2-9-1998
And so, what if there are many? I have trouble dealing as one. How much more would many cause? I have no idea, no clue. I still don't even think in those terms. I can't. I don't know how. Sometimes I toy with the idea. Sometimes I use it as a premise or hypothesis and see where my thoughts or feelings or inner wanderings can go. But the reality of such a condition eludes my embrace. If I allow such a concept its reality, would I then cease to be? Sometimes the changes are so subtle, it is difficult to tell if there truly was a shift in characters or if it were only a change in moods or something of that ilk. Sometimes every time I turn around I react so different as to be different people. So I've been told. It's very hard to see from this perspective. Is it true that whenever I am with a man long enough all I see is my father? And when I am with a woman long enough, all I see is my mother? Is that past conditioning so strong? It is strong enough to affect my behavioral and emotional responses to people and situations. And it still deeply affects all my psychological responses whether or not I allow them to manifest in a physical way. And it's also true that in accepting the premise of this horrid, cruel, and perverse abuse I, as a child, endured, then surely such reactions are a rational response to that abuse. Still, I have put so much space between myself and reality and/or Truth, that I believe it will always remain difficult at best to accept as real all of whatever happened to the child. It is true there are extremely few memories - snapshots, in truth: times, perhaps, when I allowed reality to touch me. But I don't remember the ocean. How odd is that! It was a place I must have spent quite a lot of time, living around Santa Monica and LA. There's at least one picture of me there with my brother. I've been told my eyes looked dead in that picture. I have no memories of any people. I couldn't draw one. I don't remember any pets, toys, meals, parties, clothes, vehicles. How strange! It would make sense that the psyche would split or shatter or whatever under the extreme trauma it was experiencing. But not to know that, not to feel that, not to remember, or be able to experience, or anything, makes it easily put in the realm of a creative imagination, or the realm of non-existence - in the sense that one could create fictional characters to experience and deal with something one doesn't want to have anything to do with. But supposing I do with the premise of a schism in the psyche, of a shattering of the self. Then what? What does that make the person who is writing this? How do I answer "who am I?" I've never had an answer to that. I've read enough to answer the question in spiritual ways, in philosophical ways, and even in metaphysical ways. And that, of course, is what keeps me going - gives some reason for existing, for searching, for questing farther and higher. But, in the end, it is still games of thoughts, words, concepts, and others' Truths. When I was 18, I held no opinions, no philosophies, no ideas concerning any issues, including me. Nothing mattered - and in truth nothing really existed for me if I so chose. All my world now began in 1969 when I joined the Navy and, after boot camp, chose to create an identity, a person who accepted people without judgment, staying around those who were not hurtful or who needed me. And so, I was still a child, 'though reborn. And as I grew, I gathered information by reading and by learning from other people and by trying to mold myself into a better person whenever I could, even if only a millimeter or a cell at a time. And I have created, or rather re-created, someone who is helpful and perceptive, intelligent and psychic, a mystic in spiritual terms. Someone with a great and elusive/illusive shield to protect whatever existed before. Now, it seems mere curiosity to journey back beyond the shield. As if there were no good reasons to discover what ashes remain. Unfortunately, what has occurred is that I have educated this re-created self to such a degree that I know quite well that to become the most excellent mystic, the most diligent disciple, the most proper conduit for the Holy Spirit, that I must become whole. I must allow God to reach purely through not just this re-created self, but allow Him access (by my choice) through the sewage and sickly debris that coat the shattered and charred remains of that other life. I cannot even think my birth-name, nevermind speak it, without feeling nauseous, filthy, and fearful. She does not exist. She has not existed for a very long time. True, I had to respond to that name. Still do. But I don't like it. I hate the name. I despise it. Names do have power. That name, and so the child, was perverted, was invaded, was bent and twisted, was coated in human refuse, was made the performer in the most profane acts, was ultimately destroyed. Where was my mother? And truly where was anyone fitting that definition? I do not know what a mother feels like. I could never trust anyone resembling that mother-image - even anyone who was a mother and didn't fit that early image. Because she was a Jekyl and Hyde. Because her niceness or good things never had any love or joy behind them; it always benefited her somehow. It still does today. It makes me very angry now. Then, as a child, I think I just learned to not trust the good reactions and to trust too much the bad reactions - the times when she would yell, "It's a good thing there's a law against murder!" Not that I would have cared if I died. I just didn't like getting hurt. And hurting is all I ever got. When I got old enough to challenge the irrational reactions and demands and accusations, there was always someone protecting her and telling me to leave her alone - I had no right. Yeah...... I can't ask my father any questions. He died around '84. Would he have ever acknowledge what happened? I can't write much about my father. I don't remember him before I was 8. I can't remember anything before I was 8. And he seemed somewhat empty in the few times I was with him in the time before he died. Empty. But also there was an unnamed fear that I never could account for. As if, if I weren't careful, something "bad" might happen. It was a vague feeling, like an uncomfortableness, an unsettling feel to the air. I don't know. I didn't know - until recently. Until the counseling and the energy work and the abreactions. I'm very scared about allowing the inner voices to manifest in reality. I'm very afraid that without my control, I would end up in a "nice, safe asylum" or whatever is politically correct to call it. I know they can put a good spin on the word "crazy", and the place they put those people, and the drugs they give them to keep them "healthy and sane". I'm very afraid that will happen. Very afraid. Still, there is a part of me that wants to take the risk because of my spiritual quest. And I guess it would be a great test of my faith and trust in God to take that leap.
2-9-2003
Five years later, I can say that the risk paid off. In full. I am one in convergence...no elimination of alters or other negative processes. I am one in myself, with wonderful facets and talents and gifts, all working in conjunction, in consensus with my healing...in the healing of the Whole and the parts, becoming more than the sum of them. The Child is free to be, and does not shrink from her Name. I am that I am. And how cool is that!