Around the Fire Pit

I took this picture last night while being social! 

I was in the living room with Mama yesterday afternoon. Mama says "My friend is having a fire tonight and I really want to go." I looked up from my phone long enough to mumble "Go for it. I'll watch the other kids." Don't judge. I was bubble popping. Bubble Witch Saga is addictive, people. 

Mama sort of rolls her eyes and sighs. I clearly missed a point somewhere. Again, don't judge. Bubbles... priorities. She says "I want you to make friends too. I want you to want to go places." I put the phone down (I KNOW! It nearly killed me.) and thought about it for a minute. We had agreed to trust her. She's worked hard to earn our trust. We had all agreed to step outside of our comfort zone occasionally. And to be entirely honest, a fire pit on an early summer night sounded like a really great idea. So I agreed. 

I was pretty nervous. I had no idea whether they knew about the DID, about all of us, anything. I was chatting with a bestie on messenger who said "Kaysie, just be yourself. Don't worry about them not knowing about the DID." I realized at that point that he was right. It didn't matter, it still kind of doesn't matter, whether they do or don't know. Last night it was just me. Just Kaysie. 

The new friends have a beautiful home, a beautiful yard, and a beautiful dog. Like, I'm in love with their dog. The fire was bright and warm, the company was open and friendly, and the kids made new friends. Mama was relaxed. There was a lot of laughter, some nice conversation, and a general safe and comfortable feeling.

When I woke up this morning I realized something kinda huge. We were at a fire. Granted a fire pit, but still a fire. Most of our little ones have an intense fear of fire due to our childhood abuser threatening to burn our house down with us in it if we ever told. Not one of the little ones was scared last night at all. Some people were drinking and there was a fire. No one was even close to being out of control and the fire was contained and maintained. The entire situation was safe, comfortable, and really nice.

I hope we get to do it again. I really liked these new friends.

-Kaysie

Shadow People in the Closet

Image Credit:  http://thehorrormoviesblog.com/2015/06/16/shadow-people/

I'm physically in the livingroom. My mom is with me. She's knitting and watching TV and I am working on DID awareness stuff and keeping up with the support group we run on Facebook for DID. I'm coughing, clearing my throat, and gasping for breath, Mama mumbles under her breath.

"I wish I could break into the closet and strangle them"

I heard her. To an outsider this makes no sense, but to me she just said "I love you." It takes a bit of the fear out of this scary situation. Mama is here. Mama is watching. Mama cares.

Our inside world has been through incredible changes since last August. One of these changes happened over the last month. It was the opening of a gate inside, a gate guarded by a sweet 3 year old. Olly had guarded her gate faithfully for almost 20 years, but time has a way of changing things. The gate opened when it was ready and we welcomed Olly, Sami, Trinity, Shiloh, and Andee. They are a group of sweet and fun little girls that we affectionately call the C-Continuum. They hold a lot of memories, triggers, and fears from the body's childhood years. They were not alone though.

Also behind that gate is a group of shadows. They are people but no one, not even the C-Continuum has ever seen them. They arrived some time after Sabrina posted Olly at that gate and they "shut off the lights" and made it cold. When the gate opened, the littlest ones chose to come out and join the rest of us. The shadows retreated into a closet and locked the little ones out. Or locked themselves in.

From that moment we get choking sensations a few times a week. It happens around eating, strong emotion, or at seemingly random times. There's never any actual lasting damage done, but it's uncomfortable and hard to fight through. At first I believed they wanted the body dead. Sami agreed and said that's definitely what they want. I had decided to leave them, and the entire closet, alone.

Over the last two weeks I've noticed an increase in posts in our group about "angry" or "challenging" alters and Brina and I have educated many about patience, love, and kindness when these parts don't seem to want it. So I was reading yet another post a minute ago while regaining my breath when it dawned on me.

We aren't taking our own advice. We need to show love, kindness, and patience. We need to remind them that the body is safe, our life is safe, and we are surrounded by love. Most of all, that they are welcome to join us and receive the safety and love.


-Kaysie

Time Flies!

Its been over a month! I know, it sucks for me too. It turns out we despise trying to write a blog post on our cell phone. Our laptop is touchy and we really don't like being at the big computer with our back to the room, and the big computer takes forever to load stuff and its frustrating so we often don't bother. But then we don't write!  And Lord knows we need to write. We all do better writing and writing on paper isn't happening anymore.

Journaling is really helpful for most of us. Hand writing feels awkward and we all feel reluctant to have our thoughts laying around on paper. At least here we can make things private if we need to or want to, or we can share them with the world anytime we want to.

There are about 9 of us active right now.... they are....

Me (Kaysie)
Alayna
Jenna
Cadie
Lyssa
Hayley
Abby
Zoey
Bella

Bella isn't fronting at all unless absolutely necessary. The rest of us are handling day to day life as best we can. Its been tricky because we had to make the very hard choice to give our dog to our ex for reasons that are best for her....mostly health reasons. She was our therapy dog... our bond was tight and we miss her like crazy. Its only been a week but the chaos its created is nuts. Everything from feeling alone, abandoned, unsafe, unable to trust, attachment issues, and overwhelming sadness. I'm hoping it all starts to settle down soon.

Because everything is mixed up we have been working on new ways to stay connected and together. We have found a way to communicate outside when communication inside is tricky and the parents have been monitoring everything to make sure we can ask them whats been going on and they can help us out. They have been pretty patient too. We want to start writing more too.

Thats about it for now...

Kaysie

Reflection

So I just read an article. An article that caused some heavy thoughts and some goosebumps. I'll link the article to the bottom of my rambling because I want to process this out. In short summary, the article was about the author's opinion of comments made about a 14 year old girl who completed suicide after having a sexual relationship with her adult teacher. The author herself had a past filled with willing sex with adult men. She wrote that she was 25 before she realized that the men who consented to sex with her were pedophiles.

That struck a chord with me.  This body's first sexual partner was 40+ years old when the body was 4 years old. By 14 this body was having cyber and phone sex with grown men who knew the truth about our age. By 17 we had miscarried a baby, not with our original abuser, but from an adult man who introduced us to the BDSM lifestyle. One we entered willingly and thought we needed. At 18 we allowed ourselves to be prostituted.  We met our husband online at 17, married at 21, and had an active BDSM life with him until we hit mid 20s and started to realize that something wasn't right.

We consented to nearly everything.  We initiated a lot of it. We grew riskier at every turn. But looking back now, we weren't emotionally equipped to consent to sex. We had no business at all consenting to these relationships. I doubt if we are emotionally equipped to consent to sex now (one of many reasons we are no longer with said husband). 

We learned to use sex to manipulate situations at a very young age. We learned to submit to the desires of grown men in exchange for affection and we called that love.

What we didn't learn was boundaries.  We didn't learn self control. We didn't learn self respect, love, affection, or mutual desire. We didn't learn self worth or value. And it took until this year, when Mom and Dad took us in for it to become obvious to us.

Reading that article brought it all home for me. I'm not sure all of us get it now, but the article wrapped it up in a neat little package and threw a bow on it for me. It also explains our crazy strong reaction to our 46 year old neighbor having a relationship with the 17 year old across the street who has been in and out of the foster care system.  Yes, she's consenting, but she's got about 5 to 10 years before she really gets it. And I ache for her.  And I loathe him.

This protector gets its now.

Kaysie

http://www.xojane.com/issues/stacey-rambold-cherice-morales