Inside... Where We Live (Alayna)

Image credit: Values.com

Last night Mama was talking to Cadie and she said that we have suddenly all stopped communicating about our inside struggles. We haven't been using our secret group to communicate with each other and the blog has been all but ignored. We rarely post in our own group about our struggles but we always have time to support our friends and group members. We have pulled ourselves inside and we are proverbially circling the wagons. We are not sharing at all what goes on inside, and we barely talk to anyone about what goes on outside. We have thrown ourselves totally into supporting others.

Mama said it has to stop. That we need to value ourselves and talk about how we are doing. She's right, the best way we can think of to help others is to share ourselves. So now we are going to work on really being open. No hiding.

Inside we have a resort, a main house, a lake, gardens, a huge forest, and several different places where some of us hang out. It's nearly impossible to translate into words so at some point we may take it one section at a time, but mostly what I'm trying to say here is that our inside world is vast, comfortable, and a real place.

Most importantly, inside is our sanctuary. It's not always a cool place tho. I mean crazy things happen up there as we deal with things on the outside. And its so so so hard to explain it when it all sounds like some crazy imagined soap opera all of the time.  That's like a huge part of the reason we started looking for Facebook groups to be a part of, because we needed a place to be around others like us. What we found instead, for the most part, was judgmental systems calling each other fake. And if you think Facebook is bad, you should see Tumblr. All of these places that could be so cool end up being drama and we have enough inside drama to last several lifetimes, we don't need more from places that should be supportive and fun.

I wanna tell the world about us. I wanna make the world understand that this body is simply a shell holding one huge beautiful fucked up chaotic world. That the world inside of us needs to be cherished, blessed, loved, and protected. That world, the inside world, is what saved us during almost 30 years of abuse. The body is 34. My oldest sister is 17. The rest of us are all under 17. The outside world can't seem to understand how this works, but that's okay.

Inside I am a purple dragon hybrid. My name is Alayna Jade. I am 15 years old-ish in human terms. I have no idea where I came from or how. I just remember showing up here. Mama says I'm a pretty typical 15 year old who has no impulse control, a serious attitude problem, and a strong desire to do what I want. My favorite pet outside is Howard, the black lab. Inside I really love flying over the fields and mountains. I have a long history of starting fires and causing mayhem in general in the inside world. Due to that, I have the pleasure of being supervised by the largest dragon I think I've ever seen. His name is Dae, Dae and his mate, Lianna, guide a rather large brood of young dragons. They provide some internal protection as well as supervision for me haha. Not long ago we found our sister, Shiloh, and discovered that she's a 4 year old baby blue dragon. She's sweet as hell and I totally love her.  Its become my job (with Dae too) to teach her flight and to keep her safe. She's got the dragon attitude and I love it so much.

I have a bedroom in the main house. I also have a cave in the Dragonspan. I can be either dragon or teenage girl. I hate how this body doesn't reflect me in either form. Lots of times I threaten to eat my little sisters if they annoy me.  I love with my whole heart, on the rare occasions that I love at all. I will walk all over anyone if I'm not convinced they are stronger than me. I have no idea how to cook, how to pay bills, how to raise children, or even how to decide what to eat for myself (turns out the outside world frowns on dragons eating other animals.....). I struggle with remembering that the outside body matters, and matters a lot.

I feel numb to most of the outside world but emotionally I'm a big open gaping wound. And when all of that gets too much, I have been known to cut and self harm. Daddy has forbidden self harm which was kind of a dick move really, but I'm allowed to (and supposed to) talk to him and Mama when those feelings take hold so they can help. I don't do that often enough.

I kinda think I'm around inside because dragons are safe and good protectors. I'm a horrible protector for the most part. I do, however, think I'd step up and do some real damage if I ever have to, in order to protect my sisters. Sometimes it doesn't seem like it, but I do love them.

That's me, inside and out.

Love,

Alayna Jade

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

Our Aching Feet.....

Most weekday mornings we head out for a walk. We aim for anywhere between 3 and 5 miles, although sometimes we're lucky to hit two miles.... haha.  The walks weren't something we could really do in our old life. We didn't feel safe enough or comfortable enough and it always seemed like our time was better spent in other ways. Here, though, we are greeted every morning by this sight:

Our mountains wish us good morning (taken 11/1/15 with the samsung S6 around 7:45am).

