I Don't Wanna Grow Up

Tomorrow is my birthday.  I don't know if I can adequately express the degree of difficulty which accompanies that day for us, from both a mental and an emotional standpoint.  For one thing, it makes us think back to our childhood, and relive some painful memories.  But more than that, it forces us to face the future, and that is something we haven't learned to do yet.  I'm going to try and explain this as clearly as possible, but all of what I'm about to tell you is, to the average person, completely far-fetched and outlandish and makes no sense at all.  It is, nonetheless, my reality.  Ready? OK, here we go. Try to suspend your disbelief for a bit here. This post will seem delusional and screams "batshit crazy"! 

Time, for me, K as a whole, is not linear.  It doesn't follow a clear-cut path from past to future, but rather jumps around, backwards and forwards, rarely going in the proper order as others see it, that is to say, in a progression of years.  Time for us is more circular, waxing and waning, repeating itself in overlapping cycles which recur every few years.  Everything happens to me over and over again, my life comes full circle every 3 years or so.  Now here's where it gets really weird.  K has been the same age since birth. Not our physical body of course, but mentally and emotionally.  If you ask our mother, she will tell you that I was "born a 30 year old woman".  During my childhood years, I preferred and sought out the company of adults, and in fact found children my own age to be quite annoying.  I was irritated by the immaturity of the other kids around me in kindergarten, I remember that very clearly.  I've always preferred to socialize with people in their late 20's, regardless of my own physical age.  How did I manage to do that?  As a youth, I just hung around my older siblings' friends, or older relatives, and with the adults at church.  As I grew up, not only was I mature beyond my years, but I also matured physically at a very young age; by third grade I was being pursued romantically by high school boys (NO, I did NOT date, until the age of 13). Throughout the years, sometimes I was believed to be younger, and sometimes older, but always I remained roughly the same age to the outside world (about 25). I NEVER told anyone how old I actually was, and I never maintained relationships long enough for anyone to find out my true age; to this day, most of my friends aren't sure of the number.  After a long while, I actually forgot my "real" age, but it didn't matter because I knew in my mind that I couldn't really be that old anyway.  The doormen at local bars and clubs knew me, and let me in without question, beginning when I was about 14, because my dates were always about 26 and it was just assumed I was about that same age.  I don't know how it is that I came to be that particular age, but it fits me, and I've just always felt like an older twenty-something.  K also looks like an older twenty-something, or so I'm told, and have for decades. This is where the torture comes in.  As time goes by, other people around me age, and I can't help but witness this, even though I have no concept of time and can't tell that time is passing.  All I know is that now and then I'll  run into a friend and that person will be much older than they were the last time I remember seeing them.  As in MUCH older.  It always takes me aback.  I look at myself, I see one thing, but my birth certificate tells me another thing.  Now we get into the part that's even weirder still.
                                              
Sometimes K, or one of us at least,  is a little girl.  She usually comes out in times of extreme stress, and most often when we are sick or with our mother.  It happened often in the days before our father died.  She also appeared while we were hospitalized in Intensive Care, fighting for each breath, in the hospital two years ago.  When the little girl takes over our mind, there is no reasoning with her, as she is just a child.  She's scared and needs reassurance and attention, but she also loves to play and likes shiny objects. She's very difficult to control once she's out.  We positively cannot concentrate during these times-we are easily distracted to a fault. We try very hard to keep her locked deep inside me, but if the pain is too much, I'm powerless to stop her from emerging. I can, however, become mute, and thus prevent the outside world from learning of her existence. If someone gets close to the truth, I lie, and I run away.  I've lived like this...well, forever.

                                         
So. Birthdays are hard for me, because I can't accept the fact that time is passing and we are aging.  It's beyond me.  Since not all of the K's are aging each year,  I just can't grasp the notion that I'm getting older. My biggest fear is growing old.  I still feel just as immature today as I felt at 15.  There is a K who still shops for funky clothes in the junior miss department with pubescent girls.  I still feel more comfortable talking to 20 year-old's than I do to any other age group, regardless of the subject matter, just as I did when I was a teenager.  I seem to be stuck in time, frozen in a place in my history,  floating somewhere between the past and the present.  Around me, I watch as my niece goes from an infant to a college grad in a matter of months, or so it seems to me. Now and then I'll see a picture of someone I went to school with, and I'm always shocked at just how old they are.  I'm certainly not that old, so it just doesn't make any sense to me.  But it's as though I've been given a gift from the heavens, the gift of youth.  It is our belief that I've been touched by higher powers and given special abilities, such as the ability to float through time in circles, never really growing older, just existing on a different plane.  Different K's, different points in time, but none of us are very old.  Birthdays represent growing older, and that is something that we, the K's, just will not accept.  We can't.  It's just not in us, we cannot wrap our brain around it.  Growing up is a foreign concept to us.

Can't Remember What I Did Wrong

We are struggling.  We, the K's, are NOT all right.  I'm not sure when this current episode started, but based on how I feel in my head, and based on how many voices there are now and how loud they are (some of them are screaming at me), I'd say that we've been skipping our meds for several days.  There was some trauma recently, (which I'm too ashamed to go into) and that must be the root cause here.  Sigh.  Memory loss is worse than usual; it's causing Husband to become quite impatient with us, and of course K takes this personally and it hurts our feelings.  Can't write.  Can't think clearly.  Just want to sleep, to escape the noise.  The noise all around me, the dogs barking, the traffic, the sounds of everyday life-all so incredibly loud and overwhelming.  Then there's the noise inside me, which is even louder. Got yelled at by my mother and made to feel like shit.  I tried to tell her I was having a bad day, in a mentally ill kind of way, but she flew off the handle and told me to just go back to bed.  If I really DO go back to bed, she'll get even more angry.  Plus, Husband would be pissed off too whenever he gets home.  If he comes home that is.  He left, saying he couldn't be here today, he just wanted to get out and get away from all of this, which I'm sure means all of ME.  Fuck.  Everybody is upset with me and I don't know why and I'm trying to be good but I'm a bad girl and everybody's mad even me.  Need drugs.  But am boycotting them for a while.  Not sure why.

