On a lighter note...

I thought it was high time for something a little lighter in this journal...

And so I am returning to an old journalling habit I had, years ago...

So......... if you too, are female, currently feeling bloated and crampy and craving all things bacon (well I am anyway), or chocolate (the stereotypical craving), you will very likely know where these little 'facts' came from...

So without further ado... here is the lightness (while I still can)  ;)

• Eggplants aren't vegetables; they're really fruits
• Cats average 16 hours of sleep a day; more than any other mammal
• Female elephants produce only one offspring ebery five years
• In the Caribbean, there are oysters that can climb trees
• A woman's arthritic pains will almost always disappear when she becomes pregnant
• A car travelling at 100mph would take more than 29 million years to reach the nearest star
• The gastric juices of a snake can digest bones and teeth, but not fur or hair
• A newborn hedgehog starts to get its spines within 24 hours of birth
• Ostriches eat pebbles
• Pigs get sunburned
• The average cob of corn has eight hundred kernels arranged in sixteen rowns
• A cat has 32 muscles in each ear

There is a huge backlog of things I really want to catch up on journalling about in here... but I have no intention of doing that tonight... Tonight, I am choosing to avoid the internal chaos; instead, focussing on what is real and happening in my body right now... in the present moment

Oh, and my precious Littles helped me to prepare the house for the scheduled inspection tomorrow... Today has been a good day for my Girls and I...

Goodnight.

Relentless...

*Blink*

*blink* *blink* *blink* *blink* *blink*...

My cursor blinks at me relentlessly as I attempt to stifle every scream and every cry that is attempting to tear its way out of Me and onto this page right now... :'(

I don't know who I am...

It has been so very long since I have not felt intense anxiety at the thought (or the reality) of someone addressing Me by name or having to introduce Myself to someone, giving them my name...

I do not have a name...

I am not any one single person in here...

I am switching faster and more stealthily than even I know how to recognise, monitor or combat and it has resulted in me doing constant internal and external cleanup... I am burning out... fast... I have been having flashbacks... My sight and my language skills are being effected... regularly now

I... can't... think... straight

Even now, the only reason I cannot sleep is the incredible noise and chaos inside... Triggers are coming out of the most unexpected 'nowhere' places; places I thought were long dead and buried...

I need a safe place to hide and regroup for a while... I need somewhere where all I can hear are my own thoughts... I need a place inside, where I can send my thoughts to be sorted and filtered and tested and either labelled as my own or thrown out as external garbage...

My sense of my own reality is being denied and warped and confused by both internal and external forces...

I need to make it stop... I need to solidify My Truth, inside of Me... before I allow the world to assess it and make their judgements...

I need to end this confusion and to remember and reclaim everything that makes me Me

Touch...

Today I had confirmation of just how deeply touch starved I have been of late...

It also put into perspective a lot of things about what I would describe as 'the sociopathic alters' having been so intensely present and why it has been so very difficult, if not potentially impossible to 'come back' at will...

For months now, I have barely left my house (for the most part prevented from doing so by intense back pain that even the fentanyl, codeine and valium have not been able to stop)... Add to that, having been almost completely isolated for the past 4 weeks at least because I came down with a really nasty respiratory infection... and it is hardly surprising that I am not exactly 'on top of my game'...

I didn't sleep at all last night...

I was wondering if I would be able to sleep tonight...

And then this afternoon, there was... touch

Gentle... intimate... constant... healing... un-demanding...

Almost immediately, I felt all of the fear and anxiety ebbing away...

To be honest, I don't even know why I was so anxious and afraid last night... I don't think I really even knew last night either... But I was definitely afraid... Afraid to turn off the television, which at the time, was serving the purpose of drowning out the noise of my own thoughts and replacing it with whatever mindless drivel I could find to watch and listen to... Afraid to close my eyes and to see what is there, waiting for me, on the other side... Afraid to fall asleep...

Afraid to dream...

So much has happened... I am in such an unstable state of flux...

The dreams... the internal chatter... the screaming... the drowning... I can't breathe :'(

And in the midst of this terror, right at this very moment... My mind is drawn back, once again... to... the touch

It is almost as though I can feel it... even though I am now alone in my bed

Over and over and over again, I am back there... sitting on the couch... being touched

How is it that touch can bring Me back from the brink of oblivion?

How is it that touch soothes away the insanity inside?

How is it that touch has the power to reconnect Me with ease, with an incomprehensibly painful world, when my own force of will cannot?

Wherein lies its power? A power so great it is able to disable and dissolve the influence of even the strongest, most unreachable, most sociopathic of My alters?

How does touch do that?

Honestly? I really don't want to know or understand how... for fear that one of the sociopaths is then able to deconstruct it and in doing so, destroy it and become immune to its power, leaving 'Us' essentially mentally and emotionally impenetrable and invincible...

I want to heal... not become untouchable

Healing requires openness and vulnerability... Healing requires trust...

Therefor I cannot hope to ever heal, if I am unreachable, untouchable and impenetrable...

As has happened many times before, I have so much more I wanted to say in here tonight... but the words are refusing to come forth on demand; even what I have written so far has felt awkward and somehow forced... Despite how what I have said in here is honest and a part of what I wanted to say, it still falls so frustratingly short of how much I had planned to talk about :(

*sigh*

I suspect, attempting sleep is more important at this juncture anyway... Two hours in the last 48 is really no way to go about attempting to claw my way back to a more stable and functional version of whomever the hell it is that I really am...

Goodnight... and good luck... wherever you are

Watch this space...

Watch this space... (entry to be posted soon)