The Death of This Blog

 I'm faced with a bittersweet decision regarding this blog.  Up until this point, we have been blogging openly and honestly about my mental illness.  Well, it has come to our attention that this blog is being read by someone who knows me in Real Life.  I can't have that.  There is no way I can write without restraint if I'm aware that I'm being read by real people.  I began this blog mainly for myself; it's how I keep track of symptoms and of different K's and how I remember things I'd otherwise forget.  However, I've had a good many people write to me and tell me that our blog has helped them, that they've learned something, or that I've helped them feel as though they're not alone.  Some have even called me "brave" or "inspiring" (I don't know how to take a compliment though, so these titles only embarrass me).  I just write what's in my head.  If someone finds these ramblings entertaining or provocative, then that's great.  But my point is, I'm not trying to make everyone else happy, just myself-which is much harder to do.  I just don't feel I can continue this blog as I've been doing anymore.  My secret identity has been compromised.  Now I feel self-conscious and paranoid and embarrassed, and there is simply no way I can continue to write freely as I've done up to this point. I have decided the best thing to do is create a new blog elsewhere, where my real-life readers can't find it. I appreciate all my readers, and for them I shall keep this blog as is, despite my burning desire to delete it. (You can still comment on posts; I will read them)  Here now, in the end, this blog has brought me shame and humiliation by exposing my personal thoughts and actions (all the crazy, mentally ill stuff) to people who actually see me in person on occasion.  I simply cannot live with that.  Therefore, this is the end of this blog.  If you would like to continue reading our blog and are interested in getting the new blog address, please email me. I deeply regret the loss of any readers because of my moving the blog. If you have any questions about my experiences with mental illness, feel free to email me. We hope that you will follow us to our new blog home...I sincerely thank you for all of your comments and emails, and thank you for reading.

~K(s)

Psyched To Be Here

I had therapy Wednesday.  The only reason I know that is because it's written on my calendar, and I look at my calendar weekly because I need to know when I have to go out in public, e.g. a dentist's appointment, therapy, a birthday party. (I actually have to prepare myself mentally to be around other people, sometimes for days)  I'm trying to strain my brain and remember what happened in that therapy session.  I honestly can't recall anything at the moment.  Let me concentrate harder...  I still can't remember.  Damn.  I have no memory of showering and/or getting dressed, no memory of driving to her office, no memory of sitting in the waiting room.  Perhaps I should check my phone and go back through all my texts, and then read all my Tweets from the past 2 days, and check my journal for any entries made in the past 48 hours.  This is so frustrating.  I wanted to write about my session, but I can't remember it. Not any of it. Hmm.

OK, something's coming back to me now- I showed her my journal.  Yes, I remember that. I read her parts of my journal, the parts written by other me's.  (Hey, I'm starting to recall stuff now!)  I talked to her about how I switched over the weekend, and remained a different K for about 2 days. I have evidence-notes and lots of lists and partial blog posts and various writings, all written by person(s) other than "me".  Also, there is mention by the one known as Switch Kellie of another K coming to our assistance, the one known as The Cleaner.  So there's that. I talked about being 2 different me's for a few days.  I mean, I switch for short periods of time rather frequently- I'll suddenly change into someone else and get a wild look in my eye and say something out of character or do something odd or my voice and/or language will change, but it could be for an afternoon or even just a moment-but as far as a complete transformation goes, well that happens less often. It does happen however. It all depends upon my stress level and my mood and my environment, among a hundred other things.  When this incident occurred, all the factors were conducive to switching, and so the other K's took over, and my style of dress changed to something more pulled-together (for Switch Kellie) or something very casual (for The Cleaner) and my likes and dislikes (Switch Kellie drinks tea instead of coffee) and habits, both good and bad-all these things changed.  Some differences were more subtle and probably only I would notice them. But I was a different K, no bones about it.

So this past week was eventful, to say the least, and I at times had to take extra anti-anxiety medication. And I was really looking forward to seeing my doctor.  To be honest, I was hoping that I'd show up for therapy and be one of the K's who appeared over the weekend.  Even though my psychiatrist has witnessed me as a different K (she has met Switch Kellie before), I still feel the need to prove myself to her.  I want her to actually see me switch, so that she knows once and for all that I'm being serious. There are many doctors who don't believe in multiple personalities or MPD/DID.  Now granted, Dr. H has never done or said anything to make me believe that she doubts me.  In fact, she's sometimes asked me about the other K's, which implies that she accepts their existence.  And one time I flat out asked her if she thought I was full of shit, and she looked me in the eye and smiled and said, "I don't think you're full of shit."  So this whole paranoia thing is really unnecessary...I think the reason I feel the need to prove myself, to give evidence of my dissociation, is because I've been accused of faking it before.  What's even worse is that it was a family member who proclaimed I was a liar. That still hurts when I think about it.  Maybe I should discuss that incident in therapy one day.

