nanowrimo madness

I just threw a magazine across the room because it mentioned a Soap Opera character who ‘recovered from a bout of split-personality disorder’.
You recover from a bout of the flu. You don’t recover from being multiple. You work with it, around it, living every day of your life with it even if you somehow manage to reach therapy nirvana by totally integrating.
This stupid little article solidified my recent decision to work up a portfolio and seek speaking opportunities. I talked with my former counselor and she breathed a sigh as if she’d held her breath two years waiting to hear me say I was ready. When she began working with me she knew little about multiplicity. She sought conferences and seminars across the country to learn more in the context of her job as a sexual assault counselor. They were few and far between, although our mutual research suggested many more people who seek help are multiple than are ever identified as such.
We Qs hold a body of knowledge about multiplicity that could help sexual assault counselors, therapists, counselors, even police understand more about the people they serve. If they understood how dissociation works and the complexities that can arise the farther up the scale you go they could be much more effective in identifying and treating multiples.
Even amongst professionals there are many misconceptions about multiples. Some professionals don’t even believe we exist. They are convinced people who present as multiple personalities are grandstanding for attention. Others lump us in with Borderline Personality Disorder because most multiples display at least some of those characteristics, the most dangerous of them being self-abuse.
One of the most common misconceptions is that every multiple has an alter who is so filled with rage they slide easily into criminal activity. This is reinforced by the numbers of criminals blaming nefarious activities and antisocial behaviors on such an alter. The cops I've talked to are convinced a few are real but most are just looking for a way out of prision.
Maybe but for unconditional love the angry alter becoming criminal would have been a reality for us. ‘rion could have easily expressed his rage that way. But he did not. We believe Eyvonne’s steadfast love made the difference.
Many survivors of early childhood abuse and sexual assault act out in self-destructive ways. It is not the sole province of multiples. But working with someone who struggles with survivor issues who is also multiple is very different from working with someone whose self is unfragmented.
We believe a common understanding of multiplicity will help. Educating the public beyond ‘Sybil’ and “The Three Faces of Eve’ would be a start. We have a great deal of hope.
Thirty or forty years ago if a woman was raped most people assumed she’d done something to invite the attack. She’d flaunted herself about in a way that caused a man to lose control and deserved what she got. Although this kind of thinking still lurks subtly in the dark recesses of our societal mindset, for the most part blaming the victim is passé. Legally it is understood that anyone who subjects anyone else to unwanted sexual attention, talk or action is in the wrong.
Multiples are in a way where Gays were twenty years ago, poised on the brink of greater acceptance by society through understanding. The people we disclose to want to know more. The more they learn the better the chances are that they will be unfazed by our differences.
Multiples can live healthy, rewarding lives. They face more challenges than most people, the greatest of these is getting the help and support they need.
It isn’t easy being the partner of a multiple. Family members sometimes need to extend patience and love. But isn’t that what life is supposed to be about? Love? Not romantic hearts and flowers love, but the enduring kind that allows people to be who they really are. Unconditional love. No relationship will prosper without it not even one between singletons.
I’m not talking about the simpering born again submissive crap being sold in some circles as unconditional love. Unconditional love doesn’t mean constantly asking or bestowing forgiveness or crushing some part of yourself, your dreams, interests or desires in order to become acceptable.
Unconditional love means loving someone the way they are. You may not love some of their choices, decisions or how they squeeze the toothpaste, but you love them. Behaviors aren’t people. Sometimes knowing you are loved, with all your ugly parts showing turns ugly ducklings into swans.
I was 16 with an attitude, but the body was chronologically 46 when we met Eyvonne. I drove too fast, climbed cliffs without ropes, dove without checking the depth, stomped barefoot through snake country, argued with black bears over whose blueberry bush it was, and hauled snapping turtles big enough to snap my wrist off of highways. If anyone raised their voice toward me or mine I was ready to fight in a blink. It was my job.
When we met Eyvonne el was 43. He lurked inside ignoring most of my antics. He hated the dirt and disorder of the outside world. He was the geekiest of geeks unable to defend himself in any circumstances. Emotions were alien. He approached everything from a logical perspective.
Lillie was the same age as the body when we met Eyvonne. She had invested her whole life in being a good wife and mother. The problem with being a good wife was that without unconditional love she became someone’s slave. Love was based on performance and it was never good enough, whether the issue was earning money, housekeeping, parenting or sex she was found lacking by her husband. She faded until she was almost transparent.
Baby was three when we met Eyvonne. She was a distrustful toddler frightened of almost everything outside.
We were still unaware of the multitude of others who shared our body. Eyvonne welcomed each as they felt safe enough to make their presence known. She ‘preloves’ them as she puts it, in the way a mother loves her not yet conceived children.
Eyvonne makes no judgments. She simply accepts. If someone’s behaviors are not acceptable she makes sure they know it is their behavior she has an issue with, not them.
The effect of this steadfast acceptance drove me to grow up. It drew el into the outside world where his life experiences are tangible and enriched. He is self-sufficient and fulfilled.
Lillie is whole again, sure of herself in a new way she makes no excuses that her primary goal is nurturing her family.
Baby is 13 now. She still doesn’t trust most people, but she’s learned there are some worth knowing. She likes to read, play games, cook and paint. She even smiles.
The four of us have grown in ways we once thought impossible. Our inner family has increased in number and diversity. Alters we were totally unaware of came forward, drawn by the light of love and acceptance.
We are all ultimately in charge of our own lives. We may not be able to control certain circumstances but we can shape our responses to them. I know that now. I count myself very lucky that I had the chance to learn it.
Link, Taya and the others we sense on the edge of our inside world are coming home. We love and welcome them. Eyvonne and our children love and welcome them. They enter a new place where people show caring not just with pretty words but with action.
Sometimes I think I’m the luckiest person in the world. I may bitch about our financial circumstances but I’m also always working on getting beyond poverty. The stuff that really counts we Qs have in abundance. It’s time to share how we got from the bleakest place where we were 10 years ago to where we are now.
We haven’t recovered from our bout of multiplicity. We’re just getting comfortable with it.
© 2005 M. S. Eliot

Yesterday was Christmas. Mostly it seemed to be about laughter. Some of it related to the zany things we’re compelled to give each other like slot machine banks and window paint. Or the singing frog puppets Eyvonne’s mom gave Owl and Thunder. And a can of dog food with a home-made paper label identifying it as corned beef for Sarah who won’t eat the canned variety because it looks like dog food.
Factor in Zac’s performance using a 12-foot shipping tube as a musical instrument, Lee’s new watch that clips to a belt loop; a surefire way to attract girls… and Lillie wresting ops from Shel to leap over piles of wrapping paper and boxes, bolting from the room because we were having so much fun we ignored the time and our Christmas duck was an hour overdue for its date with the oven. Maybe we were just lulled into security by the smell of the ham already cooking. We had ham for dinner and duck l’orange for supper. Neither cost more than a dollar a pound. Our entire gourmet Christmas cost less than the turkey most Americans were gorging on for one meal.
Christmas actually started for us a few days early when Mer casually handed Eyvonne and I a card with a check in. It was enough to cover that TV we’d been coveting for two years. We were stunned. It was insanely cool of her.
“I worked a couple extra days,” she said shrugging.
Owl and Thunder gave Eyvonne and us Qs a DVD/VCR player. I felt like we were the kids and they were the grown ups. After all the gifts were opened and we were almost ready to eat Owl said, “Hey, I think I forgot a gift up in Thunder’s room.”
He turned to his brother. “Did you see it up there? It had a red bow on it.”
Thunder shook his head no. They raced up the stairs to find it and came down carrying a huge box. “Hey come in here!” they called.
Lillie started to cry. It was a TV bigger than the one we coveted. Eyvonne was teary too. Now we really felt like kids! The guys loved being Santa. It was a blast.
The day was filled with food and friends. We ate a ton of candy and ‘pecan crack’ an addictive mix of pecans rolled in sugar and cinnamon created by our friends from Philly as we watched movies on our new system. The picture on the ancient TV we’d been borrowing from Thunder was grainy and wobbly. It was strange to see everything in true, crisp colors. We could use Mer's check to get sattelite service and have real TV!
I thought about last Christmas. We’d moved back into this house three weeks earlier. We had no propane to cook Christmas dinner. We managed the entire thing in an electric frying pan, a toaster oven and a crock pot. We had only enough wood to last a couple of weeks. None of us had a real job. Our tree was a three-foot scraggly pine we’d culled from the back yard. Our gifts were simpler, but the laughter was the same. No matter what we always have laughter to pull us through.
This Christmas we have wood, propane, a real tree and food. We have a new family member to share it all with. We each have some sort of job and Owl will soon start an actual, real full-time job with benefits. We have friends willing to help us through our financial crisises - teeth, tuition and TV. hmmm what are the cosmic consequences contained in all those ‘T’s?
When I look back a year and see all we have accomplished with so little to work with I’m amazed. This new year should rock.
© 2004 M. S. Eliot

We put our family lodgepole up on the winter solstice... dead center in the labyrinth it touches the sky with feathers and prayer ties, wearing the colors of the four directions and four races, it is our best effort at restoring the balance of the universe, if just for a moment. We smudged, drummed, sang and laughed. Good stuff. Then we went inside to good food.
Eyvonne said the pole will sleep with the rest of the trees and waken in the spring, but I already hear it whispering dreams...
The pole isn’t the only whisper I hear. I wake at night with the sound of voices drifting away. Several times I’ve seen a young blonde woman holding a baby on her hip watching us from the shadows inside. I usually see her backlit as if she were standing in front of a small fire or fading sunset. I can’t make out details, but I sense like Link she is my doppelganger. I can tell she and the baby are grimy and ragged. I made eye contact with her once. Her gaze was unflinching, untrusting, and defiant. I recognize the stance. She obviously protects the child, but I sense she fronts for others still in deeper shadow. Link is singularly silent on the matter when I asked through el, but I think he knows her, or at least of her. el hasn’t seen her himself, but he said he senses her presence the way you know a deer is watching from a thicket when you’re hiking.
There’s nothing to do but let her watch until she feels comfortable enough to announce her presence.
Taya has been having terrible nightmares. So bad in fact she was reluctant to be away from Link at all. The last few nights she cuddled with Eyvonne and I saw/experience some of her nightmare(s). In one a large man comes through the bedroom door and looms over her. In another she/Link is looking down at the pond, which is almost drained. The fish have nowhere left to hide; they’re all crowded into the one remaining deep pool. Link pointed at the pond, turned to me and said
“What about this? What is happening here?”
I’d like to say I have the answer. Most of its not hard to deduce, Taya’s dream of the man looming over her seems to indicate she endured her share of abuse, not a surprise. It shows me she’s remembering and working through it as so many of us have. I think the depression I feel and the constant threat of tears is related.
I only wish one of us could really talk with her. We’ve done so much of this, we know what she’s going through and I really think it would help. Link, if there is anything we can do to make it easier to communicate please help that happen.
This morning when I woke there were flashes of light in the living room. At first I thought it was car lights from the road, but the curtains were drawn. Then I wondered if the power had gone out and Zac was using a flashlight to get ready for work, but he’d already left. It sort of looked like when the fire in the stove flickers through the damper holes on the door, a yellow light, warm and friendly. I got up thinking Zac had put a log on the fire. That would be a first he gets up 15 minutes before he needs to leave for work and never breaks stride to make sure we don’t freeze our asses.
But when I got up the front damper was closed and the fire nearly out. It was very warm outside, over 40 degrees warmer than two days earlier. It was windy. I wondered if what I’d seen was lightning but I’d heard no thunder.
Between Taya’s dreams and the mysterious light it was a strange beginning to the day. When I walked the dog I watched the wind whip prayer ties on the lodgepole. It stands firm even in this terrible wind. It’s a spiritual anchor in this turbulent time.
© 2004 M. S. Eliot

Our inside life plays out simultaneously against the background of everyday outside life. Things intertwine. My depression about money outside colors how I act inside.
Inside lately I’m prone to drinking, a behavior I’m thankfully not compelled to display outside. We’re not sleeping well, probably due to Taya’s nocturnal forays and explorations.
We have a lot to accomplish for our clients. Just as we get caught up a whole new set of problems and projects appears. We’re great at multitasking though. Last night we solved a website crisis as we were talking on the phone with a client. By the time he wound down explaining what he wanted we were already uploading his page with its changes.
This time of year there are other pressures too. Finding creative solutions for Christmas gifts is one. We decided to give wreaths and cookies. We still have pine to gather to finish the wreaths and Lillie bakes several batches of cookies almost every day. Of course everyone in the family is enjoying them too, including which ever Q is up. We each feel entitled to our favorites. el just downed three peanut butter cookies. Baby and Gwen tasted ‘just a few’ chocolate chip cookies earlier, and I ate two sugar cookies for breakfast. At this rate we won’t have any clothes that fit by Christmas.
Eyvonne is working extra hours because people at her workplace are taking days off to get holiday shopping etc. done. Which means we aren’t. (Getting our holiday shopping done). Which is OK, we have less than $30 to spend on each of our kids. Wonder what a yuppie kid would make of that? Shock. Heart attack. Despair. We’d make good Whos. Dr. Suess would have loved us.
Sarah and I strung lights along the porch a few days ago. It was freezing. The wind growled up the mountain and beat on us. By the time we were done neither of us could feel any fingers. But we hopped out into the yard to see our work. Somehow two pathetic strings of blue and red lights made it feel like Christmas. It snowed a few nights later and perfected the look.
I want to get out and walk the woods, see what kind of tracks I can find in the snow. I used to walk everyday, sometimes for miles. It might be good if I start doing that again, even if it’s just so we can keep eating cookies.
This week final exams will be done and Thunder will come home for a month. Lillie checked his room this morning to make sure there weren’t mice nesting in his bed or something. It wasn’t too bad. There were some sunflower seed hulls in one of his shoes. If we have time we’ll sweep before he gets home. The noise will make a statement to the mice.
We have friends nearby who have a winery. His father is Jewish and his mother Cuban. She’s part Iroquois and Scottish. Their three kids are gorgeous. She’s graduating as an RN this Saturday, which makes it tough because the whole family has embraced his faith and this is normally their Sabbath. Until a few years ago she and the kids celebrated Christmas. Now they all celebrate Hanukkah. Like us they represent a lonely cultural diversity in this extremely rural place.
He went along with us to a meeting this week. We’ve known him for years, but never disclosed that we are multiple. He’s gregarious fellow, always talking and laughing. “Between the two of us we double the cultural diversity of this board. I’m Jewish and Hispanic and you’re Indian,” he said. Then he thought a moment and added, “And you’re a lesbian!”
“It’s weirder than that,” I told him. “I’m a multiple personality.”
He pondered that a moment.
“You mean you’re more than one person?”
“Bingo. Some of us are guys. I’m a guy. I relate to Eyvonne as a guy.”
I reached over and shook his hand. “Hi I’m Shel,” I said.
He laughed as we shook hands.
“Do I know more of you?”
“Yeah, you know el, and Lillie,” I said.
He was quiet for at least a mile, a record for him.
Nothing much changed. We had as much fun as ever. I serve as vice-president of the organization we were involved with that day. No one on the board knows. I wondered what they would think if they did. It’s really not such a big deal. I think some of them would be relieved to know. They can’t figure out how I get so much done for this organization, volunteer in so many others and balance clients. If only I could figure out how to get paid for more of my activities.
After the meeting we went to a Chinese buffet for lunch. There are pockets of cultural diversity 30 miles from our mountains. It was kind of funny how my friend took my disclosure in stride. We still laughed at the same weird kind of things. We talked about his faith, my faith, his kids, my kids, his wife… my wife.
This year I wanted to get rings, one for me and one for Eyvonne. Identical rings. So people can see we are a couple. When I brought the idea up she asked if we could have a ceremony, if we could ask our friend who is chief of our tribe to bind us together in the age old manner of our culture.
It settled something inside. I felt something relax I hadn’t realized was tense. We’re planning on having ceremony in the Labyrinth this spring. It feels right.I wonder if by then the Qs lurking on the edge of my consciousness will have come in like Link and Taya. I hope so. It’s time.
© 2004 M. S. Eliot

Link is right.
The similarities he listed of being Indian and being multiple are:
Everything can change in a blink.
Always be ready to move.
Never become soft and complacent. But there’s another one we struggle with everyday:
There’s never enough money. It’s especially evident at this time of year when stores glitter with provocative stuff. We get caught up in wanting to give stuff to people we love. Last year we looked at TVs with Eyvonne. This year we looked again. We still can’t afford either a new TV or satellite service. No cable company comes near us. Our old antenna no longer captures a signal because stations don’t boost them anymore. We’re in a dead zone. It’s all about satellite and cable. It's all about money.
I don’t know why not having TV is such a potent symbol of our poverty except that it used to be free and now it costs $39.99 a month so we can’t have it. For the last few weeks we endured gasoline versus food choices nearly every day, but we don’t talk about that. We talk about not having TV because it’s a socially acceptable level of poverty. Not being able to afford food is real poverty and somehow shameful.
el serves on the county emergency shelter board. At the last meeting he talked about not qualifying for medical assistance anymore and how that has made things much harder due to our current circumstances with a tooth gone bad.
The director of the county assistance board was there too. He said the decision could have been appealed, but benefits were probably denied because we have so many assets. He suggested selling our car.
“And I would get to work how?” el snapped.
Sometimes I’m not sure why we’re on that board except to serve as a wake-up call to people from agencies that are supposed to help people in need. Some of them really do try to help. Others are so deadened by people who work the system they believe everyone who approaches their agency is just looking for ways to not work.
It’s easy to see why so many people get depressed this time of year. The disparity between those who have enough and those who don’t has grown vast, but no one wants to talk about that. Christmas is surreal in a country where buying things is a civic duty.
Eventually there will only be ten people in the whole country who can afford new wall-sized flat screen high definition TVs or the bloated SUVs that are so popular beyond all understanding in the face of the world’s rapidly dwindling oil supply. What are they going to do with those vehicles they paid more for than my home is worth when the oil runs out in six or seven, or if we’re lucky, twenty years?
I guess before then the whole country will suffer economic meltdown anyway. Or is that happening now?
It doesn’t matter when you really understand that everything can change in a blink.
We Indians will still be here. We’ll endure. We’ll still be burning wood for heat and planting gardens. I’ll miss the computer when the-world-as-we-know-it ends, but I’m sure I’ll still be writing, or at least telling, stories.
Some of those stories will be ones brought forward from the beginning of time, like how Skywoman fell to earth, her fall cushioned by geese.
Others will be about our family. And about me, Lillie, el, Link, Taya and all of us Qs. How we came to be and how we live.
In the long run I think stories are way more important than oil, or how rich some people are.
Maybe its time to return to a more rewarding culture where people are valued just because they are people and where every gift is important. I think that’s the best thing about being Indian. We give each other stuff like feathers and rocks and those are our most treasured possessions.
Sure, we’ll have a Christmas tree this year. We're infected that far by the dominant culture.
But we'll celebrate winter solstice too, no matter how cold or inclement the weather, we'll be out in the labyrinth singing and giving thanks. This year we'll be erecting a lodgepole in the center, painted with our tribal, clan and family colors and the colors of the four directions. It will sport thirteen sets of feathers and tobacco ties. Anyone who comes by can read in it who we are. Some friends will join us as we place our lodgepole on the shortest day of the year. Each day afterward the pole that touches the sky will call more light.
The Christmas tree we’ll cut on a farm nearby where every tree is $7.50. Last year we cut a three-foot tree off our own property because we didn’t have $7.50. We didn't have money for a ham or turkey either, friends brought us a ham. This year we'll cook a ham and a duckling. Despite my depression, things are obviously looking up.
We’ll proudly do our civic duty and boost the local economy by buying a tree. The farmer can sure use the money. I just hope Walmart wasn't counting on us to buy lots of glistzy stuff.
Still, there will be a few gifts under our tree. We’ll cook big food and hopefully lots of our friends will be around to share it.
But Owl put things in perspective for me. He said the best gift he ever got for Christmas was a letter we wrote to him a few years ago. He couldn’t name any of the toys he’d received over the years growing up, but he still has that letter.
Things of value endure. Love endures.
© 2004 M. S. Eliot

When I participated in Nanowrimo I thought it was just for me. I needed something to remind me I am first and foremost a writer.
I love to write and it pains me I can’t seem to make a good living at it. I’ve seriously considered moving to Canada or Ireland where writers, poets, artists, musicians and other performers are considered national treasures. Their work is supported through national funding. Wow. To be free to just write. What a concept.
But we left these mountains three years ago tilting at windmills that turned out to be elusive chimera. I don’t guess we’ll be leaving any time soon unless major Mango Chicken happens. Which it might. Or at least could, Oprah willing.
In the meantime writing nearly every day is a joy. Being a Nanowrimo winner is a hoot. We’re getting the 2004 T-shirt for Christmas, which should extend the social talk value of Nanowrimo right through to next November when it starts all over again.
Blogging this work-in-progress has had some unexpected results. A few of our friends have new insights into our inner world, the way things work for us, how we think and why we do things the way we do. I admit we hoped that would happen.
One thing we didn’t expect was Link. Playing that out in a public forum has been a trip at times. But what the heck if our goal is to be open and foster understanding, so be it.
Another result we didn’t foresee was changing the views of a psychology professor who previously doubted Multiple Personality Disorder was a real diagnosis. It might not seem like much, changing one person’s views. But this person teaches about abnormal psychology every day. A college professor is in a position to influence how hundreds of people view/understand multiples.
It’s like butterfly effect. Chaos Theory. Physics. I know, your eyes are glazing over already. We flapped our little writer wings in Nanowrimo and rippling out are changes grand and subtle.
But the most profound effect generated by this work may be providing insight for someone who suspects multiplicity may account for their own currently MIA chunks of time. If we’ve done one thing in our life to be proud of, it’s defusing fear for other multiples.
All of this made us reconsider the Mango Chicken of our life. At one time we actively sought opportunities to speak out. Our goal was to sow understanding. We were distracted from that goal dedicating two years to a bogus-destined-to-fail project hundreds of miles away from these beloved mountains of ours. The past year has been dedicated to reconstructing our lives here and building up enough income to eat on a regular basis.
Things are infinitely better now on all fronts. It’s time to assess our direction. In Oprah we trust. She’s accomplished some of the loftiest goals imaginable. But how did she do that?
I could try chanting, “Mango Chicken, Mango Chicken, Mango Chicken,” and click the heels of my ruby slippers together…. Or I could let el do what he does best: make a plan.
el said planning is fine but "Remember the Labyrinth." Is that anything like ‘Remember the Alamo?”
There are some similarities between this blog and the Labyrinth. The “Field of Dreams” thing. We built it and people just started showing up. Maybe it will be like that.

Hi Shel.
I know you weren’t done with this and you’d come right back to it so it seemed like the best way to make sure you find it.
People are already showing up at least inside. Let me bring you up to speed.
Last night Taya stepped away from me to explore right before Eyvonne came home from work. Owl and his friend jamming on guitar and drums drew her out. She danced and I watched over her. She was happy because Eyvonne recognized her as soon as she came in the door. She held her hands up waving to the music. Eyvonne put her hands up too and Taya met them palm-to-palm.
She played with a ball that lights up when it bounces. Anything rhythmic fascinates her, draws her out even more. She was interacting with Eyvonne, hugging her and almost smiling. But she became apprehensive and retreated to the bedroom when the music stopped and the boys went out for a smoke. She wanted the turtleneck shirt off, the neck felt too tight to her. She pointed out what she wanted to wear, Gwen’s infamous purple pajamas. But she’d never dressed or undressed before.
Eyvonne asked, “Do you need help?”
Taya was stumped. Naked in front of anyone wouldn’t do. Finally after threatening to stretch the neckline of the shirt completely out of shape she sat down on the edge of the bed and made a series of gestures with her hands.
My knees went weak when I saw what she was doing. Inside she called to me. Outside she her fingers formed the letters of my name, L I N K, over and over until Eyvonne understood.
“You want Link to help you?” Eyvonne asked.
Taya tapped her arm twice.
Soon after she signed a series of things. Blinking her eyes and tapping her forefingers to her thumbs repeatedly she was frustrated that Eyvonne didn’t understand. Inspired she made a T and a V with her fingers. TV. Next she mimed eating popcorn.
Her first foray solo, well mostly solo, outside and she’s making choices and communicating.
The implication of her knowing how to spell my name and form the letters is she might be able to learn to type.
Was I happy? More like scared witless. You’ve seen parents follow a toddler around right? Magnify that by a million. Pride mixes with abject fear of their charge getting hurt. And I felt a profound emptiness inside me where I hold Taya.
I didn’t cry. Much.
“Are you OK?” Eyvonne asked.
I nodded, got a drink of water. Busywork. Talking was too difficult. It was all too intense. Then it happened. Taya stood apart from me intent on listening to the popcorn popping. I saw you Shel, with el and some of the others inside.
You turned to el and said, “Wow. She found a way to talk. She’s not locked in.”
I heard you. At that exact moment I saw others behind you like shadows. No one I knew except perhaps in the vaguest way, like people you pass on the sidewalk who look familiar but not enough to turn around and shout after.
I choked on my drink. As soon as I spluttered and coughed Taya looked at me and I knew it was gone. You were still talking with el but I couldn’t hear you.
They were gone too, the shadow people.
What to do?
I did nothing. I was exhausted. I couldn’t even bring myself to speak of it with Eyvonne. I felt as mute as Taya. She alternated ops with me watching TV, retreating inside when CSI got gory. She seems to follow the stories. She loves popcorn. But she was just as fascinated by the reflection of Christmas lights in the big bay window. Or maybe it was something inside that held her attention. I don’t know. I never know. I hold her, we’re not one.
The only things I know about being multiple are the same things you know about being Indian: Everything can change in a blink. Always be ready to move. Never become soft and complacent.

Link.
P. S. Ready to dance?
© 2004 M. S. Eliot

So yesterday Eyvonne is talking with India, a name none of us believe is his real one, and she starts goofing on something with him. I don’t know what because he can block me from speaking or hearing anything in mid-sentence even though we were doing what with any other Q I’d call sharing ops. With him I just have an overwhelming sense of his presence. Being that close to him makes my skin feel it’s burning, as if I were standing too close to the woodstove. Eyvonne said she was sure we were both up.
She could clearly see us both, but said we took turns talking.
There is a growing sense among us Qs that India is connected to both el and me. India makes me feel disoriented when he’s nearby. I feel lightheaded, feverish, and sometimes a little queasy. He has the same affect on el, but at least they can mindtouch.
Anyway, between what Eyvonne and el told me later she was teasing India about his ‘name.’
India was talking about feeling connected to both el and me.
“Maybe we should just call you ‘Link’,” she said laughing, “Since you have this connection to both el and Shel.”
India looked uncomfortable. She was a little unnerved by the intensity of his response.
“Ummm,” Eyvonne said. “I didn’t mean to say anything wrong. I was only joking.”
“Why did you say that name?” he asked. “You could have said anything, why that?”
“I donno. I said I was only teasing,” Eyvonne said, feeling her way through a possible minefield she tried to defuse the situation, but he was riveted.
“Remember when I told you I didn’t have a name? I was lying,” he confessed.
“It’s OK if you don’t want to tell me, you’re allowed to have secrets from me. Like you don’t know everything about me,” she pointed out.
“You’d get the pot of gold,” he said with a strange smile.
“Whaddya’ mean? I don’t understand,” Eyvonne said, clearly out of her depth trying to follow a major Q leap from one point in a conversation to another.
“Well remember the story of Rumplestiltskin?” He asked.
She nodded with a vague look on her face. Then suddenly she understood, remembering how someone guessed Rumplestiltskin’s name.
“I didn’t mean to upset you,” she said. “I wasn’t even guessing. I had no idea Link was really your name.”
“Well it is. You’re like that princess in Rumpelstiltskin,” he said. “Except I don’t have any gold.” He reflected then added, “When someone knows your name they have power over you.”
“I know,” she said. “It’s OK. I won’t hurt you. No one wants to hurt you. You know that don’t you? Does Taya know that?” Eyvonne touched his arm tentatively, hoping to reassure both Link and Taya.
“Is Taya with you?”
He nodded. More confessions poured out. “I’m Taya’s safe place like Shadow is el’s.” he said. Then he said almost to himself, “Why am I telling you these things?”
When el is too stressed to deal with things he hides deep within Shadow until he feels healed, rested. Shadow provides him refuge and carries on in his stead. I’ve become so used to their dance I hardly even stop to note it anymore.

Eyvonne tried talking more about Taya and her connection to Keeper, but Link was too agitated. Who wouldn’t be after hiding successfully for so long only to have your cover blown by a joke?
As Eyvonne tried to talk more about Taya I was alternately aware and then blocked. I lost any sense of continuity. I had no idea what Link was saying, but I could feel his emotions surging. At a point when Eyvonne was sure I was present she summarized what had happened. But I forgot it until we talked again today.
Link.
It was a name with implications I dreaded, although those implications were already in my face. No wonder Taya had been too much for Keeper. I suspected she was deeply related to Ember, which how she was connected to el. Like Ember she kept a deep well of pain locked away from us. She needed Link to help her bear it and keep her from letting it spill over to ravage our consciousness. I understood now why my overwhelming impression of her is just the color red. Red is blood. Anger. Pain. Flames. Redemption. I’ve had a recurrent image, leftover from a dream I don’t remember, of India, no, now he’s Link, holding open his shirt, in the pose of Christ showing his bleeding heart, but it’s only red. Just red. Just Taya.
Ember was another autistic inside child who held pain for each one of us, a repository of horror. He burned in constant agony until integrating with el. As soon as that was accomplished we all felt pain to some degree, at least enough to recognize it, but still not normally.
If I integrated with Link and Taya maybe the ability to feel normal pain would disseminate throughout the system. Or maybe only I would be the only one gifted with Taya’s knowledge. I still wonder what her real name is or means.
Link. His name implies his job. He is me. He is el. I know now el and I were never really separate until Link stepped away. I feel like he’s a hologram of me, a duplicate made in case of emergency. But he’s el too. A backup file hidden deep inside the Q hard drive.
His existence hedged our bet for survival. He was fully primed from the moment he was spawned to keep us safe and sane. I walked away from that day with my duties etched into my being: Guard, Protect, Defend. el’s primary function was more cerebral. Shadow is his doppelganger, Link is mine. And I’d always thought it was Keeper. When Keep showed up I heaved a sigh of relief. I thought it was the final round. I thought I’d faced this challenge already and laid it to rest. But Keeper’s mission never really made sense to me, not even when he resided inside me. Now I know he held a lot of pieces of the puzzle back. It makes me sad. But he was only doing his job the way he saw it then, just as he is now. He couldn’t hold Taya’s because her puzzle piece didn’t match his. It fits Link’s. And I suspect it dovetails neatly with mine.
Link’s first memory is el’s ‘birth’. Standing alongside me he watched el cut Baby’s golden curls, saw them turn raven black before scattering on the bathroom floor. I can see him now when I remember that day. I understand who he is, why he is, as he mimics every move el makes. He looks exactly like me.
Once autonomous he acquired his own life, was shaped by his own experiences. I know now we shared the consequences of el’s natal act. We were beaten for locking the bathroom door, a criminal offense of the first degree committed by a three-year-old; wielding scissors, another crime; and there was the matter of the socially unacceptable haircut. The beating had little effect. el cut our hair over and over again. No one removed the lock from the bathroom door. Locks were essential to our secret-filled home. No one locked up the scissors though. It was el’s first addiction the means and consequences always available.
Link asked el if we Qs hate him now that we know who he is.
What a weird question.
I told el to thank him for what he’s done. For what Taya’s done. Link lived free of my conviction that everything bad in the entire fucking world is my fault. Sadly he developed his own guilt trip, fears, and trust issues, grown from the same seeds. On really good days I know deep in my heart none of what happened in our childhood was my fault. Most days are really good now. But there is this tiny residual recalcitrant nagging bit of guilt that I may never completely vanquish. At least not alone.
I panicked at first, knowing who Link is. I thought el and I were doomed to integration by his presence. Don’t get me wrong, I love el. A few years ago my goal in life was to grow up to be like him. I think in a lot of ways I have. But being ‘like el’ doesn’t mean I want to ‘be’ him.
Although every single integration experience we’ve ever had indicates it happens only by mutual and voluntary consent, there have been several times over the past few years that scared me. Strangely inexplicable events where I thought I’d experienced something and el thought it was his. A particularly bad asthma attack stands out as one of those events. We both lived it, experienced it as if we had ops, remembered it in amazingly similar detail. It freaked us both out for weeks.
I’m pretty sure it’s not an issue. But it has me a little spooked. I’m pretty sure now it’s what has Taya so spooked too. She needs Link to hold her, communicate for her. He needs her to validate his existence. If he integrates with either el or me what happens to Taya? Obviously she didn’t do so well integrating with Keeper. I have a suspicion she already knows she has choices.
But despite Link’s misgivings about losing Taya, and my own uneasiness about so much changing so fast, I’m not scared anymore. Whatever it is we’ll handle it. We’ve gotten this far.
But there’s still the niggling little fear sown by Dr. Dwon that someday it could all get too much, we’ll spawn someone entirely new who just wanders off into their own sunset. What then? Is that it? Or do we find ourselves someday in strange surroundings with people we don’t know, mimicking what’s happened for so many of our re-emerging alters.
No. That’s not it. Somehow Link’s presence affirms me. Affirms el. It’s Taya who is the wild card, the unknown element. Although I can already see myself in her image I cannot fathom how she fits into the flow charts, concentric circles and convoluted outlines of the system. I suspect she is the connection to those Qs still beyond the system’s perimeters, hiding like Japanese soldiers on tropical islands fighting a war long since ended.
I’ve said this once before, but forgive me. It’s not a dissociative moment. It’s a really important one.
You guys out there, listen up. It’s over. Allie, allie in free.

P.S. By Eyvonne.
When Shel said “Allie, allie in free,” the first time, things began to happen throughout the system. Link seemed very surprised by some of the things he told me when I inadvertently discovered his real name.
As Shel and I talked later about what happened between Taya and Keeper in the past I had a revelation of sorts. I’d been thinking about how Keeper always said he was the ‘glue,’ implying he had the means to allow all the Qs to integrate. But you can’t glue (Keeper) anything with out the pieces fitting together (Link.)
I also believe I know some things about Taya. She initiates cuddling with me every night after the other Qs are asleep. She wants to communicate with me. I devised a way to facilitate that by asking her to tap once for ‘no’ and once for ‘yes’ on my arm. She did so willingly. That same night she dreamed and tapped yes, yes, yes repeatedly on my arm.
I think Shel is right, she is like ember in that she holds pain, but while he remained in infancy, she has the capacity to interact as an adult. I think she holds the ability to block…..not hold pain…pushing it so far away it doesn’t exist.
She’s aware in a way ember never was, she’s self-aware.

