... I miss him :'(

Tonight I wanted to call L***...

I wanted to be held and touched gently again... To hear his soothing, hypnotic voice... To explore his dark and mysterious, yet devastatingly familiar mind...

I miss him...

I don't miss the attempts at manipulation or the lies...

I don't miss the guilt that never truly was mine in the first place... and yet I was expected to bear it and to do so in compliant, subservient silence... and to thank them both for the privilege...

I don't miss the nightmares made real in the middle of countless nights, spent in a strange bed... swallowing screams... blinking back tears... pretending for both of us that I was okay when we both knew I wasn't...

My earlier pleas for abstinence lay ignored and discarded on the floor... right next to the clothes I had never really wanted to shed...

The sickly sweet stench of aftershave and deodorant, taking the place of the scent of soap and fresh water I wished had been there instead; covering a multitude of sins...

Rough hands and... eventually... an even rougher cock... tearing involuntary orgasms from my body; orgasms I both desperately cried out for inside in an attempt to escape the reality of what was truly happening... and which also left me wracked with guilt... drenched in shame and humiliation... swallowing a mixture of bile and vomit as the events replayed themselves over and over and over again in my mind...

No, I don't miss any of that...

And yet I miss him...

How can that be?!

How can it be that I miss someone who could hurt me so badly... so selfishly... so easily???

The shame I feel over this tonight weighs heavily upon me...

My breathing is laboured... as though his stocky, heavy body had collapsed on top of me in post-orgasmic bliss once more... I feel him on me and inside me again... yet he is not here; nowhere near here in fact...

I am so tired... and I am so awake

I can't turn off the television because my thoughts and compulsions are too loud... even now, I am afraid I will call him...

I can't turn off the lights for there are simply too many demons; both 'real' and imagined, hiding in the darkness and in the shadows, just waiting for the light to vanish... at which point they will come out and attempt to consume my sanity... if not my very soul

I have to be up for college in the morning in under 6 hours; not nearly long enough to sleep the emotional exhaustion of this one episode alone, off...

There are so many things I am dealing with right now... far too many in fact...

I have no idea of how I am going to make it through all of this...

And yes... once more, despite all of these beautiful yet tragic words, you would be correct in guessing that no, this is not even the tip of the iceberg... not on this one tiny subject... nor on everything that actually is going on in my life right now...

God damn it! ... and me too :'(

Despite having publicly owned my shame... Despite knowing a million reasons why I shouldn't... I have Alters who are trapped... 'We' still miss him... and I feel as though I would do almost anything to...

... be held and touched gently (by him) again... To hear his soothing, hypnotic voice... To explore his dark and mysterious, yet devastatingly familiar mind...

To rest in him...

... because I miss him <3 x :'(

Fallout...

Uh-oh...

Here we go again.........

:'(


Backlash against so much internal soul-searching and upheaval is coming thick and fast right now...

I have coping mechanisms designed to keep me safe and writing is one of them...

I am just hoping that I will be in a position (by morning) to be able to make the right decisions I need to make regarding my mental health and refusing to be forced (by 'those inside') to retreat from this lifelong dream...

I honestly cannot pin down what it is that has me suddenly so deeply destabilised that I cannot predict or contain this outpouring of franticness and internal screaming... Mentally, I am incredibly fatigued and I am yet to even begin, let alone complete, so much of the work ahead of me... And physically, my pain is spiking so badly, I am finding sleep almost impossible (I get 5-20 minutes here and there when I have a flare up), I have come down with a chest infection (which I have almost recovered from thanks to having hit it with steroids and antibiotics at the first sign of it) and one night last week, I couldn't even keep my eyes still and focused; they were flickering back and forth as though they were watching a fast paced tennis match ON FAST FORWARD!

I have come to the point where I have dissociated so badly that I can no longer remember what the point of voluntarily putting myself through all of this is... Yes, I want to spread healing through the gentleness of Art Therapy... Yes, I want to finally 'become something' relevant and useful and to be able to financially provide for myself... But at what cost?

Do I have the intelligence for this? Absolutely! Can I complete most of these exercises standing on my head, blindfolded, with both hands behind my back? You bet your butt I can! Do I have ANY confidence issues whatsoever that I can actually BE an Art Therapist? NO WAY!

But is this all moving too fast for me right now? Do I need more time to assimilate these massive changes in my life? Do I need time to adjust and to allow 'everyone inside' to catch up? YES!

Do I have the luxury of that time? No :(

So where do I go from here? Is it just a matter of hanging on until Thursday when I will be flying out of Adelaide for a few days, perhaps toward rest and quiet study and contemplation... or perhaps from one 'frying pan' into an even 'hotter frying pan'??? Will I be okay after some rest? Do the study modules get emotionally easier from here on in? Should I be switching to the 2 year course? And would that really be any better or easier to handle with its 4 day straight intensives???

