Post 11

Born: August 1, female, 7 lbs 2 ozs, brown eyes

Distinctive marks: Leo, born on mother's birthday

Place in family: 5th child

On my Duffys Website page background for this I choose the picture of two people standing on the river bank because the remarkable thing is that under the tree branches from a distance it forms the outline of a baby. How fitting was that for me. Though I had been exploring and learning on my own for years, this is where I place my book mark.
This journey truly began on October 23, 1989 at the Wellness Center in Vestal, New York. There I began to see the light. It was perhaps the first time in my life that I let the world come in.

These are some notes from that day's class. The doctor who was in charged began with telling us that we where all predispose to ending up in a clinic like this if we had 2 or 3 of the following

Demographics in our lifetime.

Came from a large family I had 11 children in mine
Middle to later born I was the fifth
Less then a high school education I was out at sixteen
Parented early I had first child at nineteen
Never allowed to be a kid I have few happy memories
Model for chronic pain I have my mother
Married early I married first time at nineteen
Had kids quickly I was pregnant with first child
Abuse history I had physical and sexual
Multiple marriages I had been married three times

When he was done speaking my whole table broke out in laughter as I asked him "what happens if you have all 10"? He just looked at me and jokingly said "you get to come back for another thirty days". As he left the room that day he placed his hand knowingly on my shoulder. I had laughed when I should have cried. That was when I had the first real look at my condition and accept the first in a long list of diagnoses.

It seemed rather simple back then. It was called Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). They could help with Cognitive Behavior Management (CBM). How simple it was. Just follow this simple plan and I'd be cured. Well, as any of us who are dissociate and had this label back then, found out that it only worked for a little while. Then the world would come crashing in again.
I have survived my childhood and my adulthood this far. My diagnoses are the only thing that seems to change. I've told the same story to each doctor who has treated me and each one claims to have the answer. I've been through all the Bi-Polar medication, the Boarder line Personality, the depression and manic stage medications of my life yet seem to be the only one willing at some point to accept myself for who I am. A great person with a dissociate tendency. If I could just get a handle on that one part of me my life might be complete. OK maybe not.
Where my life goes from here, I may not be sure. The one thing that I do know is that I have to keep going. In my life there has been set backs or stops along the way. some of them where not all that I had hoped they would be.
I've been in many relationships during my years and even though some where full of pain and sorrow, I can't really say that I would ever want my life to have been different. As a dissociate my memories have been kept in files. My bad experiences where handled by one and my happy/good memories in another. As you read my stories they may seem all doom and gloom. Remember that the happy memories remained in another story. That's how we deal with life.
Good memories we carry with us on the other side every day. It is the bad memories that we fight with every night. Many years ago I would pray for a better life. Now as I look around and listen to all the people I have met, I have come to believe that my life, though hard and sad, was so much better then other's.
I've heard from people all over the world that are dissociate and who have survived unbelievable lives compared to mine. My heart continues to go out to these people. When they write me their stories and share some of their pain with me, I can only pray that their healing come quickly for them.
Each of us is blessed who have begun this healing process. We can now share our heartaches and know that it is understood by many. I hope that some, when they come across these pages truly know that they are not alone. My stories in my sites are the first things that I was able to write about. They are just thebeginning of the stories. Slowly I hope that I will be able to write more into them. I've yet to remember the feelings of terror and hurt that I only have pictures of now.
Know that it is a process and for some of us we can never find it all. That is because as dissociate we weren't there. If that means that I never know or feel all the details then I'm ok with that. Just remember to believe in your self and know that if you find yourself crossing these pages then you are where you need to be.
Writing these stories has been a relief in it's own way. Trauma and abuse no matter what any one else will call it, causes this to happen to us. Being born with the tendency as they say or chemical imbalance (and I do believe this) causes us to experience our lives differently then others.
I come from a large family and none of them seem to have been affected by living in this unit as I was. So there must be something to that theory. Years ago they thought you had to relive these traumas in order to move on with your life. Don't let anyone make you believe that. We are who and what we are.
If you are truly a dissociate person then your disorder may never be able to take you there. That's the blessing in it all. For some things WE weren't there. (note: I will put a page up with some of the ways I sorted through memories to decide which where real and which were imagined as such. A very good tool for me.)
I need to say a few more things before you go on with this journey. I have seen in my life and the lives of others, that being dissociation was a gift. I have known people who weren't able to block out the pain and have suffered most of their lives because of it. We truly are the lucky ones who can say "I never felt" and "I cant remember". Those are truly the words and the ones who were saved. Many who could not dissociate did not survive and make it as far as those of us who can. That may not be much to say and understand now; yet I do hope that some day along this path you will understand that.
Live your life now and make peace with your past. That's what I have found to be the best advice to remember. On my web sites I have links to friends who have joined me and experienced much of life as I have. We all traveled different paths yet the same in so many ways. Each of my stories started out small and I added to them as the need arose. Once you read some of them please come back and email me if you want.
This was my first writing in many years. It started to flow one night and has never stopped even now as I begin these pages here and in my real world. Lady J