To hell with a title

What a fucking shit pile of a day.  I'm pissed and since there's no once else around I'm taking it out on our husband.  K hates when I do that, she gets all apologetic and weepy and tries to make up for what I say, but what the fuck ever.  I'm a bitch.  Fucking deal with it.

Our Today

We went to the post office today, to mail some packages for Husband.  I was watching my body walk down the sidewalk when we encountered an elderly man with white hair.  He smiled and greeted us pleasantly.  I don't know who said it, but someone spoke up and said "Hello! How are you?" and I could see a teeth-baring (but fake nonetheless) smile on our face.  It was so surreal, hearing the words come out of our mouth, knowing that I wasn't speaking at all.  Everything snapped back to "normal" (whatever the hell that means) when I went inside the building and saw a friend of Husband's; the proper K took over then.  Next thing I remember is the dog barking.  We are in the bedroom., and the dogs are both barking.  It's loud.  I wish they'd be quiet.  I have some time to myself now... but who am I?  There is evidence that I've eaten lunch, and if I think really hard I can kindof see me eating sometime...was that today?  It's more like it happened in a dream.  Husband will be home in 45 minutes; is that long enough to figure out who we are supposed to be?  We called our doctor to make an appointment, but the lady on the phone said she was out sick.  She told us that she would call K next week and let her know when to come in.  I'm really glad that we are going to see the doctor again; I have lots of questions for her.

Don't Look At Me!

K was diagnosed with Body Dysmorphic Disorder about 10 years ago, but she's had it much longer than that, I'd guess since she was a pre-teen.  Body Dysmorphic Disorder is a mental illness characterized by distorted body image and obsessions about perceived physical shortcomings.  A person with BDD is extremely concerned with their appearance, and this manifests as a preoccupation with a perceived defect of their physical features.  Simply put, K's obsessed with how she looks, because of her (self-declared) flaws.  This causes psychological distress that impairs occupational and/or social functioning.  The person complains of a defect in either one or several features of their body, or vaguely complains about their general appearance. (K complains both generally AND specifically.)   The disorder is generally diagnosed in persons who are overly critical of their mirror image, physique or self-image, even though there may be no noticeable disfigurement or defect.  In other words,  K sees an ugly (read=imperfect) reflection upon looking in a mirror, even though no one else sees anything wrong with her appearance.

BDD is often misunderstood as a vanity-driven obsession, whereas it is quite the opposite; people with BDD do not believe themselves to be better looking than others, but instead feel that their recognized "defect" is unforgivably ugly or not good enough. People with BDD may compulsively look at themselves, or do the opposite-cover up and/or avoid mirrors. They typically think about their appearance for at least one hour a day  (usually more) and, in severe cases, may drop all social contact and responsibilities as they become a recluse.  K positively must look at herself in any mirror she comes across, and spends hours making herself "presentable" before she will leave her house.  We haven't dropped social contact altogether, but do go through periods in which I'll avoid people for days or weeks at a time.

Common symptoms of BDD include:

• Obsessive thoughts about a sensed defect(s)
• Delusional thoughts and beliefs related to sensed appearance defect(s)
• Chronic low self-esteem
• Seeing slightly varying image of self upon each instance of observing a mirror or reflective surface
• Major depressive disorder symptoms
• Suicidal ideation 
• Strong feelings of shame
• Social withdrawal, isolation or social phobia
• Perfectionism 
• Alcohol & drug abuse
• Feeling self-conscious in social situations; thinking that others notice/mock their perceived defect(s)
• Repetitive behavior (such as constantly applying makeup or checking reflection in mirror)
• Compulsive/repetitive body modification (such as multiple plastic surgeries)

I exhibit all of these symptoms.  I must point out that K has never had plastic surgery however.  Instead, my body modification rituals include tattoos, multiple body piercings, cutting, and branding.  One therapist told me that my tattoos and piercings were another form of self-injury, and that my methods had evolved from cutting with razor blades to piercing with needles.  I guess I could believe either explanation.  I am trying to permanently alter my appearance to distract from our flaws (BDD), but K very much enjoys the pain and gets pierced to help her deal with reality or emotional distress (SH).

A person with BDD may exhibit obsessive and compulsive behaviors related to perceived appearance defect(s). (K does all of these things.) Some of these include:

• Compulsive mirror checking OR avoidance of mirrors-- I can't walk past a window or a reflective surface without looking at myself;  I'm not vain, I'm checking my flaws.  On the opposite end of the spectrum, there is a K who hates to see herself in a mirror and tries to avoid it (she also doesn't like to get her picture taken)
• Attempts to camouflage perceived defect (such as wearing lots of makeup, hats, or baggy clothing)--A couple of the K's wear little to no makeup, but most of us use a good deal of concealer and liquid foundation, and a bright red lipstick to draw the eye away from our flaws. (The Kellie loves to be dramatic and wears heavy eye makeup as well.)  All of the K's wear hats (K collects hats) and most of us wear baggy clothing to hide our body.  However, The Kellie will wear fitted clothing, and she loves to wear corsets. Note that corsets also alter the appearance of the body.
• Use of distraction techniques (such as wearing extravagant clothing or excessive jewelry)--Each of the K's has a different style, but almost all of them stand out in a crowd and are over the top with accessories-hats and scarves and tons of jewelry.
• Excessive grooming behaviors (hair-combing, eyebrow plucking, skin picking)-- Throughout the day, most everyday, K smooths or touches her hair, plucks her eyebrows and also picks at her skin. I'm not sure if this counts, but she also paints and repaints her nails and toenails.
• Seeking reassurance from loved ones-- I seek constant reassurance from my husband, friends, and family about how I look.  "Do I look OK?" comes out of K's mouth dozens of times a day.
• Comparing appearance to that of others--Not only do I compare myself to every female over the age of 16, but I almost always feel that every other girl I see is more attractive than I am.
• Compulsive skin touching (to feel the perceived defect)--I catch myself constantly touching the areas of our face and body which I feel are unacceptable; I don't know why...maybe to see if the flaw is still there or has grown larger?
• Self harm--My first memory of self-harm is from 4th grade, and it's gotten worse over the years.  I intend to do a blog post soon about my experiences with self-injury.
• Obsession with plastic surgery--As I said earlier,  I've never had plastic surgery,  but I do constantly think about which procedures I'd  have done if I could afford it. (breasts reduced and lifted, tummy tuck, forehead lift, butt lift, facelift, all-over liposuction...) In extreme cases, patients have attempted to perform plastic surgery on themselves, including liposuction and various implants with disastrous results.  I have to admit that I have done some minor work with a scalpel, but certainly nothing drastic. 

