A new part comes foward

I had the strangest dissociative experience last week. I was sitting and talking with my IRL friend J when I suddenly felt like I'd just opened my eyes, even though they were already open. Or like I had a second set of eyes and those had just opened. And then for about five seconds, I had absolutely no clue who this other woman (my friend J) was.

Didn't recognize her. Didn't know anything about her. Nothing. Total stranger. It took just those few seconds for this other part to determine she was safe and then {}poof{} she was gone.

I don't know her name, but she's shared a few things with us since then:

• she was "out" when we were in Girl Scout Brownies
• she was out in a ballet class we were in circa early elementary school
• she remembers an experience going to Dad's workplace after hours (more shortly)
• she is hyper-sensitive about "down there"
• she believes everyone wants to look at a girl "down there"

She first came forward with memories about arguing with Mom about wearing the Brownie Scout uniform, which was a very short dress. She didn't want to wear it, or wanted to wear pants under it. But apparently that was against Girl Scout regulations at the time and Mom wouldn't let her. At every Brownie Scouts meeting, her focus was completely on how to keep anyone from looking between her legs.

Just recently, she shared parts of a memory that finally makes sense of a trigger we've never understood before. She remembers going with Dad to his workplace after hours one night. It was a secure facility, requiring a numerical key lock to get in the front door after hours, then signing in with a guard just inside the entrance, showing the company ID badge, signing a log... the whole bit.

Dad told Mom he'd forgotten something at work and it couldn't wait. He offered to take me, saying he'd show me where he worked, and maybe even get me a hot chocolate from the vending machine in the cafeteria (my absolute favorite part when we watched Fourth of July fireworks on the facility's campus each year). After signing in, there's a blur, then lying down on something (couch? table?) and seeing exposed ductwork in the ceiling. Maybe ceiling panels from a drop ceiling that had been removed? Maybe a ceiling that was never finished? At any rate, the ductwork was then associated with terror.

Dad met at least two other men there that night. She heard them talking and laughing. And the talking and the laughing and the ductwork and the lying down and the ductwork and the paralyzing fear and the sicksicksick feeling and the fear...

I never understood before now why seeing ductwork was so triggering. I still don't know what happened. It seems to involve a lot more fear and sense of "wrongness" than it does pain. Or physical pain, anyway. My suspicion is that photographs were taken. Maybe more, but at least that much.

After all this time, after years of therapy, I had no idea that there were still unshared memories. Dad's been dead now for six years; Mom passed away a little over a year ago. Maybe that finally makes it safe.

Safe, maybe, but it makes me sick.

-Chris

Special? Or human?

There's a very interesting discussion going on at sharing our spaces about finding balance between the very human need to feel special and concerns about self-absorption. This is something I've struggled with for decades. Literally.

When I was four, I stuck a metal fork in an ungrounded electrical outlet. Sparks flew, I was thrown back a foot (or so it seemed), and a two-foot space around the outlet was scorched. In the immediate aftermath, before it occurred to me to be scared, I saw a man standing between me and the outlet. He didn't say anything; he just smiled reassuringly. Then he disappeared and I saw the black wall and little burn marks on the carpet and then I screamed and my parents came running.

The man came back a few more times before I was ten. On one of those occasions, my mom was mad at me for something.  I don’t remember what.  I had run to my room and closed the door, but I heard her screaming in the kitchen. Then I heard her get into the closet, and a bunch of noise, like stuff falling over. All of a sudden, the man was there. He had very kind gray eyes. He told me not to be afraid, that he was there to help me.  Then he pointed to my bed and said ‘Quickly, under there.’ My mom came into my room only moments after I got under the bed, and knocked everything off my shelves, smashed some of my toys, threw everything out of my closet and onto the floor. At one point, she dropped a wooden handle, like a broom handle with no broom on the end.  I couldn’t see the man, from under the bed, but I sensed he was still there. She destroyed my room, but she never touched the bed. Some time after she left, he said it was okay to come out. But by the time I got out from under the bed, he was gone.

It never occurred to me to feel afraid of this man. In fact, despite the sheer terror I felt in the situations before each time he showed up, his presence always made me feel protected. It made me feel loved. It made me feel... a little special.

It wasn't until I was a teenager that I started thinking maybe these visits were a little odd. I was well-used to talking to people no one else could see, but this one was different. He showed up seemingly on his own agenda; I couldn't call him. And I was acutely aware that every time he showed up, I was spared from something even nastier than what I'd already endured.

When I was 16, I'd decided there was no way out, no way to escape the horrors at home and still live. I'd decided that my parents must be right about me, that I was no good---would never be good enough---and I ought to end it all. I had a plan. I started saying goodbye to my friends at school.

The day I'd decided to do it, I was walking to my locker from lunch and saw the same man leaning against a tree, waiting for me. "We need to talk," he said. I argued with him, out of desperation or frustration or something. I didn't realize other students saw me arguing with a tree. A school administrator took me to the office. My mom was called. My best friend meanwhile had reported her concerns that I was suicidal. Child Protective Services got involved. Through it all, the man stayed with me, talking to me.

Among the things he said to me (taken from a journal I kept back then): "There is something important you must do in this lifetime. Every human being on the earth has something important to do. Events are set in motion, certain people must be brought together, every person’s actions affect everyone around them, and any number of things could throw the whole direction off balance."

It made me feel...well...a little special.

And if he was right, everyone had something to contribute. Everyone was special, for reasons as unique as they were. But more importantly, to my mind at the time, I mattered. If not to my parents, I mattered to... what? Or maybe I should ask, Whom?

I have my suspicions about the man, about who or what he is. He's shown up a handful of times in my adult life, and it's sometimes been pretty intense. About twenty years ago (!) when he showed up, I asked for proof, for some sign that he was more than a figment of my imagination. His response convinced me in no uncertain terms. It strengthened my belief, perhaps even a kind of knowing, in whatever you want to call it: God, Spirit, the Source, an Intelligence in the universe.

Talk about humbling. And yet, a little special, too.

Only a very few people who know me IRL know about this visitor. Even my counselor doesn't know. It was never something I wanted to talk about. It was very personal. And I didn't want anyone to think I was either 1) insane, or 2) feeling superior because of these visits. Only because this blog is anonymous can I share it here.

I'm convinced it's completely human to want to feel special, to feel loved. We need to matter, and as children we need first to matter to our parents. It's from them that we learn whether to love ourselves conditionally or unconditionally. It's from family that we first develop our sense of self-worth.

But from time to time, maybe the Universe can step in and help us out a bit, too. Because we're special? No. Because we're human.