When Dissociation Rests In Silence

 

These words were written, longhand with an old, cheap Bic ballpoint pen in just over an hour the day before a therapy appointment at a specialist psychology centre to help with difficulties arising from a diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder in 2018. Words written because no matter how much of myself I gave to homework asking questions to each of the dissociative parts or alters I had not been able to write or dream or hear a word in response.

My mind is silent.

So very silent.

Well, not silent exactly. There are still thoughts, conscious decisions with focus, unconscious or subconscious thoughts and impressions, and feelings that arise and say hello with joy or fear, comfort or catastrophe. There are intrusions too that may lead to speech, to the continuation of habit, to vocalisations of “I want to die,” or “I want to live,” to “I cannot do this,” or “I can and I will.”

Silence perhaps is a myth, at least in continuity, even to those who write wise books about it perhaps spoiling their own silence in the process or to those who have meditated and contemplated for decades and exude serenity.

When I claim my mind is silent I know it’s not a lie, merely a truth of a certain kind of silence. There are still thoughts that “I” as ego or controller don’t think. How could it now be so? That’s human, especially for those of us with internal monologues, dialogues, conversations. This is the Buddhist monkey mind. It’s the waterfall of Teresa of Avila. This is just how it is and I believe without deep study that it’s increased by our screens, our scrolls and even our knowledge of what’s happening beyond our comparatively small, simple circles.

Again, how could it not be so when a Prime Minister attacks the disabled, when genocide is unacknowledged, when US senators threaten reprisals against any allies who obey international law, when Russian TV explains to the people exactly where the nuclear targets will be. Or when we see poverty on our own streets, meet refugees who took a five year journey from Afghanistan with their young children, when we watch global temperatures and weather patterns or spend fifteen months waiting for DWP decisions that are almost random depending which assessor a dice roll dictates.

To let go of all these worries while still being of some use is a difficult balance. Some choose ignorance as bliss, to refuse to notice what is happening in their world, but that helps nobody. Even the blissed out person with blocked ears and blindfolds eventually becomes an empty ghost.

The silence I speak of holds its place within the meaning of human and the meanings of western, industrialised, neo-liberal capitalist, complicated social media society. It’s a loud silence but even this is quieter for me than it most usually is. I have a degree of peace that’s unfamiliar.

Peace within chaos. I accept that.

But peace nonetheless and level of uncalled intrusions in emotions or words or sounds is low. Low for me. Compared to the maelstroms I’ve often known it’s almost sedate.

The silence I speak of is the silence that proceeds from a unity.

I have been told for six years that I and we, we are plural, we have many names and that we, not I, are this way because, almost undoubtedly, the original I was subject to complex severe child abuse.

I cannot hear those others. I cannot sense them. There’s no Lucy, no Amy, no Jack or Alex or any of the others I heard – or believed I heard – for these years. They’re not standing ready to take over and act in my body independently of me. They’re not half-visible in the shadows of my mind as if waiting to teach me or for me to fall apart again.

There is only silence.

My mind is silent. So very silent.

I cannot claim this is forever with any low degree of certainty of even confidence. In six months or even a week my mind may be a menagerie again, a split apart sauce of conflicting voices, differing hopes and dreams, a resurgence of dissociation beyond the lesser ways of this time, ways that in truth are almost “normal.” In six months my mind may crash on the shore of the world with a dozen voices that don’t want to be seen by the creatures by the water’s edge. Or it may not. Silence may prevail. All I can say with certainty is that if Lucy and the rest are within my mind, a mind of mental distress for as long as I can remember, I cannot perceive them. Not in this now.

I am alone. So very alone.

No fractured pieces. No hallucinated or imagined or even real voices from spirit worlds. Just me and sometimes crawling, sometimes walking, sometimes in excruciating pain subconscious. If I scrapped compassion and a desire to learn compassion maybe that pain would recede further than it already has at this time.

I refuse that path. To stifle compassion is a numbness, a little death, a hiding from reality. It’s a pretend world, a figment and ultimately life lived that way isn’t life at all. I will nurture compassion, nurture the shadows too, the aspects of this inner world I judge as light and those I judge as darkness. I may one day learn to let go of being judge and jury too and simply embrace all of myself with tenderness.