P.S. by Shel
A few weeks ago I felt so restless and depressed I thought about going back into therapy. But we have no medical card, nor can we afford the usual $75.00 per hour fee.
Sometimes I think we are the luckiest multiple on the face of the earth, because we have Eyvonne. We’ve accomplished more in the past few days, hell, in the past few hours, because she is intimately familiar with our history. It was her idea to try and use the computer as a communication tool. It worked in the past, and it’s working now.
Now, if only Taya could type… how ‘bout it Link. Can she only talk to me in dreams? Does she have language? You can speak for her, what about typing for her?
I want so much to know you. I don’t want to take her from you. I don’t want to hurt either one of you, you know that on the deepest level there is. You must know it.
I know you’re close. Now come on, touch base. Home free. No more hide and seek.
© 2004 M. S. Eliot

Breathing is good.
I remind myself of that because sometimes I forget to breathe.
I know, it’s supposed to be an autonomic response kinda thing. Breathing I mean.
But when I’m really stressed, or really happy, or really anything I just stop breathing. Like awake apnea instead of sleep apnea.
Lately I’ve had to remind myself to breath a lot.
If you’ve been reading this bloggin’ story right along you already know there are two major plot lines. Just in case you’re a newbie to the site and you’re confused because you’re reading from the top instead of reading the oldest post first (check the archives sweetie, they’re listed by date) here are the plot lines:
1. Will Q and Eyvonne survive as a couple?
Subplot: Does anyone survive raising kids?
2. How will Q resolve the challenge of India?
Subplot: Can Shel really handle being anybody’s hero?
OK, now that you’re up to speed, Eyvonne took a cue (no pun intended) from India and left a file in our blog folder wherein her own strange and esoteric way she succinctly summarized what’s been going on with her over the past three weeks while I’ve been obsessed with writing 50,000+ words for Nanowrimo.
Eyvonne -
On Life in general:
I feel like crying lots, overwhelmed, underwhelmed, overworked (not by vacuuming), underpaid and completely stressed.
On Being an End Zone Instant Parent:
Is she 18 or 4? I remember it being easier when I could say, “Don’t put peanut butter up your nose.” Rather than suggesting in a moderated tone that it may be difficult to breathe if you continue to stuff your nostrils darling, so how about maybe you don’t anymore.
On what’s up with her:
When I’m not stewing over one thing in my head, it’s another and another and another. And mostly none of it has anything to do with any of you.
On Our Relationship:
So I’m sorry for snippy, stupid, rude, tearful, ignorant, snotty. So maybe it sucks to be safe, safe to yell at, take things out on…and it’s not fair. I am sorry.
And you’re right breathing is good…together.
Damn. Am I in heaven or what? The woman loves me. HA.
I figured out a couple years ago that when she pushes all my triggers it’s because she’s really hurting, not because she is sick of me, hates me, want so leave me or has discovered I generate so much stupidguystuff it isn’t worth it any more.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not glad she’s stressed, feeling insecure and unhappy.
I can deal with that. I understand stress. I know insecure big time, I invented insecure. I’ve mastered more stress and insecurity than you want to know about. I’ve got some pretty good tools to share. I ought to be able to help her discover ways to be less stressed and feel more secure, which will naturally lead to being happier. It’s an upward spiral from here. I have the answer and it is MANGO CHICKEN.
Well, not really. But close.
Right now I’m as happy as a frog in a rainstorm.
Because I know what Eyvonne needs. I mean besides my broad shoulders to throw crap at because she knows I won’t retaliate no matter how awful she is. This is a sign of true love you know. Watch a toddler and see if I’m not right. They pitch the worst fit they can just to see if their parents love them anyway. A truly great parent calmly observes the tantrum and says, “When you’re done I’ll be over here waiting to give you a hug.”
John Lennon was right again. All she needs is love.
You can bet your last Euro that supper will be ready when she comes in the door tonight. There will be candles on the table. I will sit with her while she eats. And I will listen.
Listening is after all the greatest gift and the surest sign of love.
As to the second plot, I can’t fathom its resolution at this point.
I was more than highly annoyed to discover India posted to the blog without letting me read what he had to say first. It’s one thing to talk through the computer, it’s quite another to have our first conversations in a public forum.
So. Anyway. Segue to his recent post:
India, I am sincerely touched by what you said about me. I believe with all my heart another theme of Ghandi’s - I’m paraphrasing from a book in el’s library here - A small group of people with enough faith can change history.
In some small way I know we did change at least a few things about our small corner of the world.
There are people who didn’t believe in multiples before they read something we wrote, or met us in person. Some of them are more effective intercessors, artists, nurses, writers, editors, counselors, ministers, teachers and cops because of what we taught them. Others are more aware and sensitive to their own journey through life. Most are more open to the myriad possibilities of Creator’s mind, one of those possibilities being us.
If nothing else we’ve opened the door to the concept that not all abused children grow up to become abusers. We spoke at a victims’ rights rally a few years ago following a minister who admitted he’d done research on the Internet. His premise was that the abused child grows up to become an abuser.
We had this whole really great speech memorized that we just trashed on the spot.
“With all due respect to Reverend Whatshisname, I stand before you today to assure you that is not always the case. In fact a lot of abused kids grow up to be upstanding, forthright, hard working citizens. They cherish their own kids because they know firsthand what it’s like to go to bed hungry, or crying with no understanding why,” I said.
We ended our speech by reading a poem we’d been asked to write for a state anthology written by victims of violent crimes. Eyvonne read her poem from the same anthology.
Afterward a woman came to me in tears, thanking me for what I’d said.
“I was horrified when Reverend Whatshisname said those things,” she said. “I thought, ‘what must my children, my neighbors be thinking?’ Knowing I was abused as a child, I thought they would think I must be an abuser in some way too.”
We cried together.
It ain’t easy being green.
To answer some of your questions India, I have no idea how el does that weather thing. He’s right about the weather 99 percent of the time, and he can tell you what time it is within 15 minutes with about the same accuracy. Rainman syndrome.
As to noises, I can’t deny they bug me too. But the safer I feel, the less they bug me.
As to issues about our parents, you’re right. It’s ancient history. No answers there. But it can’t hurt us anymore unless we let it. Not me, you, Taya, el, ‘rion, Trekker, Keeper, Baby, Ian, Gwen or any of us. We’re safe now. Trust me on this one OK?
It doesn’t matter anymore why this happened to us, except as a lesson or a warning beacon for other people to learn from, to recognize, the way you’d want to recognize any dangerous person, pattern or situation.
And the mantle of heroism doesn’t feel quite comfortable on my shoulders. Not when placed there by community members, or family or even Qs. But thank you India. I know how you feel. Not so long ago I felt that way about el.
If there’s a real Q hero it’s him. el gave up everything he wanted as a young man and stayed mostly inside for thirty years to keep us sane and moving forward.
I haven’t forgotten India that you and Ian and so many others hid just as long or longer, doing your own jobs.
The war is over guys. It’s time to come in.
It’s time to live, love, laugh. Be a frog in a rainstorm. Enjoy being green. Who the hell cares if it’s not easy, at least it’s us.
Oh, and by the way, remember to breath OK?
© 2004 M. S. Eliot

Hi Shel.
When I got up this morning the wind was making a strange sound in the woods on the mountain behind the house. el said that’s how the wind sounds in a bad storm. It’s been raining all night too, by the looks of it.
It’s strange in a way; so much I just take for granted out here, even though I haven’t had that much time out with ops. Noises I don’t know perplex me. A noise can stop me dead in my tracks until I identify it. Ian says it’s tied to being a protector. We’re more sensitive to everything going on around us.
Apparently Dr. Dwon taught you that being constantly hyper alert isn’t a good thing. In some ways I agree with that, in others I don’t. It does take a lot of energy I guess, but I still think it’s better to know what’s going on around you.
You haven’t shaken it completely yourself. You nearly always choose a table in a restaurant placed where you can see the doors your back to the wall. Being so attentive is what makes you a good reporter. You don’t miss much.
The rain is turning to snow now. el walked outside yesterday morning and said, “It will snow within 24 hours.” How did he know?
I’ve got a lot to learn if I’m going to stay.
Outside is bigger than I thought. And more complex than I remembered. It’s pretty discouraging. I can understand why Gwen and Baby stay inside most of the time. I don’t have any dreams to fulfill, no desire to be any particular thing like an artist or a writer, or to learn how to design websites. I doubt I’d be much good at public speaking or any of the rest of the things you Qs who make money do.
In fact I don’t know what I’m good at except watching and being ready to protect Taya and the Q.
Is that enough?
I know it sounds dumb but I’ve been reading about Ghandi. I thought he was totally non-violent. But he wasn’t unless I’m confused. Some of what he said indicates it’s all right to defend you family. Which made me feel better because I was getting all mixed up and feeling pretty guilty about always being ready to fight if I need to. You understand what I mean Shel; I know you do because even now you’re ready. It’s not about being angry. It’s not about expressing anger. It’s a cold silent readiness to defend what you hold dearest.
Then I wondered for a while why what happened to us had to ever happen to anyone. I know you wonder too, is evil just inherent in some people? Is it their response to society or lack of nurturing? Or is their brain awash with a batch of aberrant chemicals?
I know you have a difficult time reconciling your experiences with our father as scientist, teacher, hero and abuser.
You were constantly measured against his unattainable standard. No achievement ever won his true attention. You never earned his love.
Ghandi said this, “Man's nature is not essentially evil. Brute nature has been known to yield to the influence of love. You must never despair of human nature.” He also said, “Evil is, good or truth misplaced.”
Somewhere in the past, in the tapestry of our father and mother’s lives lie answers to why they did what they did. But they’re not our answers are they Shel?
I so understand so much more now. Living in a truly loving way absolves both the riddle of the past and the difficulties of now.
I can feel it when you’re upset. I know when you’re worried. I can tell when you’re laughing. I know your joy. I’m intimate with your sorrows. I can’t quite grasp why we can’t mindtouch. el wonders if it’s because we are too close for that. I don’t think so. I have a hunch but I’m not ready to test it.
I know this much, I would be proud to be you Shel. You exemplify something else Ghandi said, “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”

It makes me proud to be a Q.
© 2004 M. S. Eliot

By the time redneckjerk and Sarah got up it was time for Eyvonne to go to work. She’d dropped off ten dollars for me to give redneckjerk so he could buy gas.
I was seething.
He was just standing out by his truck while Sarah was ditzing around in the house. I could hand her the money to give him, or I could give it to him myself and tell how I felt. No one could do that for us. I walked up and handed him the money.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“It’s ten bucks. Put it in your gas tank and go home.”
He blinked.
“You were only here by sufferance because Sarah wanted you here. You were not supposed to stay overnight last night, and you’re not staying overnight in the future. No one here respects you because of what you did to Sarah. You dishonored her and treated her without respect. The fact that I respect Sarah is the only reason you were allowed to come here yesterday,” I said. “If you want my respect back you’ll have to earn it by treating her right.”
The whole time I was talking every Q inside was cheering stuff like “Go Shel!!” “Yeah!” “You tell him boy!”
I think ‘rion and Keeper were hoping he’d take a swing at me so we could legally take him down.
Unbeknownst to me, Thunder and Sarah were also watching from the kitchen window.
I made sure I stayed more than an arm’s length away from him because the temptation to grip his scrawny little neck and whack his head against his truck window was high.
“What did I do?” redneckjerk whined, leaning backward as if he knew I might throttle him.
“If you don’t know, that’s your first f’ning problem. Figure it out.”
I walked away.
Sarah talked to him. When she came back in she was trying not to laugh.
“He’s afraid to even come back in to get his truck keys,” she said. “Is he allowed to come in and get something to eat before he leaves?”
“Sure,” I said. “But he goes home after that, and he doesn’t stay overnight again.”Sarah blinked.
“It’s because he treats you like crap Sarah, and you don’t need that. As far as I’m concerned he’s an abuser and I won’t shelter an abuser under my roof,” I said. “If you stay with him it’s likely to escalate to violence eventually.”
“Can I ask you what you said to him?”
I told her verbatim.
“That’s pretty much what he said you told him,” she said. “I told him you were just being a good parent, looking out for me.”
She grinned and threw her arms around my neck hugging me tight.
“Thank you for standing up for me,” she said. “Nobody’s ever done that before.”
The she asked, “He still has a chance right? I mean if he treats me right he can still earn your respect?”
“Clean slate if he’s capable of it. But I doubt he is,” I said.
Sarah laughed.
“Well, we’ll see,” she said. “I’m not taking any more crap from him that’s for sure.”
She went out the door. It took her a while to convince redneckjerk I wouldn’t actually hurt him.
“Do you think he’ll change?” Thunder asked.
“I dunno,” I said. “Maybe if more people intervened things would be different. I guess if it means enough to him he can still change. He’s young.”
Thunder laughed. “If he wants to keep dating Sarah he’d better change. God, what you did was awesome, standing up to him that way.”
“It was pure Shel mode,” I said somewhat sheepishly.
We both laughed. I never told him I shook for an hour afterward. Adrenaline rush.
I actually was pretty restrained compared to years past. Maybe I finally had grown up. I wasn’t 16 anymore. A few years ago I would have put his head through the window.
But somewhere along the line I realized when I did things like that, I wasn’t tough, I was just joining the other side. I felt a lot stronger not lashing out with violence.
But trust me, if he’d thrown a punch he’d have gone down. I had enough street fighting in my past to do it without reflection. It was automatic. Somewhere in New York City there’s a big Hispanic guy with crooked fingers who made the mistake of thinking what he saw was what he’d get. Sometimes being a guy in a female body isn’t so bad.
I’d resolved a portion of the conflict stressing me out. But I couldn’t quite shake the other stuff bugging me. I still couldn’t make a good thing out of my fear that our relationship with Eyvonne was in jeopardy. We’d been together almost a decade. It was never easy, but there was a lot of good too. There’s a lot of change going on in our lives right now, good and bad. Even good changes cause stress.
I know relationships go through seasons. And I certainly know they can end. I wasn’t sure what she wanted long term anymore.
I do know every Q in here loves her. I imagined us together always. But I’m not dumb enough to believe in happily ever after. I’ll be OK no matter what. Unhappy maybe but OK.
John Lennon said, “Life is what happens when you’re making other plans.”
Dr. Dwon was fond of saying, “Expect the best but plan for the worst.”
Somewhere between these two gurus of mine lies actuality.
Start with the worst-case scenario. Eyvonne leaves. Can you make plans about that? Can you make plans for a thousand year flood, the kind that computer models don’t have enough information to spit out a predication about? Eyvonne leaving would be a thousand year flood in my life. I can’t think of a single action to take in the case of either eventuality.
It’s like planning for the apocalypse. What do you do, stockpile food? Squirrel away money? We don’t have enough of either to last more than a week.
Remember all those people who bought generators to survive Y2K? I always wondered how they thought they were going to get the gas to run their generators if Y2K was the end of the civilized world. Didn’t they know widespread power failures would freeze the gas pumps at their local COGO? What did they think they were going to do with their generator anyway, run the dishwasher one more time?
With oil reserves predicted to run out in less than two decades, now would be a good time for our government to plan something more long term than killing Iraqis to get control of the last of their oil.
But this is supposed to be a plan for what we Qs would do if Eyvonne left.
Breath. We’d do that.
We could put reminders to eat on the computer monitor and the back door. But that wouldn’t guarantee we’d do anything about it. Eating is of marginal interest when we’re even mildly bummed.
We’d keep working. We always do that. We’ve met deadlines in the midst of gave illness and personal crisis. Being dissociative helps with stuff like that.
Did I mention breathing?
OK, so it’s a short and pathetic list.
I’d rather work on planning to stay together.
Oddly enough that list starts with: Improving Shel’s self-esteem.
Because maybe Owl is right and this is a lot about my trust issues and a little about Eyvonne blurting things out of her own fears.
Settling India and Taya into the system would help.
Almost everything else I can think of to do would require effort by Eyvonne and us Qs.
There are a lot of dust bunnies accumulated in our relationship that are gumming up the works. Some of it is classic guy stuff/girl stuff.
Like she does her hair and puts makeup on and I’m distracted and stressed so she waits and waits for me to notice. Finally she asks “Do I look pretty?”
It’s a no win question, because if a woman has to ask you’re already chalked up as an idiot. If you respond, “You always look beautiful to me” in her mind she’s gone to all that effort for no good reason. If you simply say, “Yes, you look beautiful” you’re doomed because she had to prompt you. Your credibility is marginal.
It doesn’t occur to me to ask if I look handsome. I might ask, “Are my clothes OK?” “Do I look dorky?” or something like that. el worries about colors because he’s pretty much colorblind but he solves that by choosing clothes in shades of gray and black that look good with anything. He doesn’t worry about looking handsome either.
It’s probably a good time to do some relationship housecleaning. Judging by this Thanksgiving we might better get it done before Christmas. There. That’s a plan.
© 2004 M. S. Eliot

It’s amazing how just a few words can freeze your heart. Between inhaling and exhaling life will never be quite the same.
Do I have trust issues?
Is the Pope Catholic?
Maybe we could blame it on the holidays. Holidays don’t always bring out the best in people. It’s the traditional time of year for dysfunctional families to lose it.
Lillie was so looking forward to this Thanksgiving, the first in our own home for two years, surrounded by loving family.
Insert commercial here.
Fast forward to reality.
Here’s the backstory:
Sarah’s boyfriend broke up with her a few weeks ago, soon after she moved in with us. She’d lived with her grandparents for the previous two years finishing high school. Now she was going to cosmetology school near our home.
Her boyfriend treated her disrespectfully. A typical redneckjerk he was boorish and disrespectful to other family members too. Sarah was on the verge of dumping him when he broke up with her. We all rejoiced except Sarah. She cried for days.
She started dating other guys but she showed an alarming propensity for picking losers who might eventually escalate to domestic violence. Trust me, I know the symptoms. Her mother tried to talk with her to no avail. Owl was especially upset over her choices. He tried talking with her too.
The redneckjerk called after a couple weeks. She decided to have him over for the evening. She did all that telltale girl stuff, bubble bath, makeup, curled her hair and waited for him to arrive. And waited for him to arrive. And waited…. You get the picture.
This did nothing to further endear him to any of us. Owl and Thunder went into full-blown big brother mode. They wanted to hunt him down and explain how things ought to be. I don’t think they planned on using words to explain. I called them off. Barely.
Two days before the holiday redneckjerk calls and invites Sarah to dinner with his family. She accepts. Now this would be the first holiday Sarah could have spent with her mother since she was seven years old. Eyvonne was looking forward to it. Having Sarah here was like a dream come true for her. Because it meant so much to her, it did to all of us, Owl and Thunder included. When Sarah announced she and redneckjerk would be gone all day but back in time for dinner with us, I could see mayhem in the making.
“If he’s disrespectful in any way I’m telling him to leave,” I told Eyvonne. She assured me she’d already made Sarah aware redneckjerk better behave.
The only other stipulation I made was that he was not to spend the night. Not that night, nor any night in the future. I was done harboring abusers under my roof. Eyvonne agreed.
Sarah left before dawn with redneckjerk. Owl and Thunder left mid-morning for their first round of turkey at their grandmother’s house with their dad’s family. It was peaceful and mellow. Tantalizing turkey smells filled the house. Owl and Thunder arrived home by midafternoon. Their first question was “When will supper be ready?” It wasn’t Thanksgiving until they had turkey here.
Eyvonne was at the kitchen table making a sign for the wigheads on poles in the yard she and Sarah had rigged up to prank Ian. “PILGRIMS, What we should have done” it said.
The subject of redneckjerk came up.
“Why do we have to have him here? None of us wants him to be here,” Thunder said.
“Sarah wants him here,” Eyvonne said.
“If he says or does anything we don’t like he’s leaving,” I pointed out.
“We need to respect Sarah’s decision to invite him,” Eyvonne said.
“I’m tired of respecting Sarah’s decisions,” Owl snapped.
Everyone froze.
Eyvonne barely looked up from her sign making.
“Then Sarah and I will look for our own place,” she said.
Some people are born Aztecs. My daughter’s one. She ripped my heart out when she was sixteen and never looked back. But that’s another golden moment of dysfunction.
That was then and this is now, as Eyvonne is so fond of pointing out.
Now I was standing in the kitchen trying not to faint or puke. My blood burned. My vision distorted. If I moved I’d keel over.
This was not the first time Eyvonne threatened to leave. The last time blindsided me too. We were still living in the dumpy trailer in western Pennsylvania, four hours from any of our family except Owl. Eyvonne announced one morning that if her mom became ill she planned to move in with her parents to care for her. Her mom is diabetic, eats what she wants, smokes and doesn’t exercise. This is inevitable.
Just like that. No ‘we need to come up with a plan, or ‘how can we work this out’. Definitely no ‘how do you feel about this?’ or ‘will you be all right if I do this’. No ‘this would be a temporary solution’.
Just ‘if mom gets sick I’m moving out’.
Good morning to you too. Are we still together? Do you care?
The fallout from this was I learned I could get through a crisis without falling back into destructive behavior patterns. There was no cutting. I kept eating. I just felt like shit for days and spawned a new alter. Does that count as destructive behavior? I couldn’t help it, it was an automatic response. Welcome to the Q Flinch. Happy birthday. (He’s extremely ticklish flinching when anyone touches him.)
Later Eyvonne said that wasn’t what she meant at all. Leaving us. I’d misinterpreted. I’d over reacted. Who’s dissociative?
We are. We want things back to normal so badly we let it go. There was a lot of talk which didn’t really change our understanding that our relationship was conditional, secondary to her mom’s health.
Now our relationship was secondary to hers with Sarah too. Again, no discussion first.
Later she said it was an automatic response to protect her daughter. A misunderstanding. She’d heard Owl say he was tired of respecting Sarah. In reality he said he was tired of respecting Sarah’s decisions, meaning they were bad ones. Eyvonne couldn’t argue that. It was true.
All of that was moot to us. What mattered to us was that she would trash our relationship because our kids were having an issue. Any issue. I thought of all the kids as ‘our’ kids. Not Owl and Thunder as mine and Sarah as hers. I thought if we had problems we worked them out, whether it was a parent’s health or our kid’s conflicts.
Were we a family? Or is her presence here just inertia until some crisis forces her to move on?
Adjusting to Sarah moving in hasn’t been easy for any of us. Eyvonne hasn’t been the end receiver parent in over ten years. She stood beside us as we parented Owl and Thunder, many times clearly not in agreement with our parenting style. Now faced with the bewildering aspects of parenting a teen she saw more wisdom in our approach. Owl and Thunder weren’t turning out so bad.
Having another family member meant a lot more work for us Qs too. By some horrible twist of fate or bad karma we like things neat and clean, the laundry done up, food cooked on a semi-regular basis.
To Eyvonne none of that is a priority. In the nine years we’ve been together she’s run the vacuum cleaner maybe a dozen times. That was more frequently than anyone else we’d ever had a relationship with so maybe we shouldn’t be complaining. Or maybe we should be looking at reasons why that happens. I figure it’s some adolescent stage she’s stuck in and our obsessive behavior feeds it.
If the empty wood box or a sink full of dishes doesn’t speak to anyone else it speaks to me. To be exact, it speaks to el. He hates a mess. He can barely abide clutter. If someone leaves a glass or a Pepsi can lying around he is compelled to it clean up. I tried ignoring housework once to see how long it would take other family members to pick up the slack. They didn’t even pick up the trash which overflowed onto the kitchen floor. Ammonia from the catpan burned your eyes and no one cleaned it. We folded. But we protested too.
Fortunately this came to a head just before Sarah moved in. Eyvonne has been doing a bit more housework, at least sporadically. So has Owl.
Enter Sarah stage right.
She shows no more inclination to pick up after herself than most teenagers. I still don’t feel the way to teach is to yell, cajole, bribe or scream. However setting a good example hasn’t worked real well either.
Maybe it’s finally begun to pay off. Owl keeps the wood box filled without my ever mentioning it. I’ve never had anyone keep the wood box filled before this. He shows other signs of adulthood too, doing chores before I max out, actually finishing a job. He even cooks. He said he understands working at home means just that: working. He said it isn’t fair we should have to do all the housework just because we’re home. He carefully avoided pointing out that Eyvonne and now Sarah are home most of the time too.
We Qs have never had a relationship where we didn’t do most of the housework, childcare, and yard work besides running a business and writing. During our peak insanity in this regard we ran a retail antique shop, developed a computer business, worked part time in the school system and as a stringer/feature writer for several newspapers.
OK, this is starting to sound like just another a bitch session. Maybe it is. It’s better than crying. It beats cutting. And it’s accomplished something else. It’s making us take a good hard look at our goals.
And I can almost hear Pleiades. It’s not a mindtouch. It’s more like just knowing. I know what he’s feeling. And it isn’t good. He’s feeling crappy. Not surprising. If I have trust issues he’s got bigger ones. He’d started coming in to see what love is all about. No worries about him swiping ops for a while. He’s back in ‘watch and wary’ mode. So am I.
The only stand I took on redneckjerk coming to dinner was that he was not to stay overnight. Eyvonne agreed to make that clear.
But, oh dear, neither Sarah or redneckjerk had gas money, all the gas stations were closed, and he couldn’t cash his paycheck because it was a holiday. So he couldn’t possibly go home.
“He had no choice,” Eyvonne said defensively. “They didn’t know the gas stations would be closed and he wouldn’t be able to cash his check. Besides, he’d been up for over 24 hours straight. What did you want him to do?”
“Leave.”
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know if you’ve packed your jammies you plan to sleep over. If I had known about the feeble excuse Owl and I would have sacrificed our snow blower gas and given him ten bucks to leave. I’m inclined not to call Owl and Thunder off the next time he pisses them off. I might even throw the first punch myself.

So. Hi India. I gotta admit the temptation to call you Indy is pretty strong.
For anyone out there reading this who doesn’t already know, we’ve called our 1954 ½ ton Chevy pickup “Indy” since Owl and Thunder dubbed it “Indiana Truck” years ago. Every time we drove it back then we faced a ‘road of doom’ fraught with probable breakdowns.
It still has the original six-volt electrical system. The windshield wipers are driven by a vacuum system that works off the engine. When you go uphill, the wipers stop, frozen on the windshield where they were when you stepped on the gas. The heater spit out tepid air and the defroster never really worked unless you consider clouding up the windshield working. All winter the boys sat on the edge of the seat paper towels in hand ready to wipe the windshield. When they complained because Indy has no radio I’d say “This is 1954, sing!”
We sang a lot. Do you remember that India? Were you lurking around back then?
I can’t help wondering about your name. Most of us Qs have names that illustrate our job or contain a set of similar sounds.
“Trekker” is so named because his job essentially involved watching Star Trek when the emotional strife in Lillie’s first marriage got too high. When he surfaced into the Q he thought Start Trek was the actual outside reality. He was really disappointed he would never meet Talosians, Ferengis or Klingons. I pointed out they’re based on particular types of people.
“Trust me you know some,” I said.
On the other hand Trekker was relieved to know he’d never have to battle Gorns or stay on the alert for Kelvans.
Keeper’s name also derives his job. He oversaw a group of little ones who broke from his care to rampage through the system for a while. That was a wildly unpredictable time. Some of it was fun. It was always a riot taking Owl and Thunder sledding, to a movie, or an amusement park. It’s even more fun if you actually experience that excitement because you’re physically sharing ops with a l’ilone.
I like to let l’ilones sit on my lap and steer when I’m driving country roads, just like I did on farm roads when Owl and Thunder were little. By the time they could reach the gas and brake they already knew how to drive.
But back to names.
Shadow’s name also reveals his job. He maintains he knows EVERYTHING any Q knows, every hidden memory of abuse, every skill (knowledge is not application or experience), everything. He is after all el’s shadow. You most definitely are not highly linked to el India. No more or less than I’m linked to him anyway. Which is why your boast to Eyvonne that you knew everything any of us knows rang sour. I knew it wasn’t true. If you were worried about prompting mistrust, that was a bad topic to boast about.
I’m glad you clarified the issue. Most alters coming into the Q after years of hiding get up to speed rather quickly by tapping system resources. Very few however seem to be able to apply their new knowledge to actually accomplishing a complex activity without some practice. When Trekker was first learning to drive one of us who already knows how shared ops with him, kind of a Q driver education program. It’s like the difference between watching a video about riding a horse and actually riding one. There have been a few notable exceptions to the rule.
Ian for instance rode our horses the first time with no help, no instruction at all from anyone inside or out. He remembered it from his last life, or so he claims. He rides in a very distinctive way, confusing all but the most willing mount trained either English or Western style with signals they don’t know.
Our horse Chia quickly picked it up. He and Ian made a rare team. Ian’s style uses lots of leg prompts and very little rein. A bit isn’t required. In fact he sometimes used no reins at all, just Chia’s mane. They would whip through a line of aspen trees like barrel racers, Chia bending in tight circles, Ian’s leg almost touching tree trunks. You can’t learn how to do that from tapping system resources. Your body needs to ‘know’ how to move to make it happen.
When you were driving Thunder’s car I thought about Ian riding horseback. I knew then you’d either been around a long, long time and had had your times of stealing ops, or you were remembering something from a former lifetime. Like maybe you were a racecar driver? Then I noted your driving style is my driving style. And of course you look like me. So I guess I expected your name to somehow link us. India just doesn’t do it.
Many Qs names have ‘el’ in them. el is the most obvious example since it’s his entire name. He chose it as he cut Baby’s hair, naming himself after the poet T.S. Eliot. I quickly assumed a name in honor of another poet, Shelley. Back then I felt competitive with him. I couldn’t quite see the need of another male in the system. But I accepted him because he’s such a cool guy. We had a lot of fun as kids together. Being multiple means you never lack for playmates or company.
You might find it odd we chose poets as our heroes. But remember our mother read to us all the time. Words were everything to us, poetry the rhythm of our escape.
Another group of Qs has the sound ‘ie’ in their name; like Baby, Lillie, Jamie Lee. Lillie kind of spans those two groups. A third name set contains the sound ‘an or en’ like Ian, ‘rion, Gwen. Even if it doesn’t sound similar to you, it does to us. We could never get phoenics in school. We still don’t get it even though today’s it’s spelled phonics. What does ‘oe’ sound like anyway?
Owl is auditorially dyslexic. It has a subtle effect on his speech. He insists on putting an ‘n’ in the word couch. He says ‘counch.’ I think he comes by it naturally, I still say ‘prolly’ instead of probably. It’s what I hear. None of us Qs were much good at helping the boys with elementary school phonics homework.
But we were talking about our names.
There are Qs who go by numbers, like an alter spawned by Trekker who calls himself One. Ian had a baby alter who said his name was Ian Two, but later we found out he was really saying “I’m Iantoo.”
A long time ago a little one of ‘rion’s went by Twelve. Twelve was as close to that angry alter Dr. Dwon warned us about as any of us. It solved a lot of problems when they integrated.
Twelve is a definitive number for us. Shadow says so, therefore it is. He claims there won’t be more than 12 of us active at any given period of time. It was intended to be reassuring to me because I was scared back then there would eventually be so many Qs we’d focus inside and lose track of outside.
But I’ve gotten over that fear. Who’s counting. We’re fine. We have all the tools we need to get us through whatever you newbies throw at us. If you perceive that as a warning so be it, we’re dialoguing here.
Except I was going to say dancing, not dialoguing. That made me flashback to the first dream Taya sent me. Which annoyed me for some reason so I typed dialoguing instead of dancing. I think you two are getting to me. There must be some kind of mindtouch because it wasn’t like I just recalled it. I relived the entire freaking dream.
I’m sure later when I’ve had time to think about what just happened I’ll see meaning in it that I am missing at this moment.
Since I can’t quite grasp whatever message was intended there, I’ll go back to Q names. Welcome to another dissociative moment.
Star’s name didn’t seem to fit anywhere in any Q name pattern unless you follow our spectacular backward circular Q logic. Star = light. She was blind.
So. All that said, I still wonder where India fits. How ‘bout it? Fess up or I’ll start calling you Ink. Or Ghandi. And for that matter, how about Taya? What does her name mean? How do you guys fit into the system?
A Google search for Taya revealed the word is related to indigenous people in Venuzuela. It is part of a ‘welcome’ phrase of another indigenous group, the name of an ancient Tell in Iraq, a surname in Japanese and Arabic languages and a Star Trek Deep Space Nine character who was actually a hologram. Taya is also the name of an apparently infamous porn star, a running shoe and a line of jewelry. None of these connections rang any bells for us. I’m sure it means something to you, India and Taya. Maybe in time the rest of us Qs will understand too.
I guess I haven’t lost my obsession for mapping and charting the Q after all. Somehow understanding how we’re interlinked is important to me. It’s like a puzzle I’m bound to solve. But there isn’t any real solution. Not one anyway. It’s kind of like physics. You know when they get to the part of a theory that makes no sense and you have to leap over a bunch of mathmatics to make the equation balance.
Cartoonist Gary Larson summed it up nicely. He drew two physicists at a blackboard covered with numbers. One is saying to the other “And then a miracle happens.”
Someday I’ll be able to balance the equation, but I don’t think the miracle part will go away. Our life is one long miracle.
Anyway I’m very glad you wrote to me India. Even though it makes me uneasy that your name and Taya’s don’t seem to fit into the Q pattern. I won’t understand any sooner if we can’t talk at all. This is an ingenious solution to our unique problem.
I wasn’t quite sure about our initial conversations becoming part of this book. I was even less comfortable at first about publishing it to the blog. el said that’s a natural response for a guardian, born of an outdated need to stay hidden. I pretty much agree with him.
Although we’ve been presenting, writing and publishing about being multiple for nearly a decade, it’s one thing to write about ourselves and quite another to share the drama of bringing an alter in from the cold as it’s happening. Still, if people are ever going to understand what it’s like to be us, this could be a definitive experience.
As far as the nanowrimo exercise goes, this is still a work of fiction. Are you listening Oprah? Confession. As if you didn’t know, it’s not pure fiction. It’s more like one of those movies “Based on a true-life story.”
That’s us; we’re a true-life story. The small differences between this piece of writing and our literal history are insignificant.
I’m reassured to know you mean no intentional harm India. And thanks for your offer to block me from ops if I were thinking about cutting. Yes it’s an addiction. No, I don’t expect it will actually ever happen again.
I know you mean well to offer taking ops but it feels wrong. If there is one thing I can’t stand it’s not being in control of the body in the face of eminent, real, possible, perceived or imagined danger. That’s my job, my reason for being.
In the beginning it was simple. Lillie handled outside stuff. el maintained our cognitive abilities. Baby stayed inside. I guarded and protected all of them.
Now we know it worked only because unknown to us lots of others took on the burden of the bad stuff. One of my main jobs was protecting us from knowing that, but ironically I didn’t consciously know that.
Faced with your re-emergance now I can’t help but wonder what you did to keep us safe. I hope you’ll soon trust me enough to tell me. Even if you never do, whatever it was, thank you.
Right now you’re a puzzle India. A piece of math to bridge a gap in the equation of Q. Why India? Or are you just hiding your real name, hedging your bets until you’re sure of us. Trust me, we’re not so bad.
Things will get better between Eyvonne and I. Relationships have their ebb and flow. Don’t withdraw from Eyvonne, she needs us now as much as we need her.There’s been a massive amount of stress on us, good and bad, lately. It isn’t always this chaotic. Trust me, it’s been worse before. Our money problems will resolve. Our tooth will heal. I’ll be happier. So will you.
I wonder what Shadow calls you.
© 2004 M. S. Eliot

I wrote this before I found India’s file. I wanted to post his file first. I’ll be posting my response later today.
Just for the record, this post puts us only about 1,500 words from completing the 50,000 needed to be a nanowrimo winner. nanowrimo ends tomorrow. I have a feeling we’ll be going over the limit.
We’re thinking about keeping up the blog, at least for a while. If anyone out there is reading this and getting anything positive from it we’d be more inclined to keep it up. Let us know.

