Should I Come Out?

May is Mental Health Awareness Month.  I announced on Twitter recently that I was mentally ill (it's no big secret), and proceeded to name some of my ailments.  I have a laundry list of them you know.  I'm pretty sure it cost me some followers.  (Oh, well.  If they can't handle me crazy, they don't need to be in my life.)  So far, that is all I have done to spread awareness.  But I've been thinking of doing more.  I am seriously considering coming out to a friend in Real Life about my being mentally ill. I keep weighing the pros and cons, and I repeatedly keep coming back to the point of it being really important to have support.  We don't have a ton of support.  I mean, I have our shrink, and Husband, and social media, like Twitter.  I can't tell you how many times a simple @ tweet directed to me has affected my mood in a positive manner, perhaps even pulled me away from the edge of insanity.  It feels good to send out a message in a cyber bottle, and have someone from around the world answer that message, and give me words of encouragement,  or just make me laugh. I think the narcissist in us loves being singled out.  Of course, at least one of us hates the attention and would rather no one pay us any mind.  It's an inner struggle most every day.

If I do decide to come out to someone, I need to plan out what I will say, how I will put it into words.  So let me think about that for a minute.  What exactly do I want to tell them?  How much information do I need to share?  I certainly don't want to overwhelm them with too much, too soon.  And it would be a shame to tell more than is necessary and cause myself greater embarrassment.  Yes, this will be very embarrassing.  And what about their questions?  I need to be prepared with answers to the basic questions which they are bound to ask me after I drop such a bomb on them.  I don't even know which of my illnesses to share with them; certainly not all of them-that'd be too much information.  So I need to pick an ailment, and prepare a little speech about it...  But first, before any of this comes to pass, there's something even more important that I must do.  I must decide which friend I want to reveal my secret to.  I know that whomever I choose will forever see me in a different light after my confession, so I have to choose carefully.  Whom do I feel closest to? Whom do we need support from?  Who do I trust enough to tell?  That last question is easy. Answer: No one. I don't trust anyone enough to tell them about my mental health issues.  I'm afraid, I admit it.  Afraid I'll be thought less of, afraid I won't be invited to socialize anymore, afraid the person I tell will spread rumors about me.  It would be a huge risk on my part to open up to an outsider.  I don't take this decision lightly.

When, or if, I decide to open up to someone, I need to make sure that person understands that this is a very private matter and that I'd rather not have everyone in town know about my condition.  They need a strong ability to keep a secret.  I have to assume that whomever I tell will most likely tell their spouse, and that fact makes the decision even harder.  Right now, the only people who know about my DID are my doctor and my husband.  I've only come to accept this diagnosis myself as of January, so all of this is new territory for me.  I'm still learning about myself, about the different me's, about who and what we are.  I can't imagine trying to explain all that to another person.  How can I, when I don't even understand it myself?  I am still learning to recognize my parts, so I couldn't possibly introduce them to an outsider.  I know what the first question out of their mouth would be: "How many of you are there?"  This is the question everybody always asks, and I wish I had the answer.  The truth is, I don't know how many of me there are.  I've identified a half dozen personalities, but there are still more voices inside my head which haven't been singled out.  So I don't know how many K's there are. Hmm. Perhaps telling about my Dissociative Identity Disorder would be too much; I don't want to overwhelm my friend(s).  Maybe I should confess only to something simpler, something easier to come to grips with, like my Obsessive Compulsive Disorder or Social Anxiety Disorder.  I'm pretty sure my friends already have their suspicions about these things, so it wouldn't be such a stretch for me to just come out and admit that I have these disorders.  I'm fairly certain that whomever I choose to tell will be understanding and sympathetic, and I don't think it will have any sort of negative impact on our friendship.  Knowing that then, why is it so hard for me to imagine revealing my secrets?  What am I so afraid of?

stig·ma [stig-muh]

noun, plural stig·ma·ta  [stig-muh-tuh, stig-mah-tuh, -mat-uh], stig·mas.
 

a mark of disgrace or infamy; a stain or reproach, as on one's reputation.  Social stigma is the severe disapproval of, or discontent with, a person on the grounds of characteristics that distinguish them from other members of a society.