The three most common areas of which those suffering from BDD are critical are the hair, the skin, and the nose.  For K, the obsession focuses on her skin, especially that of her face, and she's particularly critical of her chin/jawline/profile.  She's been obsessed with her teeth for as long as she's been seeing a dentist.  She's also obsessed with her overall body, mainly the legs;  to a lesser degree she obsesses about her nose and hair.

In most cases, BDD is under-diagnosed.  It is often associated with shame and secrecy; therefore, patients often fail to reveal their concerns about their appearance for fear of seeming vain or superficial.  BDD is also often misdiagnosed because its symptoms can mimic that of major depressive disorder or social phobia.  K, like most people diagnosed with Body Dysmorphic Disorder, is shy, introverted, and neurotic. Certain personality traits make people more susceptible to BDD.  Others include perfectionism, sensitivity to rejection or criticism, unassertiveness, and social phobia.  K is bothered by all of these things.  Treatment for Body Dysmorphic Disorder includes both cognitive behavior therapy and medication, namely SSRI's.  K is currently being treated with both of these.  Writing about it now, and seeing everything in black and white, the diagnosis seems so simple and easy-to-see.  If only it had really been that easy for our doctors! Perhaps then K would be living a different life now, with more confidence and fewer mirror checks.
        

A Complaint To Myself

Someone inside my head is really wanting to write....  but she's being held back by the others.  I can't hear what she's trying to tell me, so I can't write it down.  I can't hear her clearly because there are too many other voices in my head, all trying to talk over one another.  Damn!  This is so frustrating.

(I wish that we could easily separate each voice inside our mind, so that I might be able to actually understand what everybody's saying at all times...)

The Care and Feeding of Us- Part II

We've talked about K's bizarre food preferences (The Care & Feeding of Us-Part I); now I'm going to tell you how her mental illness affects the physical way she eats.  In Part I, I think I demonstrated  that she's OCD when she eats (in that no foods on her plate can touch, and no food in her mouth can mix), but I'll go even further.  I'll tell you just how OCD K really is. It takes her a long time to get ready to eat.  She has to prepare her plate, by separating her food into categories.  There are different categories for different types of food; some foods are separated by color, others by texture or shape.  Let me give you an example:  K loves Lucky Charms cereal, but she must eat it in a certain way.  First, she eats all of the crunchy oat pieces out of the bowl.  Next, she eats each marshmallow one color and shape at a time, and in a specific order (In this case, yellow is first, blue is always last).  K "saves the best for last", so if there's a bite she's especially interested in, say the crunchiest, blackest part of her well-done hamburger, she'll eat that bite last, after the rest of the burger has been eaten.  Also, she always eats symmetrically. Take one bite from the left side, take one bite from the right side.  One bite from the meat/entree, and one bite from each side item, in a counter-clockwise direction.  Yes, this is time-consuming, but she's compelled to do it. 

 Food is often cut or separated into small pieces before she begins to eat, and this serves two purposes: it allows her to equally distribute a sauce or gravy onto bites of food, and it also gives her the ability to easily count the number of bites she eats.  I'm not going to go into great detail here, let me just say that K does a kind of numerology, and the number of bites eaten has to be what K considers to be a "good" number (3 is the best number).  During this process, K is also "editing" her meal, meaning she's picking out everything green as well as anything unwanted, such as peppers or onions,  plus she scrapes off any unwanted sauce.  At home, of course, she has to do less of this; her husband does the cooking and tries to accommodate her tastes.  Some things can't be made to K's liking and she has to pick out a lot of ingredients (example=chili).  Needless to say, K is a slow eater, and she can be terribly self-conscious about all of these rituals, so she prefers to eat in private.  (Not all of the K's are like this; some of us are less uptight and enjoy dining out very much.)  It's so complicated just to get a bite to eat!

Of course, the K(s) with an eating disorder tries to avoid eating altogether, and will take diet pills and appetite suppressants and guzzle energy drinks instead of consuming food.  I am trying to get K to be more health-conscious, but I'm outnumbered by the other K's.  Before the ARDS incident (When Do People Sleep Around Here?), our breakfast/lunch consisted of two pots of coffee and however many cigarettes we could chain smoke during the consumption of that coffee.  Now, we don't smoke (well, I think The Kellie does), but we still drink our two pots of coffee in the morning.  And then we can, and often do, drink additional cups or a pot at night.  K is a coffee fiend.  Probably not the best thing, considering how poor her diet is... and the worst part of all is that she doesn't even take vitamins.  Her doctor put her on some prescription strength vitamins once, but she threw them up (perhaps her body didn't know what to do with nutrients!), so now we don't take any sort of supplements.  I know we should, and every January I make a New Year's resolution to take vitamins everyday, but our memory is so bad we always forget... On many occasions I've found bottles of vitamins, some expensive, and the bottle is always nearly full but has expired, so it appears that I try to get K to take vitamins at times, I just can't stick around long enough to see that she actually takes them.

