So I'm out to my daughter. Sort of. (Me)

My daughter is home from college. For the summer. I've had some discussions, both internal and external, about what that would mean for my household while she's home. While she's been gone, my household has become more and more a home/safe haven/hang-out place for a bunch of the kinky folk. I couldn't see closing down Motel M for several months. So I talked to my daughter about it. You know, I raised a really open-minded, cool person. She had a few very reasonable requests, having to do with the level of undress in the house and the use of her room. So I announced to the household that it's living as usual.

I teach a class at our local dungeon - "Dungeon 101: I'm Kinky, So Now What?" And one day last week, my daughter came upon some of the material for that class. She read the title out loud, and we held my breath, waiting for the reaction. She asked what the class was about, and that led to showing her the visual aids I use for the class. So I'm out to my daughter as kinky. She's fine with it, which I expected. She talked with her boyfriend about it, and let me know that she doesn't want to go to the dungeon herself, but she's fine with my lifestyle. We talked a little about some of the relationships I have, just for clarification.

So I'm out to my daughter as a kinky freak. And that went fine. I haven't talked to her about my multiplicity yet. I'm not sure if I'm going to. But her being around is already starting to put some pressure on our internal balance. If she's around, I'm out. I'm her Mom, and that's how it needs to be. Which means that the rest of us need to get out more when she's not around. She's a busy person; that's not too difficult. But we need to do so deliberately.

Am I being a coward? By all indications, she would take the news of my multiple personality status calmly and easily. I'm not sure if I'm protecting my daughter from having to deal with this, or protecting myself from having to tell her. Either way, we'll let the kinky out-ing settle in first before we tackle the possibility of coming out the rest of the way.

A Fractured Mind (Me)

I'm reading A Fractured Mind, written by fellow multiple Robert B. Oxnam.  This part tickled my fancy, so I'm sharing it. Contemplating integration, the dominant alter at the time is also considering stepping out of the central position and allowing another alter to take charge of their life:

In an ironic way, finding out about MPD came as a relief in this process. My burnout was total, and so I avoided a post-Asia Society life of sputtering about trying to light wet coals. Maybe it sounds bonkers to someone who does not have this disorder, but MPD gave me a chance to pass on my skills and memory bank without the responsibility of doing new jobs. It wasn't like dying. It was more like planned reincarnation.

I find this idea fascinating. And I think it makes the possibility of integration a little less terrifying. I can see where we've been a different 'me' in stages of life.

• I was a child, spoiled, a bit naive, well-loved and supported.
• My personality made a hard change at about 15, when I discovered boys and my parents' marriage fell apart. That led to my pregnancy and first marriage and dropping out of school. I guess you could call those Rubi's years.
• Then I had to pick up the pieces and grow up, attend college, raise my kid. Had another pitiful excuse for a marriage during those years, but when he left just before I turned 25, I made another huge shift.
• For six years, I was a born-again celibate single mom focused on raising my kid. And then, in my early 30s, I finally feel like I 'grew up'. I took control of my life, started having fun again. My daughter became a teen and started requiring less parenting and needing more friendship.
• And then I found kink and poly and discovered I was a multiple.

Some of these stages were really unpleasant. But they were valid parts of my life that define who I am today. I couldn't erase any of these stages and remain the same person. Likewise, I couldn't remove any of my personalities by integration and still remain the same whole. I like who I am, despite some of the shaky parts. And the idea of integration does feel a lot like 'killing' my personalities off one by one. However, if it's more like a purposeful abdication of power, taking turns being dominant, maybe-just-maybe that's something I could wrap my mind around some time and not be terrified. Some time. Not today.

Caught It - Losing Time (Me)

One thing that multiples suffer through a lot is losing time. Just completely missing the memory of what's happened over the last few minutes, hours, days. This isn't something I struggle with a lot. I think it's because I'm very co-conscious, but it could just be that it's happening and I'm missing it. Maybe my brain's hiding it from me. It does seem that, if someone reminds me of something that happened during that period, that memory will get pushed up close enough to the surface that I'll kind of remember it.

Monday I had an in-your-face example of this happening. I spent most of the day hanging with one of my friends. We drove around doing various errands. Early in the day, he pointed out that he hadn't gotten gas in his car in several days, and it was really low. We joked about whether the gas left would last through today's errands or not. After lunch, we got in the car, and I started to say something about the gas in the car, and suggest we better stop for some. But first I glanced at the gas gauge - and it's half-full. Now, obviously, we stopped for gas. But even aware of it, and trying to access the memory of doing so - nada. If put on the witness stand in a court of law and asked whether we had gotten gas that day, I would have said no, we did not. Absolutely sure. And yet, the gas gauge proved otherwise.

