Bookmark Events for Paul [Me, Gracelyn]

Paul found a new memory last night, of his eleventh birthday. Gracelyn and I have talked a few times about Paul, wondering why he manifests at the ages he does. He can be five, eight, eleven, or fourteen, but no ages in between. Many alters stuck at a certain age are held there by a 'bookmark event', some event that makes the mind mark it as important, an event after which things changed.

Much of Paul's history is recorded on his own page. But it's all out of order, so I'll summarize here. It's not a pretty story, and takes place in another world, perhaps an alternate timeline? Please consider this a trigger warning, and don't read further if child abuse is going to upset you too much.

• At age five, Paul is 'Baby Paul'. His mother 'rents' him out to a variety of men for sexual play for money or drugs, and he gets an ice cream as a reward. He's a solemn child, and his speech development is far behind. He sucks his thumb.
• At eight years old, Paul now has a baby brother who is three. His mother is hooked up with someone Paul calls 'Uncle', who has made his mom get off the drugs. Uncle molests him regularly, but not violently.
• Age eleven, and Paul has struck a deal with Uncle to cooperate in return for his brother being left alone. He's going to school regularly. He's explained that he gets fed two meals a day at school, so he likes going.
• At fourteen, Paul is only attending school irregularly. Uncle has gone away for good, so home life is better. But he skips school now that he's learned how to get money by sneaking in the back of a local bar and blowing men for cash. His plans for the future are to get a job when he's sixteen and drop out of school.

I understand that there are children in this real world that live this kind of life. I don't have any direct experience with this sort of thing, though. So it's very disturbing to me that this 'memory set' exists in my head. I grew up pretty privileged and well-loved, and should not have this kind of thing to remember.

But the point of this post was to write about bookmark events. So. Why 5, 8, 11, and 14? There has been some discussion - speculation - that perhaps something happened at each of those ages to 'set' them as a point to return to, kind of like a 'save point' in a video game.

My guess would be that age five is when the regular prostitution of the little boy began. He remembers his mother telling the men he was six, as if that made a difference. So perhaps when he could 'pass' for six is when she decided it was okay to do this to him? Similarly, I would expect that age eight is when Uncle entered the picture, and age fourteen is when he exited. At each point, the type of abuse the boy suffered changed.

And last night we found out about what happened when Paul turned eleven. The memory surfaced, and he relived it there in bed last night. After, he quietly spoke into the darkness, knowing that Boss was listening. Some of the following he said aloud, some only to himself. A few bits I'm hearing him remember now as I write:

"On my eleventh birthday, I ran away from home. When it got to be nighttime, I asked around, and some homeless guy - homeless like me, now - told me there was a shelter I could sleep at, but I had to be twelve to get in as an adult, or have a parent with me to get in the family shelter. So I lied and told 'em I was twelve. I got a meal and a shower, then they told me to pick an empty cot in a big room like the gym at school. There were a bunch of men and boys there. I laid down and went to sleep.
Sometime during the night, I heard someone come up near me. I could smell cigarette smoke on him, and then he started rubbing his hand on me; it was bony and cold. He grabbed at my penis a couple of times; I rolled over to keep him from getting to it. Then he started kissing on the back of my neck and whispering stuff at me. I couldn't really tell what he was saying, but the kisses were slobbery and messy. I just stayed real still. After a few minutes, he went away. The next morning, I went home."

I presume that when he went home, that's when Paul made his agreement with Uncle that he could molest him, as long as he left the little brother alone, and Paul wouldn't fight him or tell anyone about it. He's nodding at me, inside. So a bookmark was created, and now Paul goes back to being eleven, when he remembers that the abuse at home is at least not too bad and can be endured.

Stephanie Finds a Voice [Me]

For Stephanie and for Silent One both, they don't exist enough in this world that I can link to them clearly. Not the way I can Sam or Kiara or Paul - we can more or less read each others' minds, when we think to do so. When, say, Kiara is out, I can observe what she is doing, as well as feel what she is feeling, and I can mostly eavesdrop on her thoughts as well. I know why she's doing something, more or less. Maybe it's less reading her mind and more understanding her. But for Stephanie, just because she is out, it doesn't necessarily mean that I 'get' her any better. All I can do is watch and try to keep up. And it's not as easy to watch - like I'm watching from behind a curtain or something.

This morning, Stephanie spoke, a little. It gave me a tiny glimpse into her world. We got up to take a shower as usual. But we recently got a new shower-head, and it's amazing - it pours out so much water over a large area, and it's just pure luxury to stand under it. The danger with that is that Stephanie is so strongly drawn to water. If she comes out, it's usually connected with a shower or a bath. Boss knows that if I'm in the shower too long, he needs to come fetch her out and help us switch back; it's happened a few times.

