Yup, We Have A Disorder.

Janet here with Saoirse close by.  A few days ago I wrote a “Do we have a disorder” blog entry.  I was feeling really good and positive, and was about to play MTG with friends, and yeah, from my POV everything was going swimmingly.

Enter reality.

Everything is not going swimmingly, but maybe we’re healing all the same?  There are two main things going on in the system right now.

Susan, who is all of 9, has been rescued.  Yes, it took us decades to do it.  She is, if not the most traumatized part in T-E-C, at least tied for it.  We have suppressed her for decades, out of fear mainly.  Partly initially out of fear that she’d do something harmful to the body – a long time ago, she would self-harm. But also just because of the sheer weight of what she carries, which is the majority of the sexual abuse T-E-C experienced.  Susan was made to carry shame and to quite literally be the one who got, uh… yeah. well, you probably get the picture. 

Think T-E-C are good people?  Except for Sharon, we basically all ignored Susan for decades.  Push her down, push her down.  Don’t want to see that, don’t want to feel that.  Sure, the pot would boil over occasionally and a flashback would burst out, but Susan had remained bottled up in her own private hell for all this time. It’s not so much that we maliciously kept her there – in my case I kind of simply forgot about her.  Simply forgot?  Ok, I dissociated.  A lot.

But now she’s out, she’s been to the council hall, she’s sharing a room with Carol Ann, and…. the emotions have been strong.  Even Saoirse has burst out into tears this week and sobbed.  But again, during my Sunday post, I simply dissociated away from all that.  Life was good. Disorder, what disorder? Groan.

I’m ashamed that I let a child carry that load for decades by herself. So is Saoirse. And what’s bad is we have another of these out there.  Tso (the silent one) is the other highly traumatized part we have.  Not to say no one else in T-E-C has trauma – most do – but there is trauma, and then there is TRAUMA. Tso is so traumatized she’s non-verbal, even internally. And neither Saoirse nor I really know that much about her, other than we think she’s one of the youngest alters in the system, definitely pre-school age.  If anyone has any tips on communicating with a non-verbal alter terrified of making any sound at all, um, do let us know.  She’s pretty buried in our brain, and we don’t think she surfaces much, but the question is, would we even know if she did?  Or would I say, Disorder, what Disorder? :-/

The other thing that is going on in our system is Saoirse and I have been getting really blendy lately.  We talked about it a little in Discord tonight.  It’s both natural and overwhelming at the same time.  Especially I guess since Saoirse doesn’t entirely trust me, feeling like I abandoned her.  And this gets back to the whole Disorder? What Disorder theme.

I, Janet, have a hard time dealing with the fact we have DID.  I know, I know, we run a freaking website and discord for dissociative folk.  I didn’t say it made sense.  For most of my life, I’ve always doubted, downplayed, and flat-out denied having DID.  I’m the reason we’ve been professionally diagnosed more than once, I needed other opinions.

Anyway, about 4-5 years ago, it just became SO freakin’ obvious to me that we were a system that I kind of blew a fuse.  I said I was tired of being host and just wanted to retire.  The truth is I couldn’t deal with it. (Mind you, we had been first diagnosed 25 years previously – not like I had a little denial or anything.) I still have yet to read an entire book about DID.  It’s now been 30 years since we were diagnosed, and I still dissociate so heavily I can’t get past chapter 2.  It’s hard for me to write here, its why you don’t see as much of me as Saoirse on here. (I know others in the system have read books and all, and great! It’s just really hard for me to look at it straight in the face.)

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Saoirse here.  Janet’s gone.  She really does have a hard time with all this.  Yes, Janet, I did feel abandoned, but not just by you.  I never wanted to be a full-time host. But when Janet stepped back, NO ONE in the system stepped up. So I had to for us to be functional.  I’ve begun to understand that Sharon had her hands full with the kids and couldn’t.  I still don’t know Forest’s excuse.  And yes, I’ve been angry about that for years because I’ve had to go so far out of my comfort zone and do so much, and I guess I feel if any of you really gave a shit, you would have helped me out more.

But the truth is I’m just as bad.  I abandoned Susan. While I was angry about “Oh, Saoirse will take care of all that, fuck Saoirse,” I was part of an “Oh, Susan will take care of holding all that trauma, fuck Susan” club.

Still, it hurt when you went away, Janet.  You and I had been a team for over a decade and a half, even if you did deny my existence half the time.  I knew you were overwhelmed with the DID stuff.  It’s a big part of why I’ve worked so hard on this site.  I figured if books were too long, maybe Wiki articles would work.  Maybe if you could see other’s experiences, you’d realize it was OK to be who we are, who YOU are. And I think it’s worked some. I hope.

Yeah, everyone, I’m a huge sap. This entire site is actually a love letter to my other half so she’d come back to me. And then, when we start to get close and co-con more, she goes on Discord to complain, “It’s too much, too overwhelming, Saoirse’s too close,” or whatever that was. Ouch again.

I don’t think we’re intended to fuse.  We kind of tried that and failed already.  I don’t think you’re going to lose yourself, Janet.  Would it make you feel better if I said I would fight so that wouldn’t happen?  I just want to be a tag team again.

I can’t believe I’m going to post this shit.