I've actually lost time several times with this particular friend. He's reminded me of several things we've done that I didn't remember until he said something. Big things, like half-day-long activities or things that were important to me at the time. Which tells me that I'm shifting around him a lot. But I don't know who it is that's hanging out with him. And he's one of those people that takes everything so in-stride, that I'm not sure whether he hasn't noticed, or he just hasn't felt it necessary to mention to me. Or maybe he's mentioned it to whichever alter is out, just not Me.

I'm working through how I feel about this. On one hand, I feel comfortable around him not to worry about shifting. So I'm not hyper-alert to it. On the other, I kind of feel like I lost my entire day off to someone internally, and I don't even know who.

Catch-Up after Con (Me, Sam, Rubi)

So I haven't posted much lately. I haven't had anything in particular I wanted to say. But I feel like I'm supposed to apologize to the invisible internet presence or something. Hey, what can I say, I've been busy. Last weekend I went to a convention. It's a convention for kinky folks, and we had a blast. This blog isn't for discussing the con specifically, but I want to put down some of the interactions it created for my system. My jaw hurts from Sam being out so much; I don't realize how wide she holds our mouth until the soreness kicks in. But I know Rubi and Kiara got a lot of 'out' time as well.

<SAM> It was really an ideal weekend for me - lots of people to meet, tease, and play with. I wrote FREE HUGS on my belly and wore clothes that would show it off - and I got lots of random hugging, both from friends and strangers. And got to bite on several hot guys. And received some nibbling as well that was oh-so-sexy. I don't think I was overly bratty to anyone who didn't enjoy it this year. Last year I did overdo it with one friend, and had to apologize to him. Poor stick-in-the-mud fellow. I got the kind of play that really revs my engine, and got to share that scene with someone I like an awful lot. Okay, there wasn't as much sex this weekend as I was hoping, but there was a ton of fun.

<RUBI> Okay, so my scene on the final night of the con was damned hot. There's not many people we trust to handle playing full-out, but I finally got to tangle with one of them. I've so missed him; it's been a few months since we've played. And it didn't hurt that a couple of hot burly guys came over to help out making sure we got all the space we needed. Yeah, nothing wrong with being surrounded by strong good-looking men.

<ME> Kiara doesn't want to write about her time at con, but she did get some fun. I missed several of the events that would have been great for her, though. She didn't even get to color anything. But there was lots of cuddling available. Counselor and I attended together a roundtable on Mental Health & Kink. I guess the only downside I can see from a multi point of view was Jarett. One of the people we rode down with is someone that has been flirting with Jarett a little, and I was hoping he'd be willing to come out and interact with her more, but it just didn't happen.

Watch Out, I Bite (Sam)

Yes, I bite... literally... and frequently. I love to bite, and chew, and nuzzle, and lick. I'm not the only one; M and Rubi and even little Kiara will bite. I guess you could say we have an oral fixation. The mouth is a great sensory intake. When you take someone into your mouth, you receive all kinds of input. The smell of the person you're biting. The taste on your tongue, the consistency of the flesh under your teeth. And many people make the most delicious noises when they're being bitten. And maybe wriggle in your grasp while you're biting. The only sense that's left out is sight. It's a very intense thing to do with someone.

And there are so many different things you can say with a bite. There are playful nips, little quick bites to tease and flirt and to stir the attention of someone you're playing with. Defensive nips say 'ow, watch out'. Nuzzles with light bites let you relish the attention you're sharing with someone. Licks and small bites for teasing. Locking down on a bite can be a challenge, or a response to a challenge. Growling bites say 'this is mine'. Long lingering shoulder bites to make someone melt down into a pool of sensory overload. Hard vicious bites to defend yourself and discourage someone from messing with you again. Gnawing bites to bring comfort and security. Or just a lock to hold onto something while your hands are busy elsewhere. Punishment bites to discourage bad behavior. And sometimes, chewing and sucking bites to leave a mark just because you can.