OK, I've been going back through my Tweets and text messages and emails and diary entries and lists and anything else I can find with clues.  I have a better idea of when I switched (approximately April 14) and for how long, and what I did during those times, and where I went.  Also, who I encountered, who saw me "out".  And then there's the Tweet from April 17 which says "Back in my head and body now", so I guess that's when I officially felt like the world had stopped spinning so fast.  Thinking about these things now, it all feels like a dream, or like a story I was told or a movie I watched.  It seems like it happened to someone else, not to me.  I can remember seeing things happening, but it just comes across as so surreal now.  And of course, there are huge chunks of missing time and lost memories.

I went to a bar that weekend. Boy that was tough; I can remember how I felt so out of place while I was there.  And everyone seemed to be staring at me, like I had a neon sign hanging over my head that flashed "MENTALLY ILL".  The bartender that night was a friend, but she doesn't know me as the K that came into the bar; I wonder if she noticed the difference. First of all, I ordered Diet Coke without vodka. Unusual. Secondly, she probably thought it was strange, since for the first time ever, I chose NOT to sit at the bar, but rather to go off someplace where there were no people (I was hiding). Also, I didn't speak to my friend very much at all...I hope she doesn't think I was rude. Was I rude? I'm not sure.   My husband wanted to go check out the band, so he left me alone, just for a few minutes, but it felt like hours. I could feel the eyes of everyone on me, and I was nervous and had to pop a Xanax.  It was really hard being in that environment, surrounded by strangers, when I myself  felt like an outsider in my own world.  That's it exactly! I felt like an outsider in my very own body. My thoughts were not my own; they were foreign to me.  But here I am, and I am fine, I survived AGAIN and no one other than my husband and my shrink knows about me switching.... except maybe anyone who might have stumbled upon certain Tweets during those in-between-me times.  Perhaps no one even noticed. After all, I've been faking normality for more than 30 years now, so I've gotten quite good at it.

I'll tell you one more thing about my psychiatrist's appointment.  She made absolutely certain, before I left, that the receptionist made me an appointment for next week, and for the week after that as well. I thought that was really top-notch of her.  My last doctor would never have been so thoughtful as to do that.  This doctor stood there at the desk with me while the receptionist tried to find an opening. Dr. H insisted that it be in one week's time. I am really beginning to like her, maybe even trust her a little bit. (!) I am holding onto her 24-hour emergency number as though it's my most-prized possession; I put it in my wallet along with my appointment reminder cards and her business card.  I don't have pictures of my kids or my dogs in the clear plastic windows in the center of my wallet; I have my psychiatric information.  How fitting. If anyone ever finds my wallet, they're going to see that I'm just a nutcase with no money but a lot of lists.

Trying to Remember, Trying to Heal

"There are some remedies worse than the disease."  ~Publilius Syrus

I fear this may apply to me.  I've been attempting, in therapy, to recover from my traumatic past.  I don't believe that I can actually heal unless I've come face to face with what happened to us, what hurt us, what created the broken person we are today.  I've been doing a lot of writing, subconscious exploration I call it, as I take a pen and paper and close my eyes and just let the words flow out of us.  The words aren't always legible of course, and they often don't make any sense, but it's interesting to see what comes out of our mind.  Words of a negative, even violent nature appear on the paper often.  Nonsensical ramblings seem to tell the tale of a shattered little girl who is scared of everyone and who only wants her daddy back. Daddy protected us, or at least he tried.  He died never knowing about the abuse I had suffered at the hands of my tormenters.  I've been having some memory recollection, and it's not been a positive experience.  I'm scared of what lies in our hidden past.  I'm not sure we can handle it.  K doesn't remember the specific bad thing(s) but somebody inside must....we just have to find those memories.  Not sure I want to find out what happened to us.  I'm afraid.
 

Another person who has DID told me that you can ask to remember only 5%  instead of 100% and that your subconscious will know to let you recall only 5% instead of total recollection.  This is supposed to make it much easier to deal with the pain of remembering trauma. I am going to try this technique....just as soon as I get up the courage to remember any trauma at all.  I'm so afraid of knowing the truth.  My psychiatrist tells me I don't have to remember everything to get better, but someone inside me wants to remember it so we can forgive ourselves and move forward with our life.  However, I'm terrified that by recovering these lost memories, I will make myself even worse.  I don't want to get sicker than I already am.  I must have blocked those memories for good reason.  I'm not sure I want to know...I just know I want to get better.