But this morning, as I'm enjoying the shower spray, Stephanie came forward. She delights in the feel of the spray hitting her ears, and the sound of the water tapping. I watched her turn slowly around. As she settled into the body, she adjusted her weak arm to hang straight down, and put her weight on her good leg. She swayed back and forth under the water, enjoying the water spray moving over and around her body, especially around her head. I noticed that when the water completely covered her bad shoulder, the phantom pain from it seemed to go away.

And that's when I heard her voice. If you've ever watched the movie Nell, you'll remember how she blurred words until they were unrecognizable, but they were language to her. Here's a clip with some, if you want - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHbQI2305qw. 'Tay ina win' is 'dance in the wind'. 'Done key' is 'don't cry'. And 'Ah so ta-ta' is 'I was so tired.' And so on. It sounds like someone who is deaf learning to speak aloud. And that's how Stephanie sounded. Just a whisper, but over and over again, I could make out, "Was bluh 'way." And as she kept repeating it, I think she was saying 'wash the blood away'; and she may have been singing. I couldn't hear a tune, exactly, but she was... pitching the noises?

So my first thought, knowing that she's from pre-Civil War slavery, was that it could be a song she was singing, a spiritual hymn perhaps. There are several with something about being washed by the blood, or about blood washing your sins away, or something like that. And slaves at that time were often baptized by their Christian owners, so that's possible. Stephanie's also very literal-minded. If she was baptized, she could easily have believed she was being washed with actual blood, and it needed to be washed away. Or she could have been washing in blood, or washing blood away, from some other tribal belief or something. It's not very clear to me, but it is terribly interesting.

Either way, when the water started running cold, for once Stephanie let me give her some direction. She turned off the water, dried off, and went to find Boss. I had hoped he would realize we were in the shower too long, and come rescue her. But I was pleased she let me 'push' her to make the next few steps. She did get to him, and he got her to step back internally so that I could take over.

Stephanie and Cherish both have that limitation. They will rarely switch away on their own; they need orders to do so. The rest of us can switch in and out at will, but the two slaves deny having any will of their own. Silent One, too, doesn't always cooperate with switching. But we can sometimes lure it away if left quiet for a while.

Status Update [Me]

The article about my class is online! We had a reporter come to the Kink 101 class that I taught, and here is the article that she wrote for Out & About. It wasn't great, but it's something, and it was positive about Kink, even if awfully light-hearted. It's not in the January print edition, so I'm guessing it'll be in February's.

We're still working on coming up with a name for Silent One - the kids stand outside the bars on the door to its room and try calling it. But when it does come to the door, we can't tell if it's responding to the kids, or to the name. The favorites are currently Umber, Tomak, Ilkin, Nox, Ferine, Fuzzy, or Tornit.

Some major happenings have occured in our friendship/sex life, but nothing that really impacts our multiplicity, so I think I want to keep it to myself and enjoy snuggling up to the memory. We've been really stable lately, for us, so I haven't felt too motivated to write.

The only major movement we've been having is with Paul. Back in mid-October, he got 'reset' somehow. He came out with a major loss of memories - and a loss of emotional connection to Boss to go with that. They've been working to rebuild their relationship since. Mostly Boss has worked on wooing him back. He's pushed more on regaining a friendship and a physical relationship than a romantic relationship, because Paul seemed to shy away from anything that might be interpreted as emotional.

But just before Christmas, that backfired in a huge way. Paul completely freaked out one night, pulling away and crying and hitting out at Boss. Then he wouldn't come out at all for several days because he was afraid of the consequences of what happened.

Since then, there have been a lot of conversations between me and Boss, and Gracelyn and Boss, and Gracelyn and Paul. Finally, Boss and Paul had a long discussion about their relationship, and the fact that Paul has the right to call things off (safeword), but he has to actually say it, or Boss can't read his mind and know things are going too far.

That conversation really seems to release a lot of the tension, and Paul's been out on pretty much a daily basis. He's really growing as a personality a lot. Some friends gave us a couple of compression shirts and boots, and we bought him a pair of pants and some underwear of his own. With his own wardrobe, he's got more confidence in his separation from the rest of the system. Our friends are recognizing him quickly, and that boosts his self-confidence, too. Last year, he created his own Fetlife account, and he's been getting more and more active there. He's even started exploring what kinds of activities he might be interested in, kink-wise, so that he can interact more. And with the GPS installed in the truck now, he's happy to do more of the driving.

