My Own Reality Show

It's hard work being more than one "entity" and sharing a brain.  I'm mentally & physically & emotionally exhausted.  I'd like nothing more than to open up my skull, remove my brain, and stick it on a shelf  for the night.  Just let me be empty. No feelings. No thoughts. Nothingness. That sounds glorious.  I'm so very tired of thinking. So many thoughts, coming at me from all sides, some being shouted at me by different voices in my head, some whispered into my ear. Mental noise. So much mental noise!  Sometimes I fear I'm going to freak completely out, just going to snap from all the voices trying to talk over one another, each one vying to be heard. Some of the voices are male, some are children, many of  them are females of different ages both young and old.  Then there are the other, outsider voices which are (almost) always present in my mind.  These are the voices of the news broadcasters, the sports announcers, the disc jockeys,  the talk show hosts, and the paparazzi-all of whom exist in my head-and who bombard me with information, questions, and laughter. I also hear applause, cheering, and, more often, booing and heckling;  sometimes I'm even threatened with violence.  They are telling the story of my life as though it is unfolding live on TV and the world is watching.  My every action is commented on, "liked" or "disliked", critiqued, analyzed and gossiped about.  I am currently the star of a reality TV show and I'm never sure if the "special guests" are going to talk me up or make fun of me. And it's all live, in real time.

 
It is notable that I often "rewind" parts of the show and watch them over and over again.  Sometimes I pause a scene, to look more closely at the physical details.  I can't erase anything I see or hear.  That's very important.  I can't erase what I hear. I may very well forget, but my subconscious never does. And while I can still recall listening to the sports announcers discuss my every move as I played tennis (actually just bouncing a ball off a brick wall) at about the age of 8-for example, one of the men would exclaim "Wow! What a great shot!"-the people who narrate my life now are not nearly as nice, as complimentary, as appreciated as the ones of my childhood.  When I was 10, the news broadcasters praised my people skills, my high I.Q., my talents for art and short-stories... I was a celebrity in "Kellie World" and I was popular. By the time I was 13, though, all of this had changed. People (in my head) started making fun of me, criticizing me, and insulting me. There was -and is- often laughter in my head, laughter directed at me, and not in a good way. I must take the time now to note that not all of the K's are very nice to us/me, and in my day-to-day life other K's talk down to me, make fun of me, point and laugh, and worst of all, one of them slaps me in the face or even punches me.  I'm my own worst enemy.  Wow. I've never admitted that before, not even to a therapist.  I guess that's pretty important:  the fact that I hit myself in the face.  Hmm.  Perhaps I should tell my psychiatrist about it... I wonder what she would say?  Maybe I should write a short synopsis of my TV show and take that to her.  Is it strange that I've never told her about all of this?  You must remember that I've only just begun to trust my doctor, it took me 2 years to get comfortable with her, and so I started talking to her openly and honestly about 3 months ago.  So there's a TON of stuff that I haven't told her yet.  I go in to see her every week, and my mind just goes blank.  I can never remember what I want to talk about or tell her.  Actually, after the session is over, I usually can't remember what happened anyway.  She tells me that this is because I sometimes come to therapy in a switched state or I'll switch while I'm in her office.  I don't know what to make of this.  All I know is, my TV show is for mature audiences only due to bad language, drug use, sex, mature subject matter, and, I realize now, violence as well.  I never thought about the violence until today.  At least, not about any violence that K causes.  She's often been the victim of violence, but I'm surprised to learn that she can also be the perpetrator. Hmm. Oh well-I guess it makes for better television.