We've been exploring a much more feral space lately, as a group, and biting helps us get there quickly. We've been feeling out different kinds of animals, and spending time really paying attention to other people that identify as ferals. Several of the Motel folk identify as various types of cats. We also have a hawk, a cow, and several bears. All of whom appeal to me/us, but isn't really a great fit. Then we got to studying coyotes. Pack animals, very similar in behavior to wolves, but more playful and less serious about status and threat. Coyotes like to hang around larger predators like bears and cats, and are more comfortable in urban settings than other animals are. They'll even mingle with domestic dogs or wolves easily.

When we found a feral space that we could slip into, we thought it would be like shifting into another personality - here's the six people, Silent One, and the coyote. But it doesn't work that way. It's closer to the headspace we slide into when taking a beating. Our entire group-mind shifts into a world that has a different feel, a different set of rules. It's kind of like starting up a video game, and you have multiple characters to run - the rules are different in this game-world, but you still have the same group of people running it. When I'm running our beast (and remember this is Sam talking now), I'm a playful beast, nipping and teasing. Kiara curls up small and gnaws to comfort herself. Rubi's mean in animal form too, biting hard. Counselor is still motherly and takes care of the other critters in our pack.

Recently M's daughter started a conversation with her/us about biting people. Turns out she's a biter too. No surprise there, I suppose...

Let's NOT Go To The Movies (Me, Lynn)

So it seems that watching movies may not be the best activity to promote internal peace for me. Earlier this week, I went to the movie theatre, and ended up having a pretty major mental break. Of course, it wasn't just the movie. Background first - a couple of my friends are about to get divorced. It's running fairly amicably, so far. They decided to go to the movie together, for some reason. Her... boyfriend, for lack of a better term, was going too. So when the husband called and invited me, I got the impression he might need someone there as a buffer, so I had to go. Well, I dragged along my boyfriend, and several other people showed up as well.

So there were several factors going into this thing - the tension between the divorcing couple, the tension between her boyfriend and her husband, and several people there that I had never met. Also, I had had a horrible day at work, so I was already feeling a bit tense and unhappy for myself. And I had had to reschedule plans already made for the evening in order to attend, which will often make me grumpy.

Added to that, my boyfriend expressed some concerns about me watching this particular movie. We were going to see Sucker Punch. If you haven't seen it/heard about it, it's got a lot of surreal qualities and abuse themes and it's dark and weird. And partly takes place in a mental institution. Remember my problems watching Dragonfly because it was in a hospital with the surreal feeling? Yeah, much much worse. So he was right; this was not a movie I should have seen.

Getting through the movie was a little twitchy, but not horrible. But when it was over, I just had a mental break. The last things I remember clearly were walking down the hallway at the theatre clutching my coke in front of me like a life preserver, and the clock in my truck reading 9:41, and a feeling like I needed to cry. The next thing I remember really clearly is going to work the next morning.

---

This is Counselor, now, and I'll have to write the remainder of this post for M, as she wasn't participating in the rest of the evening. The movie made us - as a sytem - profoundly uneasy. It was too violent for Kiara, enough sex to attract Sam, enough violence to attract Rubi, girls in sexy outfits that tickled Jarett's attention, and a clinical setting that both interested me and made Silent One twitch. The movie characters seemed to dissociate between one reality and the next rather freely, which triggered our system quite severely.

When we left the theater, M had already made plans to go to a friend's house afterward. So her boyfriend left, and everyone else left, leaving her/us alone in the parking lot. We sat in our vehicle for a while trying to either cry and get it out of our system or recover, but that wasn't happening. So we went driving for a while; taking the longest possible way our friend's house. We went approximately an hour out of our way, and were still quite shaky when we arrived. Sleep was out of the question at that point, so pizza was ordered and a kids' movie was put on. Kiara finally emerged for most of the movie, and through her we were able to eventually sleep.

I am considering putting a hold on all movie-watching for a while, as this makes two movies that have triggered negative episodes lately. However, all that does is push off dealing with the issues. So the alternative is to wach some potentially triggering movies, deliberately setting off any negative associations, with some controls in place. Having a kids' movie handy to watch afterward seems to be a valid mechanism for overwriting the negative experience. I'd like to have at least two people with us that can deal with any alters that emerge, and watch the suspect movies early in the day when there is plenty of time to recover before bedtime.

It has been several days now since the movie, and we're still a bit weepy and on edge. We've not slept well all week, but it's difficult to determine which is cause and which effect. So we'll push through. We'll spend as much time as possible with positive people around us, and ask for some compassionate moments with those people. And we'll stay busy as much as we can. If things go really well, perhaps we can get a good night's sleep - or two nights, even. Then we'll see if our moods even out.