I wish that I, and Switch Kellie (aka Smart Kellie), could join forces and take control of K's body and mind and see to it that she develops some healthy habits.  I've been trying to get Switch Kellie to come back out-I can feel her just under the surface of our consciousness; she's always with us, listening, since this last "episode"-but so far she just speaks to me, not through me.  Hopefully, one day soon, Switch Kellie will come forward again and take over and whip us back into shape; I'm good at controlling K's cravings and monitoring her food intake, but I need Switch Kellie to motivate us to work out.  All of this sounds absolutely nuts, and I suppose it IS, but this is the reality that we, the K's, are currently existing in.   ...and wouldn't you know it?  My stomach is growling, but we can't agree on whether or not we're hungry.

The Care and Feeding of Us-Part I

K is hungry.  That's not unusual for her.  You can often hear her stomach rumbling from lack of food.  She's trained herself to ignore the hunger.  We have to feed her, for survival's sake, but I don't like to.  I don't like to eat.  In fact, I hate it.  I wish there were some sort of pill we could take instead of having to eat; I would give up food altogether.  K has very eccentric eating habits.  She's been a weird eater pretty much since she started eating solid food.  For example, she won't eat anything that touches another food on her plate.  Nothing can touch.  She'd love to have those sectioned cafeteria trays to eat from.  Another weird thing is that she can only have one type of food in her mouth at a time, and she won't even take a drink until she's swallowed that bite of food.  Nothing can mix.  Her mother always says, "It all goes to the same place!" but this does not change K's attitude toward her food.  If you think that's weird, it gets even weirder.

K says she "doesn't eat plants", meaning she doesn't like fruits or vegetables.  There are some exceptions: potatoes and corn.  Also, she'll eat beans two ways: baked beans, or refried beans.  The weird fruit habits are these: she loves (some) fruit flavored foods, like blueberry flavored anything, but she won't actually eat the real fruit.  She'll eat cherry pie, but she'll pick out all the cherries.  She likes orange juice only if it's mixed with champagne or vodka.  She's never actually eaten an orange or a banana or a strawberry, and she only has an idea of what fruits taste like if they have a jelly bean flavor for her to sample.  One more thing, anything with seeds is definitely off limits.  OH yes, and Rule Number 1: No green foods.  It's interesting to note that K loves blue foods however.

Since she's the ANTI-vegetarian, you might think that K eats a lot of meat, but that's not true either.  She will only eat certain cuts of meat.  She will NOT eat anything from a chicken or turkey except the breast, and she won't eat any meat that's still on the bone (it reminds her that it's a dead animal).  If she eats beef, it must be extra well-done; if there is any trace of pink in her steak, she will not eat it.  It must be gray, through and through, and it's even better if the steak is actually black and crunchy on the outside.  She always buys the leanest ground beef and is very careful to get rid of as much grease as possible before she consumes it.  She dries her food off with paper towels.  She will not eat veal or rabbit or venison or duck, because those animals are too cute.  She refused to eat any pork until just a few years ago, because she owned a pet pig and thinks they're far too intelligent an animal to eat.  Bacon is the exception, but she must have it extra crispy, preferably burnt.  She positively will not eat anything that still resembles a dead animal, such as ribs. K would secretly love to be a vegetarian, because the truth is that it grosses her out to eat meat, but since she eats no produce, she'd probably starve to death.

Other foods?  K does love pasta, but only certain shapes and certain sizes, and the sauce should be white. (The little girl in us still likes SpaghettiO's however.)  Seafood is tricky...it can't still be "in animal form", so crab legs are off limits, but K loves shrimp if it's been peeled and cleaned thoroughly.  We, the K's, disagree on fish; some of us like it and some of us don't.  Pizza is a favorite, but only plain cheese.  What K really loves are breads and cheeses.  When she spent a few weeks in Paris, she dined only on cheese, a crusty baguette, and wine every day, and that was fine with us. 

K's bizarre eating habits are famous around here.  If she goes to a restaurant, she orders like Meg Ryan in that movie "When Harry Met Sally", meaning everything has to be special-ordered.  No butter, hold the lettuce, sauce on the side, substitute baked potato for fries.  She never orders anything as-is from a menu.  Another peculiar habit is her taking packets of Taco Bell hot sauce in her purse whenever they go out for Mexican (the waiters get a laugh out of finding those empty packets on her table).  She doesn't eat at McDonald's anymore, but when she did, they hated her there, for she'd come in and order a Big Mac without the produce, and they'd have to make her one fresh.   The sub shops love her-just throw the meat and cheese on the bread and you're done.  K does not use condiments, but there are exceptions to this rule, such as mustard on a hot dog (which should be turkey, not pork or beef).  No ketchup, no mayo, no guacamole, no salsa.  Hot sauce should be as hot as possible, but K hates the flavor of Tobasco sauce.

So.  I guess I've proven my point, that K is an eccentric eater.  I haven't even gotten to the part about her eating disorder yet-  I only let her eat one meal a day, and if I get my way, it's even less than that.  We don't eat breakfast or lunch.  We try to consume as close to 500 calories a day as possible, and that's just so we don't faint.  K eats around 6:00 at night, and after she eats, she usually goes into the bathroom and throws up.  No big deal, it's been going on for so many years that it pretty much comes naturally to her.  She can practically throw up on command.  I'm forever buying fat-free, sugar-free, and diet foods, and I'm obsessed with K's caloric intake.  Because of our doctor's orders, we're not allowed to have a scale in our bathroom; apparently I used to weigh in too often and punish myself for any weight gain.  I can't even put into words how horrified I am that K's current medications have caused substantial weight gain.  However, according to our medical doctor, our body is currently in "starvation mode" and so my metabolism has nearly shut down.