Sometimes the only thing that saves our sanity is light. Our love affair with light started when we were very young. Lillie and el and I can just sit and watch clouds and cloud shadows too, the way they race across fields and slide over the mountains.
Sunsets and sunrises fascinate us too. We have prisms hung in all our windows to invite the light inside. Sunrise plays rainbows all around our bedroom. We’ll drive 20 miles to watch the sun set from the highest mountain around. You can see nine mountain ranges from there.
Light is part of the rhythm of our life. It’s always on the edge of our awareness until it becomes so intense it demands full attention.
The other people who seem to grasp our fascination are artists and photographers. But for them it’s an applied science. For us it’s more.
We count the day’s passage through the slant of light on a stand of aspen trees. We see afternoon in the glint on our pond. It’s our anchor. We breathe it. We measure season and time of day by the intensity and slant of light. We see spring coming through subtle changes in thin winter sunlight long before first blossoms. Summer dawn is slow and sultry through a full array of leaves.
A camera captures reality, not what our heart sees. We replay inside mid-day, sunsets, and storms of fragile duration and exceptional beauty. Inside the light is always exceptional. Inside we always walk in beauty.
When we were hospitalized a decade ago el and I would sit cross-legged on the wide windowsills looking out. We watched the world go by. We lost ourselves in the play of light on distant mountains, birds on the wing. We meditated.
Sometimes we simply went inside. We took the light with us as we’d learned to in childhood. Sometimes we sat like that for hours.
Once when we did there was a psychiatrist and a nurse standing in our doorway when we stretched and jumped down from the sill.
“What were you doing?” the doctor asked.
It was dark outside. We’d been on the windowsill for at least a couple of hours.
“Meditating,” I said.
“How do you do that? I’ve always wanted to learn,” he said.
I shrugged. “You just focus down until it feels right.” I figured he wouldn’t get it if I told him to take the light inside. And I didn’t want to explain the difference between our inside world and the meditative experience. Sometimes it’s pretty subtle.
Owl says writers and artists who are multiple and have their own inner worlds like we do have it easier than those who don’t. He’s right. We have a rich inner construct to play in, to draw on for images and characters.
One of the first novels I wrote stemmed from a vision we’d had in childhood. It was an easy step from that into the realm of sci-fi. I even named the hero after myself. It was a classic Q in-joke.
When we read we hear characters speak, we see their world as if we were watching a movie. When we were younger the books we loved the most stayed with us. We could ‘read’ them inside over and over, seeing every page as we turned it. We kept them in el’s library. When bad things were happening outside we could retreat to the center of our world and read. We could pull information from those pages to use outside.
Sometimes I can still do it. I pull a book off a shelf in el’s library find the page with what I want to know. Or if someone else is reading they can share a book with others. It helped us get through school. Back then we could pull a textbook off the shelf or our notes from a class and see them, page by page, word for word. We could call up an image of something a teacher had written on the blackboard weeks earlier. It got us through a lot of exams. It’s not as easy to do now. Sometimes I think we’ve just grown rusty at it because we don’t do it as often.
Another little trick I had was staring at teachers during tests. If I focused on the teacher the answers were there. I just knew them. It freaked out one of our history teachers in high school. I sat in the front row and focused on him during every test. He was sure I was cheating in some way because I got hundreds on every pop quiz and test for a whole semester. He watched me so closely he nabbed me switching with el.
“Are you ambidextrous?” he asked.
“Ambiwho?” I was sweating. I knew the word and I knew what it meant. He’d seen me writing with my left hand then as el took ops he passed the pen to his right hand.
Sometimes I wonder if other multiples do these sorts of things. We met a few over the years online. But most were pretty needy when we met them. They wanted to talk about how their teenage alters acted out and how did other people handle that? Please. Help.
I long to find other multiples who are functioning and productive. Support groups are all well and good, except we find ourselves cast in a supportive role more often than not. It’s not that we don’t want to help. But we’re not therapists.
We are good listeners though. We elicit confidences all the time. We care about people and they know it. We believe everyone has a story to tell, and every story is important.
That belief carried us far as reporters. It gave us the tenacity needed to interview octogenarians who were nearly blind and deaf, learning what the world was like when they were young, how things had changed so very much but was still the same. People lived and laughed and loved when the only transportation was horse-drawn.
Sometimes the elder I was interviewing would grow quiet and we’d sit there watching the light change, time passing in companionable silence.
If I waited long enough they’d start talking again. Sometimes they talked all afternoon before they were done. These old, old people were happy someone wanted to hear their stories. They didn’t care that I was writing for the Sunday edition, or that thousands of people would read my words. They only cared that I listened.
It’s what we all want, someone to listen. Listening is caring. Caring expresses love. If no one listens you feel abandoned. I once had a therapist tell me I had abandonment issues.
“But I was never abandoned,” I argued. I thought abandonment meant leaving a baby on a doorstep or something. I was amazed to learn neglect and abuse is a form of abandonment.
I know it consciously just like I know I have trust issues. If there is a Q who doesn’t they haven’t come in from hiding yet. On some level I know whatever affects one of us affects all of us.
No Q came through childhood unscathed. On the other hand we are who we are because of what happened. I don’t always like what’s going on in our life, but I do like being who we are. I know you English teachers out there are shaking your heads at the word who in the previous sentence. My grammar checker says the right word is ‘whom’. But it doesn’t sound right. It sounds alien. So I’ll stick with what’s familiar. After all this is our story.
Oprah are you still listening? I thought so. Good. Now, do you see the way the light is illuminating the top of the mountain? Doesn’t that lift your heart?
© 2004 M. S. Eliot

Disclaimer (by Shel)
I woke up this morning and started melding files to send to nanowrimo for the word count process. I ran across a file I didn't originate. None of the other Qs claimed authorship either. I opened it.
Here it is exactly as written, with one edit - the addition of a period in his P.S.
OK, it's your debut dude. BTW, thanks. And thanks for letting us blog it too.

Hi Shel. It’s me India. Not a star system at all. Please don’t start referring to me as a subcontinent. That would be tedious.
I figured this was at least a way I can reach you, talk to you. I’ve been watching over your shoulder while you wrote most of this. I learned a lot.
I know, I told Eyvonne I know whatever any of you knows. But it’s only skills. Really I only know how to do things you know. If you, or el or Lillie know how to type or drive or ski I do too. It’s like Rainman, you know, the way he just knew numbers.
Maybe I just unconsciously tap the system resources. But I don’t know what any of you thinks or feels. I’m not Shadow. Or Keeper although my coming close to you inside is what broke his integration with you.
I’ve learned how to mindtouch everyone in the system but you. I’m sure there is some profound reason for that. Or maybe just a really stupid one.
It’s frustrating because of everyone in the system I naturally feel most drawn to you. I’m not dumb enough to miss how connected we are. The psychological symbolism of looking so much alike surely isn’t lost on you either. And then there’s my history with Keeper.
I’ve lurked around enough to know our collective history. I know who we are and why.
I know who I am. And I know I’m a Q.
I know you didn’t quite believe Eyvonne when she told you she sensed more than one of us when I had ops. She was right. Like many of us I have a twin. Like ‘rion’s Star and Vinnie’s Dani, she is somewhat disabled. Star couldn’t see. Dani couldn’t speak. If Taya were out in the real world she’d be termed autistic. I know there were little ones who are already integrated with some of you who displayed autistic tendencies when they were in the system on their own.
I’ve been doing some reading on autism. I got interested when you guys ‘met’ Hero Joy Nightingale and she published your article on her website. Yeah, I’ve been lurking around for a long time. I’ve been around as long as you have Shel. Like you I can be a tough guy. But Taya softens my outlook. She’s inside my head all the time. I guess that could be termed integration. I communicate with her. I hear her voice. She never acts autonomously. And yet in some ways maybe she does. The dreams you’ve been having that you correctly identified as coming from me really come through her. You saw her face. She was the child India in the last dream. She is woman/child. And she is also me.
By the way, Autistic doesn’t mean retarded. Hero Joy proves that, she’s at Oxford studying for her degree.
But it does mean a different experience of the world. They call it “locked in syndrome” sometimes. That pretty much describes Taya. She experiences only through me. She can express herself through me. And I protect her.
Even though he was integrated with you when we started coming closer to the system, Keeper sensed our presence. At one time he was instrumental in my decision to stay away. We had issues with each other related to Taya.
Back then she was separate from me and she was unstable. Keeper was sure if we came in then her condition would bring the system down. He tried integrating with her himself. I’m sure you remember when. He came close to bringing the system down himself. The threat didn’t pass until he integrated with you. I can only imagine how difficult that was for you.
At that time I refused to integrate with him, which was his first request. Surely you remember his integration evangelism streak better than I do, but what you don’t know is he went out among the hidden Qs and preached it to us too. He ended up taking in quite a few, including Taya. But not me. It was a big mistake for all of us. When Taya stepped back out he was devastated and she was lost. It felt natural for her to become closer to me. Now I really can’t quite remember how it was before it was this way. But Keeper couldn’t deal with losing Taya’s presence. Nor could he understand why the ‘glue’ didn’t hold.
Shel, you know all of this on some level. When Keeper was inside you he couldn’t have hidden it unless you willingly blocked.
As you’re so fond of saying “welcome to dissociation.”
Keeper’s attitude since he stepped back out on his own is related to me, to Taya showing up. He was, and probably still is worried our coming in will be a bad thing. He’s motivated by a need to keep you all safe. He and I have made peace, at least on the surface. But he dogs my steps with as much tenacity as you avoid me.
I still can’t figure out a way to speak to you other than this. Keeper says Taya is blocking it for reasons of her own. I sense he doesn’t trust her. So it goes without saying he doesn’t trust me either.
I can feel how bone weary the body is. Staying up any later isn’t a good idea. I hope you find this. I hope our tooth gets better soon. It sucks being sick. I think only Ian and I truly understand how sick we actually are.
I know you’re really unhappy right now, and I know why. You’re right I’ve got my own trust issues. I know the money stuff has you and el really worried too. I wish I could help. Maybe I can. If you feel like cutting, know this: I won’t let you.
I hope you find this. If you do, go ahead and blog it.
See you in your dreams.
P.S. Don’t start calling me Indy, I’m not a truck either.
© 2004 M. S. Eliot

Ever notice how early on in a relationship people make wild accommodations for each other? They don’t even notice their new love is partial to neon green ties, or chartreuse socks.
It’s the old ‘love is blind’ thing.
With the romantic soundtrack still running in the background you don’t notice your beloved snores. That they insist on using blueberry Chap Stick seems such a small thing. Insignificant. Really. But can you kiss someone who uses blueberry Chap Stick for the next 50 years? How about Blistex? Juicy Fruit gum?
What can you realistically endure for the next 50 years. Or even say, 20 years? How about more than two, about how long the honeymoon phase usually lasts?
Why is it one partner in any relationship is perpetually colder than the other? One steps into a room and turns the thermostat up. The other peels off every layer of clothing possible stopping short of nakedness in front of the kids.
Electric blankets come with dual controls, so this is a pretty widespread phenomenon. Luxury cars with heated driver and front passenger seats have separate controllers too. I’m not so sure I want a personal heating zone in my car. Do I really want a hot ass when I’m negotiating traffic?
Someone should study this; it’s probably an underlying cause of road rage. Road rage is vehicular domestic violence gone public. Since it’s aimed at random unknown people no one has identified it stems from the same source.
Sorry about the digression. It happens. Even to singletons. This does not qualify as a dissociative moment.
So, people with denominational differences concerning the correct temperature of anything, foods, wine, beer, kitchen color schemes, acceptable breeds of dogs or cats, whether or not kids are a good or bad life choice manage to hook up oblivious to their differences. This is why relationships require such work.
You can tell when people stop working on their relationships. They say things like “We won’t even say the word divorce.” They don’t either until one of them just can’t accommodate the other one more time.
The weirdest thing about accommodation is when partners switch camps. Say the cold one hits menopause and suddenly they’re the one constantly turning down the thermostat. You would think this might resolve a lifelong difference. Finally this one couple will achieve what no other couple has ever managed: Unified Temperature Requirements.
But no. Think again. If this occurs the other person in the relationship starts donning sweaters in July.
Solve this conundrum and you understand the nature of humanity Grasshoppa. Or at the very lease you’ll make millions of dollars writing self-motivational materials.
Either way your name will be revered.
Eyvonne and I left home merrily seeking paint for our living room a few years back. We’d already agreed to choose a green. el loves green.
As we stood in Lowe’s faced with three thousand paint chips, Eyvonne said. “Maybe we should consider something warmer.”
We hate this Lowe’s and most other stores in the known universe because of florescent lighting. There is a little known equation here: shopping makes Qs crazy because florescent lighting make us all extremely edgy. It was one of the reasons we hated school. It gets progressively worst the longer we’re exposed to it. For some reason in this particular store we reach a 10 on the edgy scale as soon as we enter. Owl, our in-resident maintenance consultant, believes the subtle noise the ballasts make affects us.
I began to sweat.
“Warmer color?” I squeaked.
Eyvonne had fifteen color samples splayed out like a hand of cards. None of them was green.
“Peach is warmer,” she said speculatively.
Peach is not green, el mindtouched me with just a hint of warning.
“Peach is not green,” I repeated to Eyvonne.
“But greens are cold, almost as cold as blues. We want a nice warm feel to the room don’t we?” she said.
The woodstove that heats our entire house is in the living room. I didn’t think warm was an issue. Neither did el. Lemme have ops, he mindtouched.
I let him up. It might avoid a confrontation in the paint chip aisle. I’d just had one with Eyvonne in Wal-Mart, another Q store from hell. I’d just been trying to make a point. Eyvonne suddenly whipped around and stood on her tiptoes shaking her finger in my face. Did ever I mention she’s not very tall? We tease her all the time about being one of the Little People. They’re kind of like a Native version of Leprechauns. Thunder and I know a whole Micmac song about Little People. But I wasn’t about to start singing it in Wal-Mart.
“Sometimes you’re such a man,” Eyvonne shrieked, much to the amusement of other shoppers.
It wasn’t our best moment.
I shrugged sheepishly. Most of whom were cracking up. I could see why. From their perspective we were a pair of lesbians having a tiff. We wondered what they’d think of the truth. We wonder that a lot. Mostly it takes too much energy to explain. Explaining to shoppers in the housewares aisle didn’t seem worth the energy investment. I waved and followed doggedly after Eyvonne.
So back to Lowe’s. Here was el, Mr. Calm and Relaxed himself taking up the challenge of shopping with Eyvonne. Surely once his sweetie understood he needed the room to be green all would be well.
We went home with two gallons of specially tinted $30 a gallon peach paint. Which by the way looks pink on the walls. el was pretty green-looking as he shelled out the money to pay for it. Maybe that helped.
We haven’t met a Q yet who likes pink. Most of us actively hate it, including Lillie, which was why our daughter never wore pink baby clothes. With her short blonde fuzz people always commented “Isn’t he cute!”Maybe that’s why she doesn’t like us now, because we didn’t dress her properly in infancy.
Infancy is without a doubt when most of these preference tracks get laid down. I know with absolute certainty we hate pink because pink was for girls and being a girl hurt. Blue was for boys and boys didn’t get hurt. At least not as frequently as girls. That’s probably why there are four times as many male Qs as female.
Anyway it was also in our infancy we grew to hate being cold. Being confined to a small enclosed space in a cold, damp basement will do that to you. Thus we were the thermostat turner-upper in our relationship with Eyvonne. I say that symbolically as we have no thermostat. We have a wood stove. If it isn’t warm ten feet from the stove add wood. Once you throw a few extra logs on a fire it can take hours for it to cool down again.
Our internal thermostat reset in mid life. They say the cells in your body are completely renewed in a seven-year cycle. Maybe that’s what jumpstarted our warm button. Or maybe it was due to having Ian come into the system. He’s always warmer than the rest of us.
Within weeks of our finally being able to tolerate cool temperatures Eyvonne became cold all the time. Now she blasts the heater in the car and we shed our coat.
It makes me a little cranky. We spent years shivering and now it’s so hot we can’t breath half the time. But at least we’re still accommodating each other.
You can tell when a relationship is nearing its end because people stop accommodating. Behaviors and quirks once adored or at least tolerated become annoying. People fixate on things like how their partner chews. The toilet seat up/down syndrome reaches new heights. They no longer scratch each other’s backs or rub lotion on tired feet.
They become progressively more self-centered and irresponsible. They blast the heat and don’t care that their partner is down to skivvies.
Like the participants in the electric shock experiment they no longer care how much pain they inflict. Guilt prompts apologies but unless they decide to work on their issues taking stock and making real changes or are lucky enough to ‘fall in love’ again they’re approaching end game.
© 2004 M. S. Eliot

In this dream I had last night a toddler, her mother and grandmother joined our family for a holiday meal, probably Thanksgiving. Everyone was standing around a buffet-serving table. The child stood off by herself, facing away from the table.
She wore an old tan cable knit sweater, and she had a teddy bear tucked under her arm. It was equally tattered. Her mousy brown hair was almost shoulder length It was tied back in a ponytail topped by a festive pink ribbon.
Her mother turned and called the child.
“India, come and eat,” she said.
The child turned toward us. She was a homely little thing, but only because her face that of a woman, not a toddler. I thought she was perhaps in the early stages of Progeria Syndrome. Her face was devoid of emotion. Only her eyes showed she was truly alive.
Her mother grabbed her arm and began pulling her to the table scolding all the while.
“I hate it when you get like this. Come and eat. You’re terrible,” she said.
The child twisted free and started down a hallway, not running like a normal toddler, but simply walking away.
“Let her go. Just eat without her,” the grandmother advised.
I stepped into the hallway.
“Hey, India,” I called.
She turned around and gazed at me intently, her child’s eyes looking out of that tiny 40-year-old face.
“Would you like to go for a walk with me?” I asked.
She shook her head ‘no’. If I wasn’t watching closely I’d have missed the motion. She was so solemn.
“We could go just around the block,” I said.
At this point in the dream there was a black and white graphic of the route we might take. I was showing India the way.
“We’d come right back here, see?” I said tracing the black line from the front steps, around the block and back up the steps with my finger.
“She doesn’t know you,” her grandmother said. “Maybe later.”
India continued to regard me speculatively. She took a tiny step toward me. I sensed if I stayed motionless she’d take my hand.
As I woke up she was looking up at me, holding my hand, the teddy bear gripped firmly under her other arm. She was just about to smile.
As soon as I was fully awake Ian took ops. I didn’t care. I needed to think about the dream. But he and Eyvonne were engaged in a most distracting activity. I sought the quiet of my favorite place in the forest inside. I made it dawn. I sat down and watched the sun rise, felt its warmth caress my skin.
So. Who was India? More to the point who did she represent? Many of our inner children remained hidden for years. Was this a child indicating readiness to come in from hiding?
I had a strong feeling this wasn’t about a child. Her face was too familiar. I broke into a sweat when I realized why. Her face was my own, feminized, softened.
Shit.
Suddenly I wanted to do anything but sit there and think. I called my horse and swung up on his broad back. We raced down the mountain and out across the plains as the sun continued to rise. But I couldn’t outrace my dream. The little girl’s face haunted me.
At last I slowed the horse to a walk. I sensed other Qs waking up. I mindtouched Ian lightly, imaging that I was tapping on a door.
“Stop knocking,” he growled at me.
“I need to write down this dream,” I explained.
He and Eyvonne were in an afterglow of satisfaction. I could feel how relaxed the body was, how happy Ian was.
“Go ‘way,” he said and locked ops.
I slid off my horse and walked. The horse put his nose over my shoulder and kept pace with me. Chia, one of our outside horses used to that. I missed the outside horses but inside horses are a lot less work.
I knew Ian would honor my request if I honored his rare solo time up. Each of us Qs treasure time alone with Eyvonne pretending if just for a moment she belongs to us alone.
Trust me Kermie was right. It’s not easy being green.
As I walked I became pretty sure the child India was Notastarsystem, AKA Pleiades.
Clue number one: looked like me. Clue number two: mute. Clue number three: wanted to trust but was still suspicious. Supposition but probably close to the mark: this was someone who’d been hiding since early childhood but is now adult.
What did I know now I hadn’t known before?
Maybe he was signaling he was ready to risk reaching out. I had to stay alert or I might miss an opportunity to gain his trust. Maybe once we established trust we could talk.
Ian still wouldn’t let me have ops. He wanted coffee first. He likes it with cream. Yuk.
“I haven’t had a raisin cookie in 750 years,” he told Eyvonne blinking his big green eyes.
She laughed.
“And look how innocent you are,” she said. “I thought Shel wanted to write his dream down though.”
“He can wait till after my coffee,” Ian declared.
I sighed and settled in. I’d rather wait then drink his coffee, tepidly polluted with creamer.
As soon as I sat down to write the phone rang.
“Hi Thunder,” I said as I picked it up. I kept typing. This was the day before Thanksgiving and he was eager to come home from college but his Resident Advisor duties meant he had to stay on campus until everyone in his charge left.
“I’ll be ready to leave at 10,” he said.
I glanced at the clock. 9:17.
“I’m sitting here writing and I haven’t had a shower yet. It ain’t gonna happen till like 11,” I said.
“OK, I’ll just read until you get here,” he said.
I could hear the resignation in his voice but even if I walked right out the door I wouldn’t get there for an hour.
Eyvonne breezed through holding enough clothing for several people. She was either headed to donate to a thrift store or about to get dressed for the day. It’s a girl thing.
She needs 30 minutes or more to get ready to pick up the mail. I can shower and be starting the car in five. It’s a guy thing.
“OK if I hop in the shower first?” she asked.
I nodded.
Girl thing/guy thing issues escalated as soon as Thunder arrived home. He had two backpacks, a huge pile of dirty laundry, two laptops, a camera bag and a tuba in a case big enough to hide a body.
These various and sundry objects and effluvia were deposited in the living room, which doubles as my office, except for the tuba which came to rest in the family room where it would obstruct the most traffic. (Guy Stuff)
Sarah had taken command of the larger bathroom before we came home. Makeup and other sundry things were strewn about and all the lights were on when she and her mother stepped out for a smoke. (Girl Stuff)
While they sat on the back steps talking about what to do with their hair since we were going out to listen to Owl's band play that night (Girl Stuff) I realized I had yet again forgotten to take my antibiotic on time. (Guy Stuff) Did I mention it was still six hours before we would be leaving to hear the band? And they were doing their hair now why? A practice run?
I put the giant blue capsule on my tongue and turned to fill my glass with water only to find Thunder washing his hands at the kitchen sink.
“There’s too much (girl) stuff in there to use the sink,” he said indicating the bathroom with his chin.
I couldn’t swallow the capsule without water. PLENTY of water according to the instructions. I ran into the bathroom. I was scared the capsule would melt on my tongue turning it permanently blue or worse. I thrust my glass under the faucet and wondered what the strange hissing sound was until I realized a hot curling iron rested in the sink. It was still plugged into a nearby outlet. (Girl stuff)
Risking electrocution to protect my family I yanked the cord from the outlet and stood there stupidly listening to the appliance hiss and sputter as the capsule turned my tongue bluer.
I set the curling iron carefully on the bathmat and drained my water glass swallowing just before the capsule achieved meltdown.
I stomped (Guy stuff) to the back door.
“Hey you women,” I said. “ Don’t use that curling iron till it dries out. And don’t go plugging stuff like in and leaving it in the sink basin.”
I related the entire scenario so they would understand how serious this was. (Guy stuff)
They laughed. (Girl stuff)
Eyvonne dissembled immediately and blamed Sarah, who admitted proudly. “Yeah, I did that.”
“That outlet has a circuit interrupter on it anyway,” Eyvonne managed.
I turned and stomped back in the house. (Guy stuff)
A minute later they were giggling behind me.
“Hey you man,” Eyvonne said. She was holding the damn curling iron.
“Wha?”
“This thing was melting the bathmat. See this little wire? It’s a stand. Always make sure it’s sitting on the stand when it’s hot,” Eyvonne said. I heard Lillie laughing inside as they ran away giggling. (Girl stuff)
Like I was ever going to touch a curling iron again!
© 2004 M. S. Eliot

This afternoon our family reached a new level of depravity. Sarah and Eyvonne decided to prank Ian. Of course this required complicity from the rest of us Qs.
Ian is one of us who remembers what is probably a past life, somewhere in Ireland, which he insists is call Eyre, in the 1400s.
He talks about castles and wars and the general mayhem of growing up the bastard son of a noble. One of the things he hates most is memories of heads on pikes outside the city walls.
The reason we know that is soon after he came into the system we attended a renaissance festival, thinking Ian would be right at home. He enjoyed it on some levels, like the food, but mostly it confused him. They had an elephant you could ride and he was somewhat frightened of that until we explained what it was and that it was just for fun. Right after that he really freaked out. One of the vendors had a bunch of wig heads on stakes decoratively placed in front of his booth. When Ian saw them he thought they were real.
I don’t think we’ve been to a renaissance fest since.
Anyway, for Christmas one year Eyvonne and the rest of us Qs gave Ian a tiny doll head on a metal rod. Just as a memento. Really. We made a little banner with his name on it to hang below the head.
So. That’s the backstory.
Sarah is studying cosmetology. She has three life size wig heads with which to practice hair color and cutting techniques. Are we getting the picture here?
Ian was asleep inside. We woke him up telling him Eyvonne need to talk with him. As he took ops he got a sense that something was afoot. As he and Eyvonne rounded the corner of the house he saw a “headless’ body laying in front of three heads on sticks. It was great. Just for a moment we had him. It was Sarah lying there with her coat pulled up over her head that got him. Then he laughed.
“The only thing wrong is they’re tongues aren’t stickin’ out,” Ian commented.
Inside and out hysteria reigned. It was great.
It was even funnier was when Owl’s bass player parked hi car right next to the heads and never flinched. He’s so used to the level of insanity around here it didn’t faze him.
I mean come on, wouldn’t you ask? “Hey, what’s with the heads on sticks?” Maybe he was afraid of our answer.
Yesterday when he arrived we were peeling bark off a 16-foot sapling. Just another ordinary day.
Owl and Thunder’s friends were kind of indoctrinated at an early age. Once we had a plastic soda bottle filled with sand suspended from the ceiling over the kitchen table. Given a push it would swing in an unvarying pattern trickling sand, creating the same design over and over again. We ate in the living room for a couple of weeks.
“What is that?” one of their friends asked.
“It proves the earth really does rotate,” I said.
“Oooohhhhh.”
Another time we constructed a 6-foot-tall papier-mâché dragon. Our horses would escape their pasture and wander up to the porch to beg for treats. Our house was a place where anything might happen and frequently did.
No one else’s parents allowed them to skateboard in the kitchen, swim as soon as the ice was off the lake, or finished water battles by spraying a hose through a kitchen window.
Owl and Thunder built shelters in the woods and moved out of the house for a while every summer. I wasn’t supposed to know where they were camping even if I could see them. They no longer existed as my kids. They went feral. I did however notice they still liked chocolate chip cookies enough to sneak in and swipe them off the cooling racks.
The whole prank thing started when they were little. They waited until they thought I was asleep and threw plastic glow-in-the-dark bugs at my bed. I retaliated by short-sheeting their beds.
They curled life-size rubber snakes under the covers at the foot of my bed. I waited in the darkened hallway to lightly touch their bare feet with a feather duster.
Owl turned off the light outside the bathroom door and stood right outside it so I walked right into him. I put life-like fuzzy mice in his dresser.
You get the picture. April Fools Day approached performance art at our house.
This Halloween Sarah and Mer unrolled six rolls of toilet paper festooning Owl’s bedroom. He rigged up a buzzer to Sarah’s closet door. It went off a 1 a.m. when she and I were the only ones home.
“Q, help!” she shrieked. “There’s smoke alarm going off! Help!” She was practically dancing in my bedroom door.
I woke up laughing. “Owl gotcha,” I managed.
Life’s short. Have fun.
Laughing can cure damn near anything.
We hold onto that when we hit a dark night of the soul. Those still happen to us. They don’t make us feel suicidal anymore. We know there is laughter waiting for us just over the next ridge. We just need to stay safe until we get there. Getting there can be hard. In the fall we still get more than melancholy. Part of it is the shorter days. So we work under a UV light. Sometimes we overdose on light and then we can’t sleep. We get wound so tight we can’t concentrate. Never overdose on UV rays. It’s worse than caffeine.
And we still have flashbacks. I suspect Pleiades is having them but I can’t talk to him so I don’t know that for sure. He doesn’t seem inclined to talk much to anyone yet. It’s a waiting game.
I complained about feeling exhausted today.
“He has trouble falling asleep,” Eyvonne said.
“Who?” I asked missing her point.
“Notastarsystem,” she said. “He has a hard time relaxing.”
I put my head down and groaned. How many times do we have to go through this before I remember the drill? Newbies almost always have sleep problems. They are also typically the last with ops or awareness as the rest of us falls asleep. It’s an especially common pattern for a protector. The ordinary noises of the night resonate right through them. The responsibility can feel overwhelming. Going to sleep feels like abdication of that responsibility.
Eyvonne says Pleiades startles awake numerous times before he eventually falls into a deep sleep. Passing trucks, the dog whining in his sleep, Owl dropping a shoe on his floor above our ceiling, the phone ringing. Anything can prompt him to alert.
At one time such vigilance served a purpose, giving us time to escape from our bed and hide or switch to avoid knowing what was happening. To newbies it still feels like that could happen.
Eyvonne falls asleep stroking his back so he knows she’s still there.
“It’s all right. You’re here with me.” She repeats again and again.
At some point he’ll begin to know that’s true. Then we’ll have something to work with. It’s making me crazy that I can’t talk to him. I’ve got to figure out why this is happening. I know in my gut nothing will get better until we can talk.
A long time ago el heard a baby crying nonstop inside. No other Q could hear the baby. Only el. It nearly drove him crazy knowing there was a l’ilone alone and uncomforted outside the system. He searched everywhere. He found places we didn’t know existed or had forgotten long ago. But he couldn’t find that baby. Stonebaby found her.
Once he understood what was making el so sad he told Eyvonne he knew where the baby was. She asked him to pick the baby up and comfort it. Stonebaby did. He cuddled her and brought her into the light and warmth of the system. He even conjured up a bottle and fed her. We wept with relief.
But Notastarsystem isn’t an infant. His memories are far more difficult to unravel, his needs harder to meet. If only we knew what his needs were we could at least help.
I can sense what he’s feeling when he’s nearby. But since we turn and walk away from each other whenever we meet I’m not making much headway on that front.
The thing I sense the most from him is a heaviness of heart. Sadness. Like he’s carrying a burden he can no longer bear alone. He’s come to the right place. Maybe when he builds up enough trust with one of us or with Eyvonne he’ll let it go.
© 2004 M. S. Eliot

Death fascinates us as a society. The more removed we are from it the more fascinating it becomes. Violence and war seldom visit our doorsteps. On one terrible day terror stalked our nation. We shared that horror. It was too real. It intruded into our living rooms and lives, imprinting itself on our collective psyche.
A month earlier we’d traveled to New York with a group of Native Americans to celebrate International Indigenous People’s Day at the United Nations. Our group had artwork displayed in the lobby. Chief Arvol Looking Horse and Chief Jake Swamp and other dignitaries would lead part of the day’s ceremonies. We’d traveled a long way before the city’s familiar skyline came into view.
“Look at that. Those are the Twin Towers,” I said uninterested travel-weary kids. “You may never have another chance to see them.”
I made them look at the towers. Some of them lived far from New York and might not be here again for years. A month and two days later the towers fell.
We had relatives living in the city. It almost felt selfish to worry about our relatives in the face of such horror. Theirs were the faces we longed to see among the survivors, dreaded we might not. It was long into the evening before we heard they were safe. Then we wept.
As a nation we were urged to normalize our lives. Forget fear. Ignore grief. Go to the mall. Buy something, you’ll feel better and save the economy. It’s your civic duty. Outrage and anguish was muted by cash registers. Show patriotism by shopping at Sears and Penny’s. It was obscene. It wasn’t normal. It was collective dissociation.
Outrage still resurfaces impotently across the country as bluster in bars, violence behind closed doors, and a notwar waged in a desert.
What happened to Q’s original child is a similar symptom of society’s persistent flirtation with death. A less harmful expression is our national obsession with shows like CSI. Humans long to know death intimately, to solve the greatest mystery of life: why live at all if we must die?
The more removed we are from death the more explicitly we express it in our art, words, actions. Movie villains no longer die gracefully off screen, they melt in excruciating detail. People know all about human anatomy thanks to movie magic. The goal is not to heal, or to draw accurately. Its morbid curiosity. Ours is a necrophiliac society. Check it out, only the most extreme behaviors actually involve mutilation or abuse of a corpse. Among the wider range of symptoms is a fascination with death.
“Hey man, that’s killer!” “If you don’t quit that I’m gonna kill you.” “You got a death wish or what?”
Death takes us discreetly in sterile hospital rooms surrounded by machines. We’d be far less violent as a society if we washed our own dead, cut our hair in grief and wailed our pain to the elements.
Our father made sure we understood death by killing kittens while we watched. Chickens were far more dramatic, running in circles around the chopping block spurting blood from severed necks while their heads crowed silently from the ground, eyes blinking.
Occasionally we were forced to act out death, confined in small coffin-like spaces. Sometimes spiders were dumped over our naked body before the lid was closed.
There are few responses to this that leave you sane. Not being mentally present is effective. It worked for us as long as we avoided small-enclosed spaces.
Before we knew what Stonebaby and Die-die spared us we feared spiders. The tiniest spider loomed large in our sight. A single strand of spider web could stop us cold.
Spiders are honored creatures in many Native American stories. Spider spun the web of time, created the tapestry of the universe. We couldn’t help it; we shuddered every time we saw an eight-legged. Even understanding how our fear originated didn’t purge it.
We finally made our peace with spiders during a healing sweat. There are always spiders in sweat lodges. They love the nooks and crannies of sapling and bark. Imagine your worst fear teeming everywhere in your church. It was make peace with spiders or never sweat again.
Soon afterward we made peace with them we had a dream of an immense spider standing guard over our bed. She expanded to cover our entire house. Millions of normal sized spiders filled the floor all around our bed. I woke up, amazed I wasn’t screaming in fear.
The dream’s vision continued even though I was now awake. Eyvonne woke too and listened as I described the unfolding vision. As Spider grew larger she changed from rich blacks and browns to white. With Spider among my spirit protectors we are no longer the least bit afraid of her smaller embodiments.
“So how big is your spider?” Eyvonne asked.
“Bigger than the house,” I said. “She protects you too.”
“So now we have to walk everywhere because your spider won’t fit in the car?” she joked.
Suddenly we were hysterical at 2:30 a.m. Laughter is good any time. It’s life. It puts death in perspective.
My job as system protector is easier now. Did you know spiders have eight eyes? Who better to watch over you?
Spider spins the threads of our life and weaves our strands into the universe. Spider teaches: Elan Kumankwah; Mitakuye Oysain; We are all related.
In the Dine creation story Spider Woman uses her saliva mixed with red, yellow, black and white clay to create humans. She attaches a thread of her web to each person, a gift of creative wisdom. But most forgot her gift. Three times Spider Woman destroyed the world with great floods. Only those who remembered her gift survived to climb through Mother Earth’s womb into the next world.
The Seneca believe Spider created writing. And she gifted the Lakota with dream catchers to melt away nightmares and negativity as morning sun dries dew from a spider web. The Anishnabe (Chippewa) say Spider Woman wove silken dream catchers over each baby's cradleboard. When the Anishnabe people were scattered by settlers Spider Woman had to travel long distances to find them all. To ease her burden the women made of dream catchers of willow and sinew.
We’ve come a long way in the last ten years. We are weaving our own life now brighter threads among the dark and faded ones. We are clipping frayed ends and mending tears in the light of a new day.
Although remembering brought understanding which enabled our healing there will always be triggers to our pain. No time machine exists to erase the past. Healing isn’t about forgetting. It isn’t really even about forgiving although without that step you get stuck in survivorship.
Healing is about being strong enough to know pain and keep moving forward. It’s helping Spider Woman weave the dream catchers.
I believe now what Eyvonne says: “Nothing happens without a reason.”
We endured sexual, physical and emotional abuse in childhood that conditioned us to accept rape, emotional abuse and domestic violence as normal in adulthood. We survived. It’s up to us to make our life meaningful. It’s up to us to walk in beauty.
We treasure the essence of our life.
Last night as the sunset’s golden light glistened off strands of spider web strung between ferns as far as we could see into the woods. They wafted with the breeze glowing, almost on fire. You couldn’t take one step without encountering a silken strand.
“Deities. If we’d seen that before we’d never have set foot in the woods again,” I said.
“And now?” Eyvonne asked.
“Beautiful,” I whispered.

