever came around until after K had to drop out of college, when the pressure became too much for her to bear.  I'll tell you that story later in the game.

Now back to our tale.  We have come across 3 different diaries, one begun in 1999, one begun in 2004, and one begun the first of January, 2010.  I find it absolutely fascinating, what's contained in these books, and my only regret is that we didn't find these and read them sooner, so that we could've told someone, some medical professional, one of our therapists, about them and the secrets contained within their pages.  I have to stop here and admit that I have not yet actually read all 3 diaries from start to finish; I simply have not had time to do that, at least not enough "Kellie Time", which is a measure of time all our own, which K's friends have gotten used to and often joke about but which they don't seem to understand (or perhaps some of them do) is truly the only sense of time that K knows.  I can tell time, perfectly well, I just don't wear a watch and can't always get to my cell phone or a clock to check the time around me.  "Kellie Time" is usually about 30 minutes behind the rest of the real world, but that can vary with K's different realities.  What I mean by that is, each K has her own sense of time and space, and so that 30 minutes could be as little as 15 minutes or as long as 2 hours, depending upon which K is trying to tell the actual time. I imagine none of this makes any sense to you, and I suppose it shouldn't either, as it couldn't possibly make sense to anyone who's not had a peek inside K's mind.  It honestly doesn't even make sense to K, and she's the one living through all of this madness.  If SHE doesn't get it, then how could anyone else?

So the diaries...let me tell you a bit about them.  I opened up the first one I found, the little black book, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that its first page was fully illustrated in bright colors, outlined all in black Sharpie marker.  Black Sharpie markers are K's favorite medium and she's been using them for decades now to draw pictures and tell stories of what's happening in her day-to-day life, and while a trusted few have seen these drawings, or some of them, (K does the drawings for herself, no one else) very few people (one or two) have actually taken the time to READ the drawings, or try and interpret them.  Only one of our therapists or doctors has ever seen these drawings, and when she saw them she seemed to get excited or eager or something I can't put my finger on, but which made us quite paranoid,  which is a very common state of mind for us to be in.  These drawings vary in appearance, as they are not all drawn by the same K, and most of the K's seem to have their own unique artistic style.  It's interesting to flip through the diary, and note the changes in mood from page to page, I mean the whole physical appearance of the diary entries, not just the words but the pictures and the colors, everything.  It's like reading a book written and illustrated by many different authors.  I, personally, Switch Kellie, as Husband likes to call us, am fascinated by these diaries and the words contained on their pages. I've been reading them like novels, each is like a new novel that I've never read before and which perhaps I've been told about because some of the stories are familiar to me and it seems I've heard the stories before, but I can't remember actually reading or writing these tales for the most part, and certainly I can't remember living all of these things.  It's as though it all happened to another person (or persons), or in dream or something.  Not "real life" (whatever that may be).

In addition to the physical appearance of the diaries, look closer and you will find that the words are different too, the writing style as well as the handwriting, and I am intrigued by this fact.  I want to know more about these books.  I must read them, all 3 of them, before I go and see the doctor on Wednesday.  My laptop tells me that this currently is Monday morning, so hopefully it won't be too much longer before the day comes when K goes to the psychiatrist with her husband (I need him as a witness!) and wherein she can finally tell someone this tremendous secret she's keeping. This secret is so big, so enormous, that if I stop to think about it, it makes my brain ache.  I literally can feel my brain begin to throb and pulsate and the pain intensifies until it gets to the point in which I fear I'm going to have a stroke or give myself an aneurism or something terrible like that. Thinking about The Secret, in fact, is enough to (almost) immediately induce a panic attack, and so we must be very careful about what information we share with whom, i.e. which of the Kellie's.  I'm the strong one, I'm the one who takes care of us, and so I'm much better equipped to handle the details contained in the diaries, much better able to deal with the overload of information, all of which must be organized and put into some sort of order before any recovery can begin to take place for us.  I just hope that I have enough time in this current state of mind to get the facts down on paper, to at least scan each of the diaries and take notes about what needs to be brought up in therapy.  There's so much to talk about, I fear that this project may take years and years, but I'm hoping that this is not the case; I'm hoping that by organizing all the data around me, I can put together some sort of picture of what's going on inside the mind of K, and be able to explain it rationally to our doctor.  Rationally?!  What the hell does that mean?!