I remember the specific day that I realized (or at least, thought to myself, as it wasn't true) that I was fat:  I was in 3rd grade.  It  was spring, and I was wearing shorts.  I noticed how my thighs, when pressed flat onto the desk chair, looked really wide.  I was appalled, and decided right then and there that I HAD to lose some weight; I went home from school, walked to the store, and bought a Tab (it was the only diet soda available at that time).  K hated the taste, but we forced her to drink them from then on and she eventually grew used to the bitter flavor of the saccharin-sweetened drink.  We've been drinking diet drinks ever since, and K now lives on Diet Coke.  Allow me to wrap this up.  We have a bizarre love/hate relationship with food, we are beyond finicky, and K was diagnosed with an eating disorder but refuses to believe it's true because she's not currently skinny.  In Part II, I'll tell you how our OCD affects the way we eat (Would you believe K spends over 10 minutes eating a Snickers candy bar one layer at a time?).

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...

You're Making Me Blush

I get embarrassed easily.  This might not sound like a big deal-you probably get embarrassed too-but to me there is an all-consuming fear, a fear of humiliation, which makes it difficult for me to go out in public.  I'm so afraid of being embarrassed that I will have panic attacks in situations wherein I think people are looking at me.  They might not actually even be looking at me, but in my mind they always are, and I will see them staring and laughing at me.  I'm never sure if they're really laughing or pointing...  I don't know if these things I see are hallucinations or if they're true.  These fears of mine can be triggered by perceived or actual scrutiny from others.  Makes no difference, I'm going to panic either way.

"Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD),  is characterized by intense fear in social situations, causing considerable distress. The diagnosis of social anxiety disorder can be of a specific disorder  (when only some particular situations are feared) or a generalized disorder.  Generalized Social Anxiety Disorder typically involves a persistent, intense, chronic fear of being judged by others and of being embarrassed or humiliated by one's own actions."  Google coughed up this description of myself.  No big surprise there.  I don't remember when I was first diagnosed with this condition, but I've suffered from it since elementary school, roughly age 10.  It's gotten worse as I've grown older, except for that period of time in our mid-20's when The Kellie was usually in charge of our life.  (I really should tell you about her sometime-she's the life of the party-in real life and in my mind)

SAD is the main reason I usually stay home.  I don't venture out in public very often, and if I do I (usually) must have Husband by my side and I definitely must be doped up on anti-anxiety medications.  I can't go out in public unless I'm drugged.  In fact, I won't go until I have some sort of chemical thing happening in my brain.  If I think the pills are taking too long, I'll start drinking.  Sometimes at night I'll smoke some pot.  Whatever it takes to make me feel "ready for Reality", and able to handle the stares, the looks, the laughs, the whispering, all of which I perceive no matter where I go.  This even applies to situations, like parties, where the people involved are my friends; I still think they're making fun of me, and I get embarrassed.  It's incredibly uncomfortable to be in a crowded room-the jumbled roar of whispers contains my name and everything They are saying about me is negative.  They make fun of my clothes, my hair, my body, my face, my intellect, my personality, my whole being.  They point out specific flaws-like that mole on my face or the surgical scar I have-and torture me relentlessly with their insults.  I am humiliated, I feel like there's a spotlight shining on me and everyone in the universe is laughing at me.  I can't tell you how embarrassing it is when I actually do something physical-like spill a drink.  Oh dear God, now that really makes me turn red (and then I have to flee the room so I can cry).

This fear of embarrassment makes it impossible to relax in a social setting.  I am tense and on edge pretty much any time I'm out in public.  I try to hide as best I can-sitting in a dark corner whenever possible and wearing sunglasses indoors-but I still can't escape the feeling I have of being scrutinized.  Now not only does the SAD make it difficult for me to go out, but add to that the paranoia and insecurity I feel at all times... OK, now multiply that feeling by 100, and you might get an idea of what it's like for me to be around other people.  I'd move somewhere that had no people, but I'm afraid of being alone.  A walking contradiction.  Yes, yes I am.

Hiding in Plain Sight

Since I have just snuck into the kitchen to get a cup of coffee-literally sneaking behind Mom's back-I thought maybe I'd write about hiding.  K hides in plain sight.  She literally goes out of her way to remain hidden in the shadows, unnoticed by others, even her own friends and family.  I think perhaps this is because she's always worried that she'll forget which K she's supposed to be, or else the wrong K will just show up unannounced;  either of these is possible of course, along with a thousand other potentially embarrassing scenarios, all of which K obsesses over and worries about.  K gets up in the morning (this is a subjective statement-she gets up if she's been asleep) and tiptoes up the hallway.  She crosses her fingers that her mother's door will be closed, indicating that she's still in bed, and she will be if K has gotten there early enough, that is before 6:30 A.M.  If her mother is sleeping, K will quickly but quietly race to the kitchen and put on a pot of coffee, hoping to pour herself a cup and get back into her room before anyone sees her.  If her mother is awake, K listens for the sounds of the television, and breathes a sigh of relief when she hears the morning news.  The TV helps us be stealthy.  If the TV is on, K can more easily move through the living room/dining room, which is at the end of the hall and to the right, and which has a door to the kitchen.  Her mother sits in the den, which is to the left at the end of the hall, and which adjoins the kitchen.  K's mother always sits in a recliner with her back to us, and K moves like a cat across the kitchen floor and to the coffee maker. 

 On an ideal day, K's favorite coffee mug will be sitting out, and she can just grab it, but most days she has to open the cabinet door, holding her breath in the hopes that the door won't squeak, and retrieve a mug.  Next she tries to silently pour the coffee into the mug, and then she adds her cream and such, (hopefully the creamer is already out on the counter otherwise we have to open the refrigerator and that is noisy) and if she's lucky she can stir it up without the spoon hitting the side of the mug;  the clink would alert her mother that she's in the room.  Coffee in hand, K then moves silently across the kitchen, back through the living room, down the hall, and into her room, closing the door tightly behind us.  Mission accomplished.  If K needs a coffee refill, she repeats this process of sneaking behind her mother to get it.