I'm really enjoying seeing the boy out so much, defining himself. I know it pleases Boss a lot, too.

System Meeting [Me]

So, how are things going? This is something I ask myselves pretty frequently, and today I'm going to run the exercise and try to type it up as we go. Hopefully, this will give you an idea of what I'm experiencing.

I envision all of us sitting around together talking. A conference table would be great, but we won't all sit at a conference table and behave. So let's have a big comfy couch, the overstuffed kind that wraps around three sides of a square, and has a big ottoman in the middle to rest your feet on. We've been on a corduroy kick lately; let's make it a dark green corduroy.

I'll sit in the middle, with Gracelyn to my left. She has her clipboard out, and her reading glasses on (I didn't realize she wore reading glasses until just now). I know she'll take notes, which will come in handy when I forget what was said. We'll put the two slaves on the other side of her. They sit quietly, Cherish with her hands in her lab, sitting up straight and attentive, Stephanie leaning against her side, looking out at the rest of us with big eyes. Paul's slouched deep into the couch playing a video game, his bottom hanging off the couch, and his knees bent, feet on the ottoman. Kiara's in the corner of the couch. She's mostly standing, sitting on the arm of the couch, picking lint off the surface.

To my right, Sam is moving around restlessly. Sometimes she whispers into Rubi's ear, getting an answering smirk. Rubi's slouch isn't much more upright than Paul's, and she's got one foot cocked up on the ottoman, too, as she leans against the other corner of the couch. Silent One mills around at the end of the couch, curling up on the ottoman or sniffing around the floor as it wants to. This is a good day for a meeting; everyone has shown up. I don't really have an agenda of things I want to cover, just a check-in, so it may be a short meeting.

"Okay, I'll get started," I say. "Let's talk about the body. Anybody have anything going on we need to talk about?" Silence, of course; no one wants to start things off. "The shoulder's been hurting on and off lately. Right now it's feeling just fine. Thoughts on that?"

Sam flicks a torn piece of paper at Stephanie; she flinches like she's been hit with something more significant. Stephanie has a permanent injury to her left arm, as well as her jaw, and they ache when she's out more. "I think it's Steph, trying to come out at weird times. We've been extra-careful not to do anything to hurt it. We're about as un-injured as we get. Is there something coming up we're trying to be healthy for?"

Gracelyn answers her. "We still have two more doctor's visits to go this month, and it's polite to keep marks to a minimum until then. After that, our anniversary is coming up, and I understand there's a scene planned for that. Will we need to avoid injury between now and then?"

"Naw," spits out Rubi. "I mean, it'll be intense mentally, but we just need to not get cut up on our back, I think. Other stuff's fair game. It's been a long time since I've got to cut. Thighs are pretty clear - but I'll wait till after the doctor's visits."

Paul speaks up now, "When we were driving, on the trip? We used our left arm a lot for that; maybe we overworked it then? The truck's easier to drive left-handed than right." He's right; it pulls to the right, so driving with the left is easier. Kiara and Cherish are primarily left-handed, but he's ambidextrous.

Kiara pipes up, "I can color with my right hand now. My arm hurt too much for coloring, so I switched hands." Several people nod; her right-handed coloring was much more controlled than her left, since the body has better fine motor control on that side.

Sam flicks another piece of paper at Silent One; it snarls and snaps at it, then ignores it. It seems to me that topic is complete, so I move on. "Paul, you got locked in front the other day; everything okay now?"

"Yeah, access is back to normal, and I've been doing fine. I spent some time hanging out with Mister more the other night. It was good." I'm aware of what he's been going through, trying to re-define his relationship with Boss. It went through a rough period when his memories re-set, and he's still recovering. Gracelyn touches me on the knee; we'll leave the topic there, and she'll keep talking to him one-on-one about it.

"Okay," I say, "Back to our anniversary scene. Sam, Rubi, and I will be involved, and it will be at the club." I describe what we've got in mind. "Is anyone else interested in participating somehow?"

"Will it hurt too bad for cuddling after?" Kiara asks. I don't know, never having done such a scene before, but I think there'll be room for her to come out at some point.

Paul ventures, "I think we need to do something else for the rest of us, too. Because that's only for three or four of us, and it's anniversary for all of us." I agree, and suggest that Paul and the slaves work with Gracelyn to try to come up with something for that side of the couch to do with Boss that's significant. Maybe Boss will have some ideas.

Kiara has a new topic. "We have too many S names. Everyone's supposed to have a different letter, for signing and naming. And we have a Sam and a Stephanie and a Silent One."