I, Switch Kellie, am taking it upon myself to be in charge of the diaries, to navigate these waters as it were, to read them and analyze them and figure out the mystery that IS K.  I am curious about her, I really am.  I think that perhaps she is a piece of me, or I am a piece of her....I haven't figured out yet how all of this works but I'm hoping to at least get some sort of grasp, some idea of what exactly is happening right now and will happen in the near future, when The Secret is revealed.  I have to stop now and tell you that this big secret is too much for K's mother and therefore we will NOT be telling her anything about any of this.  She absolutely cannot know, she mustn't find out what's been going on right under her nose, for that information would be too much for her to bear, she's not open-minded enough, she could never imagine the likes of what I need to to say, to share, to understand.  K's mother is over 80 years old and is very old-fashioned and naive about things, particularly things which one generally does not hear about on TV or in newspapers. She doesn't really have friends at her age, aside from a couple of relatives who come to check on her and socialize with her from time to time. These times, the times when, say Aunt B comes over and takes Mom to the grocery store, these are the times which K looks forward to, not because she doesn't enjoy being with her mother-she does love and enjoy being with her mother-but because while Mom is out of the house, K can relax her brain and let go and not have to put forth such an effort to appear "sane", which is absolutely exhausting for us to do everyday.  K's mother has no real concept of what the internet is, she just knows that she can ask K a question and K can look it up on her computer and find an answer usually.  This is important!  This is how I intend to find out about what's "wrong" with K, even though I detest that we must use that word "wrong", for it implies that K is defective, which I suppose she must be to be going through all of these symptoms and what have you, but which I, Switch Kellie, find hard to accept.  I don't want to be defective. I just want to be happy.

Happy is a fairly foreign concept to us, to K, for she's been unhappy for so long that she can barely remember what it's like to feel anything else, except that now that she's gotten married, this feeling of "happiness" has come over her and to be honest, it freaks her out a great deal.  It freaks her out because it just feels so alien to her, this feeling of true happiness (we have faked being happy for eons); K has suffered from depression for almost her entire life and she's therefore used to being unhappy and she understands these dark feelings of doom and gloom and while they may not be ideal for her, she's at least familiar with them and is comfortable feeling them.  This new feeling of "happiness" makes K very nervous, for we are unsure how to go about it, it's something different, something scary, something we've not been around much, and K doesn't know exactly how to "be" happy.  It frightens her, this new concept, although she'd very much like to experience it the way that other people, regular people, seem to experience it.  And wouldn't it be lovely if K could appreciate life and all that it has to offer, without being bothered by that nasty depression cloud which has hung over her head for so many years now...Perhaps we are on the pathway to that place, that feeling, to being "happy" (which we've been on and off before throughout the years but the feeling never lingers, it's always been a temporary rush).  I just hope I can get there, to that place, to "happy" before I run out of time.

The Lost Blog Post

I was editing our blog-we are still trying to figure out how to do this-and I came across this draft.  I have some memory of someone writing it...Not sure who or when...Anyhoo, I thought perhaps I'd share it with you, as I myself found it rather insightful.  Or something. It goes like this:


Hello and good day there! It's about time that someone, anyone, step up to the plate and tell the (non-)Real World who, and perhaps more importantaly, WHAT we are!  I apparently need to get off my ever-increasing ass and do something about this situation! So while it may be true that according to phone records and internet timestamps, we've only been asleep for say, 3 hours, and during that 3 hours let's say that I took some Seroquel and every one of us knows how much that frightens K, and that technically she should still be sleeping due to it's sedating qualities...i.e. This shit usually knocks us on our face and we sleep for at least 12 hours, so therefore WTF am I doing awake this damn early?!? Sigh. Things just can't seem to go as planned these days...


We're only a few entries (unless it's changed since I woke up; not saying it hasn't--) into this New Blog, and I've said this to someone before, perhaps you, that I'm dissatisfied with the look and feel of it.  I am looking at this and reading this and this just WILL NOT DO at all!  This blog seems rushed and NOT put-together-right and our OCD simply will NOT stand by and let this go on any further! It should be perfect.  It should be entertaining, and interesting, and maybe even a bit controversial as well, since K so enjoys that feeling of risk-taking, and after having read this so-called Blog, we have decided that K is NOT up to the task and someone else positively MUST take over the reins for awhile.  And that someone appears to be me today.


Who the hell am I? you may be asking yourselves, and I will be happy to answer that question.  We are K, not to be confused with The Kellie, (who is fabulous but rarely comes around anymore from what we can tell), we are the conglomeration of all the things and people and ideas and whatnot which belong to K but which she currently cannot express because K suffers from "mild"(?!) Schizophrenia and Major Depressive Disorder and perhaps even Dissociative Identity Disorder (we were just making strides in that area when our therapist dropped us; damn the luck!) even though she thinks (HAHA) that she's currently OK, she truly is very seriously depressed and/or mentally ill and just unable to talk about it.  For a number of reasons which shall become (at least somewhat) clear by the end of this post.  Hmm.  I wonder how long this post will be??  (cue dramatic music, then cut sharply, and zoom in to the center) We shall see, Oh yes, we shall see indeed.


