I am the marker of his violence,
a placeholder.
His greed to be endless
and clean.
I am the clay tossed out,
holding his imperfections.
I am the sky-cloud,
lacking permanence.
Tag: identity (Page 1 of 3)
stars take on his shape
I am caught in fragments of light
beneath the violence that wore him
kissed by his mask
I dream of sleep
every element
of self
i took eyes on
and thirsted
for my knowing
deeply
all my cards lay out
shuffled
some lost to the corners
chipped and folded
I couldn’t ask for a better hand
than chaos’s whimsy
I love myself
most, naked
it’s when I dress myself
I feel pretense
From the Wild Collective Heart series: Part 24
Content Warning: Childhood trauma, dissociation/DID, survival responses, clinical mental health language, coercive power dynamics, and references to perceived threat of death.
He didn’t like that we were in therapy. I didn’t like it either. Raven said that was the condition we’d laid out for entering into a power exchange relationship with him. We had to remain in therapy.
He framed it as therapy will change us, and he loves us exactly how we are. I agreed.
I hated that I had to learn a whole new language meant for scientists to dissect my brain and signal to one another what they’d found. I still hate it. It’s a lonely language that doesn’t account for the lived experiences and the gravity of chronically labeling ourselves victims and survivors and making that the identity for a person who already has enough identity. Just my take.
I am grateful for the time we had in therapy. I am grateful for the knowledge it gave us to stabilize and process. Those skills are non-negotiable. I’m just saying, I hate the language and how clinical it is. I understand that it is a boundary, a legal language. That’s also why it’s so lonely and feels dehumanizing, like we’re the issue being herded and marginalized or isolated from others. There’s a whole fucking language developed to word that experience that doesn’t account for my heart. My humanity. My sincerity. My devotion.
I’m not heavily spiritual, still I like this logic: if the Gods allowed it, then they also prepared a way out of it. That’s made sense to me.
I also don’t need the “DID is a brilliant survival mechanism” trope. Anyone faced with dying, which is what our brain told us was happening every time we split into a new alt. person, would be mentally and physically propelled toward whatever means of survival was available to them. There isn’t a choice in it. There isn’t time to decide whether it’s brilliant or healthy or anything else. There’s just what happens because life’s whole goal is to stay alive. It’s like when our blood clots to save us. It just does, and that’s a miracle, but it’s not an identity or a purpose.
Then, after surviving, there are the results we learn to live with. The danger in making those results an identity comes when fixing the self becomes the purpose, and surviving becomes the thing we’re best at. That leaves a little too much wiggle room to start liking survival as a thing to do, in my opinion.
I like being alternative. It suits me.
Our brain survived itself. I’ll never be ungrateful for that. I’ll never be angry about it or look that gift in the face and say fuck off. I’m here, all of me is here, because a way was available to me to survive impossible situations and circumstances as a vulnerable, dependent child.
It inspires some kind of faith in me. I haven’t wanted words for it yet, really, because just sitting in that miracle is all I’ve needed to feel my gratitude and devotion.
I ranted. Fuck it. That’s all I have for my part.
I canceled therapy with our psychologist, and it just so happened that she was retiring at the same time. We could both agree our system was taking responsibility for our life and could manage it. There is no doubt in my mind the Gods were there the whole time.
-Stevie
From the Wild Collective Heart series: Part 19
Content Warning: Trauma, dissociation/DID, spiritual possession narratives, family invalidation, psychological distress, and references to mental health treatment.
I excelled at therapy. I treated it like high school and really worked at it. The alternative was to sit in the trauma with no relief, and so the incentive to help myself and be supported was high. Also, I had that whole pesky narrative to disprove for all parts of me, the one trying to strip us of our humanity and frame a well-known mental health condition as spiritual possession or not even real.
Our mind was broken. Our body was broken. Our spirit was seriously questioning everything we’d known to be true. That person online had joined the wagon that I was possessed, along with my family, before he blocked communication with us. From all sides, my world collapsed. The only way out was straight through that bullshit and into understanding myself and listening to my inner parts. Supporting myself.
