The Holidays Are Always Hard [Me]

I think the holiday season is always hard for everyone. You've got to buy presents without enough money, schedule get-togethers without enough time, and visit all those relatives that you tend to avoid during the rest of the year. We're all stressed during the holidays, whether about money, time, relatives, or some awful combination of the above. Added to that, we hit the shortest days of the year, and the weather suddenly turns cold. It's dark and wet and dreary all the time. There's all kinds of work deadlines to catch up to, and now people pressure you to think about resolutions for next year. No wonder we're all cranky and depressed during the holidays.

Over the last dozen holiday seasons, I spent seven or eight of them working on a stage version of A Christmas Carol. Which means from the beginning of October until mid-December, I was Christmassing very hard. By the time the show closed and the actual holiday came about, I just wanted it to be over. The other years, well, I was still a single mom with a little girl to buy presents for - money stresses and trying not to fight with her father over scheduling ruled a lot of my holidays.

The last couple of years, I was driving back-and-forth up to Kentucky to get my daughter, move her out of her dorm, visit my parents, move her back in the dorm, and try to help everyone get everywhere they were supposed to be. Not only did I not have the money for presents, but I needed to buy lots of gas, too! Add to that, every year I tend to get really sick either on Thanksgiving Day or Christmas Day - like, can't open presents or get out of bed long enough to eat a meal kind of sick. So health and money have been major stressors.

This year, things weren't so bad. The new job means I have more cash than I'm accustomed to, so early in the season, I spent some quiet hours at work buying presents. The real trick was saving them for Christmas instead of giving them out immediately. So my money situation is much, much better than usual. And my fantastic daughter managed her own ride from her dorm to home, and she didn't have to move out-and-in her  dorm, so that saved me a couple of days of driving and lots of gas money. We even have a scheme for getting her back that will combine with visiting family, and not as much driving as taking her back myself.

I didn't sign on for any big projects this year, either. No haunted house, no holiday plays, nothing. So I have the time and energy to visit and do things - and relax some, too. And we figured out one cause of the getting sick every year - I'm allergic to the cinnamon scent that's in all the Christmas potpourri and stuff. By buying my gifts online, I've avoided the stuff in stores that makes me sick every year.

So the only thing left from above is fighting with the ex. Well, the kid's an adult now, and she's finally starting to stand up for herself with him. Which means I'm not interacting with him at all. In fact, her boyfriend is supporting her in that more than I am. I'm pretty pleased with him; he seems to be a good guy.

So yeah, all the normal Christmas stress stuff is pretty okay for me this year. I haven't stressed much about it at all. The weather's been mild, and I've spent lots of time with the people who are actually important to me. And some time resting and relaxing. Not that we haven't had ANY issues. There's always something, isn't there? Boss is searching for a job; his could end at any time. The metamour has on-again, off-again health issues - but more good days than bad, lately, I think.

Kiara still seems to be mourning Bear. But we're headed to his house tonight for gaming, and we went to a Yule party at his house. We're trying to figure out how to relate with him now. And we'll get there. For now, Sam seems to be best at interacting with him. She was never that attached to him. But Kiara came out for presents on Christmas, and she got several.

Paul got several Christmas presents specifically for him, too. He's had some rough times working through how his system interacts with Boss lately, and we weren't sure he would even come to front for Christmas. But he did, and now he and Boss are starting to work things out again, carefully figuring out how things work.

Gracelyn also took a period of being missing. But not because she was upset; just because she didn't feel that she was all that needed. She's always been mostly background, sometimes moreso than others. Boss has been on vacation from his job, so she hasn't been out to drive to and from work with him, as we carpool. When we drive alone, it's usually me or Sam driving. Silent One has also been much quieter lately, but it did come out the other night, and it was a very calm event.

Stephanie is continuing to show up, and less likely to 'go blank', taking the body into a disconnected state. Cherish hasn't been out much, though. There's another slave to take some of her being. But when she is out, she has a lot more confidence, even a hint of a sense of humor. I'd like to see her out more.

Rubi has had a few opportunities for topping lately, and has had a couple of serious play sessions as a bottom. She doesn't seem to miss Bear as much as I expected, or maybe she's just biding her time? I feel like her complacency may be temporary, so I'd like to have her a regular play partner again. But it's probably a good thing, health-wise, that we aren't having as many heavy play scenes lately. And Sam's getting more play now, instead.