This will go on until the time comes when K-whichever one is in charge that day or rather at that time (hopefully it'll be The Good Daughter)-feels capable of seeing her mother face to face.  This may sound odd, but K has to prepare herself to be in her mother's presence, she has to literally muster up the strength and courage just to walk into the same room with her.  Writing that down, I notice that it looks weird, and sounds crazy, and I find it hard to believe that I do this every day.  But we do.  I am not afraid of my mother and we love her very much.  We just don't like to be seen until we are good and ready to make our appearance.  We have wardrobe and makeup to deal with before that can happen, not to mention the fact that we must "get into character". (This is my movie, after all.)

So much hassle just to get a cup of joe!  Yet this is how each morning begins, and the process will often repeat itself throughout the day and evening, although instead of coffee it might be Diet Coke or a Slim-Fast bar.  K sneaks around all the time, in front of her mom, in front of her husband, and especially in front of the public.  It's like K is a ninja and she's going about her day in stealth mode, silent but deadly. (instead of weapons we use words)  Sometimes (a LOT of times actually) we wear sunglasses indoors; K believes people cannot see her if she keeps these on.  I can look at the situation logically, and I realize that the sunglasses make us stand out even more,  (it's ironic when you think about K's fear of being noticed)  but logic is not something K uses very often; she has her own special logic, which to anyone else is completely illogical.  You can laugh here if you want.  I know that it all sounds ridiculous.  But K is a strange girl, always has been.   When she was a little girl, she was always hiding.  She'd climb up on the roof and sit behind the chimney, or crawl into the lower kitchen cabinets and get way back in the far corner so that she was invisible to her parents.  When her mother changed the sheets on the bed, K would lie on the piece of foam that was on top of the mattress (it makes the bed softer) and she'd roll herself up in it, like a taquito.  She would stay like that, tightly confined inside the foam mattress pad, until her mother came back into the room and made her stop.  It's interesting to note that when K was younger, she loved being in small, dark enclosed spaces, and now that she's an adult, some of the K's are afraid of the dark and of being unable to move. (Is it also interesting to note that at least one of the K's is into blindfolds and bondage? Is that important?)  Sorry if that's too much information; as I've no doubt said before, we are brutally honest. 

We hide when we go out to bars or restaurants, always taking the darkest booth, the seat furthest away from everybody else, preferably the corner.  We like to sit at the bar, where we have our back to the public, and so we don't have to talk to them or acknowledge them in any way unless the mood strikes us (some of the K's are very outgoing however).  We only have to talk to the bartender, and even then just to order a drink, a drink which I will nurse for as long as is possible.  (well, actually one or two of the K's can and will drink more.)  I wear my hair down in my face, with bangs, and I often wear hats...anything to help me remain anonymous and unnoticed when we leave the house. (This doesn't apply to The Kellie; we'll tell you about her some other time.)  What's interesting to note here is that K, beginning at age 13, had a "look" which drew attention to herself, a good deal of it actually-this completely contradicts her desire to be "unseen".  At 15 she shaved her head and wore a mohawk and from then on she had a fashion sense that screamed "Look at me!" This is part of what makes K a living contradiction: she usually dresses to be looked at but she hates to be seen.  Make sense? No?  Such is our life with K...at least, some of them.  It's quite confusing, even to me.  I am different people with different styles on different days, and some of these look "normal" and some of them stand out from a crowd.  There are days in which we will change clothes repeatedly, for at times we look into the mirror and the reflection looking back at us just doesn't look like me, so I have to change.

I don't know how else to put that.  Sometimes, I look in the mirror, and I don't recognize the person I see looking back at me.  A lot of times I find the reflection to be ugly, hideous even, and this always frightens me, to think that I might actually look so horrible.  Sometimes when I look, I will see a young girl, and other times an older woman. Sometimes the reflection is pretty, and I'm always pleasantly surprised, as well as fascinated by this occurrence. There are times when the reflection is that of an angry person, or an innocent child, or a sexy siren.  I don't recognize any of these reflections as being my own, not really; they seem more like masks I wear or costumes I put on, except I don't always get to choose which one I don.  Somehow, the right K seems to show up at the right place, and no one ever notices (how can they not?!) that we are not quite the same person as usual.  There are terrible experiences wherein the wrong K has shown her face to others around her, and this is always embarrassing and confusing and difficult to explain so we usually run away when this happens.  (sigh)  K always ends up running away...she just doesn't know where she's supposed to go.  Hopefully, someplace where she can hide.

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.

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.

How I Became a Walking Drugstore

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Peeling Off An Old Label

Yesterday, (I'm pretty sure that was yesterday...) our husband took us back to see the psychiatrist again.  A different K went this time than had gone last time; I think that's because our doctor specifically requested that K come, instead of Switch Kellie, and somehow our mind just unconsciously pushes a button of some sort and we are another K, with different thoughts and emotions.  (I didn't realize this was abnormal until I was about 30 years old.)  Now, sitting here drinking my coffee,  and wishing that I had a cigarette, even though I no longer smoke, I wonder if I'm the K that went to see the shrink or if that was someone else.  I'm not sure because when I think back to the appointment, I can recall parts of it, large chunks actually, but it's all a bit blurry, like I've smeared Vaseline onto the camera lens. Did that happen to me or what is someone else, someone whose consciousness I sometimes share?  I remember one part very well, and this is important too--the psychiatrist told K that she doesn't believe she's schizophrenic.  This is HUGE. 

