TRIGGER WARNING !!!!

Over the past few weeks it’s been very hard to write a blog, so my apologies for not posting very much recently. The holidays have caused me to face some memories from my past which have been extremely difficult and that I have found very painful and challenging.

It all started with a new alter who emerged one day as I tried to give my little alters time, suddenly overwhelmed with emotion I felt scared and a sadness that was blacker than black. It felt dire and it really was difficult to feel, I tried to find out who these feelings belonged to and so I asked inside. Suddenly the new alter appeared, she’s aged I guess about 8 or 9, I’m basing that on two things one this is definitely a little alter and two the memories that have surfaced revolve around a very specific time period in my life. Her only questions to me were quite specific, ‘was she bad’ and ‘why did her mummy not love her’.

Trying to find answers to these questions was difficult, I know she is not bad but were does one start with the question regarding my Mother. My Mother clearly didn’t love me, not even for a minute and she was intent on making sure I knew that especially as a child. Yet even now I find it impossible to explain why, some tell me she was mad, others bad, I just see her as someone whose actions and reactions were incomprehensible to any sane person.

I was able the first time to sit with these feelings and reassure my alter who settled after a while and disappeared from my radar again. Over the next few days she kept appearing and mainly it was her feelings I felt, alongside the voice in my head which joins the cacophony of voices that I live with most days as a result of living with Dissociative Identity Disorder.

Over time my head was filled with memories of specific incidents and people, times in my past that I really wish I could leave behind. I found myself sitting and thinking, remembering what I did know yet had chosen to block away and yet at the same time dealing with memories of things I had not fully recalled before. Alongside these came the emotions that I guess stem from this time but which I have never really felt before, it’s as if I am reliving the events of decades ago.

It’s not time travel but it’s the nearest thing to it, I’ve been catapulted back to 1974 yet I’m living in 2015. I’ve travelled back to a small rented house on the edge of a mill town in Yorkshire, relived in my mind the horrors of a man who skilfully played me. I say skilfully play because that is what he did, he spent months grooming me in full knowledge my Mother wouldn’t object. My Mother introduced him to me when he was on bail for offences against children, she knew his bail terms and she allowed him to break them in our home; until he was sent to prison for his crimes against other youngsters.

He wasn’t like other abusers who bullied me, threatened me or were violent and aggressive towards me, no he was different he befriended me. He made me feel like I was safe, he provided stability in the utter chaos that was my existence back then and he cleverly orchestrated to break down my barriers and then psychologically played me. He spent months helping me with my school work, stepped in and protected me from my Mothers chaotic random behaviours and he gave me time and attention. In fact for years I thought this man was my friend, a friend who cared, who was a calming influence in my childhood. Then the memories began and about 10 years ago I started to realise things were not as idyllic as I had convinced myself they were. I began to remember his actions, the things that really happened that I had blocked out for so long. I realised it was at those times I had dissociated away to avoid the pain, but a part of me still lay there took the abuse and carried those memories that for years stay hidden from me.

It is this part I’m now engaging with, this child that is me who was betrayed and conned by a man who groomed me to such an extent that I didn’t need physical coercion in order to fulfil his requests, he psychologically had full control of me. This man had played with my head so much that looking back if he had told me to jump off a bridge into a deep river whilst weighed down with a heavy weight, I would have.

This man was a career paedophile who knew from the moment he first met me what he wanted to achieve. Then he skilfully worked at getting what he wanted, whilst at the same time making me carry all the shame and the guilt. This week that shame and guilt carried by my alter has for the first time really hit home with me, I have felt it and I am now trying to deal with it and survive.

To say shame and guilt is overwhelming would be an understatement, the feelings of disgust with myself is so bad that my skin feels like it’s crawling. I feel dirty, I feel soiled and I feel like I am bad.

I know logically none of the abuse was my fault, but what my head knows my heart doesn’t and so the emotions are intense as are the feelings they evoke. I have had such a strong desire to self harm this week that at one point I sat looking at tools to use, trying to decide which one was best. I haven’t planned in such a way for ages and it felt like a huge battle just to stay safe, thankfully with the help of additional medication I have been able to do so thus far.

My abuser will be old and wrinkly now I don’t think he is dead, I doubt he ever thinks of me but this past few weeks he is at the forefront of my mind. What happened over 40 years ago is being played out all over again.

My job now isn’t to dissociate it’s to keep talking with my alter, keep building a rapport and trust with her and it’s to feel my feelings that she’s held for so long. My job now is to learn to feel these emotions, and deal with them so that they no longer hold such a stronghold over me. As my psychologist told me this week this won’t be easy and it will take time and work. I know right now its a challenge and it hurts, it’s the first big test of the skills I have learnt in the past year of therapy. I can only hope I manage to survive this without too much damage or harm to myself.

Copyright DID Dispatches 2015