"Boss renamed Silent One 'Os', but it didn't take."

"Boss named Stephanie, too."

"Maybe he'll change it. He'll read about it in the blog."

"We should rename Silent One; it's not even quiet, sometimes."

"What'll we call it? Pet?"

"Nope, it's too wild to be a pet. And that's a P; it can't start with K, P, C, S, G, M, or R."

"Animal? Critter - no, that's a C. Somebody open a thesaurus." I bring up thesaurus.com and look up a few things.

I read off what comes up. "Can't be Beast; Boss has one of those already. Letters we can't start with are C, G, K, M, P, R, S. Something from 'feral'? Bestial, Brute, Ferine. Instinct. Gut, Impulse. Wild - Primeval - I'm running out of stuff, guys."

"Should it have a feminine ending? It's kind of female - sort of... Ferine - ferinus - ferinia?"

"No, that's terrible. Let's look up gender-neutral names - in case it turns out to not be female." Baby names sound 'too human', so on to dog names.

"Silent One sometimes has a fuzzy outline and is hard to see, like sasquatch..." So we look up different names for Bigfoot. And come up with Bukwas, Na'in, (okay, have to use Splintercat in a story sometime), Tornit, Tuneq, Boqs, Yowie, or Yeren. The harder K and T sounds are doing a better job of catching Silent One's attention.

"I'm tabling this one until next time. We'll talk to Boss and thing about it," I announce. Anything else that anyone wants to bring up?"

"Not while you're recording it and sharing it," Rubi points out. Granted; some things we don't want to post publicly, I suppose. I feel like I'm a reporter, except I'm also the subject of the report. No one else seems to have anything else they're willing to share publicly, so I bring the meeting to a close.

Not as Lost as You Might Think [Me]

More left-over end-of-the-holidays drama, it seems. Yesterday we had a pretty serious breakdown in communications. It all ended well, but it was incredibly frustrating.

Background - We went out of town (driving 2 hours each way) to visit the parents and grandparents. We took my daughter, who has been home from college on Christmas break, with us, and she was headed back to college from there. Because she's been home for the past few weeks, we've been switching around less. She's met Paul and Kiara, and even Cherish, and the kids will switch in to visit with her, but we switch a lot less when she's around. I'm her Mom more than any of us are anything else. Being her Mom is really important. Well, at my grandparents, I was out the entire time, completely and solidly. That's how it is around my parents.

So what that means is that I was stretched a little thin, more tired just from being out than I usually get. Family visit done, it was great, no problems. I left, driving alone now, and drove for a while, then stopped to visit some more friends along the way. That was also a great visit. They are kink- and multiple-friendly and knowledgeable folk. Kiara's been known to be out at their house, but not this time. I leave there, and I'm driving home and...

Paul's driving back toward town. He doesn't remember for sure how he switched in, but he's driving. That means he's about 14 years old; he's driven before, and it's okay. What's not okay is that, as he's approaching town, he realizes that he's not sure how to get home. And when he tries to 'search the files' for that information, nothing's coming up (the computer memory analogy works well here). Normally, Paul has full access to almost everything in my memory. This time, somehow, that map file wasn't available to him. As if maybe I'd 'logged out' with the file open? And he couldn't get a message to me, either. I'm getting all this now as if reading the logs of what happened; I don't remember, myself.

Well, Paul didn't panic. He tried messaging Boss, but got no answer (he was asleep at the time). Paul kept driving until he saw an exit that looked familiar. I live in an apartment with Boss and Metamour, but I also own a house that I used to live in, where some friends now live. The exit for the house is the one that looked familiar. So Paul took that exit, and followed this familiar route until he found himself at the house. One of my friends was home, so Paul went in and asked for help. He was embarrassed to find himself tearing up when he said he couldn't figure out how to get home, but he asked, and that's really important. I'm really proud of him.

The friend pulled up a map on the computer, and showed him how to get home, but then invited him to go for hot chocolate or ice cream, or just hang out for a while. The two went for the hot chocolate, and actually ended up having a good visit. Boss woke up and checked in, and Paul headed for home, using the route they'd looked up on the computer. About halfway there, something finally jiggled loose for me, and I managed to check in enough to free up the access to the memory for him. So by the time he got home, I was accessible, Boss was accessible, and the memories needed were accessible. Everything was covered, no problem.

The really funny part of the story? At my grandparents, I got a Christmas gift - a new GPS for my car. But my home address hadn't been plugged into it yet. Yep, GPS is pretty useless if you don't know where it is you're going...