 

 

That's your answer. The stigma of mental illness is what I'm afraid of.  Don't think that there isn't one-it's alive and well and I've seen it firsthand.  I know what it is to be discriminated against because of my mental status. I know how it feels to be the butt of jokes at the workplace. I've seen that look that people get in their eye just as soon as my mental health is brought up. It is impossible to fully understand it unless you've experienced it.  People treat you differently.  Medical doctors often think the physical ailments I complain about are simply "in my head".  They are afraid to prescribe medications as I'm seen as a suicide risk.  At work, I'm not trusted with important tasks or asked for input on anything serious.  People seem to think that because I'm mentally ill, I'm less intelligent than they are. I'm not taken seriously. Or I'm thought to be lying, or making up stories.  There are a thousand different ways in which to discriminate against the mentally ill. Unfortunately, I've dealt with quite a few of them; I'm not eager to deal with any more.  So perhaps I'll just keep my mental illness to myself.  After all, I'm very good at keeping secrets.  As far as Mental Health Awareness Month goes...I assure you, I am aware.

 

Shut Up Already!

K has a big fucking mouth and she just will not shut up. God! She embarrasses us to death! She must drive everyone crazy with her ramblings. On and on. She never stops. I'm not sure which K was in charge yesterday, but I'm ashamed of her. She completely crossed the line and talked to too many people, gave out too much personal information, and even shared some of our secrets.  We, the K's, are very angry with her for this lapse in judgement.  I'm not sure who she was, but she's a talker.

Man, she would not be silenced, and she spoke quickly (according to Husband) and loudly (according to our mother) and I'm totally humiliated today.  We had a couple of friends over last night, and I'm afraid that K got on their nerves.  Now, they gave no indication that this had happened last night, I'm just assuming that if this K got on our nerves, then she got on everyone else's as well.  I'm terrified of going back through my Tweets; God only knows what all was said and to whom.  It's a sad fact that even though I seem to recall a number of different conversations, I'm not certain today who those conversations were with.  This is quite common with us, in fact it's pretty much a daily occurrence in our life.  So every morning, whomever is out and about is supposed to go back through our Tweets and text messages and emails and Facebook posts, and try and piece together what happened the day before.  This doesn't always take place--a lot of times we forget to do this.  It depends on which K is in charge. Some of us are very self-conscious and worry incessantly about what was said and done the previous day and will not relax until we've read all those pieces of information which are available to us via computer or phone or handwritten journal entries.  Some days we find that K didn't talk to anyone at all, or she just barely interacted with others, choosing to show herself only to those certain few with whom she feels comfortable and who she likes and trusts (to some degree, not completely of course).  Just today our husband told us that there are days in which we talk a great deal (like yesterday) and days in which we stay quiet and hardly talk at all.  He knows now that these are different K's, and he's come to accept that.  He even admitted to me this morning that he very much likes the one he calls Switch Kellie, the one who first showed herself to him for a week back in January.  It seems to me that Dr. H, our psychiatrist, got to meet her too.  I really can't remember.  I suppose I should take the time everyday to re-read all the blog posts and journal entries so that I know exactly where we stand, mentally speaking, and so that we have knowledge of our prior behavior and activities.  But I've come to realize within the past 24 hours that I have a good many blog entries at this point, or at least more than I have time to read over again everyday.  Time is short, especially when you are someone who tends to lose time on a regular basis, and so we can't afford to spend too much of it refreshing our memory of the past several months.  We just have to check our day-to-day activities and interactions, and hope for the best, i.e. hope that we don't say something inappropriate or ask a stupid question (again) or in any way give away the secret that we actually don't remember much of anything that happened to us the day or night before.  Hell, we can't even remember what happened to us a few hours ago, much less days or months ago.  So everyday is like a crap shoot for us...We have to decide which blog posts to read, how many texts and Tweets to go back through, and how far back in our journal to explore, and all of these decisions will, in the end, affect our ability to carry on conversations with Tweeps or friends which make sense and follow the proper timeline. Since K has no concept of time, she usually can't recall when something happened to her, even if it happened that very morning or sometimes even in the past half hour.  I can't stress enough how frustrating this is, not just to K, but to all those parties involved.  K always ends up looking foolish, but she tries to play it off by just pretending that she'd been drunk or drugged at the time.  That's her fall-back excuse: that she was too impaired to remember things properly.  And the thing is, most of the time it works.  Most people really do believe that her forgetfulness is caused by pot-smoking or alcohol or all those pills K has to ingest every day.  We worry that our friends will figure out our secret at some point, hell I guess some of them have already figured it out by this time... I guess our memory loss is severe enough to be quite noticeable to everyone who's around us frequently.  I wonder what they think about that. I wonder if they think K is an idiot.  Or just a stupid pothead. 

