The Road Goes Ever, Ever On (Theta's Journey)

It sounds difficult. I'm glad your current endocrinologist will treat you by phone for now. And it sounds like you're doing what you can to get closer to having the surgeries done.

Thank you.

We'll figure this out with time. It's just the physical limitations that we have to deal with that are making this all a struggle. It doesn't help that things get muddled at times.

Take care,
Vi

The first notes regarding DID go back twenty-eight years. There is a very old list of alters that I found. There were a lot more at one time, apparently. But then, we forgot. It's starting to look like we started to research the DID all those years ago and kept shutting it down again and again. I'm pretty sure Beth and Queen kept destroying the lists, and I can understand why. We weren't ready to start confronting the past.

It's hard to cope with the feelings of helpless and powerless. I know that our friends don't understand that sometimes, but they happen and I have to be careful not to trigger those.

There isn't much else to say. Things are quiet right now.
Vi

I'm not sure that this is something most people would understand...but I've started putting together a timeline of past hosts. The weird part is that it made me realise someone was missing. There's an alter whose memories are unaccounted for and they may have been host back then. I don't know.

It just struck me as I was writing things out that there aren't a lot of people I could say this to who would understand.

Vi

Last last couple days has reinforced just how much I (Vi) rely on the Others to just function. This is probably how it's always been. Without Leila, I can't drive properly. Without Beth and Angel, I can't deal with certain social situations. I can get into an obsessive loop, but when I switch out, the loop comes to an end because it isn't important to the current fronting person.

It just starts to feel like without them I'm non-functional and no matter how much I try to learn skills, I've struggled to learn things properly.

We are healing. Right now it feels as if we're at a plateau when it come to that, but we are healing. It hasn't changed our level of integration, and I'm starting to feel like the Keeper of the Present letting everyone know what is going on in the here-and-now.

The odd thing is...for the first time in more than a year, things feel peaceful. Yes, we switch out and yes we still are separate, but we aren't in panic mode any more when it comes to our past.

Vi

Reaching a plateau is good. It means our brain is reinforcing the progress made so far and getting ready for the next big step.

Congratulations to everybody! Good job!

Thank you. Unfortunately, we went backwards a little bit after our father decided to be problematic. He wants our uncle to move out for a bunch of reasons that I don't even comprehend and all sound like excuses he's made up in his head because he loops around so much. This triggered more problems. We talk to our T today, so hopefully that will help.

The problem isn't him asking our uncle to move out. The problem is that he seems to expect things to go back to how they were before our aunt passed away. This won't happen for several reasons including the fact that we can't cook for him. We eat twice a day. This isn't an issue for us because our body just needs two large meals and we monitor our blood sugar closely. We have a tonne of restrictions on what we can eat due to abdominal issues and our medications. All he wants is heavy comfort foods.

We're working hard to lose weight so we can have our surgeries. We know some of our trauma will lessen and even go away after having all the surgeries.

There's so much trauma and neglect from our father that we're not sure how we feel or what to necessarily do. We've barely touched the surface of it all yet.

Thank you though. Things will get better.
Vi

So...update. Basically, our father wants to live alone, or at least mostly on his own. He is going to have to accept that things have changed drastically from six months ago when he moved upstairs, and we suspect that he's going to be shocked by just what being mostly on his own will entail. Simply put, he is going to discover that he's going to be paying out a lot more money than he expected.

Between our T and our sister, the suggestion is basically that we're going to make his food and either send it up each day or make it well in advance and store it for him in the freezer. Additionally, we also plan on making it clear to him that we will be providing minimal amount of money into the household since we are, in essence, taking care of him and at least some of his needs such as doing the shopping and cooking. Shopping is rough because it means being out in the world. We may end up doing separate shopping trips. Doing the cooking is going to be rough because we can't stand for long periods of time.

We aren't planning on having dinner with him. Truth is, while our father was minimally abusive, he was neglectful and we have no real connection to him. The last real solid memory of doing something just him and 'us' was when we were eleven or twelve and went camping. He made a promise to take us camping the next summer but that never happened.

It really feels like our father wants to have some kind of relationship, but at this point, we don't have any real will to do so. We just don't care that much about him. We spent decades chasing after our parents' approval, and I think we're fed up of trying.

And on top of all of this, our hernia has gotten worse and is going to need surgery. Not right away, but we have to be very careful and that is going to mean really pushing the weight loss.

The good news on that front is that we've lost about eleven pounds in the last three weeks.

Vi

This past week has been horrific. To start with...our dad finally told our uncle that he needed to move out. That resulted in our uncle coming downstairs repeatedly to explain how 'we had to take care of X, Y or Z'. This resulted in Valyria actually coming forward long enough to yell at our uncle because she needed to protect the system. We had multiple switches that day. The alters who were out that day were Vi as always, Beth, Valyria, Lilith, Leila and Valyria.

This was on top of already having shopped that morning and running into someone who I literally had no memory of. Learning to make small talk with people you don't know is 'fun'.

Above all of this, our friend LB had a major fight/argument with her fiancee and they broke up. LB has borderline personality disorder, and this did not and is still not going well. Beth came out to try and help her, but that whole thing is a huge mess.

By Friday, we were in shutdown mode. Too many switches and too much for the autism.

Vi

GOsh what an exhausting week! Sending tons of moral support your way. Hope you can have a few days of rest to recover from the overload of stuff.