-Raven
I was there in therapy, but mainly just checking out the psychologist to make sure they were safe for us. I didn’t really feel hopeful much could change and get better. My whole life was a trauma loop just waiting to come back around. If not for Raven, we wouldn’t have chosen therapy for ourselves at all. We would have kept in the loop, in the shame, and in the crazy-making for the rest of our life. I love her more for making us do the hardest things and acting as whatever we needed to heal. A parent, a friend, a sister, and a guide.
-Rogue
And they entrusted me enough to make solid changes in our quality of life as a DID system and as a people. That’s so difficult for many internal people to do.
-Raven
Yeah, but it took an enormous amount of patience from you to get us aligned with similar goals and safe enough to need at all.
-Rogue
Thank you.
-Raven
Part of the Wild Collective Heart series: Part 9
Content Warning: Candid reflections on adolescence, suicidal thoughts, self-harm, isolation, and identity fragmentation.
I’m ugly as hell. My face looks moony, too much like the moon, half round, strange. My hair wild and stringy around it. My eyes burn good though when I’m upset, which is most of the time. I scratch my nails into my palms when I feel too intensely.
I hid inside oversized shirts and hoodies. Wrote suicidal poetry and kept to myself. High school was a nightmare. I didn’t fit in. I couldn’t if I wanted to. Everyone expected too much from me. Be this way, not that. Work hard at things that don’t interest you at all. Control things not in your control yet. Act like an adult.
I sat quietly in the middle to back rows of the class. I ignored everyone in the hope they’d ignore me. I’d write. I liked writing. I could safely exist on college-ruled paper.
Ugly is fine by me. No one to fend off. No one to seek approval from. No one to bother with.
I knew somehow I had greater longevity in me than all my peers. Their worlds ended after high school when mine just began. They didn’t know how to not be the rockstar, the football player, the cheerleader, popular and well liked. None of that follows when you leave high school. Not really.
Identity crises happen all the time.
Mine was forgetting things.
Not remembering my name until a snatched-up name floated my way from inside our skull. A memory of a girl who had intense traits like I did, who we’d gone to school with for a season.
Stevie.
That’s my name.
Whoever she was, she left a strong enough impression on vulnerable parts in me that I’m still conflicted over what’s truly ugly or not.
-Stevie
the mirrors
inside me
have teeth
and bite
From the Wild Collective Heart series: Part 8
Content Warning: Candid reflections on childhood trauma, adolescent sexuality, blurred boundaries, and inappropriate adult behavior.
She couldn’t hack it. School wasn’t really something she was encouraged in. Becoming anything other than a breeder, some man’s obedient and submissive wife someday.
Her social skills are strong, whereas mine are blunt and sharp as needed, while still being pleasant enough for teachers to like me and help us stay out of trouble and go unnoticed.
I only knew of her and me.
Now, I’ve gone back and forth, back and forth on whether I’m an angel or demon because I seem to stay right smack in the middle. She’s a demon though, and we hold close to each other and bail each other out.
Doesn’t really matter to me. I’ll be either to keep her safe.
I excelled at school and understood that “try your best” was all that was required there. Try your best. Be interested in what the teachers said. Look studious and get it done.
The problem was, she had every type of friend and I prefer casual or none at all. I do things on my own. She thrives in contact with others. I lost all our friends easily, as soon as they became issues for us. Asking too many questions or not understanding that home life wasn’t universally the same.
I watched her being emotional, fantasizing about vampires and watching scary movies we weren’t allowed to watch. She was hypersexual and aware when attention became sexual. Male teachers sometimes took too much interest in her. I kept us out of that.
I dressed in jeans and T-shirts. She dressed in hair twists, glitter, black mascara and eyeliner, bell-bottoms from the thrift store and tight shirts. A strange aesthetic. Or brown ’70s floral from top to bottom. I left my hair down, straightened, and she put hers up with glittery butterfly clips. Her nails always painted, mine left bare. Her lip balm we could agree was tasty. Melon-flavored or tingle mint.
Her head full of music, mine like a horse with blinders, focused on forward movement.
I can be cold and detached.
Because of her, I learned I can be warm.
-Raven