Prayersong

You are confusing
What is important
With what is not.
Look around you.

You are confusing
Starvation with
Something it is not.

Look around you.

Are you hungry?
Do your children cry?
Around you is there beauty?

Open your eyes,
You have confused
Starvation with plenty.

You have created beauty
Walk in it.

Open your eyes,
See plenty,
See beauty

Walk in it.
Harvest what you need
Leave some to grow
Give some back
Open your eyes
Look around you.

© 2004 M. S. Eliot

In a lame attempt to stop obsessing about Pleiades (I will continue to call him that until he comes up with a better name) I’ve started worrying about the coming winter.
All indications are it will be a doozy. The deer are darker than usual this fall. Old times say that means a bad winter, which makes no sense as a biological adaptation. At first glance it would seem if there’s more snow than usual a lighter colored coat makes sense. Then I remembered what deer do in really bad winters. They gather in herd and trample down an area under trees with edible twigs. They stay in this ‘yard’ stripping the trees of bark and twigs in a natural pruning process. It keeps most of the deer alive and forces the tree into producing more fruit the following spring.
Deer did this in an ancient orchard nearby a few years ago during a particularly bad winter. The following spring there were apples on trees I thought were dead. We had 17 storms that winter. “Amateurish,” a Swedish friend of ours said. When I complained we couldn’t see out some of our living room windows she came back with the fact that she was entering and exiting her home via a second floor doorway. And I’d always thought Swedish cabins with the decorative tiny porches on the second level were cute. Duh!
People who live in snow belts or the mountains understand snow differently from those nearer the equator. People who live in the Arctic Circle are even more cognizant of the nuances.
Did you know the Inuit have over fifty words for snow? I thought it redundant until a winter when we had seventeen snowstorms, one of them officially a blizzard. It gave me new insight. Besides numerous words defining types of snow they can refine descriptions with another 20 or 30 words meaning ‘white’. Inuit people know their snow.
Some storms start sneaky; flakes sifting down while your attention is diverted. Blinking for instance. You may have to squint to be sure it's snowing. Trust me, it is.
Roiling dark clouds and wind herald other storms. That’s when to fill containers with water and bring in extra wood. This is a time travel storm; you're about to experience the 19th century.
During the winter of 17 storms I learned snow evolves according to temperature. Extreme cold makes snow that burns your face. Warmer conditions produce slushy stuff that clings to anything trees, power lines, roofs, and eyelashes. It brings down power lines and glues your eyes closed if you blink.
Then there’s wind driven sleet. That can blast the skin right off your knuckles if your snowblower stalls. It’s a well-known fact that snowblowers will not restart if the operator is wearing gloves. It's in the fine print on the last page of your operator's manual, right under the Chinese word for "Gotcha!"
Friends laughed when we bought a snowblower after five or six practically snowless winters. But we’d been listening to old-timers talk about the winter of '88. They meant 1888. These were really old old-timers. Like them, we knew a winter of relentless storms was inevitable. Weather patterns change.
According to the latest demise-of-humanity sci-fi genre the weather is due to change so radically it will threaten life on the whole planet. The idea is drawn from real life scientists insisting global warming is already disrupting our weather. We were prepared. We bought our snowblower two weeks before the blizzard of '93. We were among the elite few during that storm with a passable driveway. Our driveway was clear but we couldn’t go anywhere. The roads weren't open. There is an Inuit word for that. It sounds like laughter.
Being closer to the environment like Inuit, even yuppie kids are more aware of snow classifications than adults. They speak of sledding snow, packing snow, fort-building snow, snowball snow, crusty snow, and skiing snow. They never speak of shoveling snow.
But they’re right; most winter activities depend on snow type. Cross-country skiing is best on slightly packed snow. Snowshoes will handle almost anything but softening ice crust. Inuit know all about this stuff. They invented snowshoes. They also invented dog sleds. Merlot would rather laze around by the woodstove than pull a sled. He’s deaf remember?
But when Owl and Thunder were little we had a Great Dane named Sky. He loved pulling sleds. The problem was he didn’t understand speed. He moved faster than his brain worked causing some spectacular crashes. Inuit probably have 20 words for dog sled crashes.
They probably also have a word meaning “snow a snowblower can't budge”. There would be several subdivisions in that category, each requiring it’s own nuance: more than six inches, wet snow, slush, ice, slush and ice mixed, you know, anything you couldn’t easily shovel anyway.
Although a snowblower will not throw slush, it will throw a forty-pound rock at least a hundred yards. You’ll find this out if your driveway borders a bay window. Breaking glass is clearly a warning from Snowblower Above. Pay attention here: Never walk in front of a snowblower unless you seek visions. Even a small rock lobbed at sixty miles an hour can knock you out.
Snow thrown from a snowblower deserves it's own classification. Natural snow movement is down. Snowblower- propelled snow defies gravity. It moves up, then down in a graceful arch unless the wind is against you. Then it blows straight back on you.
Trust me, in any given snowstorm the wind is against you sixty percent of the time. There is a word for that kind of snow too, drawn from the phrase “accelerated by machine to twice light speed”. I’d share it with you, but it definitely isn't printable.
Facing the onset of winter is always an ordeal for us. Once it’s underway there’s not much you can do but ride it out and enjoy those rare warm, sunny days. The shortening days of fall are a hazard to our mental well being even when we aren’t working through something like we are now. Raking leaves is a harbinger of worse things ahead. Leaves are a lot more manageable than snow. I forget sometimes that no matter what’s ahead we no longer need to face it alone or endure it in silence. We have people who care about us.
Earlier today Eyvonne was working on the prayer pole we plan to install in the center of the labyrinth. We obtained the pole through a short commando foray onto neighboring property. The aspens over there were just the right size. The ones on our land are either too young or too old. There is a cycle to everything, even aspen trees.
Aspen trees in a given area are all interconnected by a system of tiny rootlets. So in a very real sense they aren’t trees, they’re a tree. If only humans could see the web of connections that binds us together like that.
Eyvonne and I wandered around until the right tree was apparent. It wouldn’t do to cut the wrong one. We cut it down and she carried it back, hefting it to feel the balance of it.
Eyvonne dug a hole in the center of the labyrinth and we placed it to see how it looked.
“It’s already growing,” she said. “It’s alive. I mean not like it was, like it’s supposed to become.”
I nodded. El was ecstatic. We can visualize how it looks when it’s done, prayer feathers spinning in the wind.
It still needed its bark peeled off and it needed to dry for a while before we could paint it. This morning Eyvonne started peeling bark. Soon her daughter Sarah joined her. I wandered out too. We sat contentedly working together, telling stories, jokes.
“You know Sarah this is how it used to be,” I said.
“Lots of people working together makes it go fast,” she agreed.
“There’s that, but there’s more too. When people are working together, talking, sharing things, that’s how culture gets transferred,” I said.
“I can’t wait to go to a pow-wow,” she said.
We plan to put the prayer pole up to celebrate winter solstice. That’s only a month away, but we finished peeling the pole. It’s drying now stretched across the roof of an old chicken coop. Waiting. I have the feeling that like the labyrinth it will bring people into our lives. New blessings. I look forward to installing it more than a kid looks forward to Christmas. Lots of things will resolve then. Like Hamlet told Horatio, there are more things under the sun than I can even dream of and I can dream of quite a few.
The phone rang. I answered it and found myself talking with an old friend. Eyvonne and I had spoken of her earlier in the day wondering how she was doing. It never seemed to fail that she called when we thought about her.
She poured out an epic tale of misfortune. It made me wonder if she was really a family member. She’d found some peace last summer in the labyrinth when things were just starting to go awry for her. I felt the prayer pole tug. I explained about it and invited her to be part of installing it on the solstice.
“I’ll be there,” she said.
It was happening already and the pole was barely an infant.
© 2004 M. S. Eliot

Pleiades’ presence is making me think long and hard about integration.
In true dissociative fashion I am alternately worried sick about the fact that we’re deaf to each other and uncharacteristically unconcerned about it.
Even though I can see him and he can see me I can’t hear anything he mindtouches, not to anyone else or to me.
el and all his alters who step in and out from time to time can communicate with him. Ian can, ‘rion, Lillie, Gwen, Baby, Flinch, Trekker, Keeper, One and all the resident tribe of l’ilones have no problem communicating with him now that he’s finally stepped into the system. Everyone assures me I’m not missing much, he’s very quiet. So far he’s said nothing to explain his presence, where he’s been hiding out or why he surfaced at just this point in time.
Eyvonne told me he told her he has no name “But he isn’t a star system.”
At least he has a sense of humor. He claims to know everything any of us know and be able to use any skill any of us have.
He could tap system resources and have any skill stored there. But he couldn’t have access to all our memories. No one but Shadow has that talent. Time will tell.
He and I still have an uncomfortable a barrier between us. We’ve temporarily solved the problem by not being in each other’s space, or at least trying not to be. But we keep ending up face to face. It’s wearing me out. And it’s making me think the answer may be for him and I to integrate. But the problems involved with this may be pretty profound.
First of all he may not actually be who he’s presenting as, although his image feels right. When Shadow first showed up in the system he appeared to us as a BIG Black dude wearing chamo and a black beret. He scared the crap out of me. We soon discovered he was trying to project his name and purpose while at the same time cover his apprehension. It’s funny now but it wasn’t then. I was convinced he was the alter Dr. Dwon warned us about, bent on taking over the Q and perpetrating a crime spree to act out his rage.
Geeze. At least I’m not really worried about that anymore. It’s only a residual niggling little fear, not an overwhelming crippling one.
Evidence for this newbie being ‘of’ me is pretty strong. Everyone in the system perceives him as protector. He looks like me. I have this sense of him even though we can’t directly talk. And I believe he perpetrated the dream where we danced together. In fact I suspect that dream was a veiled plea for us to integrate.
The real wild card is not knowing why he split off from me in the first place. It must have happened when we were fairly young because he demonstrates a well-rounded understanding of how things are inside and outside.
No one needed to explain that we’re multiple. He can mindtouch. He is familiar with most of us in the system, even some who integrated with el or me a long time ago.
He asked Eyvonne “Do you know Shadow? Do you know Dakota?”
He knows how to do things that aren’t in the system resources databank. No one had to say ‘this is a dishwasher, it works like this’. He displays a normal range of emotions. All of these are attributes seldom displayed by recently spawned alters. And it is usually recently spawned alters who desire to integrate soon after they show up. So he is definitely not normal. But which Q is? I defy you to define normal and not include us in that range.
In the beginning of our therapy with Dr. Dwon we were dead set against integrating. But over the years we learned sometimes it’s the only way to save our sanity. Somehow el looms over that thought. Sanity is, after all, his turf.
After realizing he was inadvertently terrorizing us Shadow abandoned his projection inside as a Big Black guy. Then he was so much like el we nicknamed him el’s shadow. Eventually we just called him Shadow. Shadow broke away from el because el was experiencing deeper emotions. Once el started feeling love, it was inevitable that he know hate. Joy brought him anger. While he was going through a rocky adjustment to deeper emotions Shadow broke away to man the Q helm. He knew very little about the outside world since he was a recent split, spawned by a need of our adulthood. Recently spawned alters seldom have much depth. They have a job to do and they do it. I could never be sure what exactly enticed Shadow outside on his own but I suspected it was Eyvonne. We Qs are practically pre-programmed to love her. Shadow was very childlike. He took everything literally leaving himself wide open to pranks perpetrated by other Qs.
Once el was comfortable again he and Shadow reintegrated but it’s a loose association. Eyvonne says el is a multiple within a multiple. She’s probably right. Intellectually I understand this experientially mirrors our common experience. Like many of ‘the els’ Shadow sometimes steps out for a while. I’m never sure why. Maybe it’s just for R&R.
There is one el-alter who never steps out. Ember. Ember was the most damaged child alter we’ve ever discovered. He was blind and lost. His whole existence was pain. He knew nothing else. He was the repository for the cumulative pain of el’s existence. Nothing eased Ember’s pain except being held by el. el was distraught that this l’ilone existed solely to keep him from knowing pain. Holding Ember made it impossible for el to do his job. He was terrified of integrating with Ember but he had no choice.
I remember now, that was when we all lost contact with each other inside. It was because of Ember’s pain and fear. When el integrated with Ember it became his pain and fear again, but he had adult resources to own and process it. After that el could feel pain in the outside world. Dr. Dwon would have been proud.
Why did our experience with Ember resonate through me when I thought of Pleiades?
I remember when ‘rion and Twelve integrated. They melted one into the other, child and man. Then his blind female twin Star did the same, blending with him until she saw through his eyes. ‘rion called Star his heart, Twelve his anger. He was at peace with Twelve’s anger and secrets acknowledged. Star made him quieter, more mature. We saw their integration as a rebirth, not a death.
I wondered if that was what Dr. Dwon was driving at all those years ago. But the solution was far too simplistic to serve us all. We’d never become a singleton. Dissociation is far too ingrained in us.
In the simplistic model of multiplicity each alter is supposed to hold an incident of abuse, or contain one emotion. Integrating is supposed to heal them into a whole. That worked for ‘rion, Star and twelve.
But many of us are far too organized, too complete to consider blending. We’ve gone past some unseen border into uncharted diagnostic territory.
How could any of the other Qs be my heart, express my anger, my joy?
For a long time I struggled to understand the nuances of our system. I repeatedly mapped our complex inner system and connections without success
“Don’t work so hard at it Shell,” Eyvonne advised. “When you’re ready it will be there.”
She was right. It took many more alters coming in from the cold to understand how we were interrelated. Obviously the process is still going on.
Although we take it more or less in stride now, it’s still nerve wracking. Like with Pleiades, things are easily misunderstood. He told Eyvonne he would apologize to me for taking ops the way he did. Until then none of us realized he and I couldn’t mindtouch.
Until we figured this out and told Eyvonne she was pissed at him for saying he’d apologized to me. How could he or she know I hadn’t heard him?
Once a child emerged who told Eyvonne his name was Die-die. She freaked out, believing he was suicidal. It turned out his name was descriptive. When confronted with abuse this little one went catatonic. He ‘died’.
True integration to me is what ‘rion accomplished with Star and Twelve. We no longer heard their separate voices, only ‘rion’s voice. It didn’t seem strange, nor did we mourn them. ‘rion had always spoken for Star anyway and we’d sensed from the start he was also Twelve. Despite the success and peace integrating had brought ‘rion, overall integration was still not our goal. We neither sought nor expected it.
Alters can emerge very suddenly, drawn from hiding places in a blink by a perceived need. I abruptly lost over an hour in a supermarket once. The last thing I recalled was an exhausted shopper keeping tabs on two active preschoolers. One of her little boys ran past me grinning mischievously.
“Dakota!” his mother called sharply.
The next thing I knew I was in another part of the supermarket and dusk had become night. Several new items were in my cart. I checked the time. Nearly an hour had passed. I paid for the groceries including the items I hadn’t selected. I suspected we’d been ‘raided’ by someone outside the system. Enticing them back would be easier if I honored their choices. I sighed as I looked over the items: juice, apples, sprouts. Things el might have chosen but he hadn’t, I checked. None of us could account for the missing hour. Our only clue was that these were adult choices, no candy bars or cookies.
We found out who it was a few weeks later when we received a threatening phone call in the middle of the night. Eyvonne recognized the caller’s voice and we called the police but there was really nothing they could do. Eyvonne was pretty shaken by the incident. el was holding her close when she sensed a change. Startled, she looked up into the eyes of someone she didn’t know.
“You’re all right. You’re safe,” he said. He looked stern, almost fierce.
“Who are you?”
Eyvonne was a little scared. This was at the height of our expectations that someone inside harbored rage.
“Dakota. I am Gwen’s guardian. She told me you were in danger. She wants me to guard you too. I am here now, you are safe,” he said.
“Dakota,” she whispered as he stroked her hair. “You feel like eliot.”
He smiled at her.
“eliot is my origin and where I rest,” he explained.
“And you guard Gwen?”
“Yes.”
“Why did she ask you to guard me Dakota? What did she say about the danger?”
Dakota glanced around the room.
“You are not part of our system!” he exclaimed. “You are outside!”
It was Eyvonne’s turn to soothe.
“It’s all right. But yes, I am outside.”
“I thought you were part of us, inside,” Dakota said wonderingly. “I have spent very little time outside. I am a watcher, a guardian, not a protector.”
“Well, you’re out here now. And I think you have been before.... the little boy in the supermarket.... his name was Dakota too,” Eyvonne said.
Dakota smiled.
“Yes. That was very strange. Someone called my name and I found myself in a marketplace.... I watched what others did, followed their example. I thought it was a vision, a teaching dream. But I wondered what I was supposed to learn,” Dakota said.
“You’re very like el,” Eyvonne whispered. “Do you look like him like Shadow does?”
Dakota sighed.
“Yes, but I am much older. My braids are nearly white. I would be an elder in your world.”
“And you watch over Gwen?”
“I have been her guardian many years,” Dakota said. “Now I will be your guardian too.”
Dakota was as good as his word. I felt his reassuring presence many times as we escorted Eyvonne to evening performances of the opera, symphony, plays and movies in the city. His watchfulness augmented mine.
Another time I was alerted to an emerging alter by the whisper of a mindtouch. Who guards the guardian? a voice asked.
I looked all around inside and mindtouched each Q to see if this was a prank.
Who guards the guardian? The voice was even more insistent. This time I caught movement inside out of the corner of my eye. I turned to see a child with unkempt hair, dirty face, uncertain smile.
I grinned recognizing a younger version of myself. I knew without asking who this was, in my heart I’d always known. The older and calmer I got, the more this little one needed to be separate. I sensed that time was nearly over.
Hello Wild Child, I said softly.
He grinned and embraced me.
I’m Watcher too, he said.
I know. You watch for me. You guard the Guardian don’t you? I mindtouched.
Wild Child nodded.
For a while Wild Child split and merged with me just as Dakota and Shadow still do with el. I was unaware of his presence unless he was apart from me. We acted autonomously when we were separate but he never blocked me. His actions and memories were readily available to me, his experiences my own. I understood now how it worked that Shadow held our collective memory, which meant el did too.
If any memory, skill or information was el’s he could make it available to anyone in the system or keep it private.
He developed our system resources that facilitated things for emerging alters. If they wanted to learn skills any one of us had already mastered, they could do so by tapping directly into the stored data. No one needed to be present for someone else inside to use our typing skills. Unfortunately making our typing skills available meant our typos were shared too.
I knew firsthand that integration made sense sometimes. After I found Wild Child I couldn’t sleep, inside or out. Wild Child’s duty to watch mandated that I did so too because Wild Child was singularly unconvinced we were no longer in danger. The body was physically exhausted from me sleeping with one eye open. Wild Child frequently woke Eyvonne in the dead of night.
“What’s that?” he whispered.
“It’s just a plane,” she reassured for the hundredth time.
Trucks coming down the mountain, owls hooting, mice rustling in the attic and wind creaking the trees outside our window all spelled danger to Wild Child.
The solution was simple. I invited to come home. I simply opened my arms and accepted him. My growing maturity and self-confidence was balanced by his energy and wacky sense of humor. Wow. Happy ending. It isn’t always like that.
Integrating with alters Vinnie and Dani was much harder for me and the rest of the Qs. The twins were a strong part of our inner system for a couple of years. Then they matured from children to young adults in a matter of weeks. Vinnie lost his impishness and became almost serious. Dani grew bolder, more sure of herself, although her speech remained difficult to understand.
I welcomed them as I had Wild Child. But this merging was painful. Every horrible experience they’d endured became mine.
“Oh god, not that too,” I said to Eyvonne. “I never expected it to be this hard, it wasn’t for ‘rion.”
“Shel, don’t fight it,” Eyvonne whispered. “Let it happen.”
I went limp, sobbing in her arms.
“Shel, Star and Twelve were already part of ‘rion. Dani and Vinnie aren’t part of you like Wild Child,” she said.
Her voice cracked as she spoke names of l’ilones grown and now lost to her. She accepted, even rejoiced in our choice to integrate, but she missed them intensely.
I writhed in pain absorbing their pieces of our collective past. When it was done I felt giddy, laughing and crying at the same time.
Inside Dani and Vinnie’s voices, like Wild Child’s became mine. Others heard their inflections when I mindtouched. Flashes of them ran through me like quicksilver.
But Gwen wept in the nursery next to their empty cots. Lillie hid in her cottage, curtains drawn and el wept alone on a rock ledge high in our inner mountains. Outside Eyvonne mourned too. She could never be sure who she might lose next. I know she is still terrified sometimes it will be el. I don’t know how she has the courage to live with us.
Everyone knew the twins still existed inside me. We understood intellectually this was best for all of us. It had been their choice and mine.
But el also knew he would never again heft Dani to his shoulders and hike with her into his beloved mountains. No one would see Vinnie grow up except through my maturity. Dani gifted me compassion, Vinnie gave me a broader grin and self-confidence.
As we fell as asleep that night we slept entirely, all of us at once for the first time, with no presence watching over us.
Who guards the guardian? I thought smiling through tears. Wild Child’s tour of duty was finally over.
© 2004 M. S. Eliot

I think we’re going deaf. It’s no big surprise. We Qs have what my mother called “Burgess family ears”. We were prone to earaches as a child. If we had a cold we got an earache. I miss hearing some things, like owls calling in the woods. I can still hear them if I go outside, but I remember being comforted hearing them as I lay awake in bed.
I thought about going deaf this morning because the dog ran off into the bushes. I know, you’re wondering about that connection. It’s not as far out there as it seems. I stood in the doorway sipping my coffee and Merlot disappeared into the mist. I knew if he were on a deer track he’d never hear me call him off because he’s pretty deaf. He’s the only dog I’ve ever known who lies down next to drums when Owl’s band practices. For a while Owl worried Merlot’s loyalty cost him his hearing. I doubt it. I think he was born that way.
Merlot is also selectively deaf. He’s learned to use his disability to manipulate. It’s so human. We had a horse that learned the same trick. He went lame out on the trail. He’d pitched a shoe. We had to walk him down out of the mountains. Ever after when he wanted to go back to the barn he executed a convincing limp.
Conscious manipulation requires higher thinking skills and an orderly thought process.
First the animal must remember the circumstances that fit what they want to accomplish. Then they need to display behaviors that will turn events their way. It’s human training 101. Pretty sophisticated if you ask me. Since their brains are awash in the same chemicals as ours it shouldn’t be such a surprise.
If Merlot doesn’t want to do something you can shout the command right in his face and he just turns his head away with that little smile dogs get when they laugh at humans.
Having pets is really important to us. Like the people we love they help anchor us in this reality. If we lived alone we’d still need to remember to come out here in the physical world to feed and walk the dog. Of course that requires coffee, which leads to food, which is how we start each day. We feed Merlot and remember we need to eat too. Isn’t dissociation fun class?
It opens up a whole new industry: companion pets for dissociatives. Even fish would work. Actually plants aren’t a bad choice either if they require regular watering. Cacti wouldn’t work so well.
You’d think a routine would help us maintain the balance between inside and outside life. Maybe for some multiples that is a good tool. Like always doing laundry on Mondays, or taking trash out on Fridays. But in reality sometimes you run out of socks on Saturday or the trash overflows on Wednesday. Being flexible is better. Routine only makes our obsessive alters obsess to a greater degree.
We do have some techniques to keep things moving forward. el records deadlines, meetings and appointments and lists our personal goals and projects and those underway for each client. We have a family message board where everyone can record things we need to know, like “Owl works Monday and Tuesday”. This avoids us asking six or seven times what days he’s working. Lately we forget an answer right after we get it. I’m not sure why.
Everyone in the family assumes it’s because each of us asks the same question and we don’t share the information. It’s easier for us to let everyone to blame it on that than it is to try and figure out what is actually going on.
Welcome to another fun aspect of dissociation. Sometimes you just have no clue. Or worse, you don’t even notice it even after someone points it out because it’s too scary to examine. So you ignore the concept that you’re ignoring stuff.
Lately I tend to blame it on Pleiades. Why not? If he won’t communicate he’s an easy scapegoat. Besides, he pulled a really annoying stunt today that I have no desire to discuss in detail. Suffice it to say Eyvonne and I finally successfully eluded the sex police and were having a great time. Suddenly Pleiades slammed me on the forehead, took ops and locked me out. I could be really pissed off but what’s the point? It’s actually kind of funny, Pleiades as the sex police.
So you may well wonder what I did the rest of the day. Because you see, time does not stop inside because we’re blocked from the outside. el thinks we could be dead a week before we’d all notice.
I fumed for a while. Then I imagined what fun it might be to bludgeon Pleiades for oh, perhaps an hour or so and make him promise never, ever, to do that again. Then I remembered how much he looks like me, but bigger. It would be like beating up myself. Besides, I might lose. And fighting among us seriously disrupts the system.
I went to el’s place and sat down on a supremely comfortable tattered armchair. A good therapist could do an entire dissertation on el’s abode. Why a tattered armchair? And for that matter, why a library? It was at least enclosed by a house now. For years it was just a library with one wall missing. Now he has a house with porches and steps leading up to them. There are lots of other rooms in his house, a second floor, and even an attic. But sometimes I miss the old days when you could just look in and see what he was up to. Another point for that dissertation.
Today he was reading. Usually if he isn’t reading he’s writing.
What’s up? he mindtouched me. His glasses slid down his beaky nose. Now there’s another thing. Why would you wear glasses inside where you could have 20/20 vision?
Do you know what Pleiades did to me today? I mindtouched.
el tried very hard not to smirk, I’ll give him that. Yeah, I know, he said.
You just think it’s funny because I used to do it to you, I said.
el nodded. Makes you wonder how long he’s been hiding.
I had an annoying urge to laugh.
How old am I? I asked.
el shrugged. I assume you’re not talking chronological age. So maybe mid-thirties?
No, I mean how long have I been part of the system? When’s the earliest you remember me?
Shel, I never remember a time without you. What are you driving at?
This guy not only looks like me, he feels like me. Remember my dream?
el nodded thoughtfully. How long do you think he’s been around?
A long, long time, I said. He slipped into driving that car like a pro. He’s either got complete access to what we all know or he’s driven a lot.
Ian peeked around the door. Private bitch session? he asked.
No, come on in, I answered.
Since ‘e still ‘as a lock on ops I might as well, Ian mindtouched. He looked at me closely. So why aren’t ya freakin’ out Shel? Don’t ya care wha ‘e’s doin out there?
I started to sweat. Ian was right. I wasn’t doing my job. I should be fighting to get ops back. What the hell was wrong with me?
I leaped toward the door. el put his hand on my shoulder. Wait Shel. Think this out a minute. I don’t think Ian meant you’re doing something wrong. I think he’s asking you to take a closer look at this, el said.
Ian nodded.
I don’t think confrontation is a good idea with this one. Let me try. I’ll just ask him for ops and see what happens, el suggested.
Can you mindtouch him? I can’t find him, not ever, I admitted.
Don’t worry about that now. Just let me see what I can do, el said.
el appeared to be concentrating intensely. He reached his hand up and then he had ops. I knew he did. I could feel it.
So did he just hand off to you all nice, just like that? I asked.
el sighed.
No, he bailed as soon as he realized I could reach him.
I felt my fists contract in frustration. Ian slipped his arm over my shoulder. Give ‘im time, he advised.
That’s rich coming from you Ian, I pointed out. If I’d given you time we’d be dead.
‘e’s had plenty a’chances to do that if ‘e wanted too, Ian said. I dinna ‘ave a clue when I came into the system. ‘e knows what’s goin’ on.
He’s been hiding a long time Shel, el said. He’s a Protector. Having trust issues goes with the territory. Once he’s sure we’re OK he’ll come in.
I wanted to believe that. I wanted to believe it in the worst way. But all I could think of was that not being able to mindtouch Pleiades felt like being deaf. He certainly didn’t seem to hear me.
It reminded me of a time when none of us in the system could mindtouch anyone else. We panicked. It was like wandering around in a pitch blackness. I shuddered just remembering my terror.
Terror. It had been someone’s fear that caused it.
Was Pleiades afraid? Of me? Was that what this was about?
© 2004 M. S. Eliot

