Routine update (plus a little)

My name is Cristina D. Johnson

Haven't seen Michelle for awhile - it's been several days. I don't have transportation to see her unless it's a late afternoon appointment. This is really wearing on me. I am struggling a bit.

Woke up this morning with a sense of dread and a "who do you think you are?" complex and that now all-too-familiar feeling of being in trouble. I hate that feeling. I started feeling it when I lived with Gary. It's somatic and .....emotional(?). I feel it across my backside, sometimes down my legs, as if anticipating a beating. I hate the feeling.

But because I've been sick the past couple days, NyQuil has been my friend so I took some of that, fell back asleep and at least that feeling left me.

Then I awoke the second time and I felt indescribably stupid for writing the blog I wrote yesterday. I don't know why, but I'm pretty sure that's where the "who do you think you are?" came from. Who do I think I am?

Hell if I know - haha.

At least for now I'm okay with that, though at times it's a bit unnerving.

"Hi, what's your name?"

"Uh...Cristina?.....I think?" (c'mon...ya gotta see the humor in it).

Anytime I've switched or begun to dissociate and Bill asks me "Who am I talking to?" I snap out of it.

Actually, not every time; just every time that I remember.

(Also see: Multiple Personality Disorder: Switching Between the Alters - a little less clinical).

How bizarre....how strange and peculiar. How difficult to wrap one's head around.

Anyway, today I was sick - I dreamed of Bill. It wasn't a bad dream; wasn't a good dream. Pretty neutral, really.... at least I thought at first.

But I do believe our dreams are (in short) reflections of (or awarenesses of) our subconscious minds, telling us things. In my case, also could be alters reaching out (such as the two dreams I recently had about a little black boy being abused who wouldn't show his face, but that's a different story).

In this dream, the message seems so clear: I'm repeating an old pattern. I say this with absolute fondness and adoration and devotion to Bill, but the truth is, I am dependent and I am also veering away from my path - another reason I need to see Michelle again.

I'm falling back into an old pattern of trying to be a 'good wife' or a 'good woman' and do all the right things. Mixed in there, somewhere, is the "me" that Bill knew and loved over 10 years ago. The "me" that would go out and party and come home to find him plopped in front of his T.V. at 2 a.m. in his apartment as I returned to mine. The "me" that was somewhat flamboyant and extremely opinionated, inside and outside the relative safety of my own apartment.

And....the "me" that drank too much.

In my defense, I don't drink like I did back then. I couldn't. I'm getting too old for it (haha) but I know, now, that certain things that I drink will cause me to shift, as well as where I drink them.

For this reason, I try to keep it to just beer, but I do have an occasional dip into a favorite flavored vodka which, most often is harmless - a couple nips, here and there. But sometimes it gets bad and I recall nothing.

On a typical day, however, I have anywhere from two to six beers - depending on how late we stay up. Sometimes we will go through a whole twelve pack, plus Vodka, such as was the case over the holidays, which isn't to say we get inebriated - because we don't - but we do drink (of course, there are also days when we don't drink any alcohol at all).

I know that I will stop. There have been times in the past when I've stopped of my own accord and I don't have the same feelings about it now, that I used to (back in 04 and the beginning of 05, I would panic if I got down to a six-pack. Today, if I run out, oh well. I ran out).

Today, it's a lot different and I know the power of control it can have over you.

So to me, based on today's dream in which Bill said to me, "We need more nights like that [where we don't drink] so we can have more party nights," it was both sobering (no pun intended) and enlightening. It was a bit difficult to swallow (again, no pun intended) but truth is true.

Truth is True.

And I want my reality and my Truth and my journey to be real to anyone who reads it because it is real and it hurts sometimes and it's so scary other times but of all the good and/or bad things it is and will be, it is real and I am a real person, sitting here, living vicariously through my keyboard and hoping someone else reads this not with judgment but, rather, a sense of relief that they are not alone.

You are not alone.