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Anonymous42119
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Default Oct 20, 2019 at 11:22 PM
 
I've processed so much while sharing my stuff and reading other people's stuff. For the longest time, my emotions were barely under the surface, largely handled by other alternates within my system. Sometimes, during fusion/integration, I can feel my alternates' emotions and see their memories - sometimes as separate from my own, sometimes with mixed images of their memories combined with mine. Fear makes me want to escape, which makes me want to dissociate (automatically, not consciously).

I do what I can to remain grounded. I feel my feet on the floor. I see a safe image in the room. I touch the table or the chair. I smell nothing or something (maybe my own funk for not showering for a few days, LOL). I hear the purring of my apartment's appliances, and the silence of the new town I reside in. I acknowledge the alternates' words, emotions, memories, and I acknowledge my own feelings, thoughts, and memories. I doubt before I'm convinced.

Then come the bodily feelings. I feel sad right before I feel anxious, which comes right before I feel my stomach go numb and my head slightly aching. My eyes seem to blur, but not enough to warrant a prescription change. I ground myself, but then I feel. The tears are barely there, slightly dissipating on the outside while puddling on the inside of my lids. I don't want to feel teardrops on my cheeks, I tell myself silently. I don't want to feel the emptiness in my tummy that comes after. I don't want to feel the betrayal wounds that are connected with the tears that bind my memories and my alternates together like used gum binds a shoe to the ground. I don't want to feel sad anger, the kind that makes the pain of betrayal more real. I want to pretend that everything in the here-and-now is safe, and that my past is just a faint memory, or an illusion separated by amnesia. But then up wells the tears again, and the pain that follows. Somatic responses to that pain are faint but loud. I want to hug someone, perhaps a person in a big teddy bear costume, so that I feel safe and less fearful. I want my tears to release this pain that I've hidden for my entire life, but I am so afraid that I won't stop once I start. There's a lot of pain. There's a lot of sad anger. There's a lot of fear - fear that I'm too much, fear that I'm crazy, fear that I'm never going to be good enough, fear of being disbelieved, fear of being used by the person whose shoulders are being drenched by my tears.

Distrust sucks the tears back in. The hope in trust pushes them back up to my eyelids. My tears cannot make up their mind, and my alternates inside are confused. My alternates continue to cry. "I'm not afraid of you," I tell the littles when they're crying. "I'm just afraid of feeling what you're feeling, and I'm sorry you took the pain for me," I add.

More tears well up, and almost one drop fell out. I blinked softly, and then I stare so the tears can dry up again. And when my tears can no longer be contained, I use my week-old, dirty, unwashed shirt that I'm wearing to sop it up before anyone notices - especially myself. I ignore the almost-tears for just a minute, and then see them as a distant memory, even though it occurred just seconds ago, while I'm typing this thread.

The tears want to come, but I'm not ready yet. And the big, safe teddy bear is just a hopeful wish for the future.

(Speaking of which, is it ever okay to ask a therapist to put on a teddy bear costume? --I'm kidding, I think.)
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