#repeating to myself i am not uniquely horrible. i just have severe trauma.

[cherry-pop-soda]

i refuse to let anyone tell me i’m unlovable or broken or too much anymore and that ESPECIALLY includes myself. i’m done with my own shit

[scaryarcade]

Hopefully this is okay to disscuss this kind of thing here. But in my own (and still on going) discovery of my plurarity ive found myself in a weird spot in DID/OSDD community where i relate to the some or most experiences of being a system but still feel like the way symptoms i DO experience is "wrong".

One of the examples i could give is criteria for DID/OSDD being "having repeated trauma before 6-9 years of age". But the only traumatic major event i can recall that started to affect me was at 11 years old. Before that age i almost zero memory from that period (which is terrifying on its own tbh). And from 11-13 i started devolping BPD and was probably the beggining of fragmatation of my identity/personality. My own dissociative spectrum feels more on then "just BPD dissociation when in stress" but still less severe in what you see in pwDID who have seperete identities. Though, lurking through your blog (im normal trust me /j) and knowing about "median system" did resionate with me a lot. I still feel like a huge imposter because i "dont have the worst trauma ever and have total seperate identities that make living hell", i for sure am disordered plural/system but i feel guilt when being plural doesnt completely ruin my life like it does with a lot of pwDID/OSDD. I am aware i probably have it better in this aspect of mental health in this community but i want to hear and knlw more about atypical/nonstereotyped way of living with DID/OSDD. And your blog gave me that comfort/closure i looked for so long lol. So honestly thank you for creating this little blog i appreciate you adding unique experience/opinions to the community a lot!!!!

I hope my ask is understandable and sorry for any errors i might have put here 😭😭

(Also im fucking losing it over the coincidence of sharing the same name/pronouns/age-range/interest ☠️☠️)

hi!! thank you for the ask + hell yes name twins!!! LMAO

i really appreciate you taking the time 2 share ur experience. there are a few things that came to mind while i was reading ur ask. this is not meant to imply you need to change how you view yourself/selves, but since you mentioned feeling like the way you experience symptoms is "wrong", you may find these things useful to know if you didn't already:

you do not have to recall trauma before the ages of 6-9 to be diagnosed with DID or OSDD! actually, you don't have to recall any trauma at all to receive a diagnosis.

anecdotally, there are a lot of people with DID who do not experience clear, rigid separation between parts/alters

also anecdotally, a ton of trauma survivors (especially those with complex and/or developmental trauma) struggle with imposter syndrome and feeling like they have it better than others.

i frequently feel guilty like i'm invading spaces/taking up resources/just generally don't belong in places for trauma survivors because "other people have it so much worse". this is a pretty normal way to feel, but it fucking sucks, so i'm really sorry you're dealing with what sounds like a similar feeling. i think this is what happens when we have been forced to spend a lot of time rationalizing the bad things that happen to us. mentally, we have to normalize and minimize our own trauma in order to endure it. so it's a lot easier to look at someone else's experience and go "wow that's horrible and traumatic!" than it is to do that with our own.

happy 2 hear that median terminology resonates with you!! it definitely was immensely comforting for me when i found a term that encapsulates the often REALLY confusing experience of, like. "we're separate people we're the same we're different from each other yes we are no we're not <3".

i'm rly glad to hear my blog has been a useful resource for u. i hope you know there is no threshold of suffering that you have to meet in order to deserve resources, support, and community. you belong here!

[ineffably-good]

Twice

Sometimes describing my feelings help so maybe it will today. Please skip ahead to the next post if you are here for GO content, as this is going to be personal and highly uncomfortable and probably something I’ll regret posting. If you’re triggered about dementia issues, this is not the post for you. 

If you’re interested, read it before I come to my senses and delete it. 

Image source: Julia Percival

Eleven years ago my mother died of Alzheimer’s. She was a complex, difficult lady and we had a complex, difficult relationship for most of our life. She coped well with the disease for the first seven years she had it, but the last years were a constant string of losses.

