Sunday, December 05, 2004
Allie, Allie in Free
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
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