Here's a good example of how easily we forget things: I am unable to remember what this blog post is about. I can't recall what I've just typed, and can't remember unless I scroll back up to the beginning and read it all over again.  I hesitate to do that, as it not only makes the perfectionist within us go crazy and try to correct each and every little mistake and we could end up spending hours rewriting this whole blog entry, but it also breaks the stream of consciousness which I like to just let go of and see where it leads us.  So I'm stuck now, stuck here in this situation in which I can't remember what I was talking about, but I don't really have time to find out, and so I'll just flounder and  flail about and try to compose some sort of blog post which has an understandable point and which all ties in together somehow.  I know, in my heart, that this is not going to happen.  I know that I will repeat myself, not just today and tonight but probably in this post alone, and that I do so all the time.  All the time.  Sigh. So much wasted time. So many lost memories.  Some of which we're glad to be rid of, others which could really help us in our recovery process if only we'd remember them.  It could be that every time K goes to therapy, she starts all over again, from the beginning, with her therapist. 

 I'm having a memory clip play in my mind right now, and it's showing me my doctor, and she's explaining to us that we've discussed these things before, whatever these things may be. I can see her looking at us, with this look in her eye, that says "I've told you this a hundred times".  I wonder if she and I are making any progress at all in K's treatment.  I wonder if she'll decide I'm too difficult to treat and just give up on me ever getting better, and dump us as a patient.  Our last therapist dumped us for forgetting too many appointments.  What if this doctor does the same thing? What if we get dropped again, and any progress which has been made is lost, and we must once again go to a new doctor, and spend the approximate 2 years it always takes for them to get an idea of what's really wrong with us? This would be a tragedy.  I don't know what makes me think this, but I have an idea that we, the K's, have gone further in our therapy with this current psychiatrist than we've ever come with any one prior to her.  We are learning, we are taking steps toward healing. We've made some progress.  I know this because I read some of our journal and some of our blog and I found that we're starting to remember things from our childhood.  Now K is absolutely terrified at the thought of having total recall of her childhood trauma(s).  She's not sure that she wants to remember, but some people (we can't remember who now) have told us that we can't truly heal unless we face our fears head-on.  So in order to get better, we have to see what all the fuss is about-we have to relive the horror that must've taken place at about age 4 (we've gleaned this information from the memories we've recovered and from old diary entries).

Shit.  I just paused to take a drink of water and I've once again lost my place and have no idea what I was talking about.  I don't want to read this post again. Maybe I should just shut the hell up.  Maybe I've said a whole lot of nothing.  I wouldn't be surprised at that. Not at all.  If only our brain would stay on track for more than just minutes at a time!  If only we could focus long and hard enough to finish a blog post!  Have any of our previous blog posts made sense or had a message?  Has this entire blog been a huge waste of my time, and yours, the reader's?  I shall stop now, for the shame and embarrassment is overtaking me at this point.  I'll just go take a pill and try and forget my humiliation.  It just popped into my mind that I could have blog posts which look and sound pretty much exactly like this one... now wouldn't that be funny and sad at the same time?  All I can really remember right now is that yesterday there was a K here who had a big mouth and wouldn't stop talking and spilled the beans to just about anyone and everyone and now, today, right now, the K that's doing the typing of this post is completely humiliated and feels as though everyone out there in the cyber world is laughing at us.  Are you laughing at us?  Do all of you make fun of us all the time?  Am I the laughing stock of Twitter?  Or is this just K's paranoia taking control of our mind and twisting things around so that K looks like a failure at everything she's attempted to do with this blog?  What was this blog post about again? Oh yes. One more thing, before I forget (HAHA!), I'd like to apologize to all those Tweeps with whom I had interactions yesterday and last night and even early this morning. I'm very sorry that I talked your ears off.  I'm sorry that I was a nuisance.  I'm sorry if I bothered you, or if I've been bothering you for quite some time now.  I really can't remember what's been happening since...well, I don't know.  I just can't remember.