Not Too Early To Tweet

It's 7:04 A.M. and I'm up with no one to talk to or nothing to do and I can't make any noise or else we'll wake somebody up so I can't vacuum or anything like that and I can't leave the house so taking a walk is out of the question and I just don't know what to do with myself.  So many voices in my head, all talking at once, each one trying to be heard over the others. I'm being told to eat, to go back to bed, to blog, to make a list of today's errands, to wash our hair, to give ourselves a pedicure, to draw pictures in our sketch diary, and someone wants a cigarette. Several of us want to write, just in different places-one wants to write in our journal, one wants to sketch in our diary, and a couple want to blog.  I guess blogging wins, as it has the most votes.  Our psychiatrist is going to be disappointed in us (she wants handwritten journal entries). Oh well.  We don't care right now. Another K can handle that task. The Good Daughter will be here once Mom wakes up, and she's trying to spend less time on the computer and pay more attention to her family, so I guess I better blog in a hurry.

It's been a strange couple of days (or has it been weeks? We're just not sure) and I find that we are missing Twitter.  We think it's time to go back to Tweeting, which is our outlet, where we share honest thoughts and actions and where we are free to be whomever we happen to be.  Some of us have friends on Twitter, and we miss talking to them.  I wonder how everyone is doing.  I think maybe I'll have a cup of coffee and either blog or Tweet....stay tuned...

We just haven't been ourself (LOL!) lately.  That means we haven't felt like K, whatever that means.  Wait-I seem to remember K being out yesterday for a few hours.  I didn't have therapy last week, which bums us out, but the lady never called to tell me when to come in.  I suppose I should've called them, but that's really hard for us, calling people I mean.  I guess one of us will have to call them tomorrow.  The Good Daughter I assume. She's here most of the time lately, co-conscious with other K's. Co-consciousness means that you are more aware of what others in your system are doing; you know what they're feeling and thinking.  Like right now. The Good Daughter just spoke to Mom. I heard her. I guess that means our time is up...

Charging my phone now.  Prepare for Tweeting today- Yay! We've missed Twitter, and it's been difficult to keep our thoughts in our head and share them only with our psychiatrist, because we're still afraid to be totally open and honest with her.

An Apology To My Readers

I'm sitting here, and I'm reading over my last three blog posts, and I'm thinking to myself A) These are so  boring! and B) I sound like an arrogant bitch and C) I'm going to lose a lot of readers/followers.  So I've decided that you, dear readers, deserve an explanation as well as an apology.  First of all, you have to realize that I started this blog for myself, and then later my psychiatrist asked if we could use it in therapy, so it's intended to be just a record of someone mental's day to day life, no matter how mundane.  I wrote this for ME, to help me remember my symptoms and dissociative states.  It was not intended to be a source of information or entertainment (although if you find it entertaining, then that's awesome).  The only thing, if anything, that I hoped to accomplish through this blog was to perhaps help someone out there not feel alone.  I've felt alone most of my life, and I know how hard that is. I hope that if anyone who reads this who has some sort of psych issues will find some comfort or reassurance or hope from my writing.  As for those of you who began reading my blog from the beginning, then you might have a better understanding of what this blog represents, as it is a record of my journey of self-discovery and (proper) diagnosis. It's also a history lesson, collected memories which I need to have handy, details I would otherwise forget that are important to my recovery or life in general.  I'm rambling. Again.  And I don't think I've even apologized yet.  Sorry, readers, that my blog has been dull lately. I promise to spice things up a bit soon. It shouldn't be too hard--I missed over two weeks of meds recently and am expecting the aftermath at any time now.

What Were We Talking About?

