nanowrimo madness

The Next Step

2005-01-05T10:10:00.000-05:00

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

Christmas

2005-01-05T09:22:00.000-05:00

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

Solstice

2004-12-24T16:00:00.000-05:00

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

Just Stuff

2004-12-20T18:46:00.000-05:00

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

On Being Indian...

2004-12-16T18:37:00.000-05:00

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

Taya

2004-12-08T08:47:00.000-05:00

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

Allie, Allie in Free

2004-12-05T19:31:00.000-05:00

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

2004-12-02T20:44:00.000-05:00

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

From India

2004-12-01T08:58:00.000-05:00

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

Relationships 210, P.S.

2004-11-29T21:02:00.000-05:00

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

Relationships 210

2004-11-29T18:02:00.000-05:00

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.

India, Are you Listening?

2004-11-29T16:23:00.000-05:00

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

Light = Sanity

2004-11-29T10:52:00.000-05:00

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

Not a Star System

2004-11-28T10:41:00.000-05:00

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

Relationships 101

2004-11-26T13:53:00.000-05:00

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

Girl Stuff vs. Guy Stuff

2004-11-24T15:15:00.000-05:00

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

Depravity of the Best Kind

2004-11-23T22:48:00.000-05:00

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

Walk in Beauty

2004-11-23T20:53:00.000-05:00

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

Fifty Words for Snow

2004-11-22T18:20:00.000-05:00

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

The 'I' Word

2004-11-22T13:15:00.000-05:00

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

Dissociative or Deaf, You Decide

2004-11-21T20:50:00.000-05:00

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

Close Encounters of the Bird Kind

2004-11-21T17:25:00.000-05:00

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

The Balance of Good and Evil

2004-11-20T18:21:00.000-05:00

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

I'm Pretty Sure I'm Real

2004-11-18T20:48:00.000-05:00

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

Snow Swans

2004-11-18T14:27:00.000-05:00

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