So many questions... so much dissociation and internal upheaval... so very little pain free time today... and so little sleep tonight so far... (It is after 3:30am after all)

I know that the middle of the night under these conditions is not the right time to be making big decisions... And no doubt, I will switch out again through necessity sooner or later and wonder what all of the fuss was about... and I will feel the shame of having been so stressed over 'nothing'... (and having blurted all of those thoughts out here in the middle of the night)... But I needed to scream out into the ether where I knew that everyone would be (or should be) asleep but where there was the slimmest chance that someone 'might' hear me (even if they didn't respond)...

It is how I survive...

I scream... I am (potentially) heard... I fix and take responsibility for myself...

I fear 'attention' and pity because they are not what I seek... I seek a safe place, outside of a mind with perceptions I am aware I may not currently be able to trust... And if I can see my thoughts here, where 'someone' might see them... and those thoughts still seem lucid... then maybe I will be okay and able to get through all of this after all...

God! I doubt I am even making sense to anyone but myself anymore...

Anyway... whether anyone reads this or not... Here is something else I have written in an effort to clarify my thoughts and to vent my stress in the hope of regaining control of a more lucid state of mind...


The Madness Returns - by Charli Hope

The rain washes the dust from my madness tonight
Refreshed… revitalised… reawakened… it returns
Threatening all I have worked so hard to uphold
Truths… Hope… Love… Dreams… and that for which my heart yearns

The words of years past, tumble down over me now
Falling… Haplessly... carelessly... abandoned... and raw
And I no longer know where I want or choose to be
But it's not even just that simple… oh noooo, there is more!

Do I dance frenzied and naked, in the cleansing Blood Rain...
Rejoicing in its Life? In its Death? In its purge?
Or do I sit out this storm here in stifled blackened silence
Awaiting a dawn that only prolongs the urge?

So, tell me… Where is my relief? My promised salvation?
The point of still fighting this fight?
Because if the truth is that this is all there really is
I'll be damned... before I'll see out another night!

Are my screams really so deafening that you no longer hear me?
Or have you simply turned your eyes and ears away?
Away from my pain… from my shame… and from yours
Have you turned away despite promising you'd stay?

And how do I scream above a thousand other voices?
How do I scream loud enough to make myself heard?
And this pain in my bones… in my heart… in my head
All that is left of me now is the screaming… and these words

How do I make it all stop and live a life that is real?
When I can't stop trying to outrun the pain?
When I can't close my eyes and sleep peacefully at night
In case, in my sleep, it happens again

So… please, I'm begging you! Tell me!
When there are neither answers, nor is there a cure
From what might I craft myself an anchor to this world?
For exactly what, might I fight to endure?

It has been a while...

I have been away from here for a long time because I wasn't coping with how much of my pain I was seeing pouring out here, in the absence of the recording of the moments of happiness and wholeness I was also experiencing at the same time...

There were also aspects of privacy and switching (it's frightening, sitting down to write and suddenly seeing the thoughts and feelings of an Alter appearing before you, divulging rheems and rheems of information on how 'you' are apparently feeling and what 'you' are apparently thinking, all of which you had no clue about until you just now read it for yourself!) which were considerations but for the most part, I just needed to walk away until I could find a way to begin recording more balanced entries...

So... here I am again... And I have something new for you:

(A cross post from my personal Facebook page)

This Transpersonal Art Therapy qualification I am studying for is quite a fascinating journey...

The course itself seems to be focused on an internal examination of the self and emotional growth at the same time as focussing on learning the skills, techniques and ethics required of a therapist. (I don't know whether or not any small business modules are covered toward the end or not but I suspect it will at least be touched on).

As you can imagine, for the most part, it is a deeply personal journey and as such, anything shared by my lecturers and classmates will be kept completely confidential.

I, however, have decided to share parts of my own journey through this course with you all, as aside from keeping some of you (that I don't get to catch up with much) up to date on where I'm at and what I'm up to, I am hoping it will help to keep me clear and focused and maybe even help someone else in the process...

So, I guess... without further ado...

This is a photo I took during an Art Therapy session I had where I was an actual official client...
I was really struggling on Tuesday and in this session, my Art Therapist (after I revealed that I was really not coping with the internal war between Alters AND was willing to disclose this kind of information) asked me gently, if I might like to perhaps introduce her to what life inside looks like to me...

She had a sand tray and a whole bunch of random little toys and bits and pieces and invited me to arrange the sand and pieces as I wished...

To be honest, I was already in such internal meltdown that touching anything at all that wasn't sterile and belonging to me, felt terrifying... She continued to be gentle and patient and fostered an atmosphere of calm and containment (which helped immensely!) and she even offered the possibility of a different activity if I was too distressed to participate in this activity just now...