We’ve had a series of close encounters lately. Not with aliens but with birds. When birds and animals come forcefully into our lives we feel it’s best to pay close attention.
It started with a hummingbird late this summer. He decided Lillie was more interesting than the feeder. He flew repeatedly to within inches of her face and hovered there, regarding her with seriousness only a bird can achieve. His black eyes mirrored her image. The backwash from his tiny wings caressed her cheeks. He made those characteristic chittering sounds.
“What’s up little brother,’ she asked.
He cocked his head at a rakish angle, chittered some more and sped off to a nearby twig where he sat regarding her for nearly a minute. A minute is a long time for a hummingbird to remain still.
We pondered the hummingbird’s message for days. Lakota people regard the hummingbird as the most powerful of the avian world. Although tiny, it is the only bird capable of hovering in place and flying backwards. Lillie said the hummingbird blessed us.
Our next encounter was with an owl. His hooting in the woods below the house pegged him as a great horned owl, the largest resident owl in our region. I wondered why he was making such a racket in mid-summer. It certainly wasn’t mating season that takes place when the snow cover is deep.
As I stood listening one night he flew so close I felt his wings. Ghostly silent he glided into a tree nearby to regard me. I might have been a mouse my heart pounded so hard.
I knew great horned owls exert hundreds of pounds of pressure per square inch with their talons. We regarded each other for timeless moments. When he flew he was gone in a blink. I felt blessed, especially since he hadn’t grabbed me. Trust me, he had my full and undivided attention.
el has always had a special relationship with hawks. When we were small he learned to call them close. He didn’t need to whistle or make a sound although sometimes he mimics their high-pitched calls. He can sense them and attract them from beyond a mountain ridge to circle over a pow-wow dance circle.
One particular hawk nests in our woods each summer. She’ll sit in a tree near our bedroom window and call until el goes outside and acknowledges her. Sometimes in mid-day she circles the yard calling and calling until he goes outside to talk to her. When we lived on the other side of the state I swear this same hawk went with us she is so attached to el. He was up on the trailer roof spreading that gunk to seal leaks and she came from across the valley screaming to hover over him. He smiled a lot that day. You might find this a stretch to believe, but it’s true. It’s how we got our first Indian name: Calls Hawks.
Anyway, this particular day we were photographing a hill near the New York State border. Locally it’s called Spanish Hill, or Carantouan. It’s past is the stuff of legends. In Native American oral tradition it’s a sacred place. A Manitou lived there when the Susquehannocks hunted this land.
The first time we saw the hill we almost wrecked our car. At that time we had no idea it was locally famous, the subject of mystery. We just knew it called our soul. We drove all around the little arrowhead shaped hill. We searched out its history. It was linked to Stephen Brule a Jesuit sent by Champlain to scout the region. Mormon founder Joseph Smith stalked it with a seer stone seeking Spanish gold reputedly buried there.
One day while we were photographing the hill a large hawk flew into view. el acknowledged her. She circled closer and closer until she hovered directly overhead calling. She was as large as an eagle, the biggest red tail hawk we’d ever seen. She stayed until we left. Then she flew in a straight line disappearing behind the hill.
In almost every picture taken that day there is a hawk. Some are dots in the sky where you’d expect them to be. But there hawk shapes and shadows in the leaves of grass too.
Last spring we mowed a labyrinth into the grass in what was once our pasture. There’s a dead tree on the very edge of it. el’s hawk comes in and sits on the very tip of that dead tree when he’s out there.
Labyrinths date back more than four thousand years. They’re found in nearly every spiritual tradition around the world. Labyrinths are different from mazes. A maze offers lots of choices a labyrinth only one: to enter or not. Ours is a left-handed, unicursal labyrinth. That means the entrance path turns first to the left and the single path that leads to the center. Ours has a 60-foot diameter. It's a qurter mile from the entrance to the center, so walking it in and out is a half mile workout. It’s based on classic seven-circuit Dine (Navajo), Hopi and Pima designs and is similar to labyrinths found in Crete and Ireland. The path winds back upon itself, tricking you into thinking you're almost to the center when a turn later you're back on the outside edge. We thought creating it was our idea. We should have known better.
“It will call people to itself,” a friend said.
That sounded way too new age to me.
“Like field of dreams huh?” I said and laughed
She turned and gave me the look women give moronic men. I quickly wandered off and found something productive to do like breaking sticks into small pieces.
She was right. Eyvonne and I thought we were building the labyrinth for our family. By the time we had half its arcs completed and it was already pulsing with power. It was kind of scary.
Although Labyrinths aren’t confined to religion, experiences within them are often spiritual and healing. Walking a labyrinth is supposed to promote right brain activity fostering creativity. Some doctors recommend walking a labyrinth for stress relief. We thought it would be good for us to walk it regularly.
but a labyrinth can be a trickster. Just when you think you have your goal in sight, something unexpected happens and you’re off in a completely new direction. It seems random but it isn't. It's like a graphic of the choas theory. Every time you walk it it's different. We learned so much from it in just a few months.
So we finished the labyrinth we found it a powerful place to meditate. Word spread about what we’d done. People started calling to ask if they could come and walk it a dawn, or at dusk, or spend some time there to work on a specific emotional or physical issue. People who were greiving came to walk. A family with a disabled child walked together. We nenver turned anyone away. Our friend was right. Who was laughing now?
Since so many people seemed to need what the labyrinth offered we put a small notice in local papers. Within days our labyrinth was featured on a public radio segment. That led to an inquiry from a TV station. The next thing Eyvonne and I knew we were walking the labyrinth with a regional celebrity as we were interviewed on camera. Aerial shots were taken from a helicopter. Owl was on break at work two miles away. Everyone noticed the helicopter.
“Look it’s channel five. Wonder what’s going on?”
“They’re filming my backyard,” Owl said. His co-workers laughed.
Since we don’t get TV we watched the segment at a local bar. We ate wings and drank beer and generally enjoyed ourselves. A guy at the bar next to Eyvonne looked from the TV to her and back several times. Finally he asked “Is that you?”
We were accidental celebrities and a local phenomena for weeks. I told you labyrinths are tricksters.
Like el with hawks, I have a personal relationship with crows and ravens. Tricksters. Did you know if crows or ravens gather together they’re not a flock? They’re a murder. Crows hate hawks and owls. One crow will chase a hawk or an owl shrieking out a raucous alarm. Crows from everywhere heed the call and mob the predator. Once we heard a murder of crows after something in our woods. Instead of a winged predator they were diving at a huge bobcat.
If I see three crows or ravens I pay attention. This past week or so they’ve been everywhere. This morning three ravens stood in a line across the road staring at our house. My thoughts drifted to Pleiades. He seemed like a trickster himself, capable of shape shifting and the whole gig. Were they warning me about him? Or were they just having some fun at my expense?
© 2004 M. S. Eliot

We went into the forest to collect princess pine to bend into wreaths and sell to our neighbors. Circles honoring someone else's religion. But before it was their symbol it was ours.
The forest was damp and mysterious in wisps of mist. Sounds were muted except for the scolding of a raven.
My brother, Raven. Trickster. What do you have to teach today? I hoped the lesson would not be too difficult.
Eyvonne wandered one way and I another. Unconsciously we always stayed within sight of each other. It would be easy to get lost in the tendrils of fog, especially following raven's voice.
I picked and picked until my bag was almost full. I was standing in a depression formed long ago when a tree fell. There was nothing left of the tree, only a hole with a slight rim where its stump had been. Big rocks had either fallen in or eroded out. They were surrounded by pine and brown, withered stalks of summer ferns that had sheltered them through the hottest days.
I marveled at how Creator wove the world together, how each created being depended on another until all were interconnected by one relationship.
My feet were buried in leaf loam. If it were summer I would never step here. Snakes like to hide under the ferns in the rocks from summer’s heat just like the pine.
"Come over here," Eyvonne called. "I found a plant I've never seen before!"
I walked slowly toward her. I don't run in the forest any more. I plant my feet deliberately. Even a year ago I would have run. I feel too tired for this morning.
But the sight of the green veined leaves Eyvonne had discovered energized me. She was gently clearing leaf litter from a ring of rattlesnake weed. It grew like a crown on the mound of a tree stump mostly decayed away. A wreath of dark green leaves laced with white on the forest floor.
"What is it?" she asked.
I bent down, mindtouching el. He knew more about medicinal plants than any of us. He mindtouched the information and I spoke it. "Rattlesnake weed. It's a powerful medicine plant.”
"When you called out I was standing in a place I wouldn't dream of stepping in the summer. Too snakey," I said.
"Look how close it is to the snakey spot," Eyvonne noted.
Creator nearly always grows an antidote near a poison. Jewelweed grows near nettles or poison ivy, yarrow and heal-all near the sharp leaves of sawgrass. Plantain, a plant yuppies fight epic battles to remove from their lawns provides a number of helpful medicines. In the old days the plant was called "White man's foot". Brought here as a 'sallet' green by settlers it quickly escaped the boundaries of the garden. Our people used every part of it has healing properties. Perhaps Creator saw it as healing for hurts the settlers wrought.
Known locally as rattlesnake weed, the plant Eyvonne discovered was officially called rattlesnake plantain. Later we looked it up in our medicinal plant book. It has become too rare to harvest.
I sighed. It seemed a potent symbol of Indian life. One small circle too rare to harvest. The exacting niche environment it requires to thrive has been uprooted by extensive lumbering.
“It’s probably a cure for cancer or AIDS or something worse lurking out there we don’t even know about.” I mourned.
Or maybe those attributes are contained in a more common plant like the humble plantain that grows or tries to in almost every yard and field. It’s so common if it doesn't thrive in a particular place I wonder what horror of pollution was perpetrated there in the past.
Once at a pow-wow we were attending a small child among the spectators was stung by a bee. Wizened Grandfather Ash heard her crying and left the dance circle to help. He plucked a leaf of plantain, rubbed it between his fingers and applied it to the sting. The child stopped crying. Her mother was gratefully amazed.
Soon afterward it started to rain. Most of the spectators left. Dancers wearing expensive regalia sought cover but Grandfather Ash kept dancing followed by a gaggle of children laughing and having a good time.
Grandfather Ash carried a great deal of knowledge forward from the past. When I realized Lillie and I did too we started teaching anyone interested. If we didn’t share the knowledge it would be lost. We also started asking elders to share what they knew with us. We love the scent and textures of herbs we gather in the woods and fields. We love how drying herbs makes our house smell. The rooms fill with the essence of mullein, pennyroyal, Oswego tea, spicebush, everlasting, coltsfoot, sages, comfrey, lavender and the peppermint, spear mint, applemint and lemon balm which grow right up to the doorstep of our house.
When we were younger we dreamed of making a living from things we could gather and turn into useful or decorative products. We knew how to gather without destroying and we offered tobacco in thanks. At this time of year we still gather princess pine to bend into wreaths and sell to our neighbors. Circles to hang on doors honoring someone else's religion. But before it was their symbol it was ours.
The activity is an economic barometer of our family fortunes. In good years we make wreaths as gifts. When things aren’t going so well we make more and sell some to help pay for Christmas gifts. In bad years we sell them to buy food. This year it’s mostly gifts for the kids that drive us. No, it’s not our religion, nor is it our holiday, but we’re infected with it anyway, the tree, candles, and food. Did I mention the food? It’s a winter solstice feast sanctioned by the dominant culture. And the presents are fun. In our family they can tend to be a little strange. Who else would love a stuffed Armadillo?
Earlier today we felt the forest call. Eyvonne and I set out to gather pine. It was damp, trees mysterious in wisps of mist. Our voices were muted unlike the scolding of a raven.
My brother. Raven. Trickster. What do you have to teach today, I wondered. I hoped the lesson wouldn’t be too difficult.
Our bags were full but we weren't done with the forest. Some of our l'ilones peeked out awed by the hush of pre-winter woods. They didn't stay. They found summer with creatures and the promise of berries far more interesting. We adults needed these greens and browns and grays to settle something in our souls. Eyvonne found a rock covered in concentric rings formed by lichen that grew in black dots. There are rock glyphs that look similar. Spirals are carved into rock all around the world. Some archeologists call them meanders and associate them with water.
Not rivers, pathways. The pathway, el mindtouched.
We meandered through the woods, breathing in restoration, accepting gifts. Eventually it was beyond time to go back. We'd lingered long. Images of rocks and medicine plants would help us through the coming winter.
We have a growing sense this winter will be difficult. There seems little we can do to prepare for it beyond cutting a splitting more wood and storing up earth wisdom.
On the way home we're quiet. I'd not yet told Eyvonne about my close encounter with our newest Q. I sensed she was waiting to tell me something too.
"So have you met him yet?" I finally ask.
Eyvonne nodded pulling her arms into a self-hug.
"He cuddled with me last night. He's bigger than you," she hesitated. "His hands are bigger. He put his arm around me but he was very tense."
"I met him too. Driving Thunder's car brought him up."
"I know, I read about it in your blog. That's a heck of a way to find out." She was teasing but I still felt terrible.
"There just wasn't time to talk," I said.
"I know," she said wistfully.
We were quiet a moment too long before Eyvonne broke the silence.
"He has trust issues. He held my wrist as if he thought I might hurt him," she said.
I think I'm ready to face this stuff. I think we've been through it enough times now I can handle it no matter what. And then it's in my face and I feel like running, or maybe breaking something into little bits.
I take a deep breath and let it out slowly.
"We all have trust issues. What concerns me is how he's going to handle his," I said.
"You’re going to handle it,” Eyvonne said.
In a few days or weeks I might know that. Right then I didn't.
I wondered where Pleiades hid outside the system. How long had he been hiding? Why was he surfacing now?
"Why does he look so much like me?" I whispered.
"Shel," Eyvonne said, catching my eye. "It will be all right."
Right. And the check is in the mail. Another deep breath and I wasn’t worried any more. Being dissociative has its advantages. One is we rarely dwell on emotionally painful things very long. We may obsessively come back to fret over them but it doesn't last and in between you'd never know anything was bothering us. The strategy has major disadvantages too. Things take longer to resolve.
The worst thing about being dissociative is our response to pain. We tend ignore it until its massive, sometimes until we're in real trouble.
When you have a toothache you probably go right to the dentist and he fixes it. When we have a toothache we ignore it because we have things to do and not enough money. Every time it gets a little worse we ignore it more. Eventually we're spending a lot of energy keep the pain from bothering us.
We thought we'd finally learned to allow pain. I didn’t think we’d ever learn to embrace it. On an intellectual level we knew pain served a function.
"Pain is your friend," Dr. Dwon used to tell us. "Without pain to warn you something's wrong you can get into real trouble."
We knew he was right. Most of the time we were seriously ill before we noticed. Like now.
Back to the toothache example. Last spring it became evident we'd had a toothache for a long time. We knew that because Ian complained about it. I knew it needed attention but I kept putting it off because we were broke. By the time I could feel it we needed root canal and even I couldn’t ignore the pain. So we went to the dentist. He told us we needed an antibiotic for two weeks, and we’d have to pay him half up front before he'll start.
The bad thing was I wouldn't have the money until the following month when my clients paid up. The good thing was this happened before the government used a statistical eraser on our medical card. So we could get the prescription.
So. After like eight visits and constant pain the dentist decides the root canal is completed.
“It still hurts,” I say as I fork over $137.50.
“It will hurt a while,” he said.
Maybe I should have told him not to say something so open ended to me. I had no idea how long the pain should last. A month went by and we still couldn’t chew on that side. Two months and I was wondering how long ‘a while’ ought to be. We had a fever and chills, sore throat, swollen glands and a stuffy nose for a couple of weeks. The tooth hurt as much as before we saw the dentist in the first place. We’d shelled out $275.00 and it was no better.
We went back to the dentist. He took an X-ray. Wow, I thought, why didn’t he do that last spring? The film showed the abscess never went away it just took a new path. It had eaten through the bone and was spreading into my sinus.
“Is that why the whole side of my face hurts and I have a massive headache?”
“Yes,” the dentist admitted. “The infection must be a resistant strain.”
He prescribed a new antibiotic. One probably developed to fight germ warfare. It comes in bright blue capsules the size of the ones I had trouble getting our horses to swallow.
And now that we’re now middle class, even though our income hasn’t gone up one cent, we need to pay for it ourselves. If we did so, we wouldn’t have food or gas money until Eyvonne got paid next week. I put it on a credit card. When I whipped it out to pay, the pharmacist said “Don’t you have insurance?”
“Nope.”
He charged me $5.00 over his wholesale cost. I saw the paperwork. At least there are some people left with hearts. They’re not dentists. I guess it would skew the balance of good and evil if dentists or lawyers had hearts.
© 2004 M. S. Eliot

We sometimes meet people who just don’t believe we exist. They don’t believe the human personality can fracture into many pieces, or that memories can be locked away for most of a lifetime.
I don’t agree with much Sigmund Freud professed but his suppressed memory theory seems to be bearing out. He stated the brain suppresses unwanted memories related to trauma. Our brains are awash in chemicals and hormones. Memories are the result of a complex dance of electrical connections and chemical responses.
There is a growing body of scientific evidence showing that traumatic events are processed differently in the brain on a chemical level from ordinary events. Dissociation, the mechanism whereby we became multiple, is in its most basic form merely a chemical process, probably similar to what allows a prey animal to die calmly in the jaws of a predator.
Memories created during trauma are also stored in different cognitive areas of the brain from ordinary memories. Recent studies under controlled conditions indicate participants could successfully control unwanted memories. Their attempts were associated with increased activity in the frontal cortex. This led to reduced activation of the hippocampus, an area of the brain associated with memory.
New information indicates we can avoid laying down unwanted memory tracks. Another study shows the brains of developing humans suffer permanent physical changes when subjected to childhood abuse or neglect. These changes are thought to be significant enough to cause psychological and emotional problems later in life.
Amnesia related to traumatic events such as combat, violent crime, concentration camp experiences and torture has been documented for over a hundred years. Recent studies show a large percent of childhood abuse survivors report forget some of the abuse they suffered. Some common components were that the abuses took place in early childhood, intense emotions were generated, and there was more than one type of abuse and the abuse included threats to safety.
Freud decided later in his life that the overwhelming number of horrific things his patients related couldn’t possibly be real events. He couldn’t conceive of child abuse being that prevalent and his professional colleagues as well as the public refused to acknowledge his theory was correct.
In the face of professional strife Freud backed down. Instead of actual abuse incidents he decided his patients were talking about sexual fantasies expressing their own repression or neurosis.
We suspect he was right in the first place.
Studies today indicate sexual abuse perpetrated by adults on children and adolescents is as high as one in three girls and one in ten boys.
As in our case, by mid-life the chemical locks on hidden memories often erode, releasing memories of abuse experiences in chaotic floods called flashbacks. Sometimes therapists are accused of asking questions leading patients to create elaborate false memories. Our memories flooded into our consciousness without any suggestion or help from health care professionals. They listened. They to teach us techniques to survive the horror, but they never suggested anything.
Many abuse survivors have family members who confirm their abuse memories. Our older sister has done so for at least some of our experiences. Some of our memories were merely softened so we could allow them to stay with us.
Our family raised chickens when I was young. Some of the chickens were destined for the stewpot while others laid enough egg to earn their keep at least for a while. It was a graphic lesson I never questioned. If you didn’t produce you could be slaughtered without prior notice.
My sister told me there were periodic butchering days, an event pretty common to farm and rural folk with flocks. I remember little about that but my sister can barely eat chicken to this day.
But I’d always remembered one incident in particular. My father had some chickens in a sack. He tied the neck of the sack to the exhaust of the car and ran it to kill the birds.
As an adult I wondered just how healthy it was for us to be eating chickens killed in such a manner. I mentioned it to our sister.
She looked at me quizzically and said, “Not chickens, kittens”.
The real memory flooded back. Our cat Lucy had produced a litter. They were allowed to live for a time but their days were numbered. Our father made us watch their execution. The kittens were collected, shoved into the bag mewling pitifully, fighting for freedom. The bag was progressively more still until it hung limp and silent. I was handed my favorite, a gray kitten with blue eyes. His eyes were open wide in death, his tongue chewed, and his fur damp. Over forty years later I finally cried.
You can believe what you want about multiplicity and repressed memories. It’s your life and it’s a reputedly free country. Some people choose to believe the holocaust never happened. Others tell me the Indians got what they deserved, where would the country be if left in the hands of savages?
Savages huh? According to Erich Fromm matriarchal societies are the most peaceful and offer a good quality of life. It seems to me the patriarchal European invaders could have learned a thing or two about something from the Eastern Woodlands tribes besides how to grow corn beans and squash to avoid starving. The Eastern Woodlands people prized their children. Parents seldom spoke a harsh word to them. Beatings were unknown. Child abuse was uncommon, as was rape, no matter what ‘historical’ novels try to perpetuate. A person who abused a child the way I had been would have been ostracized. There were multiples, and people who were ‘two-spirited’ – those who lived their lives as members of the opposite sex. These were so rare they were considered holy people who helped keep balance in the world.
You probably won’t learn much about that in history books either. History is written by conquerors to fit their societal needs. The American history myth and Hollywood stereotypes are all most people know about Indians.
Anthropologists are discovering our pre-contact cultures were a lot more complex then previously believed. Scientists now know agriculture developed here independently. Indian crops spread out from the Americas and are grown throughout the world. New theories about the earliest people in the “new world” are surfacing as older and older artifacts come to light. New credence is being paid to our oral history and stories passed from generation to generation. People are developing a new understanding.
I believe the same will happen over the next two decades for multiples. The media frenzy has largely died out. Raging arguments over whether or not memories can be repressed and resurface are coming to surprising conclusions supported by scientific studies and advances in understanding brain chemistry and function. Dissociative behaviors and tendencies are better understood.
Someday maybe more multiples will come out of hiding. Not because they want to be on TV talk shows, (sorry Oprah) but because they won’t be afraid anymore. I no longer care what people think. It doesn’t matter to me if they don’t believe I exist. I no longer need to cut myself to prove I’m real.
The real news is we’ve finally won. The people who abused us lost.
We don’t need to track them down, harangue them, sue them or charge them with crimes. We Qs are surrounded by people who love us. We are safe and happy and productive. No, we aren’t wealthy. We’re not living the American dream. It was never our dream anyway.
When yuppie kids at his school made fun of beat-up car, Thunder said, “You’ll never understand. The car I drive isn’t important. I’m complete. You need a cell phone just to survive.”
Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful we don’t have to trudge through three feet of snow, cut up downed trees and drag logs back to our house to stay warm like we did last winter. I like having enough money for food. I’m actually considering getting TV. I mean what the hell are we going to do in December after we’ve finished this book? Supposing Pleiades continues to be mellow that is, there is still that two percent fear factor going on. I’m kind of hoping he hates being called Pleiades and shows up to tell me what his real name is. Once that happens we can see where he fits into the Q.
© 2004 M. S. Eliot

People often ask me what it means to be an Indian. I quip, “Be ready to move.” Fewer ask what it’s like to be multiple but the same answer would suffice.
A year ago we abruptly moved from where we’d been living in western Pennsylvania for nearly two years back to our home in the rugged Endless Mountains of the state’s northeastern region.
Eyvonne and I had been adopted into a small group of other Native descendents in Western Pennsylvania. The group was first to participate in a national project we were involved with developing ‘story poles’ with native groups. The poles were widely exhibited throughout the northeastern part of the United States, including more than once at the United Nations in Manhattan, and once in Durban, South Africa.
Eyvonne and I focused on helping the group develop a heritage complex to interpret Native American contributions and culture. We worked without pay, believing we were ‘family’.
While our home in the eastern mountains sat empty we lived in an antiquated trailer with a leaky roof working up to 70 hours a week. We were promised salaries if we brought in enough funding through grants, presentations and workshops. From the outset we contributed from our meager our income to help jumpstart the project.
My business withered but I was sure things would change as grants started rolling in. My relationship with this group proved almost as destructive as my birth family. We were told no drug users would be allowed to live on the property where our trailer sat behind the home of one of the group leaders. A few weeks before we left someone new was invited to move onto the property because he was homeless. Eyvonne and I observed him using drugs more than once. We brought this to the attention of the property owner. She and her husband initially assured us he would be asked to stop doing drugs or to move. A few days later we knew he hadn’t stopped. We called a circle to discuss the problem. The man verbally attacked both Owl and I saying we’d “betrayed’ him. He threatened to beat Owl to a bloody pulp. It was worse than a nightmare.
Next the property owners defended this guy’s right to live as he chose. They said he was welcome to stay. What he did in his own home was his business; we’d just have to adjust.
That was a Tuesday. I called a truck rental company. We packed for two days and were on the road back east by Friday evening. I was glad we hadn’t sold our house. At least we had a place to go. Owl was driving our car. He’d left two hours earlier so he could stoke up the woodstove and turn on the water.
It started snowing as we drove down the driveway for the last time. It felt like the snow stung my face right through the windshield of the U-Haul truck. I was ashamed for being fooled again. I had no desire to look back at the dwelling we’d spent so much time and money fixing up. The trailer bearing my ’54 Chevy pickup fishtailed in the darkness every time we exceeded 30 mph. We wracked up 30 miles in tense silence during our first grueling hour. 150 miles stretched before us.
“Pull into this mall and park under the lights I’ll check the trailer,” Eyvonne said.
We bailed out of the too-warm truck cab into a hell of wind-driven snow. Ebensburg. It always seemed to be snowing here.
“We might get there by dawn at this rate,” I said. Shivering violently I dogged Eyvonne as she checked the trailer hitch, the wheel restraints. She ignored my steady stream of complaints.
“Here it is!” she shouted over the wind. “This wheel restraint popped off.”
“Can you fix it?” I managed. My teeth were chattering so hard it was difficult to speak.
“I dunno,” she said. “I think it slid under the wheel.”
I watched as she worked the strap loose. Her fingers were blue. But there was little I could do to help. Old injuries to my neck and back left me with little feeling in my right hand. Lifting anything heavy disabled for days. Besides I didn’t understand how the damn thing worked. My sole job was driving our little rig. I’d driven trucks with 24-foot beds through New York City in my younger days, but I’d never pulled a trailer. I hadn’t recognized the feel of a load about to launch itself. I might have lost Indy, my faithful road companion for the last 15 years. I envisioned the Chevy rolling off the trailer and flattening an SUV. I chuckled.
Reading my mind, Eyvonne glared at me.
“That’s not funny Shel,” she said.
Chagrined, I danced from foot to foot in a vain effort to get warm. Lights from McDonalds beckoned commercial Christmas cheer across a vast stretch of empty asphalt.
“I got it! Let’s go,” Eyvonne shouted.
We bent into the wind trying in vain to run. I was shivering so hard when we breached the door customers inside recoiled. It’s not socially acceptable to be that cold. It took several minutes for my teeth to slow their chattering so I could order coffee. The kids behind counter had been watching our ordeal.
“What kind of truck is that you’re hauling,” one asked.
“’54 Chevy,” I said, grinning.
The young man offered advice on keeping the wheel restraints tight. “Check ‘em every 50 miles or so,” he said.
“Merry Christmas! Stay warm and have a safe trip,” they called as we left.
They gave us hope. We hung onto each other slipping and sliding toward the U-haul with lighter hearts. A faint sound made us look up instinctively.
“Geese!” I shouted into the wind.
Snowflakes fell on our upturned faces we strained to see. This was a powerful omen. Geese supported Sky Woman in her descent to earth from the sky world. A ‘V’ of huge white birds flew low directly overhead.
“Not geese, swans!” Eyvonne shouted.
We laughed and cried as the big white birds flew over us honking steadily.
“We can do this!” I said.
Eyvonne’s eyes met mine. “I know.”
Re-securing the wheel did the trick. The trailer no longer fishtailed. My truck was safe and so were the drivers behind us. An hour later we crested the Allegheny Ridge at about 20 mph and drove out of the storm. The stars twinkled overhead crisp and bright. Our own mountains lay far to the northeast. I wondered if it was snowing there. The only part of the drive that still worried me was the nine-mile haul up Sonestown Mountain. The rental truck and trailer were seriously overloaded. But I settled into easier driving and thought about what I was leaving behind: two years work and a project I’d believed in with all my heart. But the time wasn’t wasted. I’d learned many things. I hoped one of those lessons was better discernment.
I took inventory of what lay ahead. Our business was down to one major client and a smattering of smaller ones. Our house had been empty two years and was in need of many repairs. We had little firewood and no propane. Each mile devoured more of our limited resources.
The last time I’d seen a swan it was flying with a flock of geese. A true ugly duckling it was three times the size of its companions. I could relate. I never seemed to fit in either.
When we arrived Owl met us at the door wearing his winter coat, hat and gloves. Even with the fire going full blast it was freezing four feet from the stove. The windows were all covered in crystalline ice feathers a quarter of an inch thick. Wherever nail heads poked through the walls they sported delicate crowns of frost. We slept our first night home on the floor as close to the stove as we could get. We wore our coats, hats and gloves and pulled our sleeping bags up over our heads to let our breath help warm us.
The next morning we took inventory of our resources. Someone had stolen most of the wood out of our woodshed since the last time any of us had been here. We had no propane for back up heat or to cook with and the roof leaked. By the next night it was warmer in the house but it took three days for the ice to melt off all the windows. We were glad to be home.
© 2004 M. S. Eliot

I woke up this morning feeling as if I have a hangover. My eyes burn, throat is scratchy and tight, my gut unsettled. Most of it is from being in a small space with three people who smoke for three hours yesterday while computer ‘doctoring’. The tooth is still throbbing too, in fact the whole side of my face hurts. I know it will all be better with my first sip of coffee. Coffee is the elixir of life. Somehow being fully charged makes it easier to ignore pain.
It’s the fatigue level that’s bothering me. I remember waking up last night around two a.m. I remember turning on the light to read. That’s it. I don’t remember Eyvonne coming to bed, turning out the light or cuddling up to her. But I do have a vague recollection of wandering around the house in the dark.
Sometimes I wish I could smoke. I really want a ciggie right now. It’s kind of ironic, an Indian being allergic to tobacco. But when I smudge or smoke a ceremonial pipe nothing bad happens. It’s when I’m trapped inside with people who smoke for more than a few minutes that things go wrong.
It’s not just tobacco either. I can’t tolerate any nightshade family plants. Tobacco is in the nightshade family foods along with tomatoes, potatoes, green, red, yellow or any kind of hot peppers, eggplant and paprika. I don’t eat any of those things but the last one.
You cannot eat food in America without ingesting the last one. If you don’t believe me start reading ingredient panels. You’ll see oleoresin paprika on a lot of them. They use it on the tops of bread loaves to get that nice rich brown color. It’s in a lot of foods to add color like hot dogs and frozen dinners. It’s in even more to add a spicy flavor. If the ingredients list “spice” you can bet it’s paprika.
Thankfully it’s the one thing on the list we are least reactive to. Sneaky potato flour is more of a problem. It’s in a lot of breads, cakes, gravies and crackers. It’s in those weirdly tasteless ‘onion rings’ sold next to chips.
Needless to say going out to eat is loads of fun for me. Waitresses never know the ingredients used in things. And even if I explain I don’t want any tomato garnish. Ketchup or French fries with my food, even if they’re part of the meal some prep cook in the kitchen always decides my plate looks too empty so they surround my sandwich with potato chips.
It’s hard even for people who know about it to remember.
Eyvonne held her fast food fries across the table once and announced cheerfully “I didn’t put any ketchup on these so you could have some.”
“Umm, aren’t French fries still made from potatoes?” I asked.
Sometimes the seemingly most innocent foods get me. I ate a pickled egg from deli. Ten minutes later I was sweating, all my joints hurt, and I was on the verge of hallucinating. When she’s really pissed at me Eyvonne offers to buy me a pickled egg.
The most common reaction is my joints swell up and burn. If I eat a handful of chips or a tablespoon of ketchup I will feel the effects for 72 hours. And we all feel it, so we know it must be massive. I can’t drink milk or use most dairy products in any quantity either. A glass of milk a week is about my max. I can eat ice cream, cheese and yogurt if I don’t overdo it. Too much in one day and it’s like I have the flu.
And I have these weird food allergies why?
Because I’m Indian.
Lots of us have the same types of problems. The sad thing is most don’t know why they feel like crap. Mainstream health providers don’t have a clue.
We served on a state health board as a minority representative. There was one other person of Indian descent serving on that board. The state wasn’t too worried. Everyone knows there aren’t any Indians in Pennsylvania.
When Eyvonne and I teach seminars on genealogy we always stress it’s important to know if you’re a Native American descendent.
It’s not about getting a BIA card and trying to get something for free from the government. That doesn’t happen anyway unless you can prove your ancestor was registered on a government roll. Those of us whose ancestors didn’t end up on reservations to be counted won’t get a card anyway. We’re not ‘real’ Indians to the government.
We’d be ‘real’ Indians to a forensic anthropologist. I can reel off a dozen things that would tip them off from the shape of my teeth to the extra ridge of bone that runs along the side of my foot.
It’s important to know your family members could be allergic to nightshade plants, or are at high risk for developing diabetes. Your child might be severely lactose intolerant. Owl can’t digest dairy foods at all. As a child he failed to grow for almost a year before we figured it out. Some Indians can’t properly digest wheat or other grains of European origin. Native Americans and Asians have a higher than normal risk for a little known condition called moya moya disease that mimics strokes. Treating moya moya as a stroke can kill the patient.
And you thought my life was complex because I’m multiple? Even given our present circumstances, with Pleiades and his unknown agenda up all hours of the night, I wouldn’t trade it for being a singleton. We like being who we are.
There is the risk that Pleiades is that rage filled alter Dr. Dwon always warned us about. But I figure it’s a really small risk.
Eyvonne said yesterday during one of my low points, “We’ve been through this before. It’ll be all right.”
Mostly I agree with her. We’ve never had an alter who let us discern their existence and then went back into hiding. Letting us know they’re around indicates they already know about us and they’re ready to come into the system. they typically know how to do at least the job tey were 'born' to do. That includes knowing any skill needed to perform that job.
The wild card is someone like Ian.
On some level I understand that Ian is me, as el is me, as Lillie is me. But not. Experientially we’re not one person.
It’s no longer important for us to unravel all the threads of how we got this way. We’ve done enough hard work to understand the why of our existence. Now it’s more important to keep system healthy. We have a good life. Why would we want any of us left out of that?
The biggest question I have is why now? What brought Pleiades to seek us out now? We are capable of spawning alters of the moment’s need. They typically don’t know a whole lot about anything except the event they were ‘born’ to handle. Most integrate after a very short time with one of us. Which makes sense as they split off very recently.
Other alters split off earlier in our lives for specific reasons. Most had tasks or jobs of some sort. Like el acting as our CPU. In a simplistic sense he is Qs brain, Lillie is Qs heart and Baby is our soul. I was born to handle security.
One of the mysteries to me for a long time was why all the sleeping babies? Who were Ian’s charges? We were seeing a local therapist when Ian showed up. “I think each baby represents an abusive incident,” she said.
I reacted so violently against that concept I knew she was right. Over a hundred sleeping babies. It made me weep. I was and am ever grateful to them, and to Ian, and Jamie Lee and all the others who kept us sane and moving forward.
Human adaptability to survive as individuals and a species is hotwired into the brain’s core. It’s truly amazing what we can endure and triumph over.
© 2004 M. S. Eliot