this was my mess that I actually got to stand up in front of the first group of women and teach this to. I still have that original set of papers typed out on the elementry school type writer the kids teacher let me use.

When lady j found her voice. I used word symbols for many things in my life. Much like acronyms to make a sentence, my word symbols tell a story.

Instead of reading the letters across, I write, then and you read them down.

"This Is MY MESS" ©1990LadyJtalks

M E S S

E M P E

N O I X

T T R U

A I I A

L O T L

N U

A A

L L

______________

L L L L

A O I I

B V F E

E E E S

L
__________

L E E S

When all was said and done, I got to the time for change in my recovery.

It brought me to a point where life could start again for me.
This is where my "word symbol" landed on a piece of paper.
It was the word MESS.
I knew it meant something by the way it made me feel inside as I looked at it.

It finally made sense.

How to clean up all the mess of my life.

It no longer mattered how it got there, who put it there, or how long it's been there.

It was now my responsibility to clean it up.

I had somehow gained the "ability to respond".

First I laid the MESS out where I could see it.

Then I separated each part and dealt with each letter separately.

M stood for mental. The mind blocked for more than twenty years.

Unable to let ideas flow evenly.

E stood for emotional. A agitation of the passions,
a strong feeling of a subject. How we are on the inside.

The first S stood for spiritual. Our very being, our soul, the God like part of us.

Neither tangible or material. The essence of our being.

The last S stood for sexual.
It pertains to the sexes and how life all comes together to make new life.

______________________________________________________

I drew a line and began adding things up.

At first the bottom line looks like all L's to me.

But I have come to know that life isn't always

what it appears to be.
When I look closer then passed it, I saw more.

Are they L's or are they perhaps the angles.

This piece I dedicate to the Candy Man from whom I found my mess

I was in when I learned his angle.

Life at this point is not right or wrong, it just is.

As I turn the angles around I make them the right angle or right direction.

What was done is done.

Now We take these angle to any degree to start the approach of our new life.

Under the mental the L (or angle) now stands for label.

A functioning means of identification attached to some thing to

designate it's origin, owner and contents.

The L (or angle) under emotional is for love.

The intangible, elusive part of our world.

You can't buy it, touch it, hold it, give it away or receive it for a present.

You can only feel it in your being.

When one stops waiting for it to arrive or trying to give it away you can begin to understand it.

It's the part of you always with you.

Having it gives you the ability to show love and except the gifts of

feeling love others give you in showing their love for you.

The next L (or angle) is life. A living growing being. That's what we are now.

Life is the interval between birth and death.

The process of living not just physically,

but mentally, emotionally, spiritually and sexually.

The last and most important L (or angle) is for the lies.

It is plural because it has two parts in it to make one whole being.

It takes two parts to create life, influence life, and change life.

The first part of the lie keeps us remaining in a specific condition.

We occupy this place and that becomes all to us.

The second part is the deliberate falsehoods we where taught as children.

Since we never knew to give them back we passed them on.

Not knowing we convey the false image that this is how life is.

"It's time to give it back or get rid of it"

______________________________________________________

As I drew the line and added things up again,

what was left was the letters L E E S.

I knew it must mean some thing, and there was this feeling again inside.

It had to be a word. It had to be a tangible part, and there had to be a purpose for it.

I looked for it's meaning.

I looked under the L's in the dictionary.

There I first found the word lee:

the side or quarter away from the wind 2. cover, shelter.

(it did shelter us all those years. We never felt exposed till the cover came off)

But I had LEES ? plural? It took two

lees: pl.n. Dregs; sediment

Wondering what dregs is? So did I. If that was my answer what did it mean.

dregs: pl. n. the sediment of a liquid. lees 2. the basest or least desirable portion.

Sediment is the material that settle to the bottom.

Dregs is all the junk we either don't want or don't need any more.

When all is settle and the "lees" has been given back, washed away with our tears,

drained out of us or enough time passes to distance us from our past.

What is left?

A foundation to start to build on in this process that has begun now and continues.