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

Thank you.

I'm not entirely sure what integration means in the end for us. I know that things happened. I know what they are even. I just don't have access to most of the memories. I have some of my own trauma, but there are times I wonder if part of why I'm host is I'm the least traumatized of the full alters. The others come out more when we have lots of time 'alone' these days. Basically, they're out when we spend a lot of time without having to go outside. I've been working with them to feel safe too. I think most of us are so used to being unseen that we don't want to be seen at all.

We don't expect that we're all going to fuse into one personality, but we know that as we heal things will be easier and better overall.

I feel like I'm babbling a little. Last night was not easy as one of our friends said something that triggered a major reaction. Having three alters upset and trying to take over at one time is not pleasant.

As for our mother, I wrote a note that sits on our desk explaining that our mother wasn't bad, just that there was something wrong and we couldn't see it. She didn't mean to hurt us. This seems to have helped, but knowing what happened doesn't make either me or Aurora feel any less hurt or powerless.

Vi

It's completely normal to feel hurt and powerless when you are a child and the one who is supposed to care for you and protect you, the one you depend on for living, is the one hurting you. Does not matter if she does it on purpose or not: you were dependent on her and she hurt you and you had no escape back then.

Anyone would feel hurt and powerless in this situation.

The good news is: it is possible to heal the hurt and regain your own independance and regain your own control over your own life.

ViTheta wrote: The others come out more when we have lots of time 'alone' these days. Basically, they're out when we spend a lot of time without having to go outside. I think most of us are so used to being unseen that we don't want to be seen at all.


As for our mother, I wrote a note that sits on our desk explaining that our mother wasn't bad, just that there was something wrong and we couldn't see it. She didn't mean to hurt us. This seems to have helped, but knowing what happened doesn't make either me or Aurora feel any less hurt or powerless.

Vi

Our system is like that too probably because the first child to be aware they were different didn't feel accepted by the world because they were always trying to make us 'more normal' and 'like everyone else'.

We know we never had experienced abuse at the hands of our mother, she was our one safe person in fact she used to protect us when she realised we still 'talked to our self' as a teen in our bedroom.

But we don't blame her that was the way it was in the 70's. Not saying its' right (compared to today standards) but they really didn't know any better (working class left school at 15 in the 50's) and honestly believed they would be giving me a better life with more opportunities. Special schools were awful places back then and because we lived so rurally would have meant boarding school for me. I doubt we would have ever got to university without it or be capable of living independently.

Thank you both.

Talked to our sister about it, as well as our T. Basically, our mom was sick. She had an addiction problem brought on by a lot of her own issues. It helps soften the blow a bit. It's easier to tell everyone in the system that 'it wasn't our fault, and she wasn't a Bad Person'. It doesn't make what happened right. It just makes what happened understandable.

Our father...he was neglectful, and truth is, he never really saw us as his daughter. We aren't close still, and he acts like the autism doesn't exist. He still slips up and misgenders and dead names us from time to time. The lack of boundaries added to that is hard to handle on top of everything else.

We'll get out of this. We'll be ok. At least things are improving.

Now, we're just dreading next Tuesday since our remaining aunt is visiting and she's never really treated us the best either.

Vi

Things have been quiet lately. Oddly enough...whatever was going on with that person died down and it's relieved some of the pressure within the system. It could have been any number of reasons from her finding out that we have a really strong support network (multiple friends, a loving and sometimes even doting sister, a therapist), a safe place (we don't have any ongoing abuse now. Not really, and the stuff with our father has died down a lot), and a fairly stable system. It could also be that they're not comfortable with us being trans, and this also was an issue for us given that they are too. They're pre-transition and that created some issues within the system.

There are, unfortunately, some limits to our ability to accept. This doesn't mean we don't accept and support everyone, but when it comes to personal intimacy, that has some hard limits. We're just able to separate them. The entire situation was very distressing for Lilith, Pippa, Veronica and Mox.

Aurora and Lilith have come out a bit lately too. That's been helpful. They got to do some gaming and I got to stay back and work on my own stuff even if I was half-aware of what was going on.