We really didn't think the walks were accomplishing much except for aching feet. (Pretty sure we have a muscle/tendon problem in the right foot, but no pain no gain, right?!). When Mom realized we were serious about the walking she decided we needed new shoes and that has helped a lot (stupid arch in the right foot is still killing us tho....shhh). We seriously had no shortage of aches and pains but we own a mirror and nothing seemed to be changing. It was getting pretty disappointing, which was leading to feelings of defeat and failure. Those feelings were, in turn, fueling some massive bad energy and I'm willing to bet causing us to overreact to other things. We were getting tired of seeing this (see picture below) and still feeling rejected and worthless (other things contribute to that feeling but this wasn't helping):

This a partial screen shot of our Fitbit Flex today (11/1/15).

The negative emotions were eating us alive. We were second guessing a lot of our recent major decisions and trying to figure out how we had screwed up so badly in life. We were trying to figure out what was wrong with us and why we are always rejected and/or left behind. It was just bad. If you've read other posts, you know how bad things got. Everyone in this house was dealing with their own problems and adjusting to their transitions in their own way. Everyone was battling big things... and we were sick. We spent almost all of last week with a bad cold and a mild fever. That helped NOTHING at all, especially because we couldn't safely go for our walks. We could barely make it safely across the driveway. 

Being down for the count last week, having to rest and not walk seemed like a great thing. It seemed so wonderful to not ache and not deal with the arch pain in our right foot. It continued to seem like that, but our life seemed to be falling apart at the same time. We were a mess, our life felt like a huge mess. 

Thursday of last week Mom insisted that we were not only going on our walk, but that we would complete two miles before coming home. Honestly, I (meaning me, Alayna) was pretty sure she had lost her mind because we were still running a slight fever so in my mind we were still sick. Sick kids don't go for walks. Sick kids binge on Netflix. I wanted us to binge on Netflix. Needless to say, if you've ever met my mother, we lost and we went for our 2 mile walk. We lived through it and Jenna at least, was pretty proud of us for getting it done. Then we went back to hanging out with Netflix. (side note: Netflix is pretty much our only friend here, so we're pretty attached...lol)

Friday morning comes around and Mom, once again, insists on a 2 mile walk. We ended up with close to 2.5 miles on Friday. 

By yesterday, we realized that when we don't walk, we miss a lot of benefits from walking. We miss our park, our mountain, and our trees.

More importantly, we miss out on the good feelings that come from walking. We've always heard that walking releases endorphins and raises mood, blah blah blah. I can honestly tell you that the blah blah blah is real. Our mood and our life was spiraling out of control because we weren't doing what we needed to do in order to take care of ourselves. No, we shouldn't be walking when we're sick but we could have tried sooner. Mom knew though. She knew how badly we relied on that, even when we didn't. She made the choice to force us back into it knowing we didn't feel well. 

That's not to say that our problems as a family were all due to a lack of walking. God I wish it were that easy. No, we as a family have a lot of work to do in order to make everyone feel welcome, safe, and happy. But we can make it better on ourselves and, in turn on our family, by keeping up with our walking. 

This morning, while we were hanging out in Mama's room watching her go through her laundry, she had us try on some pants. Almost everything she gave us to try on fit, and most of them were smaller than what we already had. She had noticed that we were struggling to keep our pants up. We noticed too, kinda, but figured we stretched them out or something. We never considered that we were ready for smaller pants. Her scale (which she only lets us use once a week) showed us today that we have lost 30.2 pounds since we moved here in August. That's huge. It's seriously huge and we never noticed. I spent a bit looking in the mirror today, and I really can't see it. The neighbor sees it. Aunt Leslie says she sees it in pictures. Mom says she sees it. We just don't.

What we do see: Our hair is growing back thicker and in much better shape, our nails are getting healthier, our blood sugar is almost always close to perfect and a blood sugar level of 90 feels great. When we first moved here 130 triggered a low reaction. Our average blood sugar sat around 300 and refused to budge.  