I want to tell you a story.  I really do.  However, there's a problem.  My indecisiveness is overbearing-I can't choose the story.  Not only are there more choices running around in my head than I could ever chase down and dissect, but I just can't seem to focus long enough to finish an entire tale anyway.  My concentration is non-existent right now.  In fact, I can forget what I'm saying in the middle of a sentence.  I can't keep track...my mind is jumping around this way and that way.  I'm plagued by memory issues, as you know, and this indecision is made worse by this fact (by the time the waiter has told me the specials, I've forgotten them and thus can't decide). This is something that I have to deal with on more days than not.  It's unbelievably frustrating to forget the subject of a conversation shortly after the talking begins, but that is my reality for much of my waking life.  How do I handle these instances?  Well, first and foremost,  we always make it a point to say something about how bad my memory is, so that it doesn't come as much of a shock to the people I'm talking to. (and if I happen to be in a situation where drugs and/or alcohol are in use, then that is a convenient excuse which I often give)  Anyone who knows me well can tell you how they've had to repeat things to me,  until they are fed up with me asking.  It's true, I ask the same questions over and over again, but I truly cannot remember asking before then, much less remember the answers to these questions.  That's just more than I can manage.  Most anything is difficult to remember.  ANYTHING.  Add to that our lack of concentration, and you'll find that I'm pretty much screwed.

I have to write things down, literally, or I will forget them. Everything.  Even simple everyday tasks that must be done by every person on the planet-things like eating and sleeping-are difficult for me to remember.  I will very often forget to eat, and when I lived alone I would sometimes go a few days without food; I'd eat once the emptiness in my stomach turned to actual pain.  Feeling empty is something I'm used to-I have an eating disorder and rarely eat so it's not uncommon for me to be hungry.  But the pain, well the pain will make me eat.  Same goes for sleep.  I can forget to sleep, and I'll just continue about my business until I get so exhausted that I'll just pass out for hours on end.  I don't know why I can't get myself on some sort of schedule, which would indicate when it's time for me to eat and sleep.  I guess the reason this won't work is because I have no sense of time.  I can't tell when it's morning or evening.  It all feels the same to me, I often don't know if it's A.M. or P.M. without looking out the window.

Damn.  I just read what I've written and it seems I've veered off course.  The subject was supposed to be  lack of concentration.  Hmm.  I guess getting off topic actually helps illustrate my point though...  I can't focus long enough to finish my train of thought.  I have to rewrite sentences, even whole paragraphs, because I am all over the place with my thoughts.  I just cannot concentrate.  I can't do it.  I try and try....but it's just not happening.  This is infuriating at times, and it certainly affects my quality of life.  I love to read, and to escape into a book...but with my lack of concentration, I'm unable to read much anymore and that makes me very sad.  I still try to read of course, as I'm hungry for knowledge as well as escapism, but it's exhausting; I have to reread every page several times just to absorb the information.  Often, I get stuck on one sentence, and I'll read it dozens of times, but can't make any sense of it.  I simply can't focus. I can't think clearly.  It's impossible.  Now this does not apply to all of the K's.  The smartest ones can read quite well and do so with a voracious appetite.  But today, at this moment, I am here, and I simply cannot concentrate for any period of time.

I don't even know if this rambling mess constitutes a blog post.  I can't tell if this is cohesive in any way.  I can't tell if I've actually said anything.  I really don't know.  I just know that I have this urge to write, this compelling energy burning inside me which is trying to move my fingers around on the keyboard, but I don't know what to type.  I'm dying to write, to empty my overflowing head, to get these thoughts out of my mind!  Damn.  This memory loss fucking blows.  I can't remember what I wanted to talk about.  Shit!  Did I already talk about it?  (sigh) I really need a personal assistant...

Memories Lost and Found

Memory is a funny thing...I think.  That's my attempt at humor. I have to make fun of myself or I'd have no relief at all from the teasing and taunting and laughter that comes at me from all sides much of my waking life. But I'm already going off on a tangent-we can't have that! Let's try again.  I can't explain this very clearly, I can only tell the story as it exists in my current state of consciousness.  I remember on a different plane of "reality", which an alternate K presides over, and which sometimes drops us bits of information or pictures in our mind of things from K's past (and sometimes her future!).  Sometimes this works out well, the right version of K will remember what she needs to know, but more often than not, K is unable to retrieve the information and she feels foolish and frustrated and angry with herself. 

It's so embarrassing to not be able to remember someone's name, someone whom you've known for years.  How do you play that down, or get out of that situation gracefully? You really can't.  Blame it on getting older or being intoxicated, anything to keep the truth hidden from the Outside World.  It's reasons like these which cause us to want to stay home.  At least, some of us do, the current K included.  I'm not sure where I've been, but I've been reading the blog and a book I found at the library, and I've determined that K has been having a dissociative episode, and has switched several times over the course of 2 weeks or so.  I'm here now, to try and make sense of all these notes and writings and websites.  This is going to take some work, and some time.  But-in the end, I'm hoping to help K get better, to live a somewhat stable life, to be HAPPY. (K doesn't really know what that means, she only pretends to know)  I've touched on happiness since we got married, actually since we began dating our husband, which was about 4 years ago.  My happiness swelled to such an extent I thought my heart was literally going to burst out of my chest on our honeymoon, and has been present more days than not ever since.  Yes, we still have days in which we're depressed, or want to hurt ourselves, but a lot of days we wake up and look over at our husband and emotions pool inside of us and I can often feel tears run down my cheeks and I know those are tears of joy.  K had such a hard time for so many years of her life, it's just awesome that she's finally found a piece of happiness, a life with purpose, a future worth living to see.