We're stress about our aunt coming to visit, but it should be a short visit and she'll just have to forgive the mess due to the fact that we're still clearing and rearranging things.

On one last note, we're pretty sure Mox's full name is Moxie...

Other than that, things are quiet and slowly sorting out.
Vi

Sometimes the hardest part of all of this is not the switches or the inability to access memories. Sometimes the hardest part of the DID has been not knowing why we're in panic mode or why we're crying. Sometimes it feels like the hardest part is not knowing where the emotions come from.

Sorry, I realize that we're kind of struggling with not knowing our emotions properly and the dissociation from our emotions. Like not feeling sad, but crying anyway. Being panicked without knowing why we're panicking. It sometimes can be very hard to figure out who is upset.

Vi

Yesterday we had something happen that I (Vi) dislike having happen. Beth came out in the middle of therapy.

Normally, unless it's an emergency, most of us don't like to switch in quickly, and outside of an emergency, it takes somewhere between half an hour and an hour to fully switch. I remain somewhere between half aware and a quarter aware (unless it's the real Littles where I remain about three-quarters aware). I prefer to not be all that aware of therapy feeling that it's only right to give the others a bit of privacy when it comes to dealing with their issues. When they are ready they will make us all fully aware of what is going on with them.

Beth coming out in the middle of therapy means that I had to overhear everything. We'll have to sort this out another time, but this is still upsetting.

Vi

Hope things are better for you now

Thank you, but things have been a bit worse right now. We're starting to think we've hit the first point in all of the healing we can't get passed. We know it does happen, but for now, everyone feels tired and like moving forward is too much effort. This is being complicated by the gender dysphoria hitting the system hard because it mixes so heavily with the trauma.

Possible trigger warning passed this point.

Our endocrinologist has stopped doing telemedicine. Unfortunately, we can't drive the two and a half hours to see her in person. This was not supposed to be an issue except that the other woman who saw trans patients at the hospital she works at apparently took a different job and isn't there. That left a male doctor as the only possible alternative. After two weeks of sorting this out and having made it clear that we have to have a female doctor, our old endocrinologist will do the phone call with us.

This makes us feel very guilty.

Add into this that there is a local doctor who does transition help. She's also trans. The thing is that we actually went to our current endocrinologist because the local doctor made us very uncomfortable. She would always ask if people at her office were treating us properly. We just didn't have the courage to tell her that it takes spelling out that we're transsexual for people to notice. Nurses who have full access to our charts treat us like a cis woman. We've had doctors ask us about our last menstrual cycle. It's like no one notices and we prefer it like that. We started seeing her because it became harder and harder to deal with having a male endocrinologist.

We had a bit of a meltdown when one of our friends suggested a cosmetics pack in a game because it has a trans pride flag in it.

How messed up is it that, if granted one wish, we'd take away being trans from all the stuff we have to suffer from? Not the DID, not the weight issues, not the autism. We'd wish to have been born fully female. We tell people we're intersex.

I'm sorry to rant about this here. I know that one of the mods did suggest posting on the trans forum, but even that isn't easy, and posting something like this there is terrifying. Every time we've so much as hinted at this around other trans people, we've been attacked. It's hard to talk about it around others because everyone wants to celebrate and have Pride, but we don't.

Now we're panicking a bit too. Are we going to have to go back to the endocrinologist who made us intensely uncomfortable? Are we going to have to have a male endocrinologist again? That is going to be harder these days than it was before since back then we had an easier time with the switches putting aside the pain and panic. These days we are even having to weigh leaving our cardiologist because the new one is very condescending on top of all the triggering just being alone in a room with a man can cause.

I don't know what to do right now. We're chipping away at the weight so we can have our surgeries so we can feel a lot better.

Vi

I realized looking back on what we wrote that it wasn't clear. We had a male endocrinologist ages ago, then saw the local doctor because of the stress of having to see a male doctor and then transferred to our current endocrinologist because of the discomfort with the local doctor.

Sorry about that.

Vi