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

Thank you, and yes it would be wonderful even if it is only for four months. There are things we want to do that require a certain level of privacy, and since our dad doesn't know about us having DID, he wouldn't understand.

We never got the opportunity to be on our own because we've always had to live with our family due to not being able to have a job. We've taken care of our mom and now our dad, and it's wearing us thin.

Thank you again,
Take care,
Violette

Hey Violette,

It's not great when the time comes to take care of your parents. For some of us that time comes too soon, and for others much much much too soon. Growing up, my father had all sorts of issues and therefore my family has had to support him throughout our entire life, so when you say taking care of your parents is wearing you thin, I feel that.

From bad things, good things can come, such as with this time you've suddenly gained that you really need to be able to take a breather. Four months can do wonders. I advise to take walks as often as possible. Fresh air will help fight off possible burn-out symptoms. And of course, be sure to vent things.

Best wishes to you~

~ Grey/ Knight

Thank you. The problem we actually face is not only that we've been taking care of our parents, but we never really had a life away from them. To a certain degree, our mom started exploiting us and kept us funneling money to her for her addiction to cigarettes. It has not been an easy time for us to start adjusting to that reality.

Violette

Our dad will be in rehab for a while and that's created some interesting issues for us. Mostly, not having to hide or mask the DID has meant a lot more pressure and problems on me as host. Now that it's become obvious that we're going to have weeks without anyone possibly interrupting us, more of the others have begun to take notice and they either want to front for a little while or are passively influencing how I feel and act.

Last night, Marcie was out. This was also positive as she got to talk to some of the Littles in systems who are friends of ours. She also ended up having to talk to our sister.

It's day four of a major headache. My sense of identity has become blurred a lot because of just the pressure from within. I know we'll get things sorted out, but it feels like this is sapping our collective energy right now.

Violette

I wonder if thats why I feel I'm not sure who I am? Since I re-appeared and the system all knows about each other and had others with me and getting to know them all I feel they are all very strong personalities they know who they are when they come out. When I'm fronting I'm not sure whether I'm doing things cos I like doing it or cos one of the others is around. ..and we're alone most of every day too. Jay

I think it's hard when you're the host of a system and having to try very hard to not feel like everyone else is loud and being painfully difficult about everything. Things are a bit calmer right now.

One problem we're having is convincing our dad that he needs to be with our sister this winter instead of staying here. He keeps acting like he can take care of himself when it is obvious he can't. On top of that, he gets depressed during the winter and that just makes his inability to take care of himself worse. He doesn't eat or drink on a proper schedule when he's depressed. Staying with our sister would be just fine for him. We think that he just hates the idea of not being semi-alone.

Another thing we might want to get our dad is noise cancelling headphones. He's so sensitive to noises that it might actually help him.

Violette

It's tough..Maybe your sister can get the people at the rehab centre to understand that you couldn't cope with him alone cos of your autism and could they say to him he can either stay at the unit or go to your sisters for winter until he can dress and feed himself etc?

I hope things work out in your favour so you get a break and chance to sort stuff out too.
Take Care
Jay

Unfortunately, he can't stay at the facility through the winter. Our sister is going to work on getting him convinced to stay with her. It's going to be difficult, but she's got a lot of ideas and a bit of time to pull it off.

Trigger Warning addiction

Beyond that, we had another alter show up last night, and we're starting to suspect that she's got something to do with possible addictions. At this point, we admit that we have issues with an eating disorder and 'addiction' to sugar. We over eat and we often go through periods of time when we're stressed where we seriously crave sugar. I know that it sounds a bit weird to cast sugar as an addiction, but there is some research to back that up.

But the way that she acts towards sugar reminds us of how our mom would react to cigarettes or the lack there of.

trigger warning ends

This is going to be a difficult hurdle to get over, but it will be ok. We know that we're going to have to do a lot in the future. Part of what scares us of having our dad around is that he keeps talking about living for another decade even though we doubt that, and we need to work on our various selves without having him possibly dropping by and forcing us to switch.

Take care,
Violette

Of late, things have been slightly trying for our system. We now number 28. Part of this might be due to the space afforded by our father's absence from the house, and part of it might be that we have been going through a variety of different parts of our belongings and discovering that our mother refused to throw anything away including childhood birthday and Christmas cards. Our sister has suggested that we wait for her to visit next before going through any more of those papers due to how they may impact our psychological well being.

While going through some of them, we discovered a card that we recognized as being from CB and that set poor Lilith into a panic. While we have recorded that incident, we have disposed of the offending card along with the bulk of the papers. We have, however, discovered that in some of our school report cards that our handwriting at home was vastly different (though still a child's) from the writing at school indicating that by the time we had begun to attend First Grade that our system had already started to form.

Of late we have had two alters make themselves known. This includes me, Amelia, who has taken over doing some of the recording duties. The other is Angela.

With regards to our father, it is still unclear when he will be able to return home. He has been having difficulty walking, but his mind is largely clear though the stroke appears to have damaged his emotional regulation.

Amelia

ViTheta wrote:Of late, things have been slightly trying for our system. We now number 28. Part of this might be due to the space afforded by our father's absence from the house,

With regards to our father, it is still unclear when he will be able to return home. He has been having difficulty walking, but his mind is largely clear though the stroke appears to have damaged his emotional regulation.

Amelia

We found that once the insiders got word that the outside was safe from random visitors or housemates and they could safely spend more time near or out front, more seemed to appear than we knew of!

We have suffered with mood swings (and for us switching alot) but as we were already peri-menopause I guess we put it down to that and didn't think of the stroke as being a factor in it.

Hopefully your sister can help him understand that him losing his temper for example may have more of an impact on you than it would her and he will agree to stay with her until he was stabilised?

Jay