The Elephant

My name is Cristina D. Johnson.

My blood runs cold tonight.

I was abandoned last night. Probably not literally, but in the end, at least for me, it was abandonment because once you say those words, they're spoken, and they reach down into a place that says, "See? You're a burden! You're trouble! Nothing but trouble!" which consequently pulls up that part of me that says, "Okay...seeya buddy. Never want to hear from you again."

I am irrational. I know. I am paranoid to go anywhere in my car smoking, afraid my landlady will happen by and see it (I told her I don't smoke). My basement door was unlocked this morning....FROM THE INSIDE.

So someone was in "my home" this morning, while I was asleep in bed. Fuck it.

The elephant in the room crushes me... I know what it is, and I know how it feels, but I cannot articulate it. I am not stupid. I am not useless. I am trustworthy.

Tiny images - like from little shards of a broken mirror - flash in my mind. Myself, giving me memories, little specks of time that I have consciously forgotten but I cannot see them, they flash so quickly.

That is what it is like. DID.

In the middle of a phone conversation and all the sudden, a flash....a flash of a shirt or something you can't quite identify but feel to the marrow of your bone, as if you're there - wherever "there" is - experiencing whatever that shard of pain is connected to.

And it's gone. Like a snap of the finger. So quickly, that if you don't interrupt the conversation and say, "Wait! I just saw something in my mind!" it disappears.

The emotional pain is overwhelming but it's so fleeting that it mercifully leaves in an instant. Same for the physical sensations that come with them.

Tiny little windows....into who I was, when I couldn't be there. When I couldn't withstand whatever was happening. That's what many children do. Escape into their minds. Out of their bodies so they don't feel the physical and emotional and mental torment of their experience. That's what creates "parts" or "alters" or "fragments".

These "parts" and "fragments" (there's a bit of a difference. Parts hold whole experiences, while fragments may hold only the emotion or the environment or the physical pain, et cetera) later come along in life and, as your psyche strengthens, these things are given to you as tormented gifts. Shadowy missing parts that you've blocked out.

Rage comes out for me a lot but because rage is an uncomfortable feeling, I swallow it back down, most of the time. Tonight, it's just suicide. This desire to not be alive. This deep-down belief that I don't deserve to be here...I don't belong here... The tears that would stain this page, were it made of paper, are filled with despair, yet I feel nothing for myself. As I said, my blood runs cold. I am bitterly angry at myself, disgusted with myself. What is wrong with you?

Feeling there is nobody to talk to... especially about the elephant in the room.