Back in one of the first posts on this blog, Saoirse explained how they usually did bathroom duties, while Janet was programmed to be pretty oblivious to those body-needs. Well, now that Saoirse and Janet are one, the bathroom signals aren’t really making it through until the VERY last minute. That’s putting pressure (of a very real physical kind) on others into the system to venture into the bathroom to take care of business. Saoirse was a protector, and braved the evil bathrooms of the world…. we seem to have kind of lost that. Bathrooms are very high on the list of triggering places for T-E-C, so this is not a minor inconvenience.
I don’t carry any bathroom trauma myself, but a couple of the kiddos do, and if I’m around they usually aren’t that far away, so I have to be careful. Wanderer could probably do it, but they don’t surface very often, they mostly stay in the inner world. So, which subsystem is going to own bathroom duties… or dooties, as the case may be?
I guess I have to explain what I mean by subsystem, as I’m not sure I use it the same way its used these days in the DID community. Basically, a member of a T-E-C subsystem is a lot closer to the other members of the same subsystem than to the rest of T-E-C as a whole. Members of a subsystem are a lot more likely to be co-conscious with each other, or to switch between each other. The different subsystems also have their own sections of the inner world, and elect their own representative for the ruling council.
What I’ve read recently is that subsystems are usually found in polyfragmented systems (systems with a ton of alters), and are essentially DID within DID. Which is kind of what we experience, and kind of not. I mean, we’re still all T-E-C, and there aren’t that many of us these days… Of course, the idea popped in my head “What if all of T-E-C is just a subsystem of a larger system?” I strongly don’t think that’s the case, but its that kind of thing is excellent insomnia material. 😉
The whole ruling council thing, which we’ve used for something like 35 years, is based on being a system with three subsystems. Is Jes a subsystem of one? Right now Jes has Saoirse’s seat on the council, but it feels unbalanced power wise now that one subsystem has apparently totally fused. (Interestingly enough, neither of the other two subsystems have ever had a fusion – those only happened in Jes’ line.)
Is Jes the Borg? Will we all be assimilated? More insomnia fodder. I don’t want to fuse. I’m happy like I am, even with having two versions of myself. (There is a 13 year old me and a 17 year old me. We share a memory bank, but are subtlety different.. We don’t count ourselves as being separate alters, though. We’re kind of half-split?)
ANYWAY, bathrooms. I think we’ve had like one shower in 3 weeks. It’s bad. And I take partial responsibility for that. I usually step in and do that when its needed, but I’ve been, well, strong armed out of driving a lot more than I used to be.
I used to be able to break in and become a driver pretty easily. I even wrote a blog post on how I did it. But Jes is strong with the Force, and I haven’t figured out how to get around that yet. So this entire long winded post is basically me leading up to….
Jes, if you’re going to hog the driver’s seat, you’ve GOT to take better care of the body. We totally suck at it anyway, but its gone downhill. Also, if *you* are having nightmares and flashbacks, newsflash, its probably coming out of my subsystem. We’re a pot that boils over into the rest of the system. I have some very freaked out kiddos right now, and the last thing I need to do is take the risk of having one close by while I try to take a shower. That’s like asking for a major flashback territory.
I’ve given you time, because I know you’re going through a lot yourself as you work out who you are, but hon, it’s time to step up, Take a blessed shower.