Evidence is mounting that our ‘newbie’ is swiping time on a regular basis. Thunder called this morning to say his car won’t start again. Since we couldn’t afford to keep up his Triple A membership I needed to go sit with the car. His college is 42 miles away. This threw a spanner in the works for my day.
Eyvonne, a late riser, had just gotten up while I’d been up long enough to get some work accomplished. We were both eating. It was breakfast for her, second breakfast for me (maybe I am a hobbit) so I assumed it was about 10:30.
“I have a commitment at 3:30 in Shurdue,” Eyvonne said. Shurdue is nine miles in the opposite direction from Thunder’s school.
“What time is it now?” I asked. “12:30,” she said. My fork stopped halfway between my plate and my mouth. “12:30?” She nodded.
It was lunchtime. I’d missed second breakfast completely. All the time between cookies for breakfast at 6 a.m. and now was AWOL. Suddenly I remembered the strange dream I’d had just before waking.
Eyvonne and I were in a huge glassed in room like a solarium or greenhouse. It was very old and we were there because we were instrumental to restoring it. It was like two stories high, all very old windows, with a concrete floor. The floor was cracked and broken in places. The end of the building had a very large door, which was open. Dried leaves were blowing about here and there. This man who looks almost exactly like me was with us.
He was a bit heavier, more muscled up than I am. He said I needed to dance with him. I thought it was a joke but he remained very serious. Eyvonne watched as I went into his arms. Music started and we danced. He held me very close.
I felt awkward at first, then relaxed, almost laughed. Eyvonne was obviously trying not to laugh. It was like I was dancing with my own mirror image. But I felt smaller, somehow rather frail compared to him, as if my masculinity were not as robust. He led as we danced and I was content to follow. In fact I was rather enjoying myself. We danced out the door. Outside people were parking their cars and going into the building the greenhouse was attached to, or enjoying its park like surroundings with antique wrought iron fences. This was either a public place, or soon to be a place the public would enjoy. People who saw us dancing smiled.
When I woke the dream hung with me. All day the strangeness of it haunted me. I know when a dream does that it’s important. But I felt foolish asking Eyvonne to dreamsay (interpret) it or even just listen to it. I felt silly about dancing with a guy, especially a guy who looked so much like me. Eyvonne is great at dreamsaying. She has a natural knack for the work. She is my partner. There is very little I cannot just say to her. It bothered me that I was reluctant to talk to her about this dream. Which made me very aware the dream’s message might be one I didn’t want to hear, especially in light of the fact that losing a few hours brought it back in detail. “What’s up honey?” Eyvonne asked.
I was blinking back tears. I hate crying. She came around table and put her hand on my arm, which made me feel even more like crying.
“Lost most of the morning,” I said. “I’m sorry you’re having a hard time,” she said. Sympathy is tough for me. I swallowed hard.
“You noticed anything unusual? Anything that doesn’t seem like one of us?” She shook her head. “No.”
“Stay alert OK?”
“Sure,” she said. I applied myself to finishing a piece of chocolate cake with an inch of icing and sprinkles. It made my sore tooth hurt like hell. Which kind of jolted me. That damn tooth. Normally I don’t even notice if it hurts. We’d completed root canal on it two months ago. The dentist declared it ‘finished’ even though it still hurt at the time.
What I think he meant was he was finished with it as he’d been working on it off and on for six months and wanted the second half of his money. When we’d started the whole root canal thing he’d said it would take two visits. We were on about the fourteenth when he declared it done. “But it still hurts,” I said.
“It will hurt for a while,” he said.
He didn’t say what constituted a while. It hurt a week later. It hurt a month later. It was annoying so I turned the pain off. After that the only one who could tell us how badly it really hurt was Ian, who can always feel pain even when the rest of us are clueless.
I knew if I tried chewing on that side of my mouth I did feel something uncomfortable. Ian said it hurt like a sonofabitch. So I stopped chewing on that side. But I wondered what purpose having root canal served if the tooth still hurt as bad as the first time we saw the dentist for it.
I suppose a normal person wouldn’t have lasted a week before they called the dentist to complain. But we were programmed in early childhood never to complain.
If the dentist says it will hurt a while then tough it out and don’t bother the man. Don’t even dream of mentioning the $300 we paid him to not make our tooth feel better. It’s a dissociative pattern. It’s a microcosmic look at why we ended up in so many awful relationships and then stayed in those awful relationships.
Although I believe we now live our life from the perspective not of victim, but of survivor, in fact beyond survivor, we still have those early tracks laid down to derail us.
It doesn’t really hurt, or at least not enough to bother anyone about. He didn’t really hurt you. Why did you make him mad? Maybe you ought to look at your behavior, what did you do to provoke him? Lie still it will be over in a minute. This won’t hurt. Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about.
Anyone see the progression here? Oprah, you of all people should get it.
We drove to Thunder’s college and tried to start his car. It made weird clicking sounds but didn’t start. We called Triple A. While waiting for the tow truck we messed about with the car and it started. We turned it off and restarted it. We did this four times. The tow truck arrived and we were all standing around sort of sheepishly.
“What was wrong?” the driver asked.
We explained what had happened and he was nice enough to do some troubleshooting. “Turn it off and we’ll see if it restarts,” he said.
He seemed to grasp that the car was Thunder’s even though I’d made the call for roadside service. He would have been blind if he’d failed to notice it looked suspiciously like a rez car parked among all those brand new Yuppie kid cars.
“What year is this Cougar?” he asked.
Thunder grinned. “1988 .”
It was guy bonding.
After the car started one more time we all deemed it best I drive it to the garage near our home. The tow truck guy waved on his way out of the parking lot. I hugged Thunder. College security drove up, perhaps sent to investigate a possible Indian uprising. Thunder explained and Eyvonne waved.
“See you Saturday,” I hollered.
Saturday there was yet another college band concert where we would probably see the bell of the tuba, and if we were lucky, Thunder’s forehead. But the music was always grand.
As I drove the Cougar home I remembered how much I loved the car. It has this big roomy luxury feel to it that not even an SUV has today. It’s low to the road and has way too much power. The temptation to let it out was high but Eyvonne was right behind me.
I relaxed and just drove with the radio blasting and window down, enjoying the unexpectedly warm afternoon. Indian summer. Why the hell is it called Indian summer anyway? Probably something derogatory.
I remember at one point being very aware someone was up with me. Although I thought so at first, it wasn’t Keeper. In some ways it felt very much like him, male, tough guy kind of presentation. Maybe the car had drawn our newbie up. I stayed real calm and low key, just let it happen like I didn't notice anything. I didn’t want to scare this one back into hiding.
I was reminded of my dream. I noticed as I relaxed he was more present. I felt him settle into ops and take the wheel. But he didn’t lock me out. We just shared loving driving this car. I let it be all the way up the highway. I noticed how he sat, a bit more open than I do when I drive. He was a bit heavier than me, more muscled up. I noticed his hands in particular as he held the wheel. They were bigger than mine and rougher, calloused. Working man’s hands. He bailed as we approached the garage.
That wasn’t half bad, I thought. If he loves this car how bad can he be? I would have bet anything he likes Guinness too.
Then I pondered what an experienced a driver he was. He’d either driven before or he was the quickest learner I’d ever encountered. Again I thought about my dream. Were we dancing yet? I was really glad there were no hostile overtones. Somehow thinking of hostility brought Keeper to mind. I reached inside to brush him with the faintest mindtouch. I couldn’t find him anywhere.
I turned the car off, let it sit a minute and then tried to restart it. Nothing. No matter what I tried it wouldn’t start. Eyvonne sat waiting patiently. To her it was immaterial whether it started or not, we’d accomplished what we set out to do.
I was rattled and restless. I’d nicknamed our newbie Pleiades. The closer I got to him the less I understood. Eyvonne and I talked about what to do if Thunder’s car cost too much to fix. Sarah’s car had problems too.
We were already almost broke and I couldn’t even bill my clients for another couple weeks, then it would take a week or two for them to pay me. Money makes me cranky. Maybe that’s why Eyvonne and I ended up fighting which is a rarity for us. I was driving out our own driveway enroute to her appointment in Suredue to fix a friend’s computer problem. We were down and dirty in a blink.
I felt unreasonably angry with her and she responded by yelling at me to stop driving like a dickhead or she was getting out of the car. I stopped the car when I realized she already had the door open and her leg out. This was not the best moment in my life. We resolved things although I was compelled to bitch for several miles about her poor judgment in trying to exit a moving vehicle.
“This was about control Eyvonne! I don’t want to be controlled by you or anybody else!”
“It was not about control,” she said.
We were silent for a few miles and then just started talking randomly about something else. For Eyvonne the fight was like a summer storm, fast, furious and over. Now the sun was out again. For me it lingered.
The flashpoint of my anger seemed low even given the number of triggers. I still felt residual anger. Mindless, undirected hostility.
“It’s lack of sex,” Eyvonne said.
“Yeah,” I said wistfully. She was at least partly right.
We call our kids the Sex Police. It was uncanny how seldom we had the chance to be alone. If we were by some miracle alone for an evening and even thought about a romantic interlude one of them called or came home unexpectedly.
The computer problem we expected to take an hour to fix took three. When we finally got home there were four cars in the driveway and all the lights in the house were on.
“You thought about sex didn’t you?” Eyvonne said.
© 2004 M. S. Eliot

How can you experience a slump and a crisis at the same time? No, this is not a stupid joke snatched from an email forward. I’m serious!
We’re still less than half way finished producing a 50,000 word novel in less than a month. Remember we started late because we didn’t know about nanowrimo until Nov. 5.
In case you’re interested our personal word count at midnight last night was 18,650. I’ve grown to hate the countdown clock on the nanowrimo website which this morning cheerfully reminded me there are 13 days, 14 hours, 55 minutes and 49 seconds left in the month. Even though we’re producing at a pretty good rate I'm worried our late start may doom us.
I clicked about on nanowrimo forums last night after I couldn’t write any more. In some ways it made me feel better. There are lots of people already gracefully accepting defeat. Others are hovering about where we are, somewhat less than halfway done. I noted a few already topping 50,000, but one of them admitted he’s on sick leave from work and has basically done nothing else all month.
Does any of this make me feel better? No. Obsessive to the end, when I take on a task nothing less than the finish line will do. Nor can I allow any other single thing to fall by the wayside. I still need to keep the woodstove going as it’s our only source of heat; do laundry; run the dishwasher; walk the dog; cook; and delete a thousand emails and spybots a day because my spam and spybot programs either quit working or the game has gone to the next level. Oh yeah I still need to attend to my clients so we can make it through December, you know, the month AFTER nanowrimo.
We need an obsessive-compulsive dissociative behavior support group but we don’t have time.
ARG!
Sometimes I wonder if we’re cheating because we can swap ops and continue working long after singletons crash and burn, but we can’t expand the hours in the month. Not even Oprah can do that.
I decided at about 1 a.m. last night that nanowrimo is really an economic plot to increase coffee and booze sales thereby surreptitiously lifting the country out of the depression it’s not in before enough of us get wise and try to do something about it.
Or maybe it’s one of those university-sponsored studies to see how far people will go to achieve a stated goal. You know, like the ones Erich Fromm wrote about in his book “The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness.” These were normal everyday people who demonstrated varying degrees of willingness to press a button delivering a potent electric shock to another person.
In the experiment few people refused to keep pressing the button even when it delivered a shock big enough to cause pain. Some were upset but followed directives after pressure to do so was applied. Most were disturbed by their own actions, sweating, becoming restless, trying to talk their way out of it, but in the end most pushed the button (which by the way was a fake, no electric shocks were actually delivered, the screaming was pre-recorded). The ones that really scared me, and probably scared the people who’d set up the experiment, were those who never questioned it. They just pushed the button because they’d contracted to do so, no sweat. They scared me more than the psychopaths who enjoyed pushing the button. Psychopaths you can identify of you watch their behaviors. Ordinary people capable of becoming Nazis are harder to pin down without extenuating circumstances.
Becoming multiple meant being on the receiving end of some of those extenuating circumstances. Fromm’s book, although published in 1973, provides amazing insight into today’s world situation. It also gave me insight into what formed the people who abused me into fragmenting.
So, enough about the writing slump. Which isn’t really a slump because we’re writing at a good pace; it just doesn’t appear to be fast enough to meet the deadline.
On to the crisis.
Does this novel have a plot? I asked el.
He growled, “Plot this,” and made a universal gesture.
If he’s that cranky we’re in trouble. He's generally a swet, even tempered guy. Kind of like Henry after the brain injury in the movie "Regarding Henry." He looks kinda like Harrison Ford too.
I know he’s upset because we have a project due for a client very soon and we haven’t even started it. Lillie is also upset because we need to gather materials in the woods to make Christmas wreaths.
It’s a sign of our worsening economic condition that we need to do this. In good years we don’t make wreaths to sell. In moderate years we need to do so to afford Christmas gifts. In really bad years we need to sell wreaths to eat. This year we’re sort of between gifts and food. If we’re really lucky we’ll get paid for writing a grant that should be awarded soon. When that happens the organization we wrote it for owes us three percent of their award.
Our income is like a roller coaster. It’s the unexpected stuff that always kills us.This month we had to pay over $150 toward Thunder’s needs at college. Yesterday we found out we had to pay $160 to finalize Sarah’s semester so she can begin the process of transferring to a closer school. Sarah announced a few days ago her car needed to be inspected this month. Who did she think was going to do that, elves? She and Thunder have both been having car trouble too. And we need to order wood or we’ll be running out probably in the middle of the first snowstorm of the season. Do you sense a growing pessimism here? What would Oprah do?
Owl and Eyvonne both have part time jobs they are hoping will develop into full time work. That can take years in our rural county. Usually it only occurs when someone retires or dies. Jobs are pretty scarce here.
The school system is the county’s biggest employer, followed by banks and saw mills. The bankers have the county’s economy figured out. It’s simple, if you work for the school system or a bank you qualify for a mortgage, if you work for a sawmill you don’t.
We have a mortgage because I can out talk anyone. I convinced them I’d pay the mortgage even if I didn’t have money for food. Which has happened.
In case you now believe the crisis of the slump and crisis routine is economic you’re wrong. We’re so used to economic idiocy it’s just part of the background noise.
The crisis is whoever is lurking around outside the system. They know I know they’re there. But they won’t step forward. I get only the smallest hints of their existence and none of their motivations or mindset.
Last night I told Eyvonne someone unknown to the system had ripped off an entire day.
She knows better than believing we just forgot a day, or we were so busy we can’t remember what we did that day. She’s forewarned and watchful. She's also on the alert now. I’m not quite worried but I am uneasy. I’m keeping a closer eye on Keeper who has been known to place his personal agenda higher than that of the collective view.
He justified it because in his opinion, it was the best thing for all of us: integration into a single person. It was like a religion for him. He sang it like a mantra, touted it like a snake oil salesman. In the end I think it was our steadfast rejection that crushed him. Ironoically the answer to his growing instability was integration with me. It made me crazy for a few days. I was kind of a born again integrationist. But it waned and all was well.
until a few weeks ago Keeper stepped out on his own again. That has never happened to me, having someone I integrated with just walk away. It happens to el all the time. So much we sometimes refer to him and anyone he’s integrated with as ‘the els.”
It puzzles me why Keeper left. He seems different too. Angry. He can cop an attitude about things in a blink. I don’t feel much different. Maybe a bit less prone to hostility, which makes sense if part of what I was feeling was his attitude developing.
You have to wonder, if we fragment as a survival strategy, why did Keeper step out now? And who is lurking just beyond the reach of my mindtouch?
Have we achieved plot trajectory yet?
Oprah, please be listening.
© 2004 M. S. Eliot

I can’t shake the sensation of being watched. When someone is standing just behind you there’s a definite feel to it. You know someone is there. It’s like that. I know someone is close by observing, looking over my shoulder. I can almost see them, but when I try to focus, like the Pleiades, they melt away.
Whether they intended it or not a rudimentary link has established between us. I can discern a vague discontent, restlessness and something else. Hunger. Aha! I’ve been starved all the time lately with no good reason. Gotcha! Or is it the other way around? We’ve gained a couple pounds but I’m so tired most of the day I don’t feel like walking.
Logic says I’m tired because someone else is awake at night. We’ve still no idea who swiped an entire day from us. All I can say is they must be good because Eyvonne never noticed. She’s usually on to a newbie before any of us inside.
The majority of new alters steal little blocks of time, pretending to be one of the Qs already known to Eyvonne. She catches them when they relax. They’re usually damned by some little quirk like being extremely ticklish.
Most of us barely react to a tickle threat. But just point a finger at one recent newbie and he flinches away. He doesn’t know his name so we dubbed him Flinch. When he’s con-conscious with anyone else they become ticklish too.
Sometimes alters know why they exist. Like Ian being a guardian to the sleeping babies. Others have no idea what their purpose was originally. Like Flinch, some show up without even a name. I know my first purpose was to guard and protect Baby, Lillie and later el. I knew it was important that I was male. I also knew it wasn’t wise to express that outside. el was ‘conceived’ to preserve our intellect. I can’t remember my first moment of consciousness. But el remembers his.
“One afternoon while our mother took her usual nap, Baby locked the bathroom door, a forbidden thing. She sat on the floor shears in hand, but I hacked away,” el said. “I cut her golden curls but saw my own straight, dark locks hit the floor.”
While we were in therapy Dr. Dwon warned us over and over that it was likely there were more than four of us. He was concerned that some of our alters might be filled with terrible rage.
I was terrified of even considering that others lurked beyond the known inside. I could barely breathe when I thought about it. How was I going to protect el, Baby and Lillie from some idiot on a rampage? My anxiety about emerging alters rivaled the anxiety level when secrets spilled out in flashbacks. I was so jumpy it was pathetic. I was totally unprepared the first time it happened.
Baby wandered into el’s library trailed by a tiny, naked waif. Thin and dirty, ragged dark hair long and unkempt, he stood before us sucking his thumb, eyes closed tight in fear. el gently embraced him. I wept. I’d been ready for almost anything but this.
“His name is Stonebaby,” baby said. “He’s been hiding wif me.”
This new l’ilone was patient, even stoic. He could stay motionless for hours turned totally inward. We surmised he was born of Baby’s need to escape the pain of sexual and physical abuse. Lillie managed to clean him up but he never learned to like clothes. The most we could get him to project wearing inside was a pair of jeans. Thankfully when he got the courage to be up outside he didn’t strip down, but he did take our glasses off and pitch them. He didn’t need them to see.
Stonebaby was drawn to Eyvonne who we chatted with daily online. As our friendship deepened she was friend to me and Lillie, mother to Baby and Stonebaby, and clearly el’s heart’s companion. We counted on her help as we faced the challenge of nurturing Stonebaby. He was comforted by motion. I loved rocking him nearly as much as I’d once enjoyed holding our outside children. They were too grown up now for such baby stuff but we missed it.
One summer evening Stonebaby relaxed against my shoulder as we swayed back and forth on the porch swing. Lillie’s husband sat nearby smoking a cigar. The smell reminded us of our Grandfather Burgess. Baby missed Grandpa intensely. When he lived at our house for a year his presence kept her safe. His dark skin, high cheekbones and familiar smile were safety, warmth and love.
Every afternoon she waited for him at the train station near our home. Her toes even with the yellow danger line on the platform she strained to see the approaching train. As soon as he stepped down she ran to him.
Baby threw herself into Grandpa’s arms. He swung her aloft into weightlessness pressing her smooth cheek to his stubbly, scritchy one. He was tired from a long day at the office and the train ride home but his eyes always lit up for her. He smoked a cigar as they walked home down the tree lined street his big hand enfolding hers.
That summer night Baby realized Grandpa was never coming back. She hadn’t understood his death or the passage of years. She fled upstairs to mourn. But as Baby ran up the stairs she was seeing the ones in the house where we grew up. Baby paused at the top looking back to where our mother stood below. Mom was crying and yelling. Her face twisted in anger.
“Don’t you dare cry!” Mom screamed. “He wasn’t your father. You don’t even know what death is!”
Baby froze at the top of the stairs, hot tears drying on her cheeks.
“You stop it right now or I’ll give you something to cry about,” Mom threatened.
Denied the right to mourn Baby simply refused to remember Grandpa was dead. Now Baby laid on our bed sobbing. Stonebaby cried too without really knowing why. Lillie scooped them up and rocked them repeating over and over, “That was then, this is now. We’re here and we love you.”
But it felt like ‘now’ to all of us. Time isn’t always linear for most us, it’s more like a series of vaguely connected ‘nows.’ To get a real handle on a series of events we check with el. He has the best grasp of events. In a pinch we poll everybody. That’s how I discovered the missing day.
After Stonebaby came into the system from whatever dreadful place he’d been hiding in I started to worry that there were others like him out there, frightened and alone when there was no longer any need to hide. I wavered between that and being terrified the next one in would be our own personal Jeffery Dahmer.
‘rion and Ian scared me the most. They tested my strength and my wits. They were also to date the worst first presentations of any Qs. Congratulations guys! At least we survived them. Looking back my bent for risk taking throughout our lifetime was a bigger threat to our survival than anything they did. So who am I kidding? I should worry about who’s watching us now? Hey, I’m cool. Really.
Did you hear something?


© 2004 M. S. Eliot

In case it isn’t really clear by now, we experience two separate but concurrent realities most of the time. There’s the world you live in, the one we call ‘outside.’ Then there’s ‘inside’ which is where we live. We experience inside and outside life simultaneously as forever and irrevocably separate worlds.
Imagine looking in a mirror but the mirror world is as complete as the one where you’re brushing your teeth. It isn’t just a reflection. Things happen there independently. You can always see inside this alternate reality and know it intimately. It has sunlight, forest, rivers, mountains, houses, animals, flowers, whatever you want, like instant virtual reality. If you walk to the horizon it expands before forever, every step takes you toward something familiar or new.
The only people who live here are Qs. There is no crime, but there is darkness. Sometimes I wonder why we even bother with outside. Inside is paradise where anything is available just by thinking of it. We can be alone or do things together. Sometimes Qs conflict as to what time of day it is, or the weather or the time of year, but all things are negotiable. Or we can always go off by ourselves to have it our own way.
Why we bother with outside reality is complex. Although inside can be addictive it’s also sort of muted. Tactile sensations are a little off. Beach sand isn’t as hot. Chocolate isn’t as chocolaty. But the real drawback is that Eyvonne isn’t inside, nor are our kids and friends. We just can’t manufacture the excitement of interacting with people in the real world. However if we’re ever in a coma don’t be in too much of a hurry to pull the plug. We might be perfectly content surfboarding inside.
If you’re wondering why we call ourselves “Q’s” watch Star Trek. There’s a character who is both autonomous and yet part of an intelligent continuum called The Q. Friends of ours noted we have a number of traits in common with Q. Unfortunately one of those traits in common is not omnipotence. We are not a deity, even a minor one. Oprah are you listening?
Since our friends had trouble discerning which of us was up at any given time it was easier to call us all Q. It stuck. When there was only the original four of us in the system (before our Q nickname was bestowed on us) we didn’t know any others lived outside our circle of light.
We did have some rather strange ‘imaginary friends’ according to our siblings. I remember distinctly playing with ‘rion in the chicken coop where we hid frequently at very young whiling away long hours until school was out and our big sister returned home.
Over the past decade many like ‘rion, Ian and Jamie Lee have come in from hiding. Some of these ‘newbies’ burst into Q consciousness with little or no warning, wild-eyed, angry, frightened, disoriented, shaking our system to the core. Others whispered hints and scattered esoteric clues for the rest of us to puzzle out. Some were hesitant to claim their rightful places in our system. Others gave ominous warnings of their impending emergence. A few were rescued from places where something had swallowed all the light.
I suspect some still hide beyond the fringe of our inner reality. Losing a whole day recently is a pretty big clue. A few years ago I would have freaked out. Now I know there’s no sense wasting energy worrying. Most of what I worry about never happens anyway.
Much of the time at least a bit of our attention is focused on what’s happening inside even when we have ops. Each of us looks different inside. Each of us has a sense of self, of completeness. Any one of us can have ops for a variety of reasons. We usually take control with the knowledge or consent of the rest of our system, but sometimes it doesn’t work that way.
Each Q lives a full and independent existence inside parallel to our life outside. We can and do sleep, read, swim, hike, play, paint or otherwise amuse ourselves inside. Most of the time what Qs do inside doesn’t affect the one with ops. In order to contact each other or share information we use a technique we call ‘mindtouch’. If you understand telepathy you understand mindtouch. Sometimes we use the same technique outside the system. Eyvonne and I play a game where she thinks of a random word to substitute for the word “screen” in the useless information flashed a TV screen every time you watch a rented movie. You know, it says, “This movie has been formatted to fit your TV screen.” So she thinks of a random word instead of ‘screen’. In nine years of watching movies together Qs guessed wrong three times.
We use it unconsciously outside with varying consequences. Yesterday I met a fellow for the first time. He asked what there was to do around here, a common question from city folk pondering moving to a county with one traffic light.
“If you want to get over being scared of reading your poetry in front of an audience, there’s a poetry open mike once a month,” I said.
He looked really confused, wondering how I even knew he wrote poetry. It made me sweat. I don’t mean to get inside people’s heads; sometimes it just happens, like the northern lights. But at least there’s a body of evidence explaining how that works.
We use the mindtouch to share ops. Any number of us can share ops and thus have immediate live feed access to what we’re doing in the outside world. Even though this is possible, therapists call it “co-conciousness", only one alter should have control of the body at any given time. We proved that when we first experimented with sharing ops. We fell flat on our face if one alter decided to walk in one direction and another decided to go the opposite way. It wasn’t pretty. It also gave us an idea that driving with that kind of shared ops is dangerous. So it’s a hard and fast rule: Only the Q with ops decides what we do and where we go. It’s fine when we’re all agreeable and cozy. But when there is dissention it can be hell.
Outside we are still very invested in camouflage and keeping a low profile. Some of us are better at it than others. Anyone can peg Ian's brogue or ‘rion who speaks with a southern accent. They rarely take ops unless they’re at home. Some of us spend a lot more time outside than others due to the idiotic need to make money. Time outside can get to be an issue in and of itself. Even the l’ilones want to spend time with Eyvonne, watch a kid movie or eat ice cream.
When she hasn’t seen someone in a while Eyvonne asks casually, “What’s Ian doing?” or “What’s Gwen up to?” Most of the time she’s just checking in to see how we are. But sometimes we know she’s scared someone has integrated without saying goodbye. Even though we try not to do that sometimes there are special circumstances like when Keeper got so unstable I needed to make it happen NOW so things didn’t fall apart.
Just as we need to adjust when our inner population shifts, so does Eyvonne. Imagine a child you’ve grown to know and love suddenly disappears, absorbed by someone else. You can catch glimpses of them in that person, but it’s not the same. I know Eyvonne privately mourns each integration while at the same time she accepts whatever we need to do to stay healthy. Living with a multiple is like existing in a kaleidoscope. Your life can change in a blink. She shares our triumphs, sadness and joys. Looking back over the decade we’ve been together it’s been chaotic but it’s also been the happiest ten years either of us ever imagined.
As we fall asleep Eyvonne likes to ask where each of us is, what we’re doing. Frequently as the one with ops nods off those still awake take ops for a moment. L’ilones like to cuddle up to Eyvonne before they fall asleep.
Eyvonne is familiar with our inner world. She loves to hear us describe it and what we’re doing. She knows ‘rion has a cabin in the woods on a lake. He and Ian like to sit on the dock and fish. Inside Ian smokes a lot. None of us smoke outside, we’re allergic to tobacco.
I live in a tipi. Quit laughing. I know it’s stereotypical. But I like the way it looks when I look up, like it’s a wheel curving up to become the whole world. I paint a lot including the sides of the tipi. el reads a lot. He lives in a house now, but for most of our lives it was just a library. It has a gazillion books, and even a kind of gallery with a railing. There’s a beat up leather couch where he sleeps, usually with his glasses askew and a book fallen on his chest.
el’s house is right next to Lillie’s cottage. It has flower and herb gardens all around it. It kinda looks like a hobbit house, all warm and cozy. She reads and quilts and bakes a lot. Her place is a gathering spot for our l’ilones. Lillie loves being a mom. She adores kids, a trait she shares with Gwen. Gwen has her own house but she alternates most of her time between ‘rion’s and Lillie’s. She’s nearly always keeping a watchful eye on our current batch of l’ilones.
Ian sleeps on the ground. He has a little cottage too, even more hobbit like than Lillie’s because it’s thatched. But he says he misses sleeping in the roots of the great tree where all the babies once slumbered. The tree is still there, but it’s not his home anymore. He and Jamie Lee integrated a few years ago. He inherited her gracefulness and sharp wit. He’s a little easier to understand too.
Inside is idyllic most of the time, but not always. It’s also the battleground where we fight the demons of our past.
© 2004 M. S. Eliot

Normal people dissociate. It’s part of the human condition. It may even be a mammalian response to long stretches of time spent doing something like sitting in a tree waiting for a deer to walk by below. Or maybe it’s more to do with becoming prey. Once a rabbit is in a fox’s jaws it goes perfectly still.
Normal dissociation is daydreaming in a boring class or zoning out during commercials. Normal people often dissociate during things they do every day, like driving to work over the same route. I’ll bet if someone studied it they’d discover the number of accidents near people’s homes is disproportionately high compared to the amount of time they actually spend driving there. It’s because people veg when they’re covering overly familiar ground. Their brain actually fills in more of their visual field than usual.
Did you know what you see is actually determined more by your brain than your eyes? Your eyes provide raw data but your brain interprets it. If you’re looking at a housecat but your brain’s pattern recognition is skewed at that moment the interpretation might be ‘Cougar alert! Cougar alert!’
In much the same way your brain can interpret a clear road when in fact someone in a BMW is making a U turn right in front of you. After an accident when people say, “I didn’t see him officer” they aren’t lying.
It’s what makes people such lousy eyewitnesses. After a traumatic event five eyewitnesses will describe what they saw five different ways. Cops pick the ones that sound most alike to testify in court.
So, if daydreaming and zoning out are normal dissociative experiences when does the strategy become abnormal? An experience a bit higher on the dissociative scale is forgetting where you parked your car at the mall. The bell rings at the top when the reason you can’t find your car is because another person sharing your body drove it there and parked it.
In that case to find it you must: A. Connect with that person and elicit their help; B. Wander aimlessly until you spot your car; C. Call security and claim Alzheimer’s.
Choice A only works if you know you’re multiple and have established some sort of inner communication system. Choice B is a royal pain. Choice C is iffy unless you’re old enough to be plausible.
Those who are unaware that various personalities share their body and steal their consciousness may dismiss missing time and confusing circumstances as confusion spawned by hectic lives. Others live in constant chaos and fear. It really depends on how often it happens and how disinterested or outright sadistic the alters are. Some might enjoy planning little scenarios to play out later, when they can watch safely while lurking hidden inside. Like maybe messing up the house, or rearranging a closet, or spending the grocery money on a day out.
When lives spin out of control dissociation can reach epic proportions even for those who are not multiple. Victims of childhood abuse, sexual assault, domestic violence, violent crimes and trauma nearly always exhibit higher than normal degrees of dissociation.
We’ve helped train people training working with victims in crisis. It is vitally important they understand the dissociative response. People in crisis are driven to normalize their lives. Remember those pictures of people sipping tea at a sidewalk café in New York with smoke from the towers billowing in the background?
The need to normalize life drives people to return again and again to abusive partners. Many survivors of childhood abuse and domestic violence believe they caused the problem. Because they blame themselves they believe they deserve abuse. It’s what they know, what they believe life is always like. It causes them to forget the bad stuff so they can go on with life. It’s a strong survival tool.
In the midst telling Victim Services staff she’d fled her home with her children while being threatened with a pellet gun, Lillie checked her watch and started to rise. “I should get home and start supper,” she said.
If you didn’t understand how dissociation works you might be tempted to assume she was either lying or in denial. Denial is just another word for dissociative.
It can be nearly as difficult listening to a survivor’s story as it is telling it. Dissociative responses can sidestep events or details and mask emotion. Listeners sometimes think if a victim’s story can be related with little emotion the victim must be lying, confused about what occurred, or mentally disturbed. Bingo.
Being the victim of a crime is so mentally disturbing dissociation can save your sanity. Just like zoning out during commercials, not remembering details of domestic violence, abuse, assault or other crime is a basic dissociative response; it’s just at a high level. At the highest end of the scale victims repress all memory of events, sometimes by dividing the personality into fragments who hold various experiences, memories or emotions. Becoming multiple is a survival strategy, a last-ditch effort to deal with a reality too awful to know. It can saves and disturb a victim’s sanity.
Untrained listeners tend to blame victims rather than perpetrators. Remember Lillie’s friends who asked her what she’d done to make her husband angry? Or the minister who said she needed to be more submissive? How about the doctor who intimated her defensive bruises weren’t ‘real’ injuries? These response and other like them are common in our society.
We’re taught to mind our own business from an early age. Neighbors, ministers, storekeepers, teachers fail to see patterns screaming of victimization. Doctors dismiss bruises on a toddler’s head as age appropriate; toddlers fall down a lot don’t they?
And women all across the country walk into a lot of doors on a regular basis. I’ve actually seen Eyvonne walk into a door, her arms full, looking back over her shoulder talking to one of the kids or yelling at the dog. She didn’t end up with a black eye and bruising on half her face, but I suppose it’s possible.
Untrained listeners blame victims because of their own need to normalize situations. It’s more comfortable for them to believe a child falls down a lot than his dad hits him frequently with malice.
There is an almost natural response to the sexual or physical assault of a child that something so heinous can’t possibly be true. Start reading the newspaper. Keep track of each article about such crimes. You won’t want to believe the numbers after a week or two. Not wanting to believe it can happen is the first step toward our society’s collective dissociation from the ugly truth.
Remember, the first rule of multiplicity is: Don’t talk about multiplicity.
Current research indicates MPD, now referred to in the medical community as Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), is not as rare as once believed. Remember some doctors, psychiatrists and psychologists don’t believe it exists. In their opinion people who claim to be multiples are fakers.
They want to ignore the body of information documenting some commonalities. Most multiples have histories of repetitive, overwhelming early childhood abuse or trauma. Research indicates people with MPD/DID constitute about one percent of the general population. Some researchers put the number higher, between three and ten percent depending on where a person falls on the dissociative scale.
One of the commonalities about multiples is they often hold highly responsible jobs in public service, as professionals or in the arts. Outwardly they appear no different than anyone else. Most live inner lives undetected even by those closest to them, spouses, children, co-workers.
Among medical professionals who believe in it MPD rates as one of the top four major mental health problems in our society along with schizophrenia, depression, and anxiety. MPD is traditionally recognized among females but new research indicates it may be equally as prevalent among men. Anyone with a history of early, repeated childhood abuse could be multiple: your neighbor, boss, co-worker, spouse, or parent.
There are some documented cases of multiples formed in response to the trauma of war or medical procedures. But by far the most common recipe to make a multiple is frequent profound abuse in early childhood. It helps if the child has a natural talent for dissociating.
I suspect most multiples are of above average intelligence. Most of those I’ve met, either in person or over the Internet are extremely talented writers, actors, visual artists or musicians. Some, like us, have alters proficient in many fields or professions.
I’ve never met a multiple with an alter who was a serial killer. I met a cop who said he’s never met a real multiple but knows plenty of people who claim the honor after they lawyer up. It’s viewed as one way to get slammed into a mental institution rather than prison.
A decade ago multiplicity was popular with the media. There was at least one article published about a multiple who had a ferret alter. That was one of my personal favorites. I just hope to hell there isn’t a ferret hiding outside the Q system waiting to come in. Considering my current anxiety about someone grabbing a whole day from us maybe I should have a bit more reverence. I can’t help it ferrets make me laugh.
Other multiples were on TV demonstrating for the camera how drastically different they were when they switched ops. This boggled my mind. We spent most of our lifetime keeping a low profile. So low in fact it’s still difficult sometimes for Eyvonne to peg who’s up. There were multiples on talk shows with their kids and spouses. It was apparently a national craze. We missed the whole thing because we didn’t have TV. We still don’t. Don’t tell Oprah OK?
We were interviewed a few years ago by a filmmaker from Japan making a TV documentary about the brain. He wanted to include a portion on how the chemistry of the brain stores memories, and how people can dissociate from events in a way that hides memories from their conscious mind. We spent an afternoon together, talking mostly through an interpreter. He met several of us, including some of our young alters. He filmed us as we talked. He was surprised to learn when we switched it was barely noticeable. We missed our day of fame because his company dropped the project. At least it wasn’t a talk show. But overall it wasn’t a fun experience. We have a deep-seated dislike of being ‘tested’ or proving we’re multiple. You can either take us at face value or forget it.
The only thing we hate more than proving our existence is movies and TV shows with multiples are cast as villains. It’s bad PR and not very factual. I’m sure there are some multiples with dangerous or criminal alters. Maybe it’s just fate that we’re not among them. Or maybe it’s that we have the steadfast love of Eyvonne. Without her love ‘rion might have turned his rage on the world instead of learning to understand why he was so angry. Understanding is the key. It’s not about keeping things locked away; it’s about learning how to live even when you know the truth.
© 2004 M. S. Eliot