Look & Listen

Currently hallucinating. Watching the shadows of people in my kitchen move across the floor. Only no one is in my kitchen.  Am simultaneously listening to all the noise coming from the living room...sounds of the cat jumping on furniture and scratching at the carpet. Except the cat is outside. There's no one in the living room. Shit! Now I'm hearing footsteps...  this is the part where I get scared. Is someone in the house?? Did Hubby forget to lock the back door when he last went out to get a beer? Has someone bad entered my home? Am I going to die?? I'm not finished living yet, in fact I feel like I haven't even started yet. *sigh*  And here comes the panic attack...I better go take a Xanax before it gets too bad.
                                         
LATER--
Have taken anti-anxiety meds and am just waiting for them to kick in. It still sounds like there is someone in the other room.  Everyone that lives here is asleep, I'm sure of it.  So what the hell is that?!  Heart pounding, chest heaving, sweating, shaking, head feels like it's going to explode...just your typical panic attack, which always makes me think I'm going to die, literally.  Come on, Xanax...work your magic. I took a full 2 mg bar; I wasn't playing around with it tonight.

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...

Read This! (AGAIN.)

THIS PART IS SO ANNOYING, IT ABSOLUTELY DRIVES ME/US/WHOMEVER IS DOING THIS-THIS OBSESSIVE TYPING, RESEARCHING, STUDYING, ETC.-It is driving us fucking crazy! KELLIE HAS TO REREAD EVERY LAST BLOG POST AND JOURNAL ENTRY AND TWEET AND PHONE TEXT MESSAGE AND ANY OTHER MEDIA-WHICH WE ARE STILL LEARNING, STILL FIGURING OUT- STILL GETTING TO KNOW US/ ME/HER...(???) [CRAZY, PUN INTENDED]...She has to reread everything because of her terrible memory problems, which I'm certain I've mentioned (or you've noticed) by now.  I am still learning the in's and out's of all of this technology/social media; please be patient with us and try and understand how very difficult this must be for K (and I don't just mean her lack of computer skills).  I can’t imagine how bad the trauma must have been for her to have done this to herself (That part still blows my mind) Am I doing the right thing when I try to write everything down as I remember it, even trivial little mundane everyday normal kinds-of-things?  This is terribly confusing, to most all of us; I still haven’t figured out which ones of us are doing the talking and which ones are doing the writing and researching, etc.  The Switch Kellie persona, this current state of mind, this current “consciousness” has an overwhelming amount of work to do, and one of our biggest fears is that we will die before we’ve had the chance to tell “our story”. I really and truly think and feel that way.  I don’t know how to put this into words without coming across as a crazy person, which I most definitely do NOT want to be. (sigh-I know, I know-TOO LATE!)  So I’m just going to spill it and see what happens next…. Ready? OK here we go.  Keep your arms inside the ride at all times.  Most importantly, try to enjoy yourselves!  (Sigh) SOME OF US ARE REALLY, DESPERATELY TRYING TO REACH OUT TO OTHERS WITH THIS CONDITION, THIS MENTAL ILLNESS THAT UNFORTUNATELY WE’VE HAD TO DEAL WITH IN THIS LIFETIME.  Not sure how long I’ve been typing in all caps; Damn but K's OCD is funny to me, but in a good way most of the time."The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time." ~ Bertrand Russell 

 As I told our husband last night (?), just try to ride out the "wave".  Just hang on and ride it out…perhaps it might even be fun at times, or at the very least quite interesting, or it is to "US" anyway, to Smart Kellie,  aka Switch Kellie.  Which is me, the one who’s currently doing the typing.  Have I mentioned (yes, I’m positive that I’ve mentioned this already-sorry for the repetitive nature of this disorder; I realize it must be tremendously irritating, the repetition of stories and symptoms and whatever else it is that we've been writing about) that I feel it is a fantastic idea to let US do some art therapy and writing therapy?  It amazes us that no-one has ever thought to do this before, or perhaps they have and I just can’t remember right now.  That’s probably it, don’t you think?  It’s a logical conclusion, I think, and that is I being Switch Kellie, the one who’s here to protect Kellie and see that all this work gets done properly and on time and, let’s face it--at all.