The Evolution of My Self-Mutilation, Part II

(This is going to be a very difficult post to write; I've never confessed these things to anyone. I'm completely humiliated and ashamed and embarrassed to death to admit these things out loud, but I feel it's important to speak out. Perhaps I can help someone else.)

In the first half of this post (The Evolution of My Self-Mutilation: Part I), I described how I began cutting at the age of 13.  I was always very careful with my routine, never daring to nick an artery or something that could cause a trip to the hospital, as that would reveal my secret.  I was a cutter throughout my teens and into my 20's, but then I took a break for several years and didn't cut. I turned to tattoos and body piercings as a substitute.  I told myself I was better, that I'd outgrown such behavior. That was a lie. I started cutting again on my 30th birthday.  But this post isn't about cutting, it's about self-injury, which comes in many forms.  I didn't need a razor blade to harm myself.  In fact, the self-injury actually began many years before I picked up a knife and made my first cuts.  This post is about my main form of self-mutilation.

I've suffered in silence since the age of 9 from a disorder whose name I never knew until two months ago.  This particular disorder is actually visible to others, in a tangible, physical way, or at least its symptoms are; it's much harder to hide than say Bipolar Disorder.  It's something I've misunderstood and been ashamed of and hidden from family and friends, and my doctors as well, all these years, for almost my entire life. Dermatillomania is an impulse control disorder characterized by the repeated urge to pick at one's own skin, often ending in bloody wounds and causing tissue damage severe enough to leave scars.  The urge to pick-or scratch, bite, tweeze, or squeeze- is similar to an obsessive compulsive disorder, but for some people the condition is more akin to substance abuse; I haven't yet figured out which one of those two groups I am in.  The activity causes great anticipation in me before I engage in the behavior (as with substance abuse), and while I'm doing it I feel a tremendous sense of anxiety relief (as with OCD).  Plus, 79% of patients, including myself,  report feeling a pleasurable sensation while picking.

My first memories of picking at my skin were in 4th grade, and it was on my face of all places.  There was no way to hide it. I can remember staring into the mirror and seeing all these flaws on my face, all sorts of imperfections.  Well, we, the K's, cannot tolerate imperfections, especially when we can alter the appearance of the flaw and hopefully remove it altogether. (This thinking stems from my Body Dysmorphic Disorder) So I began to squeeze any little bump I thought I saw on my face.  Then I mashed some pores on my nose that seemed dirty.  This led to my scratching at a mole on the side of my cheek. And so on and so forth...worse and worse every day. One day I was feeling sick at school and the teacher sent me to the nurse, and she looked at my face and decided I had chicken pox and so I got to go home that day.  I was too embarrassed to tell her that I'd created those angry red spots myself.  To this day,I find the subject completely humiliating and I hesitate to write about these things here, but when I started this blog, I said I was going to be honest, and so here we go.