Losing an entire day is pretty high up on the dissociative scale. It has us worried. The implication is that someone outside the Q system is taking ops. Alters who have hidden a long time can be curious, but are they are often extremely secretive. Most lurk around grabbing blinks of time until they understand who the major players in our outside life are, what we do and how things work. They generally start coming out around Eyvonne. By that time we’ve usually noticed enough clues to be suspicious that something is up. We’re alert and ready for it.
This recent stealing of a whole day feels slightly more hostile. It has me watching over my shoulder inside which makes me a little less attentive outside. It ups the anty for weirdness to happen.
I’ve started examining the last few weeks in more detail and keeping a better eye on who/what/where/when as each day progresses. I can’t shake suspicions about our new sleep pattern. For the first time in our lives we’re sleeping six hours or more a night on a regular basis. But are we really in bed snoring all night? There is precedence. Several emerging alters explored the outside world while the rest of us slept. Usually it doesn’t matter but in one case it nearly got us killed.
It started when with whispers of laughter and singing. We could all hear it. We got glimpses of a young girl dancing in what we perceive inside as sunlight. Blink and you missed her. I started watching, just as now I’m watching now, for some one to tip their hand.
My sleep was haunted by her laughter. Finally, after weeks of assessing our trustworthiness, Jamie Lee danced into full view and stayed there. I realized she wasn’t really dancing but her motions were so graceful she appeared to be. She was a young, slender, dark-haired beauty with snapping blue eyes. But her impishness concealed strength no one dared challenge. I recognized the demeanor of a Protector. But who does she protect, I wondered. When I asked Jamie Lee stared as if I were totally mad.
“You are Guardian of all, Protector of all. How could you not know?” She asked.
I blushed and turned away. She grasped my arm.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I really thought you knew. The babes. I protect our sleeping babies. There are a lot of them.”
I drew her close. The tenderness of the moment drew everyone in. Lillie and el appeared together. Gwen and the l’ilones stepped out of the forest like a doe and her fawns, ‘rion following. We each hugged Jamie Lee bringing her fully into the system.
Thank you, Jamie Lee, we mindtouched. Thank you for protecting our babies, for protecting us. But I sensed there was more to know. I remained hyper alert.
Soon after on a warm summer night several of us were sharing ops scanning the sky for meteors and sipping Guinness. It was after midnight.
el and I competed for the highest nightly tally of meteors. He usually won.
“It’s only ‘cause you’re practically blind. Half what you see probably aren’t even meteors el!” I protested.
He grinned. “You could be right.”
Suddenly ‘rion startled. A muscular young man sat beside him. Taking advantage of ‘ri’s surprise, the boy grabbed ops and chugged the Guinness.
Who the hell are you? ‘rion mindtouched.
OK, not exactly welcoming but if someone suddenly appeared next to you and swiped your beer how would you react?
Our newest Q’s response sounded garbled. None of us could decode it. I started to sweat. He had ops with a vengeance. I couldn’t even get a toehold to regain control. I was scared he’d lock us completely. On the bright side he seemed to like Guinness. You can hardly be a Q if you don’t like it.
A tractor trailer rumbled by on the highway and the boy was on his feet in a flash spilling a bit of Guinness in the process.
Mither’agod wha’ were that? His mindtouched. His panic resonated through the entire system. Now everyone in the system was awake and frightened. I caught a glimpse of Gwen catching l’ilones and herding them back to bed.
‘rion attempted to regain ops and failed.
We may have a situation, ‘rion mindtouched me.
No shit, I responded. At least we could still see and hear what was going on outside and we could mindtouch inside. A couple of emerging alters were able to block inner communications, which made it difficult to reassure them or share anything. ‘rion and I joined forces and pushed for ops together. The boy swatted us away like an annoying insect.
Crap, I said.
‘rion agreed.
Another truck went by. The boy hid. The body shook with his fear. True to Q form he drained the bottle.
Hey dude, don’t get us drunk that would be seriously uncool, I warned.
“Wh’re’m I?” the boy asked aloud. He had a distinct sort of Irish brogue.
The sound of his own voice startled him. He didn’t seem to grasp the difference between outer reality and our inner world. Suddenly Jamie Lee was at his side. Arms crossed she glared at ‘rion and I.
Leave him alone, she warned.
We won’t hurt him. We just want to get acquainted, I assured her.
This is my twin, Ian Lee, she said.
Jamie, lass, wha’s happenin’? Ian mindtouched.
She wound her arms around his neck.
It’s all right sweet Ian. It’s time. I’ve been checking this out for a while. The babies are safe.
“How can you be sure?” he asked aloud with a sharp intake of breath.
“I just know. I’m done protecting them and you don’t need to guard them anymore. We can let them go, we can be free now,” she said.
She vanished without warning, her signature exit. Ian blinked owlishly at the rest of us. He took a step back regarding another truck racing up the mountain. This time he stood his ground and watched.
I mindtouched el privately, This could be tricky. He’s unstable as hell and scared witless. Why didn’t Jamie Lee stay?
I don’t know Shel, but I have an idea they aren’t ever really very far apart, el said.
He asked the others to give Ian and I privacy. I was worried. Ian still had a stranglehold on ops and his response once he understood our situation was a wild card. Ian met my gaze.
Where am I? What is this place? he demanded.
I tried sending him soothing thoughts.
We’re kind of a family, but we share one body. Right now you’re in control of that body, I said.
He blinked in disbelief. His expression made me shiver. Ian, look around you outside, what do you see? I prompted.
Nothin’ familiar, Ian whispered. His fear surged hit me like a detonation.
“Where’s me babies?” Ian wailed aloud into the night.
Think of them. Reach them with your mind like you’re talking to me. Mindtouch them and you’ll see them. That’s how it works Ian. Are they safe? I asked.
Ian’s face softened. “Aye, me wee ones are sleepin’ sweet,” he said.
I tried getting closer hoping to grab ops from him but Ian whirled on me, fists ready for a brawl.“Stan’ y’r groun’,” he warned.
I sighed. This could be a long night.
Ian, I’m Q’s system protector. Just like Jamie Lee protects the babies and you, I protect the whole system, all of us in Q. You have nothing to fear from me. Think hard. Reach out like you did with the babies but deeper. I’m sure you know me. I help Jamie Lee protect. I’m a Guardian too, like you. I’m the only one in Q who is both. Come on Ian, try! I urged.
He still regarded me suspiciously.
Jamie Lee trusts me, I said, wishing she’d come back and prove it.Ian softened his defensive stance a tiny bit. Ha ya got an’a mar beer? he asked.
Maybe later, I said with a grin. I patted the ground and Ian dropped warily beside me.
el can let you tap our collective memory. Let him show you Ian. You’ll understand better, I said.
Ian nodded uncertainly. Sometime between a sigh and a lifetime later he understood. But knowing the truth devastated him. He hid his face in his arms and wept.
I ‘m suppos’d t’guard th’ babies. Wha’ will I do now? Wha’ about me babes? Must they all wake, grow up? Ian demanded.
I don’t know, I whispered. We’ll know in time. Suddenly I saw what he saw, a hundred or more babies wrapped in blankets, sleeping amongst the roots of a huge tree. I was overwhelmed by Ian’s task. I knew he’d readily die to spare them pain, just as I would for Q.
It would hurt ‘em too much. I can’t let that happen, Ian said.
Maybe it has to happen Ian. Jamie Lee said it was time, I said.
A light winked on in the house. Eyvonne woke to discover her beloved Q was not inside. Even though it was now 3 a.m. she wasn’t overly concerned. She was accustomed to our nocturnal forays. She called softly from the doorway. “Q?”
Answer her Ian, I urged, desperate for Eyvonne’s help.
I don’t belong here. I belong wi’the babies, Ian said. I want t’go home.
Another truck barreled down the highway. Ian strode purposefully toward it. I ran alongside.
IAN! Stop! Kill yourself and you kill us all! Even the babies! I shrieked.
Ian slowed at the last possible moment. The truck roared past. A latter-day dragon, the truck’s hot breath buffeted our body, still under Ian’s command. I couldn’t believe we were still standing. Our heart was racing. We could barely breathe.
Ian, you’d be responsible for the babies’ deaths. For my death. For el’s, Lillie’s, Gwen’s, Baby’s, ‘rion’s, Jamie Lee’s and all the Q’s still hiding out there somewhere beyond the system. Is it fair for you to kill us all?
I remembered when it was me wanting, el pleading for life. el wanting and Lillie pleading. Was this the last time? Would Eyvonne find us crumpled in the road?
It’ll ‘urt ‘em less than stayin’ here, Ian said with a shrug. They’ll be born inta new lives, wi’ bodies a their own. I will too. It’ll be much better.
I wept with frustration as another truck bore down the mountain. Ian squared his shoulders.
Ian, it’ll hurt! I said.
It was lame but it was all I could think to say. Try thinking rationally standing in the path of an 18-wheeler.
Only f’r a moment lad, he said kindly.
He stepped further onto the road.
eliot! I can’t stop him! I shrieked.
He and ‘rion added their weight to my mine.
We were blinded by headlights but we had ops. Ian was fighting to gain control again. We stumbled and fell. Wind from the truck backlashed us. We were curled up on the white line.
Give the babies a chance Ian. Give us all a chance, I said.
The winking out of the outer world when he lost ops astounded Ian.
‘ow ‘d you do that? Where did it go? Are you wizards?
I pointed at el. I was hiccuping something between sobs and laughter.
No, only him, I said.
We managed a retreat to the yard before Ian gained ops again. Like most newcomers he had raw strength. We couldn’t force him to do anything for very long. In Ian’s case his strength was amplified by his role as a Guardian. Fighting him was futile. He would either accept his place in the Q system or not.
I tried a strategy I learned from Monty Roberts to gain the trust of horses. Advance and retreat. When Ian listened quietly I retreated. When Ian challenged me I pushed him steadily away. By morning he was tentatively willing to align himself with the rest of us. He handed me ops and abruptly disappeared. I knew he’d be back. This kid was a major force.
Once he decided to truly become part of the system Ian integrated with his sleeping charges. He just put his arms out and drew them in. He said it was better that way. It was a solution that worked for all of us.
Ian had a lot of interesting traits besides being almost unintelligible most of the time. He felt pain in a normal manner, the only Q to do so. If we thought we might be sick he could confirm or deny it. He was nearly always warm. He could run around outside in the dead of winter comfortably without a coat. He rode our horses in an archaic style we learned was once called ‘sidepass’. He won Scrabble games using archaic Celtic words that were still in the dictionary. And he remembered a past life. He was the first of us to remember such a thing in detail.
Several of us remembered things we believed stemmed from former lives. Bits and pieces really. But Ian remembered a lot and in rich detail. Our therapist at the time was convinced he was proof that at least some of us had lived other lives, only awakening in this lifetime to protect this lifetime’s child from abuse. It works for me. It feels right. And our clanmother says it’s a traditional way of understanding multiplicity.
In the far back time people like us were thought to have great medicine. Many were psychic and adept at traveling in the spirit world. They were often healers. That pretty much describes el.
© 2004 M. S. Eliot

We were hospitalized by choice a decade ago. Looking back I can see how our experiences paralleled those of people who first discover they’re sharing their bodies with a number of alters. We discovered there were more than the original four of us as terrible secrets cascaded out of hidden places. Some memories we relived as flashbacks. Other events we just remembered. Still more were brought back to us by alters long hidden outside our comfortable system of four.
The shock of these kinds of discovery is sometimes insurmountable. Multiples have a high suicide rate. But so do most childhood abuse survivors.
As our system guardian and defender before this time of change I alone remembered why we hate being held down, why we freak out when a shirt gets stuck as we pull it off over our head. I understood why we kicked a hole through a solid wooden door locked as a joke by a friend. I grasped the significance of Lillie putting both hands crossed at the wrists above her head when making love, a gesture of helpless bondage.
I held the key to our secrets and our rage. Suddenly my key was useless. I sensed we would soon know the worst thing there was to know. Knowledge pursued me in my dreams until I couldn’t sleep. I was a failure. We finally acknowledged our existence was not a natural occurrence on bell curve of human condition. Like other multiples we were born of pain and violence.
Under the pressure of flashbacks and emerging memories Lillie’s marital problems worsened. We used it as an excuse to start therapy. We were desperate to find someone we could trust to guide us through this minefield.
By our third session we knew we couldn’t afford to wait. I leaned forward assessing Dr. Dwon one last time before disclosing. He would have much to do with whether we survived the next few days. But a lifetime of hiding was too strong. I couldn’t speak the words.
“el take ops, I can’t do this,” I said.
el moved restlessly, settling into the body, the place, the need.
“Dr. Dwon, I have something I need to tell you,” he said.
He smiled encouragingly. “All right, go ahead.”
“ummm,” el paused, hoping for help from me or Lillie. “I’m MPD,” he blurted out.
Running a hand over his face as if clearing away cobwebs Dr. Dwon leaned forward. “Who told you that? Who diagnosed you?”
“Uhh, I did. I was in therapy 20 years ago but they didn’t get it back then. We read a lot. We’re MPD, no doubt,” el said.
Still rattled, Dr. Dwon blinked, thought deeply. He began asking cautious questions. We all listened. I don’t remember the questions but I do remember his concern and I remember the moment he believed us.
“I have no experience with MPD,” he said. “But I can refer you.”
I wrested ops back from el and started for the door.
“No. We’re not starting over, it’s too late! If we walk out now we’ll keep going. We can’t go through this again, trusting someone else,” I said.
Dr. Dwon sighed.
“All right, but I’ll need to get support. I need to be able to talk to colleagues about this.”
“No!” I shouted. “I only trust you.”
el wrested ops from me, walked back across the room and sat down calmly.
“Sure,” he said. “Talk to whomever you need. But we’re not starting over. We don’t have time.”
Dr. Dwon looked at us closely.
“Who am I talking to?” he asked. He spoke quietly as if afraid we might bolt for cover. He would ask the same question again and again in the ensuing months. Eventually he learned subtle clues to help identify each of us, but our need to hide was so ingrained he was often reduced to asking who had ops.
el considered his question. Although he used his name as a nickname on IRC, he’d never spoken it aloud to another human being. You can't hide if people know your name.
“el,” he whispered. “My name is el.” Dr. Rising was as fascinated as el was frightened.
“Hello el,” he said softly. Leaning forward he asked, “Who else is there?”
“Shel, Lillie and Baby,” el said. “You’ve already met Shel.” He was trembling all over. Tears threatened to further erode his dignity.
el and I switched frequently as we revealed our inner world and current crisis. I admitted I was suicidal but not that el was too. He'd just taken a frightening leap revealing his existence. It felt wrong to speak for him. We both just wanted to feel peaceful, preferably far from Lillie’s spouse, someplace where flashbacks couldn’t reach us. Death at least sounded peaceful. But we knew firsthand the legacy of pain a parent’s suicide left. None of us wanted to do that to our own kids. We loved them far too much.
“What do you do to stop when you feel suicidal?” Dr. Dwon asked.
“We go online,” I said. In those days mostly geeks and techies frequented chatrooms so I explained about IRC. “We’re safer there than anywhere else.”
el grabbed ops. “A few days ago an IRC friend of ours who lives in Sweden talked Shel out of cutting,” he said.
“I think we should consider hospitalization,” Dr. Dwon said.
“No,” I was up and on my way out the door again.
el took ops from me again. It was really starting to piss me off.
"I promise I’ll call you if it gets bad,” el said. He was hedging, buying time.
“Can I ask Lillie a question?” Dr. Dwon asked.
el nodded and handed ops to Lillie.
“Lillie does your husband know you’re MPD?” Dr. Dwon asked.
I grabbed ops and stood up. “No! And we don’t want him to know,” I snarled.
Dr. Dwon tried reasoning. “But he could be a real asset in your therapy.”
“More like a real ass,” I snapped.
Dr. Dwon couldn’t help smiling.
The next time we saw Dr. Dwon he had us take a test to determine how depressed we were. We all participated answering questions. When we were done he totaled our score and sighed.
I sensed where this was going. I knew he could legally hospitalize us without our consent if he thought we were in danger of harming ourselves.
“I think you would be safer in the hospital,” he said.
“No,” I said. I was gripped by an overwhelming sense of doom.
el took ops. “How long would we be there?” he asked. We all knew it would be better if we went voluntarily.
“It depends. Some people are there just a few days,” Dr. Dwon said.
“It didn’t help last time,” I said grabbing ops back.
“You were hospitalized before?” Dr. Dwon asked.
“A couple of times... it didn’t help”. I felt trapped. We had to face our demons or die. I still thought death might be preferable to knowing our darkest secrets.
“I’m not comfortable with what I’m seeing here. It would just be until you’re safe,” Dr. Dwon said.
“No.”
“Who am I talking to?”
“el,” I lied. (This was during my sixteen-year-old days.)
“Well el, will you call me if things get worse?” He handed us his home number.
Glaring el took ops back from me. “OK,” el agreed. Inside he said, “He really cares what happens to us Shel. It’s a rarity in therapists.”
“NO, NO, NO,” I screamed back at him.
In the end I agreed being in the hospital to work this through was safer than being at home where either Lillie’s husband was going to snap and kill us or push me to do it for him.
Dr. Dwon had no idea just how badly that relationship had deteriorated. In true dissociative fashion we hadn’t talked about that aspect of our life. Nor had we disclosed to Lillie’s husband we were MPD. He only knew we were being hospitalized because we were suicidal. As always he was tenderly concerned.
“This is because of something that happened before you met me right?” he demanded.
“Yes,” Lillie said. Inside she said to el and I, “We should tell him. Dr. Dwon’s right, he should know. It might make things better.”
I’m not telling him anything! I said.
“Maybe Lillie’s right. I think it’s time he knew,” el said.
Outside Lillie’s husband was still talking. “At least it’s not something scary like that movie 'Three Faces of Eve'!” he said.
We kept silent. What was there to say?

by el

Circle moon.
Trees reach for sky secrets.
Mountains fold into dark valleys.
I used to sneak out in moonlight,
dark and shadow less scary than my room.
A fey child,
I sat beneath a pine,
its lowered branches my circle of protection.
No one could find me here.
No one knew my secret place.
Pungent dirt.
Pine smell.
Rough bark.
Sap jelled on a branch,
twisted by someone who didn’t know trees bleed too.
Earth, twigs, stones caress my feet.
Safe for now, hidden by medicine things.
Childhood’s magic spread at my feet,
Feathers,
bits of glass worn smooth by the ocean,
stones worn smooth by my hand.
I slept, my cheek against the tree,
bark imprinting my cheek,
tree wisdom imprinting my brain.
Became one, two, three, and me.
A circle of protection no matter what the need.
No more stone heart.
No tears.
Handing off the burden of breathing,
Knowing,
needing,
caring.
The world contracts
A child is abused in dark moments stolen from daylight.
Inside, sunlight and laughter, a child never seen.
“I just don’t know what’s wrong with her!
She’s so shy, quiet, backward.....”
Whispered conferences, worried looks, hasty assurances.
A conspiracy of pretended concern deflects guilt.
I sat silent in the grass watching
sunlight on my arms,
ants on my toes.
There was no language for it,
only silence,
only yearning.

© 2004 M. S. Eliot

Thursday.
Eyvonne and I went to my Clanmother’s house to help replace a leaking roof on an addition. We figured the job would take four or five hours. It took seven. We were exhausted when we finally got home. Because it was a warm day for mid November I’d left a note telling the kids to let the fire in the stove go out so I could clean the chimney.
When we finally got home it was dark and turning colder. Owl had worked overtime and just arrived himself. Sarah, who’d only been living with us a month or so, had no idea what to do. She’d been trying to work up the courage to start a fire because the house was getting cold. Eyvonne and I gathered up brushes and took the stovepipe apart as Owl started supper. We were pathetically grateful to smell food cooking.
Friday.
el and I were developing a project for a client. We swapped off every hour or so to check each other’s work. We’re both dyslexic. Neither of us can even spell that word. Have you ever tried to look up a word you can’t spell? At a local flea market I was attracted by a sign that read “Equana.” It was a moth-eaten taxidermied Iguana. It sat next to a stuffed armadillo. There was no sign for that. I wasn’t sure if the spelling of armadillo totally defeated them or if they just didn’t know what it was.
I wanted to buy it for Thunder for Christmas but Eyvonne came as close to throwing a fit in public as any of us Qs had ever seen, much to the amusement of the vendors. I backed off but when I told Thunder about it he groaned. It would have been a boon for his dorm room.
Anyway, I thank the geek deities for spellcheckers. Without one I too might be led as far astray as Equana. When we taught creative writing seminars for sixth graders their classroom teachers wouldn’t allow them to use spellcheckers. I argued about it with them. I’d gone through school getting those big red ‘Ds’ on my paper. I figured teaching a kid to use a tool to avoid that kind of humiliation was pretty empowering.
“If your students were learning to dig ditches would you hand them a shovel when you could teach them to run a backhoe?” I argued.
“It’s not the same,” the teachers. “Anyway those kids are just lazy.”
I had to control an urge to commit mayhem. These were professional people with big time college degrees. Kids were supposed to be their vocational call but they didn’t understand basic stuff about how the brain works. If they confused dyslexia with lack of effort they shouldn’t be teaching.
“These kids have real problems. I know, I’m dyslexic,” I said.
“They’re hopeless. They know something one day and the next it’s all new to them,” the reading specialist complained.
Alarm bells sounded in my head. That pattern was ‘way too familiar. It’s one of the drawbacks of being multiple. Sometimes information just doesn’t get shared efficiently.
Once while teaching a creative writing series at an elementary school I’d opened my eyes knowing I had just lost time. It wasn’t long. The kids were still focused on me but with quizzical expressions. I had no idea what we were presenting. Neither did el or Lillie. Baby was quietly amusing herself inside. I covered my confusion with just enough honesty to be believable.
I grinned sheepishly and said, “Uhh, middle age rots. Anybody wanna tell me what I just said?”
Even the other teachers laughed. It took a minute to get my stride but the kids didn’t care. Losing your place is human. Students enjoyed our classes. We encouraged them be themselves. Most worked hard. Some were really talented. With effort some could become writers. The ones with lots of talent already knew it. It was the quiet ones and the ones who acted out who intrigued us. A little praise at the right time might convince them they had something important to say.
The first time Sam wrote a full page I was ecstatic. That’s a big risk for a sixth grader still reversing a third of his letters. Sam’s teacher pegged him as a kid with an attitude problem. Competent one day, the next he refused to even try. I suspected his attitude hid a battered self-esteem. He seemed dissociative. But how was I to prompt help from a group of adults entrenched in prejudice?
I told my boss I suspected Sam had serious problems.
“Yeah he’s got problems, he’s brilliant but unmotivated. He knew this stuff yesterday. What the hell happened overnight?” he said.
Maybe Sam was molested. Maybe his dad hit him or beat up his mom, I thought. But saying that aloud risked revealing my own pain. It was a risk I wasn’t ready to take back then.
“People like him shouldn’t be teachers,” I shouted inside.
“He’s burned out,” Lillie said.
“Then he should quit!”
I was angry with the adults in Sams life, including myself. But I was also angry with all the teachers, ministers and other adults who’d made similar judgements sealing my childhood fate. Looking at Sam was like looking in a mirror. I was very bright but mostly disinterested in school. Sometimes I got so bored I walked out. I flashed a square of white paper at any teacher who raised an eyebrow. It was my ticket to our salvation. I walked out of the school into the fields beyond where I stripped off offending dresses and revealing jeans and T-shirts hidden beneath. I stole precious days in sunlit fields and woods. Cradled in the roots of trees we read Mitchner, Walt Whitman, Shelley, and Masefield, their words soothing our collective soul. We never once got caught. I was adept at forging our father’s signature on excuse notes and report cards.
Columbine assured skipping school was almost impossible for my students.
Some of my students were so conditioned to being labeled “bad” they didn’t how to handle our casual acceptance. Their unruly behavior dissipated when I met their gaze, making sure I spoke directly to them.
“Hey it’s uncool to do that,” I’d say, and then go right on teaching. I never got angry with them. I always insisted on nothing but their best. Every one of my students wrote something, even those labeled learning disabled or behavioral problems. At the end of class they gave us gifts, tears in their eyes. Years later they still slip into easy conversation when we meet.
“At least we’ve maybe helped a little,” I said to Eyvonne.
But I feel like it’s not enough when I know there are children being raped right now. This minute. Totally disconnecting from what is happening to them. It makes me want to scream. I weep instead. Eyvonne holds me close and lets me cry. I hate crying. It feels like the ultimate defeat.
“It’s time to tell our story. For all the Sams,” I whisper.
“And for us,” el agreed.
Still Friday.
Our closest friend stopped to drop his dog off for us to puppy sit. Undergoing chemo in an attempt to force Hepatitis C into remission he was on his way to a liver care clinic in Pittsburgh the next morning.
“You look really tired,” I said. “Want me to go along?”
“I’ll be all right. I’ll drive till I can’t anymore and then get a motel room.”
Eyvonne and I exchanged glances.
“You sure you don’t want company?” I said.
“Nah….” But I could see he was wavering.
“It would take me like two minutes to grab my backpack and be ready.”
“OK, I guess so.”
Friday night was about driving. It was windy and after a certain point the road was unfamiliar. el and I kept swapping off driving. We found a motel a half hour from the city and crashed for the night. Our friend sleeps with the TV on. When I woke up at 3 a.m. Stargate was on. I watched it. I looked at him curled up in the other bed. He wasn’t even snoring.
Saturday.
We made it to the hospital a half hour early. We needn’t have bothered. His doctor, who flew in from Chicago once a month to run this experimental clinic, was already two hours behind. We went outside walked around the city, sat in a park soaking up sun, called Eyvonne to see how the dogs were getting along and split a fish sandwich at locally famous Armond’s. When he finally saw his doctor it was good news, his blood levels were great. If things continued to go well he might be a transplant candidate. It was a happy ride home.
Sunday.
We tried catching up on this book. We are perpetually behind our self-mandated word count production goal. In other words I was freaking out because I really want to finish this on deadline with at least 50,0000 words. Part of freaking out involved tons of ice cream and coffee.
Monday.
Eyvonne and I finished a complex project for a client and then had lunch with my former counselor at a new restaurant nearby. The three of us spent two hours laughing before we realized the day was slipping away. I still needed to drive an hour to Williamsport to pick up printer cartridges to complete a different project for another client. Eyvonne went to work. She has a 3-hour-a-day cleaning job at a nursing home nearby.
Tuesday.
Eyvonne and I dropped the complex project off at the printer’s over an hour away. I love rural life. Everything is at least an hour away. We stopped for groceries on the way home. Lillie took ops for grocery shopping. If I do it we end up with junk food. If el does it we get stuff like apples and carrots. Since Eyvonne thinks chocolate is a food group she’s a wild card. Lillie figures the best strategy is for her to take charge. We end up driving across town for Feta cheese salad dressing to satisfy Eyvonne’s latest craving.
“It’s almost as good as chocolate,” she says.
“Yeah it is,” Lillie agrees. “Make sure our little ones don’t get mesmerized by the lobster tank OK?”
Eyvonne nods. “Sure.”
Sometimes even with the best planning shopping is still Q-hazardous. Young alters are attracted to the sights and sounds. Just like outside kids they plead for things like cookies and candy. “Can’t we have this?”
“No,” Lillie says. “We’ve already got ice cream for a treat.”
“But we want Twix bars too.” They line up all cute and bat their eyes. They also know I love Twix bars and may be persuaded to throw in with them.
“No,” Lillie says firmly glaring at me to defy her.
“Awww,” I start. “Look how cute they are Lil.”
“Shel, you’re blocking progress.”
Shopping can take us a long time. But even so we don’t hold a candle to Eyvonne. She’s legendary. She can spend fifteen minutes comparing bath soaps.
Wednesday.
None of us remembers Wednesday. No one. Not one single blessed solitary minute. At least they’re not talking about it if they do. Maybe documenting an entire week wasn’t such a great idea.
“Shit, what’s up now?” I groan.
“Whatever it is we’ll deal with it,” Lillie says.
el nods but he has little worry lines next to his eyes.
The lost day could mean someone is hiding something. It could mean we have a new alter who stole a day. It could just mean the day was so unremarkable no one remembers it. But I have this sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.
© 2004 M. S. Eliot

I came up with this really great idea. Not genius, just great. I want to put a webcam in our kitchen and charge people to view. My website has pretty high traffic and I wrack my fevered brain trying to figure out a way to make money from it. Most visitors are seeking information about our business services, or using the site to find one of our clients.
If I could just get a buck per visitor I’d be set. With the popularity of reality shows and the sitcom value of our life I figure this is a winner.
Most of the real craziness in our lives takes place in our kitchen. We carved our Halloween pumpkins in the there. Not a kid in sight, just five adults, (ok, two of them young enough adults to start chucking pumpkin guts). We had a devil pumpkin, pumpkins with warts, and a cute pumpkin, pretty average stuff. We set them in a row on the porch railing but they didn’t entice any trick or treaters.
People won’t bring kids to trick or treat here. Which element of our fringe scares them most? Rumors that we’re crazy? Maybe it’s the Indian thing. Or could it be they still classify Eyvonne and I as Lesbians? Maybe it was the Kerry for President sign that kept them away this year. Considering where we live I count us lucky rednecks and bornagains don’t sign a peace pact to burn a cross in our yard on Halloween.
This year we carved pumpkins so early that by Halloween no one would reach their hand inside to light them. They were slimy and gross. Besides we were all distracted by the upcoming election. Since we don’t have TV we planned to stay up late checking election results online. By one o’clock it was obvious this election was even more disgusting than the last one so we bailed. The next morning we were inspired to dispose of our pumpkins. Like most things of import, it started in our kitchen.
“Come on, I’ll draw a picture of Bush and we can use it as a target. It’ll dispel some angst about enduring four more years of this crap,” I said. Already up for several hours and perky as hell I pushed immediate action.
Sarah and Owl’s friend who we all call Mer (no one remembers her real name) was cooking omelets to order.
“Come on, how ‘bout a little enthusiasm here?” I pleaded.
“I don’t want to smash my pumpkin,” Eyvonne complained.
“Oh come on, it’ll be great,” I said.
“What do you want in your omelet Q?” Mer asked.
It took a moment to negotiate inside with various Qs who wanted various things.
“Onions and cheese. You get to throw a pumpkin too Mer,” I campaigned.
After breakfast I sketched a caricature of the pres and added what should have been his campaign slogan: “Smack me with a pumpkin.” We hung it on a tree and launched our semi-rotted jack-o-lanterns one by one. Mine barely hit the tree. We laughed hysterically. But with so many draft age young adults in our lives maybe it was just to keep from crying.
As people of Native American descent the growing negative impact of the Federal government on our lives feels almost way too familiar. We are definitely not part of the one percent of people in this country who control more than half of this country’s wealth.
Being multiple it’s nearly impossible for us to go to work in the same place and do the same thing every day. The only two ‘real’ jobs we ever held were in the publishing business where every day it was something different, and as a feature writer/police beat reporter for a daily newspaper. Ditto. Neither lasted six months. But we can do the same work from home on our terms and excel. We worked for several years for a daily paper producing news, features and photos, all sent to the office over the Internet. A large portion of our work is still accomplished the same way.
Working at home we can share or switch ops without worrying about being detected. When people see you every day they start noticing things.
“Gee, yesterday you were left handed and today you’re right handed.” Or worse yet, “I thought you knew this software.”
We see most of our major clients a few times a month. As long as we meet deadlines they’re happy. No one notices idiosyncrasies.
We have an ebb and flow of clients like any other business. Lately it’s been more ebb and less flow. Most of our big clients are non-profit agencies funded by grants and municipalities relying on government funds. Most have cut back what they spend on PR and websites.
Like most people in our county we can’t afford health insurance. But we no longer qualify for medical assistance either. Thank you President Bush. When he took office we earned about $2,400 a month. With one dependent we qualified for medical assistance that paid for doctor visits. We seldom went anyway. What’s the point if you can’t afford the resulting prescription?
At our last medical assistance recertification appointment we were denied any benefits at all. The rules changed in the last six months. Now you can’t earn more than $2,900 in SIX months, which is just a little more than what was previously allowed in ONE month. Did inflation reverse? Is my money worth more now? Or like the rest of you did I just get poorer?
A high school kid working minimum wage can earn more than $2,900 in six months. Then there’s the other kicker: you must also be working a minimum of 20 hours a week to qualify. How many homeless people or people unemployed long term in rural areas can meet that one?
The DPW in our rural county employees five people. I hope they keep busy shredding papers sent from Washington DC, writing report and such. I doubt too many of the county’s year-round residents of 6,200 people contributing to our 42 percent below the poverty line based on per capita income qualify for assistance anymore. If they still qualified the government could readjust the poverty level again, miraculously lifting them out of poverty through the magic of statistics.
I’m sure the wealthy people with summer homes in the county’s two resort areas haven’t noticed the local people are any poorer. We barely exist as real people to them.
Maybe I should be thankful. Now things are more in balance. Before we couldn’t afford prescriptions. Now we can’t afford doctors to write them either.
In a way it feels good not taking anything from a government we no longer trust. They don’t trust us either. A handbook on Homeland Security published a couple of years ago for distribution to fire companies, police and hospitals lists American Indians as a terrorist group. Not the American Indian Movement (AIM), which has a bad-ass reputation leftover from the sixties and seventies, but our entire ethnic group.
My grandparents and great-grandparents never talked about being Indian outside their homes. They weren’t ashamed. They were scared. Like many people of Eastern Woodlands their ancestors remained behind rather than be forced westward or onto reservations. Hiding in these mountains was a good idea. Back then Indians couldn’t own property, send their kids to public school or hold public office. My ancestors blended into the dominant culture to survive. Maybe I was pre-disposed to dissociate.
Until 1978 it was illegal for Indians to practice their religion. For you non-history buffs that’s the year the Federal Freedom of Religion Act was passed. Oprah are you listening? And here you thought this country was founded on religious freedom. Think again. Wealthy people intent on gathering more wealth founded it. Not much has changed.
Still, some of us Qs are pretty intent on increasing our pathetic share of America’s wealth. We’d like to be sure we can afford propane and firewood, or at least not need to decide this winter between food and fuel like last year.
In case you hadn’t noticed our concept of genius revolves around money-making ideas. We are most dedicated to the American work ethic. It’s just we see steadily dwindling returns for our efforts. We’re working longer hours but the price of gasoline, propane and food keeps spiraling upward. It’s not like we’re just sitting around.
Trust me, multiples can work harder and apply more specific skills and talents to a job than most singletons. When one of us gets tired we just hand ops to someone else. Within our inner ranks we have three professional writers, a feature writer, a police beat reporter, five professional photographers, a public relations specialist, two grant writers, many artists, several poets and two web designers.
We owned an antiques business for nearly 20 years. ebay and Chinese imports closed us down. We hold an associate degree in journalism. We’ve been regularly published freelance writers/photographers over the last 30 years.
We’ve taught writing and computer skills. We present seminars and workshops on such varied topics as Native American culture and spirituality, genealogy, history and public relations. Our skills include horse training, dog training, road rally driving, baking, cooking, a bit of carpentry and home repair, gardening and landscaping.
We’ve helped train volunteers for victim services organizations. We’ve presented speeches and programs on domestic violence, sexual assault, childhood abuse, dissociation, multiplicity, post-traumatic stress and survivorship issues.
We’re very sensitive to community. We serve on the local emergency shelter board and serve as vice-president of a State Heritage Park. We spend a great deal of time helping people in our local Indian population. Like us they are mostly struggling financially. If we pool our resources, skills and sometimes food we all get by.
In case you’re wondering the family voted down the webcam in the kitchen idea. I’m still bummed. At the very least it would have justified buying a webcam.
© 2004 M. S. Eliot