I was determined to go through with the process that had been offered to me though and when she asked if I wanted to try wet sand instead (as I had revealed that deserts have always terrified me, even in cartoons, ever since I was a child), I agreed and found myself gingerly reaching out and bit by bit, beginning to move the sand around...

I remember initially looking at all of the bits and pieces and this small sand tray and wondering how on earth I was ever going to fit 'everyone inside' into such a small space and I also remember scanning the room for more suitable objects to place in the tray as surely her collection couldn't be anywhere near enough!

What actually happened though, when it came time to put the pieces into the sand landscape I had created, surprised and delighted me!

I found that instead of the crowded chaos I was experiencing inside, everything suddenly became almost desserted and silent, for the first time in literally years!!!! And I watched myself, place only three objects in the sand; a star, a tree and a treasure chest...

The star is the Sun who appears in so many of my drawings... My Hope, my Creativity, my purest, unafraid Love and all of my most Childlike Happiness...

The tree is the Hypnotic Tree which appears in so many of my drawings... It is a representation of where I go when I need to disappear and 'switch out' and on this day, it was where most of my Alters went to watch this new Therapist from a safe distance...

And the Treasure Chest... This day it was where all of my most Artistic Alters went to wait to be discovered as 'buried (but not completely buried) treasure'...

I was frustrated that I was unable to place the 'Sun' up in the sky, quite literally and metaphorically 'above it all' and 'a part of it all', yet still apart from 'the Others' and their fear and excitement and chaos...

The Hypnotic Tree, I placed atop a Hill, located deep in a Valley... The depth of the valley came from how deep 'the Abyss' is inside where all of my Alters exist but the Hypnotic Tree had to be placed on a Hill inside of that Valley because although it never reaches anywhere near the surface, the Hypnotic Tree is a neutral zone of sorts where Alters seem to go to 'transition' or 'switch out'...

The Treasure Chest, I partially buried but much deeper down because there are parts of Me in there that even I, as yet, have not consciously 'met'... I have a deep sense that they have 'been out' before but their experiences in the real world are still blocked by a wall of amnesia for me... The message I was getting from inside was a feeling that these Alters would not embarrass me (as I often so greatly fear) but that they would shine and equip me with the skills (I already have buried as each Alter is a part of the 'Real Me') I need to become all I dream of and more as both an Artist and as an Art Therapist... I got the reassuring feeling of containment and of the gradual assimilation of 'their' skill sets in a very non-jarring and integrated way... Like having teachers on the inside... And that unlike so many of the specialised skills particular Alters have, which disappear as the Alter 'switches back in', I would actually have re-learned these skills bit by bit and that they would now belong to me too and be something I could trust in and rely on, even though the Alters themselves had not integrated yet (if ever)...

The whole experience left me feeling so deeply peaceful and 'whole' even in my fragmentation... I felt happy and serene... It was a precious moment of relief when I needed it the most... And I did it ALL BY MYSELF! AND it happened INSTINCTIVELY... For the first time in a very long time, I didn't have to force a single thing :)

My Therapist made no comment indicating failure or success... She simply smiled at my relief and joy, let me babble about what it all meant to me (as she could see that I needed to say it all out loud to solidify it and to comprehend it all myself) and told me at the end of the session that she was happy for my happiness...

From what I understand of the word 'Transpersonal' as it is applied in this form of therapy, it means that there is an understanding that all of the answers a client needs already exist within the client and that as a Transpersonal Art Therapist it will be my job to provide a safe environment and guided activities within which my client has the opportunity to explore themselves and to find these answers... and potentially even ultimate healing and catharsis.

Even though I babbled a lot about my fears and anxieties in the beginning of that session, (I honestly couldn't help it as I was so distressed at the time), there was no need for me to have done so in this type of session. In fact, my Therapist didn't need to know even what kind of problem I was dealing with; only a simple goal: 'What would you like to achieve in this session?'

That is what I LOVE about this style if therapy... It EMPOWERS the client and steers away from all of the confusion of words and motive and direct thoughts... Through it's simplicity, it reaches past all of that and touches what is called the 'Felt Self'... It is so simple and innocent and core...

I have to wonder... In a world where intelligence (both intellect and emotional) is so highly sought after and valued, why is it that those with the highest levels of attainment of these seem the most conflicted and unhappy? Yet those in society who appear the happiest, are the children (and those who 'stay childlike' inside even as adults)...

Could our ultimate answer lay in the purity of simplicity? And is this why so many eastern religions/beliefs are so sucessful in helping their followers achieve the inner peace we are all striving for?

If I can just stay focused on this idea of simplicity... And if I can stay present enough to refocus when I lose my way... I really AM going to be okay; both in this course AND in the world outside...

Love and Hope to you all,
The Amethyst Butterfly <3 x