K was diagnosed with schizophrenia at the age of 27, and every doctor since then has just agreed with the diagnosis (and usually tacked on a new label to go along with it, labels such as BDD and GAD) rather than trying to dig a little deeper and see if perhaps she didn't have something DIFFERENT.  So. This is life-altering news.  Everything that K believes herself to be is false.  All these years, she's been living with the stigma, and with the shame, and with the despair which stemmed from this diagnosis, and now we find out that the diagnosis is (most likely) WRONG.  K is simultaneously thrilled and terrified.  Thrilled to find out that she probably does NOT have schizophrenia, yet terrified of what she really DOES have, and also afraid that one of the K's IS schizophrenic.  More labels... Take one off and put another one on in its place.  Sigh.  K didn't mention to her mother what the doctor had said about doubting the presence of schizophrenia, and I can't remember if she told her husband or not....that information is no longer with us.  I hope that she told him, he needs to know what the current status of his wife is.  Plus, it'd just be nice to know once and for all what the hell is really wrong with K!  We've been drug through the mud and given the run-around so many times over the decades....  K no longer has any faith in doctors.  This "new" doctor-who, it turns out, has been treating us for 2 years!-seems very willing to help K, and she makes K feel comfortable and perhaps even safe.  That's what the shrink told us yesterday; that her office is a safe haven for K, and that when she's there, she doesn't have to be afraid.

The shrink, Dr. H, talked with us for a while about different ways we can go about treating K.  I asked her if she'd had any experience with mapping therapy (wherein the different personalities are charted) and she admitted that she had never done such therapy.  She did NOT say that she was opposed to it. She also didn't say that she believed integration was the best route to take, and I feel that's important.  (Integration is organization of different aspects of the personality into a hierarchical system of functions, or one, unified personality)  We, the K's, are afraid of integration.  The Smart One is all for it-she just wants to be "normal" and be able to live a productive life and perhaps have a successful career in the arts.  The Good Daughter would like very much to feel more connected with her environment, with her mother, with her husband.  She's in favor of integrating all the different aspects of K into one being, assuming that being would be a positive addition to the world around her.  Some of the K's (like The Little Girl) are dead-set against integration, for this state of feeling split apart, of feeling shattered, this is all we've ever known and while it may not always be pleasant or convenient or logical, we're used to it-it is who and what we are.  (I think...)

The best part of the therapy session was when Dr H told us that she'd like to use the old diaries that we found, that she believed we could learn a lot about K and her different personalities from these books. (See Blog Post "The Discovered Diaries" from January 9)  K was elated that the doctor recognized the importance of the diaries.  They could change my life as we know it.  I just knew it, I knew when I found those diaries and read them, I KNEW they were important to K's recovery.  This could change everything.  We're all on the edge of our seats.  What's going to happen to us?  What will become of the K's?  Who will come out to meet the doctor, and who will stay hidden?  Who will we ultimately become?!?  (panic attack coming on-I have to go take a pill now)

Finding Funding: A Follow-up Post

Wouldn't you know it?  We just got finished telling you how bad we are with money, and then today, in the mail, comes not one, but four non-sufficient funds notices.  FOUR.  It seems that not only did we overdraw our account last week, but 2 days after we made a deposit and fixed the problem, the account was overdrawn again.  I don't understand what is happening.  My bank records show that I made a hefty credit card payment, but I can't remember doing that.  I just can't win.  I took a great deal of my savings out to pay for my overdraft, so now I'm really screwed.  My husband has offered to take control of everything and get me out of this mess, but that's so humiliating!  That doesn't seem fair to him, and makes me feel terribly guilty.  Life blows.  I hate motherfucking banks.  They can suck it.

Finding Funding

We've never-and I do mean NEVER- been good with money.  Over the years this has been a constant  source of a great deal of stress, shame, and a lot of problems, both financially as well as legally, for K and her family.  Since the only jobs K was capable of handling (after dropping out of college due to a breakdown) were entry-level positions, they offered little pay and no benefits.  I was almost always just scraping by each month, and I inevitably ended up the same way: in the red.  The damage to my credit rating and bank account compounded each day/month/year until there was simply no way to get myself out of trouble.  I was too proud to ask for help-I waited until it was offered-and usually I'd find myself in a black pit of debt which I can't even venture a guess as to how many times Daddy and/or Mom had to bail us out of.  They helped K with her credit card troubles, paid her bills, and saved the day...for years.   K is very ashamed of and embarrassed by this; she wants to take care of herself and be independent; she hates her unemployed status.   Twice I've considered filing for bankruptcy but I'm proud to say I did NOT take that route.

Growing up with parents who were raised during the Great Depression means you are hard-wired from the get-go to be frugal, or at least that's the way it was in K's house.  Her father's most-used expression was "Money doesn't grow on trees",  and he knew better than anyone the value of a dollar, as he began working at the age of 9 (he picked up golf balls at a golf course).  He taught K from the time she first began walking to watch the ground for lost change (the man could spot a dime from across a mall parking lot!) and stick her finger inside coin slots on vending machines to see if someone had forgotten a quarter. (To this very day, I'm compelled to do this)  I don't want to infer that he was cheap; rather, he was thrifty. He wanted very much for K to be financially stable and to have enough money to be comfortable and never have to struggle the way he and his family had during the Depression of the 1930's, or even the way he'd struggled when he and my mother first got married.  He, like many from his generation, wanted his daughter to grow up and marry someone "from a good background" who would work hard and take care of her; instead she got married at 19 to a con artist who stole thousands from me and my family. But that's a whole other story.

K absolutely, positively can NOT handle money, not by herself.  It gets spent or it gets lost.   (I have a theory that I actually misplace just as much money as I "foolishly" spend.) We tend to be quite frugal, but at least 2 of us are the type to enjoy shopping, and we overspend when manic. During her brief teenage marriage, (it lasted less than a year)  K attempted to balance a checkbook and pay bills and such and it was a colossal failure.  (It didn't help matters that her husband was stealing checks from her and forging her signature)  On one hand, K is exceedingly frugal, to the point of being obsessive about it; she'll drive out of her way simply to save a few cents on gas or to buy something on sale.  On the other hand, we have no way to gauge how much is too much (we tend to overdo it) and we're generous to people and always try to help them out and many people (mostly boyfriends) over the years have taken advantage of that.

