This then, here I am.
Posted by Philomela on April 6, 2008
This project, this reweaving thing scares me, I have always loved passionately but stepped lightly, being ready to leave when things got too dangerous, too complicated, I left things behind, important things, I jettisoned parts of myself as a barter for my survival. and I have to go back for the bits I dropped, that I still miss, that I still need, that make me me.
I came to adulthood, to coherence, to an understanding of social rules late, after a traumatic adolescence and early twenties that included abandonment incest rape prostitution homelessness and psychiatry. Learning to be linear adult is an important trick that helps me move through the world with an aura of protection, of camouflage but I’m not willing for that to be all I am. I lived with multiple personalities for a long time and since integration I am learning to rejoin, to reweave myselfs, to become neither several people nor one totally linear person but a many faceted crystal.
And this is about honouring the edges, the flimsy boundary lines that enabled me to survive, that yes my articulateness and intelligence are part of who I am but so is the girl with solid concrete street smarts under love me look after me eyes. She is the girl that SURVIVED and has so much to teach me.
and this is about connecting all I am, my politics, spirituality, sexuality ,creativity, intellect, sense of self
and it wont come easy, I think by doing this I will loose people, people that really matter to me but people who are so tied to the “cause” that they forget that people are real and vulnerable and messy and beautiful and that I am one of those people and that I can’t stand and watch as other people who cross edges and boundary lines for their survival are abandoned and belittled
And this will be intense rambling, thoughtful, angry, heartbroken, joyful, grateful, wondering, questioning, searching, accusing, but most o all it will be honest.
I don’t know if anyone is reading this, and really this is about seeking and finding my voice but if you are I would like to know who you are and how you got here
purtek said
I think you know how I got here, so I’ll just skip that part and say that I really admire the open, honest, messiness here.
I hope this doesn’t come off as belittling/minimizing your experience, but although I’ve never had the experience of multiple personalities, I can relate to a lot of what you’re saying about trying to integrate what continues to feel like a fragmented self, about having to learn in totally weird, non-linear ways, how to be what the hell it is everybody else just naturally learned to be. Figuring out how to honour and embrace aspects of yourself that have kept you alive, but that have (at least mostly) worn out their usefulness and presumably started to become destructive.
And I think in my case, genuine honesty with myself has been (and continues to be) the hardest one of those lessons to learn, so again, I have a ton of respect for the intensity of honesty you’re expressing here.
Philomela said
Thank you
no you don’t come of as belittling or minimising at all, I think we live in a culture that fragments/fractures people (especially women) as a matter of course and the multiple personality thing is just maybe the most extreme degree of that.
yeah I think genuine honesty is hard and painfull but I’m hoping its worth it in the end!
belledame222 said
Hey, you know I’m reading, and how I got here. Just to say again: I really appreciate the work you’re doing–in the world as well as internally– and hang in there.