How did my parents not notice?  Well, they did notice, but I pretended that it was just acne.  Puberty came early for me and so it wasn't hard for them to believe the lie.  As the years went on, I honed my skills and began using implements, not just my fingernails, to pick.  Tweezers were, and still are, my "weapon of choice", but at different times I have used scissors, nail files, needles, safety pins, and nail clippers, plus weird little things here and there, such as a paper clip or a thumb tack.  Anything I can use to remove the perceived imperfection, which apparently only I could see.  That's the thing which kills me, the fact that no one else can see all those blackheads on my face, or all those pimples, enlarged pores, scars, or ingrown hairs.  That was what I saw when I looked in the mirror.  I saw something flawed, something ugly.  I started wearing my hair in my face, but then in junior high I discovered that I could have just as much fun-yes, FUN-picking at the skin on my arms as I could my face, and no one would be able to see it.  That was a real turning point for me, when I moved from my face down to my body.  It was easy to wear long-sleeves and keep my skin covered, and since I quit picking at my face, my skin cleared up and I actually had a very nice complexion.  It's ironic, that everybody in 4th grade thought I had acne and teased me, but once I was in high school and everybody else had acne, I had smooth skin. (We never teased anyone with acne-one of the K's wants me to tell you that.) I'm not sure if my skin-picking was a precursor for my cutting. I just know that my cutting and my skin-picking coincided beginning in 7th grade and lasting until I was in my 20's.  I'd cut and cut, then take great pleasure in picking at the scabs from the cutting. I loved seeing how many times I could make the same wound bleed.  We'd go through phases of terrible picking, and then we'd stop for awhile, and let our skin heal.  Often we'd just move to a different part of our body to pick while the first area healed; the cutting was random and could occur anywhere on us. Try to imagine how horrible this looked-my body covered in rows of razor blade cuts on my thighs and upper arms, and then surrounding the cuts were open wounds, all shapes and sizes, all over my body from the chest down.  The only part of my body that didn't get cut or picked at was my hands, but even they were subject to abuse-I bit my fingernails down to the quick, I tore at my cuticles, and I chewed the skin all around my nails, resulting in horribly ugly hands which I mostly kept in my pockets.  It wasn't until my mid-20's that I was able to control chewing on my hands, and my nails finally grew out and I kept them manicured and no one would ever guess that I'd been a nail-biter for so long.  That was the same time I gave up my cutting and skin-picking for several years, and I actually had nice skin with no bloody wounds or scabs. I was modeling then, so it was important to keep my compulsions in check, but God it was hard to do.  I was only able to maintain this smooth, clear skin for those few years in my mid-20's; I was cutting and picking again by the time I turned 30.  And this time, I had a new favorite area to pick at-my lips.  Yes, I'd bite and tug at and peel the skin from my lips until they were raw and bloody. To this day, I cannot keep my fingers away from my bottom lip. It's a compulsion which my husband tries to help me control; if he sees me chewing on my lips he'll tell me to stop.  He also polices me when I shave my legs or pluck my eyebrows, as he knows how these activities can easily trigger me and lead to my either cutting or picking.

                                          
I have these episodes in which I lose time and stop thinking about anything other than the imperfections on my skin.  I can go into the bathroom, and won't emerge for hours, literally.  Some days, I have shorter picking sessions scattered throughout the day and night, but a lot of times I go into my bathroom, lock the door, and get lost in the mirror.  I have lost entire days like this (when I lived alone of course) and I always feel the same way when it's over=baffled.  I usually don't remember what I was doing, and I can't believe I was in the bathroom for such a long period of time.  I will look down at my body and be shocked to find bleeding, open wounds scattered all over my arms, shoulders, legs, chest, and sometimes even my breasts.  God this is embarrassing.  But I want you to understand that this compulsion is something that certain people deal with. This is a real disorder.

Approximately 2% of the population has this disorder.  It's considered a similar condition to and is often comorbid with Trichotillomania, where persons pull out their hair, and is as difficult to treat. Thank God I don't pull out my hair.  Treatment for Dermatillomania include Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and prescriptions for SSRI's.  I do take medication which helps me, but I've never sought therapy for my disorder because I'm just too ashamed and embarrassed to admit to my psych doctor that I have this problem.  She knows I self-harm, she just doesn't know to what extent.  Dermatillomania causes intense feelings of guilt, shame, and embarrassment, and this increases the likelihood of self-injury. Suicide attempts occur in approximately 12% of patients with this condition.

 And I have to interject this now--The Kellie is really very angry that we are divulging this information to anyone, let alone The Public. The Kellie has a diva's reputation to uphold.  The Kellie is NOT a compulsive picker.  She has soft, smooth porcelain skin which she works hard to maintain.  She can't look at us when we're covered in sores and scabs; she is disgusted by us.  I'm fairly certain that anyone would find us disgusting.  I mean, this is a really gross habit.  No, not habit, compulsion.  I am powerless to stop this behavior.  In fact, I usually don't even realize I'm doing the picking.  I lose time, a lot of it, and I become absorbed in the activity, and it's as though someone else is driving the car, so to speak, and I don't have true awareness of this...not really.  I see the aftermath.  I see the bleeding, gaping holes in my flesh, the peeling skin, the nasty scabs, and of course the scars.