I wonder if K will live to see her future... I don't mean to sound so doom and gloomy but I mean, her health is not so great considering how young she is.  She already has to wear oxygen at night when she sleeps (that's something that came about only recently but is because of the ARDS incident (The story of my ARDS ordeal).  She has COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease) as a result of the ARDS too.  Needless to say, by the time she got out of the hospital, she was a non-smoker.  (It's interesting to note that some of the K's DO smoke)  She recently had exploratory surgery to find the cause of some severe pain she'd been having in her right side for several months.  The surgeon found something called adhesions (the abnormal union of adjacent tissues) growing on her colon and he had to scrape this tissue off her organs.  She was really sore after that, and ran out of pain pills too quickly,  but the doctor refused to refill them.  It's often hard to get some medications, such as pain relievers and sleeping pills, when you have a history of mental illness.  My theory is that the doctors are afraid you'll intentionally take an overdose of the pills.  Or perhaps they believe that people will take advantage of our impaired judgement and we will sell them or give them away.  Now I will confess that on certain nights, rarely, my mother will be so nervous and anxious that she cannot sleep, and on those nights I will give her a quarter of one of my Xanax pills to calm her down and help her relax.  Is that really so wrong?  Mom's always worried she's going to become an addict, which I think is hilarious-she's 82 for Christ's sake!  So what if she DOES get hooked?  What difference would that make now?


Damn! I've gone and forgotten what it was that I wanted to write about tonight.  I HATE when that happens, and unfortunately, it happens a lot.  It's embarrassing and drives me crazy, pun intended.  K used to always have a pad of paper and a pen with her , as well as a sketch book, a pencil, and a fine-point black Sharpie marker.  We got out of that habit at some point when other, less active K's came to visit our mind.and K became lethargic and less inclined to do anything (anything at all by the end of that time period)  I guess after we dropped out of college our mind and memories started to get fuzzy from neglect.  I, and the other smart K's (I don't know how many there are, I'm still figuring all this out), will try and focus our energy on remembering what to blog about.  OH YES, and we've begun to carry a pad of paper and a pen in our pocket at all times now.  I think that's as good a place to start as any. If you want to remember, write it down. If I find some notes or remember something on the subject later, I"ll be sure and post those thoughts  here.

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...

Running on Empty

It feels as though I have to write, I have to clear my head, I have to put these thoughts down on paper (here, only in a manner of speaking, although some of us are actually, literally writing some things down on paper).  Yesterday was the mental and emotional equivalent of giving birth.  I am utterly drained and just don't know if there's anything left inside me with which to compose a blog post...but I'm going to try, just for a few minutes, while I sip my hot tea (with a tad of honey) and wait for the medication I took to kick in and (hopefully) put me to sleep for the whole night.  I can't remember what it feels like to sleep through an entire night.  I can barely remember what it's like to sleep at night, period.  K is so very tired, her body is worn out and her health is beginning to suffer.  It's my job to take care of her, to see that she remembers to eat and sleep and shower and things of that nature, things which a "normal" person just instinctively knows to do, without being prompted or told to do those things.  When most people get hungry, they eat. When they get tired, they sleep.  It seems simple enough, and in the Real World people are automatically tuned in to their bodies and what they need and these needs are met, often without even a conscious thought.  In my mind, in us, inside Kellie World, food and sleep are optional and usually misused.  We either deprive ourselves the luxuries of eating and/or sleeping, or else we overindulge and end up feeling worthless. Lately, or before I got here, the sad and lazy K was doing nothing much outside of sleeping on the couch all day long.  Sure, she'd wake up to take more pills, and occasionally eat a small meal (mainly just to stop her mother from scolding her for not eating) and every once in a while she'd have enough energy, motivation, and/or desire to leave the house, usually only with Husband, on some occasions all alone but in those situations we have to heavily sedate her to take her out in public.  But sometimes, just sometimes, it feels really good to get out and be social and interact with others, my friends in particular- K doesn't feel comfortable around strangers-and so K looks forward to those good days, those days wherein she could appear "normal" to the outside world.

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!