In this aloneness, my inner human solitude, my conflicted and messy unity, two questions must be asked. I’ve asked them daily. Every day for the last three months.

Firstly, will those others return to me and if so, when? I find in some ways I miss them. I miss the joys and protections and companionships I’ve known sometimes. I miss the voices and laughter, even the tears, their encouraging bravery, their calls to childlikeness, a widening curiosity and denial of shame. Those things all helped me. So did creating a wall of art I still mostly believe myself incapable of creating. Even the part, and I can’t even remember his name now, who so firmly wanted a return to our old, certain Christianity has done me good and helped awaken a broad path of spirituality I’ve been taking determinedly, between gaps and stumbles.

It’s easy to say I want them all back because being plural does have its advantages especially when most times it’s more experienced within what diagnostic criteria would call OSDD than DID. Not always. Others did front in therapy and life. Apparently. Pieces broken off at an early age through that horrific abuse. Apparently.

In that word “apparently” lies my second question.

It’s a “What if?”

In simplest terms, “What if I was never plural at all?”

What if, in my trust of a psychologist and of the therapeutic process, of questionnaires, procedures and confirmation biases I became convinced of plurality simply because I was told it was the truth? What if the dissociation and apparent manifestation of other parts I experienced in EMDR was just me not coping with the level of distress in the focus on a single triggering phrase and so regressing and getting a bit lost? What if that’s all it was but I was told by the expert that it was much, much more. What if I just ran with his conclusions in a faith that was entirely misplaced, just as I’ve done with diagnoses before?

Simply, what if psychology and the psychological profession railroaded me at the age of forty-seven into a belief in a complex dissociative disorder that never really existed and then, as if following a new religion to explain all my history distress, my brain and mind adapted to it with imagination, creative responses, an almost spiritual fervour. What if it was belief that manifested and developed dissociative parts or alters that previously had no reality and fragment shard memories of abuse that were based on nothing that ever happened or on accidentally exploding small things into nuclear bomb size trauma? I came to remember pieces, images, strongest emotional pain, what it felt like to be raped as a child. At least I believed I came to remember but that doesn’t mean it was memory of a childhood so broken I couldn’t rationally understand how it could have been so.

What if psychology and my unintentional collaboration with a story provided by it has done a lot more to fuck me up for the last six years than to help me? What if my doubts in therapists’ offices had been listened to and my most extreme statements not been seen as stone engraved holy writ that I wasn’t meant to challenge?

Simply, simply, simply. What if “I am plural,” or “We are plural,” has merely been my dangerous delusion.

What if I cannot be healed because there is nothing to heal or work to hold a creative dissociative system in love because there is no system to hold?

Now I could sit longer with my therapeutic homework. I’ve sat with it. I’ve asked everyone, everyone I ever knew or believed existed in the system. I’ve asked the questions to anyone else who’s there or who wants to speak up.

Silence. Total silence.

I know I could conjure answers, give responses acceptable for therapy and for the story and I could do it even without the intention to do it. I could, without even choosing to, write answers as if Lucy, Amy and the rest were answering and writing. If the name of a spirit was at the top of the homework pages I could probably do that too just like I produced so many pages of automatic writing I believed were from the spirit world and many pages of a story and world I never completed that felt like someone else was writing.

I could do that. But I won’t and I won’t risk being in a place in which I manifest writing claimed to be from a dissociative part when in reality I wrote it in some kind of semi-trance state. I refused to because the plain simple truth is, as I said at the very beginning, my mind is silent. So very silent. To answer with anything more than silence would be an act of self rejection, self destruction. At least at this time.

I can answer neither question.

I cannot say whether they will all return, whether those alters and parts are missing and not just missed. I cannot say whether they existed at all except as tools I inadvertently and unexpectedly created to both help and hinder and attempt to explain the wide varieties of inner hell I’ve been through. I don’t know how to begin to answer the questions either but I have a suspicion, not shared at any point in the last six years by any of four specialist psychologists, that the answers are no and yes respectively.

For today all I know is silence. An inner solitude shared only by my own complex humanity in a difficult world.

All I know is at least in this present moment, in this naked now, I am alone.