Recently, as in two weeks ago, I had to go see a medical doctor because the self-harm had gotten so out of hand that my wounded legs would NOT heal, and I feared I was getting infected.  I was totally humiliated to show him the dozen or so large (3 inch x 2 inch) sores on my calves.  They were all bloody and scabby and it was obvious I'd been picking at them as early as that very morning.  He was very understanding and did not embarrass me.  He gave me a steroid cream and said it should clear up my skin in 3 weeks.  So far, I've got the same large wounds, only now they're all dry and cracked and peeling.  It is my belief that the scars from these particular self-inflicted wounds will be the worst ones I've ever acquired, and will probably result in me never again being able to wear shorts or dresses. Sigh. (Last Summer I wore short dresses and told everyone the sores on my legs were just mosquito bites, but that excuse won't cut it this year)

I don't want to make myself ugly, really I don't.  But this is my fate.  I've gotten much better about the cutting, and only do it in times of extreme stress, but the picking is harder to control. I can stick my hand in my sleeve and pick at my arm right in front of someone and they'd never know. And I do.  Thankfully it's Winter now, so it doesn't seem odd that I'm all covered up.  But I worry about Spring and Summer...I have a whole new group of friends now that I've gotten married, and I do NOT want any of them to find out about this.  My big fear is being invited to a pool party. I can stop picking long enough to heal for special events (I wore a sleeveless wedding dress) but I can't stop altogether and it's impossible to predict when some skin might be visible.  I worry constantly about my secret being exposed.  Sometimes, I'm still asked to model, and whether or not I take the job has to do with which areas of my body will be seen.  I had to turn down 2 jobs in the past few months because my arms were too scabby.  I don't know if this condition will ever be under control. I fear that I'll have to deal with this for the rest of my life.  Man, that's a hell of a lot of scars.

Looking For Part II of the Self-Mutilation Post?

This post is supposed to be the second part of our last blog post, The Evolution of My Self-Mutilation-Part I.  In fact, I have already written and edited Part II.  I just can't bring myself to publish it.  I'm too ashamed and embarrassed for anyone to find out the secrets contained within that post.  I mean, I've written about some stuff since I began this blog in late December that made K feel really self-conscious, like posts about my dissociation or my hallucinations or our eating disorder.  The latest post, about self-harm, was hard to write, because thinking about cutting naturally made us want to cut.  I didn't get too graphic to prevent triggering-both others' and my own. I've had a number of people read "Evolution of Self-Mutilation",  but so far no one has left a comment or sent me a message so I have no clue what people are thinking or feeling after they've read it.  What if I offended someone?  My cutting is not so severe as some people's, I mean I've never almost bled to death or been hospitalized for a wound.  Does that mean my self-harm is less real, or less emotionally charged?  It certainly seems real enough to me, and I have decades' worth of scars as evidence.  So it seems I'm coming to accept my compulsion to injure myself, and perhaps now that I've talked about it, I'll feel less humiliated about it.  So.  Now the big questions is, what about Part II of the blog post?  Why can't we publish it?  What am I so deathly afraid of?  Well, for one thing, the second part of the SH post is much different from the first part.  Part II contains secrets I've kept since childhood, secrets I've told no one, ever, not family or friends or even a psychiatrist.  I've seen so many psych docs, yet I never said a word about this particular issue, which I've dealt with on a daily basis for what feels like an eternity.  I felt, and feel, so much shame that it's just impossible to imagine admitting the activity out loud, even to strangers whose faces I cannot see.  So I don't know whether I'll be able to publish "The Evolution of My Self-Mutilation-Part II".  It could take some time to work up my courage.  It might require encouragement from other people, or at least from other K's.  It might get posted tomorrow, or maybe never.  It was the hardest thing I've ever written, so I will definitely not delete it...I just don't know what to do with it. I was thinking that by writing all of those terrible things down, it would ease the humiliation. Instead, it brings me nothing but shame, anxiety, and self-loathing.  I disgust myself.

