Memories and Guilt *Trigger Warning*

TRIGGER WARNING

(For: self harm, abuse)

This is one of the hardest pieces of art for me to share because I have so much shame surrounding my childhood.  There are parts of me that are furious that I wasn't helped, that the grown-ups didn't do their job, but there are also parts who blame me, who think I was just a weird kid, that I did bad things, that everything was my fault.  Self harm during childhood is a reality that I have had a very hard time accepting.  Perhaps it is extremely rare or perhaps simply taboo, but I feel so alone in my struggle to accept what I did to myself as a child.  Do a search for child self harm and all you'll find are sites about teenagers, citing that self harm can start as early as twelve or thirteen.  Twelve or thirteen?  I estimate the onset of my self harm at about five to six years old.  Am I really alone in this? Am I horribly abnormal?

Once I was finally able to speak up and tell my boyfriend about the self harm I had inflicted upon myself as a child, I was able to truly realize what had been done to me, how much the adults in my life had failed.   Regardless of whether or not it's a "normal" response to trauma, I am beginning to accept that it was not my fault.

I have now been able to talk about the self harm, although it still bothers me and the sad part is so deeply shamed that I couldn't put the really bad stuff in the drawing, because she was too scared of what people would think of her. 

As a child, self harm was a way of life for me.  Nearly all of my memories before the age of twelve are of self harming.  I created a world for myself where I could be in control, where I was in charge of my own body and the pain that was inflicted was of my own choosing.

This drawing is about more than just self harm, it's an overall impression of how I see my childhood from my earliest memories until age nine.  The knives are not because I cut myself.  In some ways I've always been ashamed of my more creative forms of self harm.  Cutting seems mostly socially acceptable, the things I did to myself...I'm not sure that anyone could ever truly understand.  But anyway, the knives are because I had an enormous phobia of sharp objects.  I explore this more in my drawing about not being able to sleep. 

The thought bubbles with the "Bad Man" in them, represent how I fantasized during self harm.  I still do not know who this bad man was or if it was even one person.  It may very well have been an amalgam of all the negativity I had experienced in the world.  Someday I might know, but right now I don't have the memories to explain who he is. 

As a very young child I used to play-act torture scenarios, so I used to hang upside down on the stairs or cling to the top of the slide and not let go for long periods of time.  Much of the torture had to do with inducing extreme levels of fatigue - holding my arms up or straight out at my sides until they were sore, pretending to be tied up until my limbs were horribly uncomfortable. 

I used to hit myself with belts and rulers until my skin was raw and streaked with red.  I obsessively masturbated by rubbing my genitals against poles, slides, or basically anything I could wrap my legs around and I pretended that someone was making me do it.  That they were watching and making me have the good feeling to control me, because it was a strong sensation that they could force me to experience.

The ways I found to harm myself were largely undetectable and nearly infinite.  I dumped scorching water on myself and followed it with ice water.  I put soap in my private parts to make them burn - I no longer remember where I came up with this idea. 

As difficult as it is to say and read about these things, I need to let it out to let myself be free of it.  To show the parts who are ashamed that it wasn't our fault.  That I was doing the best that I could to survive.  Self harm did not change who I was or who I am.  It doesn't make me bad or disgusting or wrong or ruined.  I was just a little child.  It wasn't my fault.

Internal Conflict

One of the most difficult things for me to deal with is internal conflict.  When more than one part is around at one time, my ability to think and make appropriate decisions is significantly weakened.  This is because each part has its own ideas about how things should be run, how we should behave, and how other people should treat us.

This creates situations where my external behavior is contradictory or erratic.  Obviously this happens whether or not I have parts out at the same time - when you have parts, you're going to seem a little frustrating and spontaneous.  Having more than one part out at one time just intensifies this, because the parts are either fighting for control or one has control and one or more are inside reacting negatively to the external one's behavior.

I guess the best way to explain this is to say that I have an internal and external frontal area.  The external frontal is the part that is most in control, the part who is currently speaking and moving the body.  The internal frontal parts are those who are "around" (as in, I can feel their thoughts and emotions), but they do not have control over the body and what is being said.  Often, the external and internal frontal parts will switch places back and forth and back and forth, trying to say what they need to say and obtain what they need to obtain (usually emotional or physical comfort).