Memory Rush [Me]

I've known for a long time that my memories from when my daughter was a baby were, well, toast. I could remember looking at the pictures, and I could remember some facts, but my memories from the time I was married to her father, up through about the time she learned to walk, are pretty nonexistent. That's the time period when I fractured apart, and yeah, nothing's there. The time period just 'skips' in my head, like a scratched record. I was a horny teenager, and then I had a toddler.

I know that those memories are blacked out because there are so many unhappy stressful ones there. But there are also all my memories of my daughter being born, and being an infant, and getting to know her. And I don't have them. I'd take back all the memories of abuse just to have my memories of my baby back.

Today I got a memory back.

One of the reasons I haven't been writing too much lately (among several reasons) is that I've been going through old scrapbooks and scanning all the photos to digital format. I have a fear that they're all going to get destroyed or lost or something, and I want to have that visual record.

I was scanning photos from her first year, and at Ten Months, I got to a picture where she's in a grandparent's lap with some cousin or another, squirming to get down. There's a real sense of movement in the picture. And something about the movement, the look on her face, or the clothes she was wearing, triggered a memory. The first thing I got was the feeling of her little fat baby thighs in my hands. I remember holding her, squeezing her thighs, and the way they felt. I remember the smell of my baby's skin and hair, and the exact way she felt squished up against me in a hug, squirming to get down. I even remember the texture of the outfit she's wearing in the picture, the exact color of pink and the coarseness of the cloth. I remember that ten-month-old little girl. And I've been crying ever since.

Merry Christmas to me.

Really Bad Poetry (Me)

I went searching out my scrapbooks so that I could scan more photos. And one of the scrapbooks I found was full of my old poetry. The stuff I wrote when I was 15 or so, and just discovering that boys could break my heart so badly. Most of it, of course, is pretty awful stuff. Are we all that dramatically emo at fifteen?

But I started typing them all into a document on the computer so that I'll have a record or them, should anything happen to the hardcopy. And there's something interesting I found. Very early on, I find heartbreak, not about a boy, but about two boys, or three. Stressing myself over how I can love them both, and how they could both be happy about that.

Some excerpts:

I swear by all the gods
That I am in love.
So why, then, must I still be forced
To care for all these others?

My heart is cut into many pieces
By many, many people.
Each cuts his own piece,
Whether he says he is a friend or more.

If only the second and first were to meet,
               And both were mature enough to understand.

So apparently I had some very poly leanings long before I knew that such a thing existed. Interesting.

A Fourth Blog [Me]

So I've started another blog. I'm up to four now; that might explain why I'm so inconsistent about writing to any particular one.

This is the primary blog. It's about being multiple, being poly, being kinky, about being me. Mostly, it's about being multiple, but the kinky and poly and other stuff all tend to bleed through. So really, this is 'my blog', in the sense of what a blog is typically used for.

The second blog I have is for my fiction writing, http://moretoconsider.blogspot.com. I have two ongoing stories going: More to Consider - vanilla girls meets kinky guy, gets into kink - and The Lockbox - girl wakes up locked in a storage box, at the mercy of some man. I have a series of kinky short stories, under the umbrella title Kink Me. Sam has written one short and intends to write more, under the umbrella title Sam And. And Paul has written a post with his memories, and intends to write more, under the umbrella title Be. There's also a vampire story and some poetry.

The third blog I have is my collection of quotations, at http://quotefiles.blogspot.com/. I love quotations. From well-known classic authors to Bible verses to bumper stickers, any quote I enjoy ends up there. I also have an entry of Toasts and one for 'Everything I Need to Know I Learned from Firefly'.

And now the fourth one. Stories of Tori - http://storiesoftori.blogspot.com/. I'm going to start recording some of the stories I tell over and over again about my daughter, what a cool person she is, being a parent, all kinds of things. I like to think that maybe one day I'll print them all into a book to give her, to share as she wishes with her own children.

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Thinking about these stories makes me sad. Because in many cases, what I remember is the story, not the actual event. My memories are so tenuous without some anchor to hold them to me, and sooner or later, it is the anchor that I remember. This was brought home last night to me, when I was scanning some old pictures onto the computer. Some of them were tucked behind other pictures, so when I took the first out of a frame, I found more. And some of these 'more' pictures, I don't remember. I mean, looking at them, I begin to remember the picture. But I don't really remember the time of the picture being taken.