 

It's late, or early I suppose, and yet once again we find ourselves in this situation, the situation in which K is physically exhausted and needs desperately to sleep for a good solid chunk of time.  I am simultaneously concerned about her (both physically AND mentally) and frustrated at the fact that I can't stop thinking long enough for her to lie down and get that much-needed rest.  She's hoping that this sleep deprivation doesn't come back to bite her on the ass as it were; she has no desire to start hallucinating again,  (a symptom which we have sometimes but not all the time)  The insomnia has come and gone throughout the years, being with us more often than not, although it'd be quite difficult for the outside world to know this, as K sleeps so much "now" due to the medication(s) she takes. "Now" meaning normally, as in pretty much all fucking day long, or at least that's how it's been seeming to me, since that sad and lazy K came to stay with us.  Now this chemically-induced comatose state is exactly what I, the physical K, have needed for weeks now, or at least it seems like weeks have past (dammit I'm just not sure) since our body slept in a bed during regular nighttime hours, for any length of time past 3 hours or so.  Last night, as in the most recent period of sleep for our mother,  I seem to recall that Husband wanted us to go to bed early, and so we did, I don't remember what time it was, but definitely at a more logical hour than we've been doing lately.  Now he went to sleep and stayed asleep and for that I am thankful, for Kellie is worried about him not getting the proper rest (as well as eating) because of his being so worried about us, the K's. However, I, Switch Kellie, wouldn't allow K to waste too much precious time sleeping, for I understand that we have only a limited amount of time in which to be here, in which to exist, and so therefore I only let her sleep for about an hour, maybe an hour and a half.  K was back up by midnight and even though technically my brain was still incredibly tired, it was working at a frantic pace STILL and so we had to-and I do mean HAD TO- write these things down.

There was something important which I wanted to write about, and now, of course, I can't remember what it was.  This infuriates me! Wait-let's take a look in our notebook...We've been taking notes for a while now, I'm not sure when this started, but it seems as though I've always taken notes and written things down and made lists and such.  However, these latest notes seem to be of some importance, that is for the recovery of K; they seem as though they might help her doctor give her the proper diagnosis, something we have always wanted but which I'm afraid we've never gotten.  Well, it did seem at times that we had the correct diagnosis, but then things would all start going downhill and then inevitably crash and burn and I'd end up running away and leaving my friends and loved ones and sometimes material things too.  That's hard to admit, for I do NOT like to waste things or throw things away, and I worry about the state of the environment and things of that nature; I'm very considerate of the world around me. One of the K's we affectionately refer to as the "tree-hugger", and she/ I/ was in charge (at least part of the time) whenever Kellie lived in Seattle.  Also making appearances in Seattle were The Little Girl and The Kellie.  I'm not sure if there were others, but I'd venture a guess that there were others, it's so hard to remember-it's as though everything were wrapped in saran wrap or something along those lines; I can see things, things just aren't crystal clear for me.  I can see bits and pieces....Damn.  I've just remembered that we wanted K to write a blog post this morning (? not sure when that is)  OK, let's see.... How can we handle this dilemma, the dilemma being whether or not to write this blog post or whether to take care of other business, like getting K dressed for the doctor's appointment which she has this morning...?  That's right, at long last the day has arrived when we, the Kellie's can go into our psychiatrist's office and confess to her what the hell has been going on all this time (although we're not sure how much time that is, time that's past I mean). What is simply hilariously tragic is that the shrink's office called the house phone, that is the Real Life phone, yesterday, twice.  The first call was to verify that we had an appointment at 3:00 this afternoon.  The second call, hours later, was to tell us that the doctor had some sort of illness in her family and was therefore unable to see me at the regularly scheduled time.  The psychiatrist apparently was going to try and see all her day's patients in the morning today instead of spread throughout the course of the day.  And so we found K's note this morning, the note telling us that we're to be at the doctor's office at 9:30, which is only about 25 minutes from now.  I guess that means that we should shut the hell up and stop typing and instead put our energy into getting dressed and made up to go see our doctor.  It's such a shame that we'll only get to see her for 15 minutes, instead of the usual length of time, which I can't be certain of but which seems much longer than that, perhaps an hour? I couldn't say for sure.  OK, let's go get ready for this rather monumental day (it will be if things go as planned).  Cross your fingers for us!

 

 

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.