Today, after completing 3 miles and seeing the scale, the clothes fitting differently, and spending some not emotional, perfectly normal time with Mama, I feel good. Not only do I feel good, I feel hopeful, strong, and I feel a weird sort of peace. I don't really feel safe yet, that I think will come in time. I think I need to work on not pushing myself to feel safe. Pushing this system to feel something we aren't ready for or can't seem to grasp always seems to lead to disaster. I think I'm going to do my best to keep my sisters and I looking ahead and I'm going to keep building my support system. I love my family and I won't give up.

Alayna Jade

Office Hours, Processing, and Jessa

We, or maybe just I, seriously need "office hours". We need to dedicate a time where we can just write, research, learn, grow, think... and to process things. I process things through reading and writing, and using our cell phone to research and write is a lesson in futility... or maybe a lesson in patience... or possibly a bit of both. With so many changes in our life recently processing is soooo seriously necessary.

Right now I'm hiding away in my room with a laptop and music. I feel at peace today. Its a much needed feeling because the family has struggled with transitioning and adjusting and we take the blame for that. We all, as in all 11 of us, take the blame and that gets to be a bit complicated sometimes because we can't possibly ALL be responsible for the family struggling. I started wondering a few days ago why we do that. I started to really think about it but got stuck because I can't seem to process anything without writing and I'm out of notebooks to hand write things in. I prefer writing online anyways.

Why do we automatically assume that we are responsible or to blame for everything?

Well, its certainly not because we believe we are THAT important or because we feel everything revolves around us. That is definitely not it.

After some thought (and a few song changes) I think its because we have been blamed for everything that has gone wrong since early childhood. I don't want to be one of those people who place the blame elsewhere or who complains endlessly about their past, but our childhood is kinda how we ended up a "we" in the first place. Oh... just thought of this possible reason too.... if we take the blame for everything then we don't have to face conflict.

I think that's a real possibility... and I think thats part of what's going on with Jessa. Jessa is the oldest (in age) but still about 16 years old. She's the main protector and has shouldered that responsibility for a long time. She has single handedly made decisions for the system and decided for what we will and won't accept/take responsibility. She's been told before that it would one day backfire, and I think that day may have come.

We are safe here. We have parents, the treasures are here and safe. We have a family. We have extended family now. We have loving aunts, an amazing nana, and the treasures have that too (along with some cousins... whoot!). We have supervision, guidance, and space to be ourselves in entirety. And we have NO idea what to do with all of this. Add to that an absolute inability to understand how to deal with conflict and some seriously immature social skills and you get an epic disaster and an overall emotional explosion.

That's where Jessa is, I think. She's pretty much not communicating at all with anyone at all. She's almost perfect in her politeness. She's staying calm, polite, civil, and out of the way. She's doing her best to not ruffle feathers and is taking care to be productive and useful. And she's miserable. What's worse is that she can't see how uncomfortable and sad she's making other people. She's stuck and can't find her way out of it and refuses to discuss anything with any of her trusted adults because she doesn't want to cause them any trouble. Maybe she doesn't really trust anyone. Maybe she's too scared to be vulnerable.

Vulnerability is a hard one for me, personally. I hate admitting weakness and traditionally my fears, anxieties, and weaknesses have been met with exploitation or just ignored in general. That doesn't inspire me to open up and be vulnerable. I have zero good experience with being vulnerable and I have a hard time talking about hard feelings and emotions when the conversation doesn't change anything. Too many times in my existence people have said they care, they love me, they are going to help me... and then they disregard and ignore my anxieties and leave me literally struggling to breathe and to not dissociate while they go out and have a good time. That kinda gets old. I know Jessa sees that too and she's usually the one that has to help me function through my anxiety so that might make it hard for her to trust too. I'm really not sure.

I know that me, Mia, and Jenna are working our way through some self-help workbooks. We are doing our very best to teach Lyssa and Cadie what we are learning and we are working hard at applying what we are learning. I think its been helping. I mean, we don't feel much different, but family life seems to be running more smoothly.

Now that I think about it, I believe part of why its running more smoothly is because we have finally let go of a power struggle we were having with Mom. We can NOT keep saying we trust her and then treat her like we don't. We understand what we are doing and why, but she doesn't always and that's not fair. And she has her own emotional shit-storm to process too. It doesn't make it any easier for anyone in this house to bond or function well and somehow Dad seems to end up in the middle of it all and that's not cool either.

