Friday, November 05, 2004
Oprah are you watching?
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
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
