Well, the first ~6 hours of today were successful at work. But, now I’m starting to feel spacey and tired. Something is bothering me, I think, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. So I’ll try vomiting words on paper (or screen) until I figure it out.
If you ever hang out with T-E-C in person, you’ll notice we’re a pretty quiet bunch for the most part. We really don’t like to talk out loud, me especially. Talking was not, ah, encouraged by my father, especially at work. (I grew up in the family print shop. I was cleaning presses with industrial solvents in poorly ventilated areas while still in the single digits age-wise, which may have contributed to our lifelong breathing issues… but I digress.)
I remember the first time I ordered a pizza for delivery, I was terrified, absolutely terrified, of talking to them on the phone to order it. I convinced myself it was OK because I was paying them, but to this day, I always order online if it’s a choice. But the fucked up thing I’ve been reflecting on recently is how much I’ve internalized that silence. I have a hard time talking with my headmates internally, and even crazier, I have difficulty talking to MYSELF internally. I’m writing this to think, if that makes any sense.
Internally, I think a lot visually or in entire concepts at once. Part of what makes me good at what I do for a living is that I can easily visualize complex systems in my head. And that’s lovely to a point. But I also have to write things down a lot to really get into the details.
Thankfully, not everyone in the system is like this to the same degree, although we do have one child alter who is pretty much non-verbal. Janet is able to talk a lot more freely. Which is part of why she was host for such a long time. Now she’s “retired”, and I somehow got stuck with the job. Our relationships have suffered. Other than our Mom, we have no really close friends anymore, and we mask around her all the time.
Oh, poor me. Yada, yada… that wasn’t supposed to be the point of this blog. Sorry.
I’ve been especially struck by two posts lately – one was Braidid’s Patreon post about why she’s taken a step back from social media, and the other was a long comment by Flusterette on one of my previous blogs. They both have me thinking about the balance of dealing with DID and inner work vs. being a functional, healthy human in the outside world.
I know I can, for a time, stuff everything down and seem to be highly functional. That’s been the story of my career. For a few years, I can kick ass. Then I break down, and it sometimes takes us a year or two to get our shit back together. AH HAH, nailed it. That’s what’s bothering me. I’m afraid of having another breakdown. I haven’t been myself (har har) the past few weeks at work. At the same time, I’ve been spending more time on DID and trauma-related stuff. Related? Probably. Which is the chicken, and which is the egg?
In the past, all I had to worry about was kicking ass at work, and I could do that. Now I’m host and have all the responsibilities that brings, but I’m not sure how to live a healthy life. I’m a workaholic. I escape into my work and push everything else down. And that’s not healthy, even if it is financially lucrative. I’m a well-paid empty shell. At least, that’s what it feels like. Blogging and interacting with y’all helps me feel like more of a person, but then I’m not sure how healthy sharing all this stuff openly is either.
All this is therapy fodder, I guess. But my therapist doesn’t want to work with me as much as other parts, I feel. Probably because he gets somewhere with them. <laugh> Part of it goes back to that talking thing, I’m sure.
What I really need is for someone to teach me ASL and talk with me that way. <laugh> I took a partial semester of it in college, but we had to drop out. It made a lot of sense to me, though.
And work is pinging me; I’ve got to go.
You wrote:
“I know I can, for a time, stuff everything down and seem to be highly functional. That’s been the story of my career. For a few years, I can kick ass. Then I break down, and it sometimes takes us a year or two to get our shit back together. AH HAH, nailed it. That’s what’s bothering me. I’m afraid of having another breakdown. I haven’t been myself (har har) the past few weeks at work. At the same time, I’ve been spending more time on DID and trauma-related stuff. Related? Probably. Which is the chicken, and which is the egg?”
I’m glad you got some thoughts out. I can relate to having words when I type but being quieter in person. And I can also relate to the working-shell thing. I’ve had about 3 breakdowns in as many consecutive years, and been off work most of that time.
I can appreciate in my own way how scary that is, to think of facing it again. I think I know that fear all too well.
After my breakdown, all of my energy was spent trying to “get back to where I was,” and for a bit it seemed I could. I was still just a working shell, but I felt respectable, independent, and functional. But my superficial Identity was no longer compatible with the reality of who I’d become — a broken, hidden, empty shell, too afraid to commit to a dream and see it fall apart again; “getting it wrong” with how to live my life. I felt like a failure for not getting my career back.
I think that’s why I’ve struggled so much with Identity as of late; who I am is not healthy or functional, and I don’t know in what way I want that healthier part of me to dare to manifest next.
I think things ebb and flow with recovery, because that’s a part of healthy life. I think there’s an illusion that everything just levels out when things are better/healthier/more healed (at least for me; one of my delusions). But life is like crewing a ship and responding to the weather and the tides, the needs of the crew, and the needs for the destination, and even sometimes changing course or adjusting itinerary.
We gravitate one way (work and exterior perception), then we find we need to focus on other things, and adjust accordingly as we go. A breakdown is potentially avoidable if we can check-in with ourselves and make sure some compatible part of us is working a bit in each of the aspects of our life.
But sometimes, as feared as they are, a breakdown may become necessary. It’s absolutely shite, acutely and sometimes chronically. It can uproot one’s life, as it’s done to me. I’m not trying to pretend it won’t suck, if it has to happen.
However, in the grander scheme, and on the messed-up undulating spectrum of recovery and life itself, we’re still moving forward if have our wits about us.
And you certainly do. 😉