Three roads converge.

I stopped writing here for quite a while because I was both struggling myself to tolerate what it was I needed and wanted to say and also because of what other people might think or say in response to what I write here.  I think it has been mostly the first reason- fear of knowing myself better.  In any case- one of the things I came to understand very clearly when I was in the hospital was that the more I talked- the better I felt.  I have to repeat myself a lot- especially regarding really painful ideas which are painful to hear and thus difficult to process- and since I do have divided ways of thinking- I really do need to go over the same ideas more than once.  Anyway- I am going to just start writing here more- partly out of panic and the pain which are occurring from the 'letting go of the wish'- which I wrote about in a previous post.
While I was in the hospital two different nurses who told me they knew about dissociative disorders at different times asked me, "Am I talking to Jenny now or one of the alters?"  And both times I had the exact same response.  I felt like it was such an odd question and both times I just said, "I'm Jenny."  Which I think was a good answer because how some part of me felt and what some part of me wanted to say was, "You've been watching a lot of TV lately, huh?"  It really was a weird question and it really felt awful when they asked me it.  It felt awful because:  I am always Jenny.  I am not Jenny and then a bunch of alters.  I am one person who sometimes feels like different people.  It really is like a constellation- Orion is the name of a constellation and the constellation is made up of many stars- that is sort of the best way I have of explaining what it is like to have DID.  Jenny is the name of the constellation and the constellation (my mind) feels divided into a lot of different ways of thinking.  And really most people's minds are like this- people have different ways of thinking about things.  The main difference between my mind and anyone else's mind is that I have not been able to know fully about all of the parts of my own mind.
I have been working to be able to tolerate knowing more of my own mind and that has brought me to the place of understanding that I have to let go of the wish that my parents were not abusive.
Before I left the hospital on Monday I wrote on one of the first pages of a beautiful new little sketchbook the following:  Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, AND I TOOK BOTH.
And I meant this:  For all of my life it is like I have been running down two roads- one road on which I knew about the abuse and another on which I did not and I was always imagining that the two roads would never meet.  But the roads met.  It makes me want to cry just to type that.  Anyway- the roads met and the wish that my parents had never been horribly abusive was killed at their convergence.  And I was thinking today how I had written yesterday that I went into the hospital because I came to the understanding that I have to let go of the wish that my parents did not abuse me- which is sort of what happened.  But it was also really that when I started to understand what was happening- that I had to fully stop pretending and wishing- I felt like I might hurt myself because I was so scared.  I was so scared and lost and completely terrified about it all- I thought I might hurt myself- I wasn't sure what was going to happen.  I was unsure what was going to happen next because I had never even imagined my life without the wish.  And when I did- imagine my life without the wish- I felt like I might just not make it. So that is why I really went into the hospital.
I was feeling better through the metaphor about the two roads and how I had taken them both- I had come to understand something that had been really difficult to understand.  But I felt like something was still not quite right- that some piece was still missing and then I came to understand that there was a third road.  There was the knowing, the not knowing and then the final road- the last piece and the most painful road of all: the road of Stockholm Syndrome.
I'll write about that as soon as I can.