For instance, there are a set of photos taken of me as a little girl in a velvet & lace dress, and then as a big girl in a velvet & lace blouse. They were taken by a particular photographer, along with others, and displayed at my house growing up. They were great photos; they won awards and everything. We decided, when my daughter was little, to get her picture taken at the same age in the same dress and blouse, in something close to the same pose. Since we knew that we had my picture taken at ages four and twelve, we had hers taken at ages four and twelve. Last night I scanned the photos in. And on my photo, on the back, was a date. It was taken when I was six, not four.

I've known for twenty-plus years that that was a picture of me at four years old. How did I know this? Because I remember hearing my Mom say it. And yet, there's the proof; I was six. Did she remember my age incorrectly? Or is it my memory that is faulty?

I scanned nearly 40 pictures. And with many of them, I remember the picture, but not the event pictured. Except for one. I found a picture of me with my mother. I am an adult, wearing a black dress with black velvet polka-dots. She is wearing a fancy white beaded dress. I think it was taken on a cruise we went on after I graduated. I'm pretty sure that's what it's from. But looking at the picture, I don't remember it being taken. What I do remember is the way the skirt of that black dress felt on my fingers. Looking at the black dress, I remember that I wore it in a choir competition in Chicago, with a women's chorus that I was in during college. Was it high school? No, I'm pretty sure it was college. And I ended up giving that dress to my mother, because she loved it, and it no longer fit me. So the photo doesn't give me the memory of the event it was taken for. But it does remind me of other memories - women's choir, and a gift to my mom.

The Magic Daughter - The Urge to Tell [Me]

More reading of The Magic Daughter. The author opens the book by telling of a time she was on an academic review committee, and was faced with disciplining a student who was also multiple. She feels attacked by the reactions of the other committee members, calling the student psycho and crazy. She didn't out herself, but managed to argue successfully on behalf of the student. But she felt like she should have done more. After the crisis passes, she had some rough personality switches, in reaction to the event.

"And I find myself struggling still with the urge to tell about my life as a dissociator and a multiple - and with the equally powerful urge to remain silent. The reasons for silence and secrecy are many and obvious. The first is pathology, plain and simple. A child creates multiple selves in order to keep her deadly secrets out of the way of her conscious mind so that she can continue to function and to survive. My secret selves protected me from the demands and expectations of a family focused in desperate ways... My selves contained my fierce desire to live, a  desire too dangerous to display... My selves hid the secrets of incest and of other cruelties that, all these years later, still take my breath away. My selves wept and sorrowed; they plotted wild, improbably scenarios of revenge. But they also kept safe my dreams, formed a tight protective circle around my soul, and acquired talents and traits that I would later smuggle, unbeknownst to my family and indeed to myself, out of the family circle."

 I faced my own committee situation just today. I read a letter in an advice column; a young man wrote in that his girlfriend had lied to him about having other relationships. He confronted her, and she said she wasn't doing any such thing. She freely offered to let him look at her email history. And the proof was there. She swore she didn't remember writing any of the incriminating emails. But there they were. She's been diagnosed with BPD; she's on medications. But she completely doesn't remember things that there is ample proof of.

To most readers, it sounded like she was simply lying to him. And that may be true. But any decent liar would have made some attempt to delete the emails before offering to let him see her email account. It sounded like she was as surprised to see those emails as he was. And yet they indicated an ongoing back-and-forth conversation. How could you not remember such a thing? What if it wasn't you that wrote them? Being multiple would explain it, and many multiples are treated for BPD (borderline personality disorder) first, as well as other personality and mental balance issues.

So I wrote in on the comments for the advice column. And then looked at the signature block. Do I sign my name? Do I explain that I'm multiple? I could see the previous comments above, vilifying the girl and telling him to get away from her. In the end, I did not identify myself, but urged the young man to point her to a therapist of some sort, with DID as simply one possible explanation. And though I had the option to sign my post anonymously, I went ahead and put an identifier - MultiMe, my handle on this blog site. If someone else reads that, and thinks they or someone they care about is DID, maybe they will look for me. Or at least take the negligible legitimacy lent by signing my post and listen, and see a professional about it. Instead of just dumping the person and leaving them still broken and confused.