The above drawing is one of the most common conflicts between my parts.  The angry part and the sad part tend to always come around at the same time and they seem to be a match made in a special sort of dissociative hell.  The angry part likes to hurt people.  She thinks that if people hurt you than you should hurt them back.  The sad part thinks that everything is her fault and that she is bad.

So in a situation when both parts are around at the same time, I get highly conflicting internal messages.

The Angry Part                                                       The Sad Part

"I hate you!"                                                            "Please love me!"
"You're wrong!"                                                      "Everything is my fault!"
"I'm gonna hurt your feelings too!"                        "I'm sorry!"
"You're bad!"                                                          "I'm bad!"
"Leave me alone!"                                                  "Please comfort me!" 

These contradictory messages are a nightmare when trying to prove a point or participate in a disagreement.  It creates a situation where I eventually no longer know who is right or wrong, who was behaving appropriately and who was inappropriate.  When I reach this point I am faced with the decision to either continue to argue my point or to drop it and blame myself for the conflict.  Most of the time I don't know which of these decisions is best, because I really don't know who is at fault.

This scenario is not helped at all by the fact that I do not have healthy concepts of boundaries and appropriate behavior.  I'll get into more of that later.

Parts Drawing Themselves

Usually when I sit down to draw "I" am the one that is upfront.  This means that I draw the way the parts feel to me.  They do not draw themselves.  This is mostly due to their inability to take total control of the body.

With this piece of artwork I tried to draw the parts at the top as I see them and then below as they see themselves.  I still facilitated the drawing, but the way they see themselves has more to do with the way they are feeling internally.

The angry part feels chaotic, so draws herself as a blob of scribbles.  The sad part feels pressured and alone, so she draws herself crying and with arrows pushing down on her.  The hiding part draws herself hiding in a blanket.  And the happy part just wrote down how she feels internally.

I think this can give an extra layer of insight into how parts are feeling, but it's pretty challenging to do unless I have a day with a lot of connection to the other parts.

Dream: Needles, a Skeleton, and a Morgue

I had this dream on October 28th.

TRIGGER WARNING

(For: violence) 

I was a child in the dream.   I was struggling against two or three people who were holding me down on a table.  I was naked and they had their hands on my arms, legs, and the back of my head.  They were trying to force me to lay down on my stomach, but I kept twisting from side to side. 

Someone stuck a long needle into my back.  In the dream I thought it had been stuck into my spine, but the positioning was more on the side of the spine rather than on top of it.  After the first needle was pulled out, another one was inserted below where the first one had been. 

Later...

There was a man sitting on a mattress or maybe just some blankets on the floor.  His thumbs were bleeding.  I think he had cut them on purpose, but I'm not completely sure.  Tons of blood was coming out of his thumbs.  The blood was just draining out of his body and spraying all over him and the blankets.  I screamed at him to stop the bleeding, to put pressure on the wound, to stop all the blood, but he wouldn't.  He just kept bleeding.  I thought he was doing it on purpose. 

Later...

I was walking around in the woods barefoot with my boyfriend and some other people.  All the sudden I saw this little skeleton running around.  It was the size of a small child.  I tried to point it out to my boyfriend, but he wouldn't look at it, because he was preoccupied.  When I told him what I had seen he said that it must have just been a spider and I was being silly. 

Later...

Me and my boyfriend were at some strange building that had a sort of concrete patio that wrapped around the entire top of the building and had patio walls that were so high that they were at my eye level.  There was an entrance into the lower part of the building from this patio area and someone told us to go down there and take some water. 

So we brought the water down into this basement type area (even though the patio was at the top of the building, the door that went straight down lead to the basement).  When we were down there we figured out that it was an old morgue.  We heard some voices coming from an adjacent room, but the morgue was supposed to be abandoned.  My boyfriend said he wanted to check it out, but I said not to.  He did anyway, but got too scared and came back.  We went upstairs and a woman started showing me fabric samples because she was going to make something.

