nanowrimo madness

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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