I’m sitting here at my keyboard wondering how to get started. It’s not I don’t have anything to write about, It’s I have so much I want to say. Anyway my son Thunder calls from college. He says, “I have the answer. It’s Mango chicken.” I immediately feel jealous. He has an answer. I’m not sure to what but wow, what confidence!“OK,” I say and wait for him to continue. It’s not a long wait. Thunder’s a lot like me. He doesn’t need prompts, he needs cut-off warnings. “I gave a colloquium presentation today and afterward one of the professors got me all psyched about my majors. It’s all Liberal Arts. I really can do the Social Anthropology/Archeology and the Music Major thing work together at a Liberal Arts school. So if I start worrying about making my life work just tell me ‘Mango Chicken.’ That’s what I had to eat tonight,” Thunder says. He hasn’t stopped to take one single breath. It’s amazing. But he’s a tuba player. He sings in the college choir too. Last spring they toured Spain. Twenty-one years old and he’s already world-renowned. I murmur something non-committal waiting to see if he’s really finished. He isn’t. He talks non-stop for five minutes drawing two breaths. I utter two more monosyllabic comments. “I gotta go. So tell everyone I love them and I’ll see ya soon.”
“OK, love you too.”
The silence is deafening after we hang up.Life for Thunder is either all up or all down. I’m really glad it’s up right now.When I answered the phone I’d been expecting the call to be from Eyvonne’s Sarah. She left a message on our machine hours ago that she was having car trouble and would call back. She commutes to her school.
It’s hard parenting an adult size kid. Sorry, young adult. I wonder if it’s harder parenting them while they live at home or parenting long distance and fielding weird calls. I know it’s been difficult for Eyvonne to get used to the full-time responsibility of parenting Sarah, who moved in with us less than a month ago. Eyvonne was always there for my boys as they endured high school and took their first steps into the real world. But the parenting decisions were made by the continuum of Q, usually el, Lillie and I. Being supportive is one thing, it’s quite terrifying when the full responsibility falls on your shoulders.
Suddenly Eyvonne is not so sure about how to handle things. She’s the one staying up half the night playing solitaire on the computer because Sarah hasn’t called home. We Qs stay on the sidelines and try our best to play a supporting role. All I can say personally is girls are high maintenance. But then I think of Thunder in one of his downswings. The only reason he isn’t high maintenance then is because he doesn’t have 24/7 access anymore. Instead he calls, spills a torrent of despair and hangs up. Next time instead of worrying I’ll know what to do. The answer is mango chicken.
The phone rings again. I pick it up. This caller is a young man who calls an average of a dozen times a day trying to reach Sarah. She is perpetually not home. It’s a doomed relationship not even salvageable by the magic of mango chicken. The poor guy called three times the other night right up to midnight. Sarah was out on a date with another guy. We were up late watching the Northern Lights.
I knew about the possibility of seeing the lights because of an email alert from this fringe element guy who keeps an eye on things like solar flares and the resulting geo-magnetic storms. If you read my profile you’re forewarned, here it comes: pure unadulterated love of science slightly tainted by fringe element wacko world-watch concerns. You can skip the science paragraph below if your eyes start to glaze over.
During bigtime sunspot activity mega explosions result in solar flares. Lots of solar particles are spewed into space in plasma clouds. Whipped by solar winds these reach spaceship two or three days later. The earth's magnetic field captures them swirling particles towards one of the two planet’s magnetic poles, south or north. Light shows result when the particles collide with earth’s atmosphere.
I started hopefully scanning the night sky as early as nine p.m. but it was cloudy. By ten the wind was up and clouds were lifting and but there was still no sign of Northern Lights. Eyvonne and I gave up to watch a movie. We were snuggled up on the couch with double buttered popcorn to sustain us when Merlot started making dog-rolking sounds. Eyvonne grabbed his collar and dragged him outside.
Seconds later she was shrieking, “Q come here, ya gotta see this! Garbled garbled LIGHTS! But watch it don’t step in the dog puke.”
I bailed out the door worried it would be over before I got there what with having to leap puke and all. I needn’t have worried. When I arrived fingers of white light were reaching from the horizon upward like the hand of god, or perhaps mango chicken. I was pretty sure it wasn’t Oprah.
My excitement woke every Q so it was a shared experience. Therapists call it being ‘co-conscious’. They like it. It’s supposed to be a major step toward integration. If so we’re progressing a bit slowly as Lillie, el, Baby and I have always been able to do it. Emotions surged through the system as we all watched.
“What is it?” one of our youngest alters asked as the sky lit up. “Wind from the sun kissing the stars,” I said. He snuggled into my arms content to watch.
Forty-five bone-chilling minutes later those light fingers morphed up from every compass point to the center of the sky where they met in a spiral. They flashed and pulsed with light as bright as summer lightning. A red corona appeared in the northeast, another toward the west. I flopped down on the picnic table and wept as I watched.
Feathers of light overlaid the Milky Way, the spiral path to the spirit world suddenly visible. A lot of people we knew had started that journey recently. At journey’s end they were star people. I wanted science gone from my brain. I was flooded with awe by this visible evidence of the power of the universe. But I wanted to experience and interpret this in the manner of the old ones. Did this beauty herald the world’s end? Prophecies flooded my mind, Quetzequatl, feathered serpents, flying monsters, dragons. I saw them all wheel above.I could hear Eyvonne calling her mom, brother and Thunder, telling them to go outside.
Sarah drives in momentarily blinding us. She leaps from her car.“Did you see the lights?” she yelps.
Eyvonne hugs her. They do a wild little dance.
“Look up, breathe, live,” eliot said. As we did a slow fireball tracked across the sky from east to west. Now el was crying too. He loves meteors. The dude absolutely hates to be cold, but he’ll stand outside in the dead of winter wrapped in a blanket to watch a meteor shower.
He interprets things with no science overlay. Sometimes it’s eerie. Definitely fringe element. But what do you expect from a guy who’s walked that spiral path and returned since we were both three?
“What’s it mean el?” I whispered.
“The worlds are coming closer together,” he said.
I knew there wasn’t any use pressing him for details. It made as much sense as photons being released from excited atoms of nitrogen.
“We would have missed this if the dog hadn’t puked,” I said to Eyvonne.
“Shel you’re always so romantic.”
I grinned and pulled her closer. I had proof. Mango chicken is the answer to all things in the universe.
“If not the answer at the very least a minor deity,” el says.
“Good night el.”
“Nighters Shel.”
© 2004 M. S. Eliot

Our relationship with Eyvonne is complex, but then nothing about our life is simple. Most people assume we’re lesbians. Outward appearances would seem to support that supposition. If people are comfortable with us as an ‘alternative lifestyle couple’ we usually clue them in, but we’re not driven to explain. Once they know they usually have a lot of questions.
The most common question, after an appraising look at whichever Q alter is up: “So you’re really a guy huh?”
Gwen loves fielding that one. “No, I personally am not a guy. But at least six of us in here are.” If the question comes from a woman she leans toward them batting her eyelashes and acting all flirty. You can practically see them wondering about the lesbian thing again.
Eyvonne has a gift for pre-loving us. She first loved eliot. She tried really hard not to fall in love with me too.
“You’re a really fun guy Shel, but you’re a kid,” she said. “I love you but not like that.”
I definitely loved her ‘like that’. I was severely jealous of el. But I had to admit his feelings for her were kind of amazing. It was like watching Data on Star Trek have his emotion chip activated. Lillie and I agreed it was el’s moment. He’d been lost a long time, buried deep inside.
I toy with the idea of making an animated feature length film about it. “Finding el.” Even though he wasn’t an adorable yellow clownfish Eyvonne certainly did find him. And she set him free. By doing so she set in motion a series of interactions that ended up setting us all free.
Once el allowed himself to feel things there was no going back. Short term it messed up our work ethic pretty bad. But I realized I could keep track of things, get us where we needed to be, make sure projects were completed. In other words I started growing up and taking responsibility for things.
As I grew up I stopped being so jealous of el. I realized Eyvonne loved me too. She loves us all, even Qs who’ve not been spawned yet or who lurk around, not ready to come into the system yet. She loves them the way a mother loves her yet unconceived children. It’s truly unconditional love. Which is a good thing because if I had to earn her love I’d be doomed.
The whole thing about our sexual orientation is tied to some of our earliest cognitive memories. Our father made sure Baby knew she was the wrong sex. He would rather she’d been a boy. To him a boy had intrinsic value, a mind worth educating, a life worth living, power. Still when he bounced Baby aloft haloed in sunlight she was special, a golden child. His favorite. Chosen.
It was basic sexist stuff. Men are strong. Women are weak. In order to combat the early repeated sexual abuse we needed to be strong. Tada! I was born to serve as Baby and Lillie’s defender. Soon eliot entered the picture. Our existence didn’t stop the abuse but it gave us strategies for dealing with it.
We learned to hide because “acting like a boy” earned beatings from our mother. Mom’s rage at what others dismissed as tomboyishness was an ever-present risk. I absorbed blows for Lillie, for el, but most of all for Baby.
Each aching bruise underscored the importance of silence. Every slap drove the message deeper. Like other more profound pain, we chose to ignore it. It became a matter of pride; never needing Novocain at the dentist; being stoic as the doctor administered a shot. Mom watched from across the room nodding approval as I denied pain.
“She’s a strong child,” she said proudly. “Never whimpers.”
Never when anyone could hear.
Our childhood secrets remained buried deep within until middle age. We remembered a nearly perfect childhood marred only by my mother’s chronic illness. When my sister and I talked about growing up she was bewildered.
“We were raised in different families or what?” she commented. She was six years old when I was born. Until I was nearly four I thought she was my mother. She was my primary caregiver until I started school. Throughout my childhood she did much of the cooking and cleaning for our family. It didn’t seem unusual, but what did I have to compare it to?
Our father was the pampered only child of extremely wealthy people who lost their fortune in the depression. When the dust settled they were still wealthier than most people but counted themselves impoverished. Born into wealth and power, our father had neither in adulthood. A self-trained research scientist with no college degree, his income was far less than his colleagues even though he developed 11 patents enriching his employer a major chemical firm.
When I was very young Dad started a business long before its time, purifying used oils. The fledgling recycling operation failed when the company’s treasurer accused him of embezzling $10,000. Our father was court-ordered to make restitution. Later the man went through some sort of religious experience. He came to our home to confess he’d stolen the money using his position as treasurer to make it appear it Dad was the thief. My father hit him. I remember the man cartwheeling over our porch railing to the ground in slow motion. Nothing changed. We were still impoverished by the court ruling. The true thief bought a new house while our father worked two jobs and burned with resentment.
He resented his disabled wife. He resented having so many children. Baby was his fifth. The first was stillborn. By age three Baby was painfully introverted, peeking at strangers only from behind Mom’s skirts or Dad’s knees. We assumed life for all small children alternated between love and resentment. Small children accept any circumstance without question. They have no way to compare, no language to describe, no one to tell.
What would have made sense to my friend George our garbage collector? He was a middle aged Black man who took the time to sit on our back steps with me a few minutes every Wednesday until I started school. He asked my opinion about the weather, wondered how my dog was doing, or noted my sister’s cat had a litter of kittens. I seldom responded but I basked in his caring. To his credit my earliest vocational choice was to be a Black garbage collector.
Could I have left a note for our milkman Dugan who carefully placed glass bottles of milk, cream floating on top, in a little insulated metal box on our front porch twice a week? Sometimes he knocked on our door and handed my mother a bill printed in red ink. He seemed embarrassed to tell her she had to make a payment or there would be no more milk. She would shut the door and gather coins from all over the house while he waited patiently on the stoop. When he left she retreated to her bedroom shutting the door against the world. That included me. I was left to my own devices, a three-year-old suddenly free to explore the universe. I stood on tiptoes to turn the doorknob and escaped to curl up with our dog in the cool space dug into the earth beneath his doghouse or to hide among the hens in the chicken house. Safe havens.
None of the adults who flitted in and out of my life were concerned that I was practically mute and seldom met anyone’s gaze. My kindergarten teacher was an older woman who yelled a lot. She didn’t encourage personal revelation. If you spoke out of turn it was ‘head down’ for you, your face buried in folded arms on your desk. At least it wasn’t heads off. She reminded me of the Queen in Alice in Wonderland. I spent most of my first year of school worrying about that.
It was a good thing I already knew how to read, since I was mostly occupied by keeping a wary eye on the myriads of new adults connected with this school thing.
One of the cool things about my kidhood was our father reading the Sunday funnies to all four of his children. Being the youngest I was relegated to the least favored spot, across from him, looking down on the funny pages. I learned to read upside down. My parents both read incessantly. Our Mom read aloud to us every day. It didn’t matter what she was reading or if we understood it. We loved the words. We spent a lot of time in the children’s room of the library while our parents selected books. Seated on the floor under one of those munchkin tables eliot experienced an epiphany. He was reading a book about a circus to Lillie and baby and I. I can still see the colorful pictures of lions and clowns. el would read a page, turn the book right side up so we could see the pictures, then turn it upside down so he could read the words.
Suddenly he hesitated. The words coalesced under the pictures and he stopped turning the book over to read. We were four. It opened up a whole new universe to us. We spent long hours every night thereafter reading in bed by flashlight under the tent of our covers. In kindergarten we were reading sentences faster than other kids sounded out words. In grade school we took a book every day, leaving it open on our lap to save our sanity as teachers droned on in the classroom. By middle school we’d stopped reading individual sentences and graduated to paragraphs. In high school we could read all but the most complex stuff by the page.
Remember the Star Trek episode where this one crewman becomes godlike? They demonstrated his growing abilities by showing him reading at an ever-faster pace. It would have gone better for him if he’d been smart enough to hide his abilities like we did. In first grade we imitated other kids sounding out new words. We actually did struggle with phonics. It made no sense given our established reading style. Troubles with phonics kept us believable. When our own kids struggled with phonics homework we couldn’t help. None of us can grasp it to this day. © 2004 M. S. Eliot

We woke up this morning to a new world. A dusting of snow transforms familiar objects defining angles and softening defects. At our elevation we can have snow like this in September but it’s been a warm autumn. It’s mid-November and this is the first snow to stick. I let the dog out the eastern door sipping my coffee while he runs idiotically about the yard. I keep a watchful eye out for deer, bear or turkey in the pasture or the woods to the side of the house. It’s rutting season for deer. The bucks are stupid with lust. Yesterday a doe walked through our woods in mid-morning. Sure enough not five minutes later here comes a big eight point sniffing every few steps following her trail.
I can normally call Merlot off a deer. He’s pretty well trained. But I’m worried this time of year the deer might be aggressive toward him. Forget Disney. This ain’t Bambi. This is a sex-starved male animal half the size of a horse with razor sharp hooves and antlers that could pierce right through Merlot’s scrawny frame.
Maybe it’s just my world-view. One of my therapists explained there are two kinds of people; those who view the world as a safe place and those who view it as unsafe. I fall into the it’s ‘a jungle out there’ category. Given my life I think it’s a justifiable view.
That same therapist told me he only worked with one other client who reasoned in the same manner as those of us in Q. He was a concentration camp survivor.
So I’m standing there in the doorway, steam rising off my coffee cup with rising sun bathing me in thin wintery warmth. I’m the only one up inside or out except for Owl who rose before dawn for work. I pause and listen. It’s the perfect moment for genius. Nothing happens.
I call the dog in, feed him, sit down at the keyboard and start working. I pick up my cup to take a sip and my coffee is gone. Welcome to another Dissociative moment.
“Who drank my coffee?” I snap inside.
All I hear inside is “Echo, echo, echo” and giggling. I can’t figure out which one of them it was. And there are a lot more of us to sift through than there were ten years ago when the shit hit the fan. Talk about midlife crisis. We had the granddaddy of them all.
Anyway, I pick up signatures inside… Ian, Ry, el, Lillie, Keeper, Gwen… bingo, coffee thief.
“Go make some more,” she says still laughing. She throws her arms around my shoulders and peers at the computer screen. I’m redesigning a web page.
“It isn’t funny,” I grump. “You interrupted my work flow.”
“Workus interuptus,” she taunts. “By the way it looks good.”
Grudgingly I thank her and get off my ass to make more coffee. I value her opinion. Like me, Gwen is an artist. Unlike me she has an eye for graphics. I work in acrylics producing impressionist pieces when I’m at my best. My inside home walls are covered with paintings, most of them of Eyvonne. I seldom work outside anymore. With our business moderately successful there just isn’t time.
There are twelve of us now give or take a few. It’s not important to us to keep track anymore. Ten years ago I drew and redrew elaborate charts trying to make sense of who we were. I designed linear flow charts, concentric circles, lists of alters related by interests, mannerisms, who they looked like inside. There were tons of young alters for a while. Most of them have integrated with one of us now. I know, I said we hated even thinking about integrating… but somewhere along the line it just started happening. I think it’s mostly a good thing. It’s made me more complete, taking into myself those who fragmented out in my image to protect us all. But we steadfastly refuse to even consider trying to unify into a singleton. That just ain’t gonna happen. Trust me.
The integrating we’ve done is tenuous anyway. Keeper, who showed up about five years ago in response to the eb and flow insanity of our life, became unstable and irrational. He claimed he held a piece of each of us Qs. He said he had the ‘glue’ to make integration into a singleton work and he campaigned for it like a presidential hopeful. Our response significantly underwhelmed him.
Eventually he asked to integrate with me. I accepted. I viewed it as part of my job to protect the system, he was becoming unstable enough to threaten our collective sanity.
Integration works like this, at least for us. There is a request, discussion and an agreement. In this case I held out my arms and embraced Keeper until Keeper was me and I knew all Keeper ever knew. His reason for existing in the first place becomes clear. I lived in vivid detail Keeper’s pieces of our fragmented past. I felt Keeper’s feelings about abuse he endured. I knew his fears, joys and triumphs. It all became mine when I couldn’t separate it out anymore. Once I owned it, we were integrated. But Keeper’s glue didn’t hold after all. He stepped out on his own again not long ago.
For a while I felt the loss keenly. When a woman gives birth, there is a shifting of organs, an empty place inside her. I know it personally, because even though I am male, I live in this body. I know how a woman can cry with joy holding her newborn while at the same time mourning the physical closeness of sheltering that child under her heart.
As Q guardian and defender I watch Keeper closely. I don’t understand the forces that pulled him away from me once again. His re-emergence from under my heart disturbs me. His presence among us is like the distant warning of heat lightening. There could be a storm brewing. Or it could just blow over.
He’s different than he was before. He’s older, not as naïve. I’ve gifted him that I guess. I grew up fast myself once I decided to do so. I was 16 for 30 years. Then I met Eyvonne. She was falling in love with eliot (man what a weirdness that was at the time) and I was already in love with her. We met online. It’s a jaded story nowadays. Internet lovers. It seldom lasts once people actually meet. For us it has. Eyvonne frequented the same writers and poets chatrooms we did. She was witty and talented. We had a mutual chat buddy who lived in Australia. He discovered Eyvonne and I lived in the same state. We lived within one hour’s drive of each other. If I believed in fate I’d say it was inevitable. But I don’t. I’ll go as far as saying everything happens for a reason. There was a reason we both hung out in the same IRC chatrooms. Maybe the reason was she would someday be instrumental in helping me save my own life. It sure wasn’t about procreation as that’s impossible given that I’m trapped in the same sex body as hers.
© 2004 M. S. Eliot

Moments of genius are rarely repeated. My best ideas occur when I’m driving, in the middle of the night, halfway up a cliff. When I arrive, wake up or reach the top they evaporate into the ether.
Ether is an old-fashioned term for what scientists once supposed filled the space in the universe between planets, comets and other heavenly bodies. Now we know better. Space is just that, space. Aside from planets, comets, asteroids and a few black holes there isn’t much up there. It’s pretty much uncluttered unless you count cosmic dust.
Watson and Frick, the guys who figured out the DNA double helix gig might have missed their one moment to capture fame and fortune if they hadn’t been paying attention or at least had a tape recorder, flashlight, or a climbing gear.
Hang on, this relates back to, back to… umm, whatever went on before now. Sorry, I’m having a dissociative moment. More about dissociation later.
I’ve actually had quite a few moments of actual genius. In the 1960’s I thought up vending machines to sell bottled water. It made sense to us Qs, we all hate soda. My friends laughed.
Just after graphics were introduced to the World Wide Web I dreamed up an online auction. I was a fledgling website designer and an antique dealer.
I thought it would be cool to offer Vaseline glass and shaving mugs to the highest Internet bidder. My friends laughed. I kept designing websites and eventually closed the antiques business…. But not before ebay proved me right. The Internet drew us in like a siren song. In cyberspace we are separate and free in a way we can never be in the real world. We haunted Internet Relay Chat roaming at home in physics, poets and writers chatrooms.
I’m still waiting for my next moment of genius. Even if I manage to write it down or record it I doubt Oprah will hear about it. If she does she’ll probably laugh.
My theory about Oprah is she serves as a definitive American deity. Think about it.
I’m sure things would have gone a lot smoother for us Qs if we’d gotten her attention during at least one moment of genius or tragedy during the last 15 years.
What would have been different if I’d asked myself “What would Oprah do?” in the pre-dawn hours of an autumn night in 1996. I held an antique straight-edged razor poised above my wrist, an elegant weapon from a more civilized time.
eliot watched from a unique perspective, for my wrist is his too. Blood dripped on our computer keyboard. I’d been chatting online when I was overwhelmed by the familiar need to cut. I was weary of fighting the urge. I expected to die. el was curious about how it would feel. We shared consciousness as I cut. We watched droplets of blood well up and drip to the desktop, splash on the keyboard.
I kept typing, chatting with people from an IRC writer’s channel who had become our friends over the last few months. Each of us Qs yearns to be recognized and valued as ourselves. In cyberspace, linked nearly mind to mind that almost seems possible. The writer’s chatroom was the first place eliot ever used his real name. The first time someone addressed him as eliot he wept. In cyberspace no one knew we shared the same body, or that we were male while the body we inhabited was female. No one knew online I was holding a razor to my wrist either.
Even if el wanted to stop me, I clearly had ops and was not about to relinquish it. Usually one of us is “up” alone. Two or more of us can share consciousness, but only the one who is "up" controls what happens.
Lillie was livid with both of us.
“Stop!” she screamed.
I ignored her. Watched our blood well up. I had no emotion left. I was totally numb, or thought I was.
“Shel, if you kill us you kill Baby!” Lillie shrieked. “You’re supposed to protect us you bastard!”
She had my attention. I looked at el. He sighed and nodded.
Shit. Outvoted. I put the razor down. I laid my head on the keyboard and sobbed. Crisis averted. But our problems weren’t gone. And there were a lot of them. First and foremost was my growing feeling of impending doom. As guardian and protector of the Q realm I sensed something awful looming on our horizon. Suicide seemed better than knowing what it was.
Looking back I’m really, really glad I didn’t die that night, or the many other times el or I drew blood. I cut more often to prove I was real than out of a deathwish. But every time I cut suicide was a risk. It took three years of therapy and Eyvonne’s love to make us stop.
A lot of things led up to my crisis that night. Our personal Book of Counted Sorrows included early childhood abuses locked in the deepest forgetfulness a human being can generate. My vestigial knowledge of those memories had me on the defensive. I would do anything to keep Pandora’s box closed. Once unleashed those hounds of hell would consume us all.
Lillie’s marriage was disintegrating then too. Her husband’s usual temper tantrums escalated into violence. We needed help but were convinced no one could understand. Understanding would require disclosure, not easy after a lifetime of hiding.
The few times we were desperate enough to seek help we found none. Elders of Lillie's church counseled submission. They told her his behaviors were responses to her failures as a wife. She told them to go to hell.
Examining defensive bruises on Lillie’s forearms the doctor said, "Well, he doesn't really hurt you does he? He doesn't use his fist, or hit your head?"
Female friends dismissed Lillie’s tearful tales of aggressive sexual demands. "That's just how men are," they said. "What did you do to make him so mad?”
No one suspected our multiplicity. No one really seemed concerned that Lillie was being hurt. No one but eliot, Baby and I.
I knew I couldn’t win a physical fight with the guy. The bruises proved that. But I threatened to call the police if he hit us again.
“You’ll be dead before they get here,” he snarled.
Check and checkmate.
In true dissociative fashion, Lillie wanted to salvage the relationship. She didn’t say she wanted to stay because she loved him. Her reasons were more practical. He’d threatened to take custody of the boys and keep the house if she tried to divorce him. He pointed out she had no secure income. “What judge would award you the kids? Where would you live?” he taunted. And he didn’t even know about his wife being multiple.
In true dissociative fashion I backed off. It wasn’t my relationship it was hers. But el and I spent longer hours working. We figured it wouldn’t hurt to have a better income.
The constant turmoil inside and out rattled eliot’s composure. It interfered with his ability to do his job within the system. An organizer dependent on logical thinking el was our system administrator, kind of like the Central Processing Unit of a computer. Through most of our adulthood eliot stayed inside by choice. Socially inept, many of eliot’s attempts at friendship or more intimate relationships bordered on disaster. Since our teens he was content to let Lillie and I handle most outside stuff. With eliot off balance things rapidly spiraled out of control. We began having vivid visual and auditory disturbances that terrified all of us. They descended without warning overlaying or obliterating anything else we were experiencing.
“What if it happens when I’m driving?” Lillie asked.
I didn’t know what to say. I was worried about the same thing. I mean what would you do if you were driving down the road and suddenly giant squiggly colored lines filled your entire field of vision.
“Maybe it’s a neurological condition,” el observed.
I shivered. “Nope.” I couldn’t tell him why I was so sure. I could only try and batten down the hatches for what I knew was inevitable.
The visions flooded over us in the blink between waking and sleep. They stole our dreams turning them into nightmares.
Never good sleepers, we actively fought sleep until we were exhausted. We averaged two hours sleep a night. Lillie’s husband didn't even notice. We whiled away those long dark hours reading, writing, chatting. Someone was always on the writer’s channel day or night. We chatted with people half a world away. They became as important to us as our real world friends. Maybe more so. We trusted them. They knew our likes, dislikes, moods, quirks. Techies who noticed our computer Internet Protocol number was the same assumed eliot and I were two people, perhaps brothers, living in the same household. We let them go right on believing it.
© 2004 M. S. Eliot

Signing up for Nanowrimo on Nov. 5 when the deadline is Nov. 30 is pretty typical Q stuff. We never really seem to see opportunities until they knock us down. We spend a lot of time doing damage control. Our peers in this Nanowrimo madness should be about 8,300 words ahead of us at this point supposing a real effort to produce 50,000 words in 30 days. We figure we need to produce an average of 2,000 words a day from here on in to catch up. It shouldn't be a problem. Our record stands at 10,000 words in one day. If you're wondering about the use of pronouns... we're multiple. The first rule of multiplicity is don't talk about multiplicity. If you've never seen the movie Fight Club, watch it. You'll catch on. It's somewhat more accurate than the Three Faces of Eve, or the most amazing drivel psychiatrists perpetuate about the species. Multiplicity is about hiding. We're great at camouflage. We spent most of our lifetime making sure no one knew we were multiple. Only people close enough to observe nuances ever suspected the truth. So why are we coming out of the closet so to speak? It's just time. Unlike “classic” multiples who don’t realize they share body space/time with an unspecified number of other people (known in the psych trade as ‘alters’), we Qs always knew. As far back as we can remember there were four of us: Baby, a blonde, blue-eyed toddler; el is the center of our little universe. He's the guy who keeps us on track, on time and almost sane. Lillie keeps pace chronologically with the age of the female body we all share. And there's me, Shel. I was a sixteen-year old tough guy for about 40 years until I met someone worth growing up for, but more about that later. We were pretty smug about being different. But once we hit mid-life it we discovered a lot in common with other multiples. It started with stuff like waking up with our fingernails painted neon green or flaming red and our money gone. Maybe we shoulda suspected someone was lurking beyond the Q perimeter. But we are experts in denial. Instead we blamed each other. When strangers approached like long-lost friends but none of us knew them we fought about it. Afterward we each retired to privately to lick our wounds sure the other Qs were having us on. They were, but it was no one we knew. This sort of stuff played right into our trust issues. Did I mention trust issues? No? Well anyway you don’t get to be multiple without losing trust in somebody. It’s how you pay your dues. Being multiple is the ultimate reality show, all day, every day. You never really know what’s next. Every step you take is potentially negotiated unless you’ve achieved the therapist’s nirvana - integration. Integration strikes us as an impossible waste of time. Who the hell would we talk to inside or fight with if we all squashed into one person? Whose reality would reign supreme in the end? We read a lot of books about multiples who achieved this supposedly sought after state. It took people years of therapy to make the grade while lining the pockets of dozens of therapists at exorbitant prices. It also involved tons of anguish reliving crap that caused their personality fragmentation in the first place. The other thing that stood out was inner silence as the ‘voices’ of alters blended into one. There were whole chapters in these books on dealing with the mourning process following the integration of each alter into the unified whole. All in all it sounded pretty barbaric. We like our inner voices. We have our differences from time to time, but hey, that’s life. Or is it the ultimate dysfunction? While we’re on the subject of hearing voices I need to point out that therapists determine the difference between multiples and schizophrenics by where the voices come from. If you hear voices outside your head you’re schizophrenic. If they’re inside you’re multiple. Of course this sort of diagnostic tool only works if your therapist believes in multiples. I recently met a psychiatrist masquerading as a motivational speaker who said he’d never been within a hundred miles of a multiple. Maybe he hadn’t seen the latest stats that indicate if you know a hundred people you know three multiples. I looked around his audience and guessed I wasn’t the only one laughing at him. The other thing we learned about integration is after all those years (and dollars) spent in therapy to reach the goal of a unified outlook, quite a few patients, excuse me nowadays it’s clients, backslid right into multiplicity. All it took was a real life crisis and they were back to calving new alters like icebergs. People who’ve learned at an early age to dissociate completely because of things like physical or sexual abuse are rarely able to completely stop the behavior. It’s automatic. Scare me deeply enough and I won’t remember it someone else will. So.
I said our life was the ultimate reality show, but sometimes it’s more like a sitcom. Consider the dynamics of today’s Q. There are many more than four of us sharing body space and competing for outside time. We reside in an isolated mountainous area with our life-companion, one of our kids, Owl, age 22 and one of our companion’s kid’s, Sarah, age 18. We have another son, Thunder, in college age 21. My kids names aren’t quite as quirky as they seem. We’re Native American. If you’re keeping score on whether or not we’re certifiably crazy, it’s just one more piece of evidence in the plus column that my kids’ Indian names are on their birth certificates and they wore them all through public school. In high school they successfully charmed beer-consuming rednecks into allowing guys with shoulder-length hair to date their daughters. Our kids probably qualify for sainthood. By the time they were two they knew who to ask for a lollipop. (Guilty) I allowed them to try almost anything from skateboarding to cliff climbing. In fact I usually joined them. Lillie was more conservative but I usually won. Would you want to alienate your security team? el rarely got involved in parenting. Kids made him nervous.
Our companion Eyvonne definitely qualifies for sainthood.
It goes something like this:
“Didn’t we agree this morning you’d get groceries today?”
I’m confused. I’ve been working on websites all day, exactly what I’m supposed to do since it’s how we pay for the freaking groceries.
I tense, sensing a wrongness in the fours. I look inside to see if anyone looks guilty. No one meets my flinty-eyed gaze.
Who promised we’d get groceries? I yelp.Suddenly the inside landscape is empty. Eyvonne is still talking outside splitting my attention between inner and outer realities. By now our collective spawn have joined us in the kitchen adding to my tension level. I hate being caught in some stupid scenerio in front of family members. “Groceries?” I ask innocently.
“Yes, you said you’d….” her voice trails off as she tunes in.“I talked to one of you about it. Can’t you guys you share stuff in there?” Eyvonne is unusually frustrated. She usually takes this stuff in stride. “I think it was eliot,” she says to herself.
“Do I look like eliot?” I counter huffily.
“Hey, chill. You’re getting way too intense,” Owl warns. He looks warily from me to Eyvonne. He’s jumpy about raised voices. His dad and Lillie fought horribly right before their divorce. Of course I had nothing to do with any of that except to do my job, which is to defend all Qs. I can’t help it, if someone gets in our face I react. If you get confrontational with any Q you deal with me.
Eyvonne sighs. The psycho-drama potential in the kitchen is approaching critical mass. She’s hungry. The kids are hovering like starving fledglings. She opens the ‘frige door and scans a barren landscape.
It’s not like we can order a pizza. The nearest pizza place is nine miles away, right next to the nearest grocery store. Neither delivers. She opens the freezer compartment and rummages around.
“How ‘bout chicken cheesesteaks?”
Everyone grins. Food is just minutes away. Peace is restored. Eyvonne’s daughter slices onions. Owl sets the table. I mine the ‘frige for condiments. I kiss Eyvonne’s cheek as I pass by arms loaded with ketchup, mayo and mustard containers. The world was a better place when there was one kind of ketchup and two kinds of mustard.
Things are already sizzling on the stove.
“Do I look like eliot?” I whisper. Eyvonne swats at me with her turner then flips thin chicken minute steaks.
Oprah are you watching?
© 2004 M. S. Eliot