Salty Flashback (WARNING: Graphic)

My name is Cristina D. Johnson

Today Michelle and I talked about an article I read about DID. I had sent it to her, to get her opinion. See, I am pretty pissed off about this whole DID thing and for the past two days, have fought the notion. Fuck that. I don't have DID. No way.

But then I read the article... searching, I suppose. Just wanting answers. Something. Anything. I don't know. Some kind of answer or answers for the weird, crazy shit my mind goes through and the stuff that just doesn't make sense.

I asked her what she thought about the article, "besides the typos," I said...

"There were typos?"

"Yeah. Several," I said.

"I didn't notice."

"I did. I didn't like it," I told her.

And, like any good therapist, I suppose, she shot my own question back at me. "What did you think about it?"

I shrugged. I didn't have an answer.

We talked about the reasons why I might have sent it to her, what I was looking for. She asked me what the DID means for me, what's wrong with it?

I  told her I am among the victims of The Seven Faces of Eve and Sybil - those who see DID as some malady where you change personalities so overtly that people think you're crazy.

"I don't want to be crazy."

"Do you think you're crazy?"

"Sometimes I want to go crazy."

"Do you?"

"Sometimes."

It felt like I needed to fit too much into the session. Like always, I suppose. In a hurry. I want this over with. I want all these stupid fucking "parts" or "fragments" or what the hell ever it is to go away so I can know who the hell I am because that is what I fear the most and I don't want to fear anything.

Still, my "core self" (whoever that is) lies dormant and hidden.

I felt a surge...a need to tell her what happened last night, despite this feeling I had not to say anything. But this urge took over, this bizzare disconnection happened and there I was, saying it.

"Tell me something," I said to her. "Last night, when I went to bed, I had a flashback," I continued, not waiting for her to speak. She sat quietly and I talked.

"I don't know how old I was. I was on the streets. There was a car - the door was open - and a big black man and he had a gun to my head. He had me on my knees. He made me perform oral sex on him right there, and he held the gun at my temple and said, 'Swallow it or I'll blow your fucking brains out.' So I swallowed it. I remember this very vividly, even though I couldn't tell you how I got there, where we were [except that we were in St. Louis] or anything.

"But then the flashback went from that to Bill and it stopped with Gary. I got this sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, envisioning Gary." My father - my first predator - didn't even come to mind, despite my vivid memory of asking him as a child, "Daddy what is that white stuff?" and his response: "I don't know, honey," as he handed me a towel to wipe it off.

I was emotionless. The black man, the gun, the swallowing - how it burned - those things were far removed from me, aside from the visual (and the burning sensation which I can call upon if I choose, but I choose not to). Instead, I was overwhelmed with disgust over the taste of semen.

"I tasted semen. I felt it was flooding my mouth," I told her, speaking of last night. "This has never happened before."

I was laying in bed. Bill was asleep. I hadn't watched or read anything that might have prompted it, but there it was - suddenly - and I was heaving, panting, sitting upright, reminding myself who I was, where I was, that I was safe. And there was an argument in my head and I was trying to ....I don't know, calm it down.

So strange.

"What the hell is that?" I asked her. "I mean, if someone ever did something like that to my daughter, I would consider it traumatic. But me? Who cares?"

She said this centers around this enormous shame I have. I trust her. I believe this, even if I don't understand it.

She said (paraphrasing), "While you think it'd be better if you didn't exist, you have people standing on the other side of the [chasm] saying, 'Come over here. You deserve to be here. You deserve to be safe, loved.'"

"I don't think I'm really doing anyone any favors by existing," I argued, adding: "Except for Trevor."

"I would argue that," she said calmly.

She did tell me one thing:

She told me she's seen me switch and described some of the ways it appears when I do. My posture changes, my countenance changes, my voice changes, my body language changes.

We discussed other things I've experienced that I've never told anyone and am not yet ready to now.

For now, at least.

I'm very confused and I feel lost. But part of me figures, you can't really be found, until you're lost first.

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.