I went to a class once on dementia where they gave us a stack of post it notes and had us make one for each of the twelve things we cared about most in the world - family, friends, hobbies, places we like to go. Then for each stage of dementia, we had to pick three of those we were losing. It wasn’t so hard at first; there were some that were easy to give up. When you got to the severe stage and you only had two or three left, it was heartbreaking to choose what thing you would lose next -- your love for your only child? your memory of your spouse? I was only a few years past mom’s death and I cried so hard in that exercise that I had to leave the room. 

There's a word for the process of watching someone you love lose themselves to dementia. Anticipatory grief. They're gone before they're gone; you lose them while they're still living. Alzheimer’s is especially crushing because for a long time, the person is aware of what's happening and watching it from the inside. It's an awful, horrible disease. It is always fatal.  

In the end, she broke her hip, went to recover in a rehab facility, and died fairly soon thereafter. In the last six weeks of her life, she was nicer and kinder to me than she had ever been before, because she could no longer remember her grievances. When I went to visit (every day), she would recognize me and smile, even if she didn't know exactly who I was. The last thing she ever said to me was "oh it's YOU!" with a kind of childish joy I had never, ever heard from her.

I went through a really long grieving process after she was gone. It took me most of a year to get through a lot of it. I had a three year old who needed me every second, my marriage was undergoing some very serious challenges that year, and I had very little time to myself to process. On the one year anniversary of her death, I parked my car under a streetlight at night in the rain and sobbed for about two hours -- and after that I was a little better.

-- 

image source:  HANS-ULRICH OSTERWALDER

My father has always been the kinder, easier parent. Less angry, less difficult, easier to be around. We've always gotten each other's sense of humor and enjoyed each other's company. We've gotten much closer since Mom passed, because we were able to spend time together in a new way -- more relaxed, less formal. And he's been pretty healthy, until this year. He has only a couple minor health issues. He has one bad knee and has used a cane for a couple years. 

But now? Now my Dad unmistakably has dementia too. Not Alzheimer's, thank god. I think it's vascular dementia, which has its advantages, since it doesn't necessarily progress, and it's not inevitably fatal. But all of a sudden, he's wearing dirty clothes over and over. He can't remember to get his mail. He's repeating things all the time and has little memory of conversations once they are over. Staff in the senior living community where he lives have been pulling me aside here and there to express concern.

I thought it was depression from being cooped up since February; everyone is suffering from that, or just normal aging memory loss. But his doctor called me earlier this week and told me they don't think he's taking his medicines, and when I asked him about it he happily admitted he's stopped taking most of them because he forgot what they were for. No big deal. I went to straighten that out with him today and found him with fifteen different bottles of half full, half-expired pills, none of which he'd been taking, and it took two hours of work to set up the pillbox and answer the same five questions ninety times and draw him a list with pictures of what each pill is and then quiz him on what he's going to do tomorrow morning to find the pills he needs and I *still* don't think he can do it.

So now I can't deny it anymore. He has dementia. He's barely coping.  

Luckily he's moving into assisted living in about three weeks and will have his pills brought to him after that, so this is a short term emergency that I'm going to have to manage on a daily basis. I can do that.

Image source: I’m sorry. I don’t f#@&ing know. I’m very tired and it wasn’t attributed. This one is my mental state. Getting that? Hahahahaha. 

I can do that. And I will. But... but...

I am realizing that I'm having the quiet equivalent of PTSD, facing my second parent with dementia.

I've done this before and I will do it this time and I’ll get through it. I’m fucking resilient. My sister lives too far away to help with the daily stuff, although she’s concerned and grateful. My husband can’t take a shift or a visit because he can’t get into the building where my dad lives. (I get in on a loophole because I work there. Otherwise no visit until COVID ends, otherwise known as forever.) Just me. This is all on me. And I won’t even list the otherwise whopping pile of stress and responsibilities in my life. This is a focused post. *ahem* 

There is a unique trauma to starting this process for a second time. And damn is there not anything out there on the interwebs for how to survive this process a second time. 

So. That’s me. Not sure why I’m sharing this. 

Advice, hugs, or happy thoughts -- cat pictures? sick jokes? -- happily accepted. 

Or, you know, we just go on with our lives. :) As one does.