The Mystery of Marriage

I just celebrated my 2-year wedding anniversary, so I've decided to write about our feelings on marriage.  K never wanted to get married, in fact she was very much opposed to the idea of marriage; she found it to be an antiquated notion which was only useful for tax purposes or naming heirs in the current day and age.  She thought it was old-fashioned as well as obsolete, so she decided by the time she was a teenager that marriage was NOT for her. (Insert horrible mistake at age 19 here, but it was only 8 months before K kicked him out so that hardly counts as a marriage)  She didn't fall in love, not really, until she was 24, and it did seem that she was going to marry that guy.  He appeared to be everything she wanted, and The Kellie was madly in love with him, but he was evil and the relationship was toxic.  He proposed three times over the course of five years.  Once we said yes, once we said no, and once we said yes and then he changed his mind and broke our heart.  That's a story for a different day.

K moved around a lot, and she'd always end up with a boyfriend whom she'd inevitably dump just as soon as marriage was mentioned. It was a fairly simple task, since she never "loved" any of these guys anyway.  I don't know how or why this happened, (I'd be scared to even date K) but K received 7 marriage proposals from 5 different men over the course of her dating career.  That doesn't count the one she finally accepted and followed through with, the one from her Husband. (I never group him into any of K's categories, for he is the exception to all our rules)  She was engaged four times, but even during those times she knew, on some level, that she wouldn't get married.  Perhaps the logical K's knew it would be a disaster, and they were trying to protect all the K's, or protect the guys she was hurting.  K broke a lot of hearts, and in the end karma bit us in the ass, but after a lifetime of nothingness, we finally found true love and happiness. It was a long and difficult journey with a lot of good scenery along the way.

I think K wasn't so much opposed to marriage as she was terrified of it.  Her parents were married only to each other for 50 years, so you'd think she'd feel good about marriage.  The truth is, K's parents were part of the reason K didn't want to get married.  She grew up watching them...and she didn't like what she saw.  Now there was no substance abuse or violence or infidelity in their marriage, it was strong and dependable and could weather any storm.  Mom and Dad loved each other, of that I am certain, but they never seemed to K to be in love.  K never saw them kiss, or hug, or hold hands.  K used to joke that her conception was probably the last time they ever had sex and they were probably drunk when it happened.  We never heard them speak lovingly to each other, or even say "I love you", except maybe on special occasions.  The one instance of romance that K witnessed between them occurred when her father was on his death bed; he asked K's mother for a kiss, and K witnessed them peck each other on the lips for the first time as well as the last time. It brought tears to her eyes.

I have gone off on a tangent, and have yet to tell the story of how I came to marry Husband.  We met in fourth grade when he moved to the area from a state about 800 miles from K's hometown. We weren't friends, we just knew each other from school.  After fourth grade, his parents sent him to Catholic school, and K remained with her classmates and she didn't see Husband again until they ended up at the same high school.  They met for the second time in 9th grade, and as it turned out they had both gone down the "alternative" path, meaning that they dressed "weird" compared to the other kids and listened to different music and had different interests.  They ended up in the same small circle of "freaks" and became friends and remained so until junior year, when K broke the heart of Husband's best friend.  Naturally, this split the group up and thus K was no longer speaking to Husband, as he was on his friend's side.  K didn't really care about losing friends, she packed up and fled to another state, and was alone for her final year of high school.  (Coincidentally, K moved to the same state and even the same city that Husband was from) She focused on school and her job and had good friends and so she didn't really need a boyfriend.  She wouldn't see Husband again until she was in her 20's and had moved back to her home state but to a much bigger city to go to college.  Husband had moved here and there from state to state, but had ended up in the same city as us, and once in a blue moon, he and K would run into each other at parties or a bar.  It was rather awkward for K (since their friendship had ended abruptly) and so she never really spoke to him.  He ended up moving back to K's hometown and that was that.

It wasn't until K was 26 and visiting her parents one weekend, that she actually had a conversation with Husband.  She was in town with that guy who kept proposing, and they ended up at a restaurant and as it turned out, Husband was the manager of that restaurant.  At some point, he spoke privately to K, and apologized for anything he'd ever said or done to offend us, and said that he hoped we could be friends again.  And so K forgave him for taking that other guy's side way back when, and they were on friendly terms again, but they wouldn't be real friends, and hang out together, for years.  Here's the irony: it was Husband's best friend, the guy whose heart K had broken in high school, that brought K and Husband together. Years later, this friend discovered K on MySpace (even though she wasn't using her name) and sent her a message. (He worked in the same city in which K lived)  They ended up dating casually and K went to visit him where he lived in her hometown and that is when she discovered that this guy's roommate was Husband.  This was the beginning of a new chapter in the book of K and Husband.  She became good friends with Husband, as she was often visiting his home to see the other guy.  Well, it wasn't very long before K decided she was bored with that guy and so she stuck him in the "friend" category, but she continued to hang out at his house sometimes, when she was in town,  and she became better friends with Husband as time went on.