Most of us are non-materialistic.  (I'm being told, no-urged to say that.) There are periods of time scattered throughout the years in which K was responsible for herself, times when she had run away from her problems (financial and otherwise)  and started a new life elsewhere and had a job and even went to school several times over the years. At one time, she even owned a house of her own; she had to sell it when she suddenly decided to move to the other side of the country.  She'd up and disappear to a different state sometimes, the first time at about age 17.  In instances like that, her parents would use money as a lure to try and get K to come back home; but K was always a free spirit and wanted to be on her own and would often refuse to cash the checks her parents would send her.  She would rather ask passers-by for quarters all day long, (but  K was never a panhandler)  or sell her blood at the plasma center, if she wasn't making enough money at whatever job she happened to be holding at that time, rather than accept help.

K was very good at getting a job.  A job application was just paperwork after all, which we're good at, and the proper person almost always showed up for the interviews.  K would get a job and keep it for as long as she was able to maintain the facade of being "a regular person"; if someone suspected anything, or if her paranoia told us they did, then we'd just go home and never go back to that job. K did NOT ever tell anyone at her job(s) about her mental health problems; she was too ashamed and embarrassed and didn't want her co-workers to treat her differently.  What kinds of jobs did we have?  Well, K got her first job at a fast-food joint when she was 16 and after that she worked various jobs in retail (three times selling shoes, at one time she was actually the assistant manager at a funky little clothing store in the mall) or customer service, or in an office doing paperwork. I'm really good with paperwork, as long as I'm taking my medication properly and am not having a "schizo" day (which can happen at any time).  Stress is K's biggest trigger and eventually any and every job, no matter how trivial or mundane or even enjoyable, would become too stressful for her and she'd have a meltdown and usually quit her job without warning, or a lot of times she got fired for calling in sick too many times. (When our mental health was too fragile to deal with Real Life, or when the voices were so loud she couldn't hear herself think much less answer a phone, K called in sick.)

The older she got, the worse her mental illness got, and with age came new symptoms.  K had stopped taking her medication after she got married, because she'd lost her father's health insurance, and simply couldn't afford to pay for it on her own. (Psychiatric medications are very expensive) So she was off her meds for several years and during that time period, she had a number of "episodes".  I'm not sure how many, that was lifetimes ago and I don't even remember who that was.  Sometimes, though, I'd somehow end up at a clinic or doctor's office, and somebody would be kind enough to help me or advise me, and on many occasions I would see a doctor who would give me medication(s).  They'd usually make some sort of arrangements with me to come back, see a therapist or psychiatrist, and get medication refills.  A lot of these clinics had a sliding-scale fee, and I only had to pay what I could afford. I honestly don't know what would have become of me were it not for these clinics.

I bounced around from city to city, year after year,  but I tried very hard to maintain at least some type of medication schedule and therapy sessions.  There were years in which I lost my doctor for some reason (once I threatened to punch my shrink in the face and he threatened to call the police, so he was no longer my doctor after that) and thus had to go without medication for stretches of time every few years.  During these times, I'd hold it together for as long as possible, and then I'd crack.  First a tiny crack, then the whole fucking thing crumbles and emotions and thoughts and words come gushing out and I am just trying to stay afloat in a sea of crazy.  Sometimes when this happened, K could easily be influenced by the "wrong crowd" to do something bad, to shoplift or do something illegal, even though K is a good person and such behavior isn't like her...But I fear I've gotten way off the subject, which was supposed to be money.

I don't know if it needs to be said or if it's implied by my crazy ramblings, but in case you're wondering, no, K does not work anymore.  I'm embarrassed and ashamed to say that she last held down an actual job in approximately 1998.  After the year 2000, K applied for Disability-at the urging of her then-doctor (he told K that she had a "brain disease" and that she had no business trying to handle the stress of a job, which would only make her symptoms worse); up to that point, K didn't even realize that there was such a system in place to help people  like her.  The process was long and tedious and complicated and the only reason K was able to get through all the paperwork and interviews was the fact that she had a very dear friend, who happened to be disabled herself, (only her disability was physical rather than mental), and this friend walked K through the process.  She helped her fill out forms and applications-which seemed to be never-ending.  She accompanied K to interviews with mental health professionals and doctors and Social Security people.  Thinking about it now, and realizing how much she went through to get to the other side, I'm really surprised that K was able to successfully complete the application process and get her Disability payments-it literally took years to get all that stuff sorted out.  But she finally did, and she is now on Social Security Disability and has Medicare to help with her doctor's bills and prescriptions.  Otherwise, I'm not sure what might've happened to us.  Disability has saved K's life, literally.  She wouldn't have been able to continue with her existence were it not for the medical insurance she is now eligible for.  Thank the gods for Medicare and Medicaid!


Let me sum up.  Money is the root of all that is evil (K really feels this way), it changes people, it makes them greedy and selfish.  K has seen this phenomenon in Real Life, as in when one of her friends was in a bad car accident and received a hefty settlement; K finally cut him out of her life because he'd become so obsessed with the money, the possessions, the THINGS, that he was no longer the friend K knew and loved.  This has happened more than once and each time these things happen, it just proves to K that she is right about money being a bad thing.  Money is the devil.  We hate it.  We'd much rather live in a world where bartering was the norm.  K would love to trade paintings or handmade jewelry or some sort of art for food and clothes, etc. but unfortunately, that's just not the way it works in the Real World.  Too bad for K.

These days, K is married to a loving, generous man who takes care of her and the bills.  Sometimes K is able to write checks and see that the bills get paid on time, sometimes she can't even handle something as simple as that, and she must depend upon Husband to manage her money, or lack thereof.  It's difficult to stay on top of your finances when you have blackouts and can't remember writing checks or using a debit or credit card.  She definitely still struggles with money; they are on a tight budget to say the least, but things are much better and much less stressful now, and therefore K can relax, just a little bit, and not worry so much about being homeless. (Yes, this is one of her actual fears.)