Mom and Lex had a really really good talk yesterday. Lex has settled in at the age of 4 years old but we have strong reasons to believe she's the original. We did learn yesterday that she understands things far better than we ever gave her credit for. Alexandria has been around for as long as any of us can remember. She hasn't always been active, but she's always been there. Lurking. She's a clever little girl who proved yesterday that she can listen, understand, and apply what she's given for information. It takes her a little while to process everything, if she retains it, but when she applies it she has the ability to calm the entire system and calm our inner world.

I know this is all over the place. I'm about to jump topics again. I need to get it all down now and I can come back later over time and chip away at it.

Triggers... we aren't handling some of our triggers very well. Some of them are worse than we originally thought. Some are really hard to swallow and we are left feeling very alone with them. Others aren't so bad and are clearing up a little, I need to explore the relationship between trust and our triggers.

External people. We have been recently made aware that not all of "us" are accepted by everyone we are around on a regular basis. That has been a bit of a blow. We understand are completely accepting of the fact that not everyone has to accept us all. That part isn't the issue. It's trying to figure out how to keep everyone around us comfortable and happy.

Everyone.

That's kind of a big job. Maybe we shouldn't be worried about keeping everyone happy and comfortable. But if we don't, we are going to lose people we want to keep around. Or lose out on their time and attention. Ick. That's going to take more thought.

Moving on.... Dad's home and dinner will be ready soon.

So I read a really great blog post today about DID being an injury vs an illness. It was such an eye opener. I shared it on our Facebook and can post it here if anyone's interested. DID is not an illness. We are not contagious. We have not contracted a sickness. No amount of meds will make it go away. What it is, is an injury. We were injured at a very young age. Someone deliberately hurt us.

Dad just cut me off.

Later!


~Layna

Except when we don't. Because we are a family and we are real. And lately, we do "leave people out, hurt feelings, yelling, door slamming, frustration, and unrealistic demands of each other". Awesome, huh?

We're a new family. We are still transitioning and learning how to be a family. Every single person in this family... from our system, to the parentals, to the youngest of the treasures.... has issues they are working through. It's like a sea of damaged people coming together and trying to mesh to become this thing called family. Only most of us have no idea what family is or is supposed to be. We all have these ideas in our head that should be good enough but they don't mesh with other ideas and it causes tension and problems. Everyone in this house is trying to learn their place, the rules, the routine. Everyone in this house is struggling with poorly set expectations, dealing with major triggers on a daily basis and being expected to be fine with that, and trying to be what each other needs despite the chaos and lack of communication. Everyone is expecting things from each other that simply can not be obtained... not because anyone is lazy or refusing, but because the skill set isn't there and full trust isn't there yet.

To most, this would look like a recipe for a serious disaster. Honestly, it kinda felt like one for the last few days.

But it's not. It's real. It's raw, its messy, its painful. It's hard and its complex. Without love, it would be doomed. But there's love in this house and in this family. None of us ever give up. We make it through and we come out better for it. We all learn. We all grow. 

This family will make it. Failure isn't an option here.

The Worst is Over Now.....

.... so what the fuck is wrong with us?

Cadie touched on it some yesterday. Not gonna rehash that, its boring crap anyways.

I woke up in a fairly decent mood... and then I had to get out of bed. Instantly everything was stupidly overwhelming. I couldn't remember who was supposed to do what (thank God for the schedule/checklist Mama made), or what time anything was supposed to happen. I made it through most of it without taking it out on the kids, which is good because its not their fault they were born to a mommy who is falling apart, and I hit the shower. I was seriously relived to see the neighbor (who is more like an uncle/nanny) sitting in the living room directing the kids to finish up their morning routine. It was one less thing I had to focus on and my good mood returned.

Uncle Neighbor and I took the kids to school. Right before we left Girl 2 mentioned that today is half-day Wednesday. That totally caught me off guard because I had forgotten all about the half days every Wednesday. On the way home he mentioned plans for today that we had no idea were happening and immediately the anxiety creeped back in and the mood was shattered. Cadie had asked yesterday what the plans were for today and the answer she was given and had emotionally prepared for did not match how this morning was portraying the day. I spent the rest of the walk home wondering if we have finally shattered emotionally. We never used to have a routine, stability, or structure, so why is it now that the smallest deviation from what we have emotionally prepared for launches a full blown anxiety attach? Kenzie is a fucking emotional disaster and I know that is a large part of our issues. Jessa is back but has no faith in herself or her abilities to keep us safe and well. I'm not sure I can do it either, but I know Jessa can.  She's always done it before.