The Deep Sadness

This drawing shows all the ways I feel sad inside.  While each figure does not represent a specific alter or part, they all represent feelings that are inside of me most of the time.  These feelings are deep, both because of their magnitude and because of their repression.

It's impossible for me to just feel sad.  To just cry and let it all out.  Instead, my feelings stay buried inside with other parts, bubbling to the surface and then nosediving back into the depths of my mind.

Feeling sad is scary, so they end up pushed aside and buried away.  Drawing the way I feel has provided a little bit of a release from the pain, but it's definitely going to be a long journey.

Scared to Sleep

TRIGGER WARNING

(For: implied sexual abuse)

The above drawing is of one of my few childhood memories.  This is my only memory under age 12 that I can place myself into on an emotional level. There are a few memories where I remember how I felt, but I can't feel it myself. 

Whenever I think of this memory it gives me a great deal of anxiety.  My heart starts pounding, my breathing quickens, it's a very scary experience.  This memory takes place in the house I lived in from a little before my 2nd birthday until just after my 9th.  I have no idea what age I was in the memory.

I remember feeling someone sit down at the end of my bed.  My heart started beating and I pulled the blankets tight under my chin and pretended to be asleep.  I was petrified.  I was afraid if I moved my toes would touch whoever was sitting there and then they'd realize I was awake.  I tried to just fall asleep, to just not exist, to disappear and I succeeded.  But was I really asleep?  I don't think so.

The drawing above shows how a part of me went to sleep and a part of me stayed awake.  The part that stayed awake is either the eraser part or one of the parts from the back that I don't know yet.  Why would someone have been sitting on the end of my bed in the pitch dark, scaring me nearly to death, for no reason?  I think abuse or a fear of abuse is the logical assumption.

I can't remember exactly why I feared sleeping so much, but it was a source of obsessive nervousness.  I would look around my room dozens of times before closing my eyes, looking out for intruders or monsters or bad guys.  Right before I fell asleep I would have to check again, to make sure it was still safe.  I would scan my room another dozen times and lay back down.

TRIGGER WARNING

(For: knives, violence)

As a child, I associated my bed with knives.  I believed that I would get stabbed while in bed, that someone would stab me from under the mattress, from above, or from behind.  I would be so scared of this that I would only sleep in one position, on one side of the bed, and I would never move, because there was only one way to sleep that was safe.

Even as an adult knives are still my number one fear.  They trigger me into a state of anxiety and panic unless I am in total control.  When someone is using a knife I either leave the room or keep my distance and watch them intently for any signs of hostile behavior.

I'm afraid of being cut by a knife and of someone else cutting themselves with a knife.  Mentions, descriptions, and movies containing torture are also huge triggers that I do my best to steer clear of.  If it's non-deliberate harm I do okay.  I can treat accidental cuts for myself and for others.  It's the deliberate use of knives for violence that scares me in the deepest way imaginable.

Dealing with Hurt Parts

 

One of the most difficult things to deal with when you have parts or alters is the pain that accompanies the ones that have never experienced any joy, happiness, or goodness.  These parts are so sad, so full of pain and suffering, that it feels like nothing could ever make them heal. 

Right now I am approaching these sad and broken parts by allowing them to come out and express themselves.  I hope that time will give them the ability to grieve their lost childhood and to overcome the pain that has been their reality. 

I drew the picture above, starting with the happy part.  She likes drawing pictures of herself, so while she was out I/we drew her.  The drawing made the sad part feel even sadder.  There was a jealousy and frustration coming from her that was heartbreaking.  There's really nothing as strange and confusing as two conflicting feelings coming up at one time, because the parts that are at the front had drastically different life experiences. 

The sad parts are rarely brave enough to come out.  Most of the time they stay hidden.  I have a very difficult time crying or feeling truly sad and I think it's because all my true emotions are broken into parts that are too scared to come all the way forward.

I just hope that the sad part is able to find happiness someday.  I can feel her inside of me nearly all the time, her sadness wrapping itself around all the parts and darkening every part of me.  But I don't resent her for this, I just feel saddened.  I want her to find the happiness she deserved as a child.