At some point, K's mother got to where she could no longer live by herself.  Her health had been deteriorating since the death of K's father, and she had trouble getting around and needed someone to help her with cooking and cleaning.  She did NOT want to go to a nursing home.  At the same time, Husband's roommate needed a new place to live, a place closer to his job.  K just happened to have a condo which needed a tenant, as she'd decided to leave her life behind us and take care of our mother. This is how it came to pass that K moved back to her hometown and in with her mom. Husband's roommate rented K's condo and everything worked out splendidly.   She began to spend more time with Husband, and he ended up being K's best friend.  Everyone always joked that the two of us should be a couple, (we did everything a couple does except for the sex part) but K never thought about him in that way-she never had in all the years she'd known him.  She loved him as her best friend and their relationship grew stronger for the next 2 years.  They spent time together nearly every day and talked on the phone for hours, sometimes 'til sunrise.  One day, he wrote K an email about his true feelings for her.  When K saw the email she knew what it was about before she opened it, and so she was scared to read it.  She didn't know how it was going to affect their friendship, and so she let the email sit in her inbox for about 24 hours.  Finally, she had a few drinks and smoked half a joint and read the email.  It was the most romantic thing ever-Husband is a writer and has such a way with words!-and K began to cry.  She was thrown into a situation which she couldn't control and she was confused and scared and excited and a million emotions all at once.  She didn't want to talk to Husband after that, not for a while, for she had to digest his words and think long and hard about whether or not she was willing to take their friendship to the next level and go out on a date with him.  Husband tells us now that the period in which I made him wait, after he sent the email, was torture...but I had to do it.  I had to think, and on some level I think I must've known that our decision would affect the rest of my life.

A year later,  miraculously in our mind, he proposed. By that time, we, the K's, had fallen head over heels for Husband and couldn't understand how we never noticed it before then. The next thing I knew, we were in Las Vegas at a chapel.  And I've been in a different place, mentally, ever since.  I think perhaps these unknown feelings I have been experiencing are called security and contentment and I am slowly beginning to accept them as valid feelings.  The thing we haven't spoken about, and which seems really important, is how I went about dating and marrying and living with Husband without him ever knowing about US.  It was no secret that K had always suffered from depression; Husband knew her when she hospitalized at age 16.  Also, once they became friends in adulthood, she gradually began to trust him enough to open up and, when she was drunk or stoned, she'd tell him little bits of information about her mental illness, without ever going into specifics.  He knew I was on a good deal of medication.  He knew I'd been diagnosed with a chronic mental illness, and he knew about the voices and hallucinations.  He did not know about all the K's (even though he'd met more than one of us over the years) and I never told him out of fear.  Plus, I suppose I thought I was such a good actress that I could hide it from him the same way I hid it from everyone else my whole life.

It worked for almost the first two years of our marriage.  In fact, it was only weeks before our anniversary when K had a severe episode and switched to a K that Husband didn't recognize.  We tried desperately to explain to him what was happening, why it happens, how it happens, but I didn't have the words.  How do you tell someone you love that you are not the person they think you are?  (at least, not all the time)  I cannot put into words how difficult and confusing and stressful the situation became after that incident, and there was a lot of crying on both our parts.  He couldn't believe we were married for 2 years and he never knew about it.  He couldn't believe I hid this from him for all these years.  Truthfully, the talk I had with Husband about the different K's was the very first conversation of its kind in K's life.  She had NEVER told anyone, outside of her therapist Patty, about Kellie World and our existence there in various forms, on different planes of reality.  Suffice it to say that Husband's mind was completely blown, and we feared that he would leave us...but it turns out that this love is True Love and he has promised to stay with us and take care of us and accept and love us, no matter what or who we are or may become.  That, my friends, is what we call a happy ending.