The story starts as many stories do, only ours doesn't necessarily start at the beginning...rather, it starts somewhere in the middle and then jumps back and forth from past to future, never really lingering long enough in the NOW to have a "normal" life, whatever that may be. In our mind, "normal life" means literally "the life that most normal people lead" and it entails a job and a spouse and some kids and probably a dog and a mortgage and plans for some sort of future in which the star of the show has grandchildren and memories of a long and fulfilling life, with the usual ups and downs along the way but which ultimately has a happy ending.  The "...and they lived happily ever after" part of the movie. But NO, not us, not now, not EVER, that's just not the hand that was dealt us in life, and we must face the facts. K is still (after all these years) in denial, and probably always will be.  It's just in her nature to be negative, only she considers this "realistic" and gets pissy if someone calls her a pessimist for she very clearly is a realist.  But I'm jumping ahead again. Damn.  I forget sometimes that this is NEW, that you don't know us, that you are NOT my doctor or my therapist or my partner or even my friend yet, and that some explaining needs to be done.  How could anyone possibly jump into the middle of this madness and be able to successfully navigate their way through  these troubled waters? Not even I can do that, and at the moment, I am the captain of the damn boat! ("Ship" I hear Daddy whisper in my ear "A boat fits on a ship, a ship cannot fit on a boat!") K's father was in the Navy and loved all things ship-related. So let's dive right in, shall we say, and start swimming.  I'll be nearby with a life preserver for you in case of sharks or piranha or whatnot.  You will be safe, I (cannot) promise. Just keep swimming.

We are known collectively as K, and we were first diagnosed with a "mental disorder" and given a diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder (although at the time it was called "Manic-Depressive Disorder"; I suppose this dates me EEK!) when we were 16. Now granted, just because this is when the illness was brought to the attention of us and (some of) our family, it does NOT mean this is when we first got sick. No, we've been hearing voices and/or having hallucinations since roughly the age of 4.  For as long as we can remember, in other words. It just didn't really become a problem for us until I was a teenager. Actually, K had no idea that anything was wrong with her at all, because this way was the ONLY way she'd ever known. She assumed everyone else also had a sports broadcaster in their reality, commentating on their "game" of life.  Throughout her childhood, she heard people refer to "that little voice inside your head", so she thought it was perfectly normal to have someone in your ear telling you to do things.  The fact that she had more than one voice didn't make her ill, it just made her special, and so we lived with these voices and were not afraid at that time.  They were nice to her back then, perhaps because she was innocent. The visual hallucinations were her "imaginary friends" that a lot of children have.  K's secret is that she never outgrew them as other children do. (They are no longer my imaginary "friends" however; more like enemies)


Now we come to the childhood trauma which every therapist seems to think mental illness comes from, although I'm not sure mine was all that traumatic for me until I began seeing a certain therapist in my mid-20's,  which seems a long time ago now, (but how would I know? I have no concept of time. And K has issues with her age-she doesn't believe she's as old as she is-but that is definitely another tale for another time) and she told us that I was displaying all the signs and symptoms of sexual abuse. (Yes, I do exhibit the classic signs. I'm not going to list them here; you can easily find out for yourself online what exactly those signs/symptoms are) Now we've tried to revert back to our childhood and remember who exactly did what and when...Yes, it happened. Yes, it was a family member.  Two actually (but NOT our beloved parents!) But in the end we  only succeeded in making ourselves feel more uncomfortable than ever in our own skin and brought about feelings of guilt, as though she had done something to deserve it and it was her own fault that she got molested. No, K was unable to handle that reality and therefore she dissociated and created her own reality and we can't really remember those super-traumatic things anymore. K isn't allowed to think about that stuff.  It's best we not go down that path again, I assure you. It's a slippery slope and we always fall and it takes literally years for us to get back up again.  So we will NOT be talking about the molestation OR the rape(s). Another time, another place. Maybe.


Jump ahead now, and K is a teenager, and puberty kicks in and the hormones start to take over and this starts to compete with the Mental Illness (which of course is going untreated at this time) and what happens is  she becomes a suicidal mess and gets sent away to the loony bin for what seemed years but which we now know was only 3 months.  And in those 3 months, K's parents did all they could to hide K's illness from the rest of the family; they were ashamed that something like this could happen to them and they thought they'd be judged, and let's face it folks, there IS a stigma, and back then it was much worse even than it is today.  We certainly never had famous actors going on national television and announcing they were Bipolar or Bulimic or anything like that; it was something we didn't talk about, something to be ashamed of and embarrassed by, something that happens to other families, not ours. So K's sister, her very own sister, was never even told that K had been hospitalized for attempting to commit suicide (the wrist slashing we can't remember-it was too traumatic; we just have the scars and nightmares now) not once but several times, using different methods, which we obsessed about and which we were constantly in our head planning out for K's future. She intended to be dead by age 25 anyway.       


That's the end of the draft.  As I've stated earlier, we're not sure which one of us wrote that.  But it seems important to share it with someone, anyone, and that someone turned out to be you.