I have such a headache this morning. The anxiety is too bad to even try to eat.

In a Land Far Far Away....

we have a story. a long one. doesn't everyone?

my name is cadie. i'm a member of a well established DID system. the body is 33 years old and the mother of 4 children under the age of 12. our system is made up of 10 of us, including the original. we have been hiding for a very long time and recently that has changed. we no longer have to hide.

for the first time in about 30 years, we are somewhere completely safe and with people who are determined to keep it that way. we are getting help parenting, and learning new skills, and learning to make better choices. in order to do this we had to move 2200 miles from the place this body was born and raised. all of that happened about 20 days ago.

there are 10 of us in this system. im cadie and im 12-14ish but im also an age slider so i end up all kinds of ages, but never over 15. the 10 of us consider ourselves sisters and are pretty much like your typical sibling group. we fight, argue, and irritate, but we protect fiercely.

lexi is 3. she's can't read or type so she won't be contributing here. truthfully she doesn't care about much except the color yellow, toys, and snuggles.

hayley is 4. she likes pink, and unicorns, hello kitty, and snuggles from mommy and daddy.

bri is 5. she likes unicorns, blue, and stickers with her daddy.

kenzie is 6. she's the core/original. she hates her legal name and refuses to have any part of it. she likes to be safe and feel loved.

josslyn is 9. she loves butterflies.

lyssa is 12. she's emotional, argumentative, and confusing.

jenna is 15. she's nurturing and calming. she takes on too much and overthinks everything.

layna is 16ish. she's the secondary protector. she can be cold, hard, and immovable. she often makes people wish they had never met us. she can be completely compliant, or completely definant/rebellious and there's rarely a good explanation of why.

jessa is 17. she's the main protector. up until recently she had no real emotions and no real use for anyone outside of our system.


many of us will probably be writing here. we'll be doing it more for our family and each other than anyone else, but we welcome new friends. see, our recent move, and the circumstances that led up to the recent move, seem to have shaken the system in a huge way. the move is a good thing. the best thing for us, but change seems to hit us hard.

we're finding that not having to hide, while being a relief, is really really really painful to adjust to. its something we need and desperately want, but it's like being in the dark for years and then stepping into the sunlight. its warm and welcoming, but its blinding and painful.

we are living with mama and daddy. they adopted us and are teaching us all kinds of things we should have learned forever ago. they accept and love each of us, and all 4 of our babies. they are amazing people with infinite amounts of patience, while keeping control and structure in place which is something we have never had. the structure and rules are comfortable like a hug. the organization here is intriguing because we've never experienced anything like it. the whole experience has almost been surreal so far, and is almost too good to be true. their neighbor is a goofy guy who has fallen into the "manny" role with surprising ease.

too good to be true.

we are terrified of fucking this up. we are so afraid of screwing it up, in fact, that we're an emotional disaster. to be fair there are other reasons for the emotional chaos right now too but that's a huge one. we don't deserve anything like this. we don't have a history of being good girls or making good choices. what right do we have to such an incredible life?

im having a hard time centering my thoughts i think. earlier today jessa fell apart and her emotions are affecting me a lot. she's afraid that she's messed up a lot of stuff and momma left to go run errands and jessa was scared to be alone.... she was sure she was going to fail at her job protecting us. right now we kinda don't need a protector because we're well protected and i think that's actually a huge part of jessa's problem. she's wondering what her role is. we're all wondering where we fit in and if we actually belong because we don't seem to have a purpose and we definitely aren't very useful here. when jessa freaked, layna went to comfort her and now we have no idea where either of them are and that kinda sucks and is really scary because we were alone and because we love them both so much and jessa is our gatekeeper. i don't think she realizes how good she does.

jenna has been with the littles, keeping them calm. they were really scared. a lot of this is scary but not in a bad way. its hard to explain. i just lost my train of thought tho and this is really long enough right now.


~cadence danielle~