She Had Forgotten Her Towel - A Story Rescued

 I haven't posted here in months.  I've been busy though, or as busy as someone who recently received a diagnosis of fibromyalgia should be.  I've begun a challenge for 2023 to write at least one poem for every day of the year.  Today is day 77 and I've written 88 poems so far.  Some of them I'm proud of.  Some I'll be pleased to perform if I get the chance.  A selection will be printed in a book being published later this year.  Some of them I admit aren't great.  Some of them are rubbish but they're all part of a process.  One of the ideas behind the challenge is that no matter what happens in it I'll be a better poet at the end of the year than I was at the beginning.  There are related challenges that unfortunately I haven't been able to enter into because the fibro brings exhaustion and fog with it.

This afternoon I sat and wrote a poem about fibromyalgia and how it felt at that moment.  It wasn't a happy poem so I wrote another poem and intended a happy ending that didn't happen.  That poem in turn reminded me of a story that I wrote in July 2016.  I hunted for it on my old blogs and it wasn't there.  So it was a relief to find it in a folder on my laptop.  Here it is, without an edit or even a proper read.  I seem to remember being quite pleased with it seven years ago.

...

A Forgotten Towel

She had forgotten her towel.

Everything had been going swimmingly.

Joan had got up that morning feeling surprisingly refreshed. She hadn't slept well at all, finding herself unable to stop thinking about a quite unpleasant encounter with her neighbour the previous day. Mr. Fry was a strange man and often said things that other people wouldn't say. Yesterday they had met in the street and she had decided to stop and talk rather than walking past with a polite “Hello” as she often did. The sun shone. She felt as though she was shining inside. So she had felt able to deal with a short, neighbourly conversation with Mr. Fry.

It had been fine. She was sorry to hear that Hilda Smith, the old woman in number sixteen, was back in hospital. She was glad to hear that the council had finally cut back the weeds in a nearby alley that she had given up trying to use some weeks ago because they had made it almost impassible. Mr. Fry was being surprisingly amenable. And Joan was surprised to be feeling glad to have stopped for a chat.

Glad.

Until she wasn't glad at all.

Glad. Until Mr. Fry behaved in a more characteristic Mr. Fry way. Oh yes, Joan was glad. Until he said “Well personally I think the sun brings out the light in your eyes. On the other hand I think you're looking fat recently. Better be careful or you'll never get a man. No children for you unless you look after yourself better. Have you thought about joining a gym?”

Joan hadn't quite known what to say to that. Even for Mr. Fry that was a particularly rude set of comments. Perhaps she wouldn't have believed he had said them except that she had just heard them said. She considered whether to tell him just how rude he had been and whether to tell him in a way that would make it abundantly clear what she thought about him. At that moment those thoughts were unsurprisingly lacking in charity and filled to the brim with obscenities.

But what good would it do? Mr. Fry would almost certainly never change. He was a strange man. Joan suspected that he had some kind of mental disability that made him the way he was. But he might just have been strange. And sometimes nasty too. So Joan just tried to make a joke out of it, said a quick goodbye, and walked on.

She knew she shouldn't let comments like that worry her, especially not comments that came from a source as unreliable as Mr. Fry. She knew that none of it mattered, none of it had anything to do with the facts of who Joan was or how she chose to live. She knew that letting it go, moving on, and having a good day would be what anyone would tell her to do. She told herself to do it too.

Nevertheless, Mr. Fry's comments had hurt. Joan found herself unable to forget them. She was surprised to have allowed herself to be wounded by a weapon of illusion and she kept returning to it through the day. Then through the night too. Somehow she couldn't be kind to herself and let it go. In the small hours that too became a source of another stress as she told herself she was stupid for keeping on thinking about it.

Joan knew she wasn't fat.

And would it really matter if she were? What difference would that make? And what would it have have to do with anyone else anyway, let alone Mr. Fry? Her doctor might need to know if she were morbidly obese. Her tailor would have to know. If she had a tailor. But anyone else could just take a leap of a cliff if they thought her body size was any of their business. Joan knew the truth and she was surprised to have lost sleep over such a demonstrably erroneous comment.

She wasn't fat. She wasn't skinny either. Nobody would have mistaken her from one of those models who look anorexic or were part of the heroin-chic fashion look some years ago. She wasn't a stick who could do with eating a super-sized burger meal every day for a month just to get up to a healthy weight. She had a bit of a belly. She had curves. And she honestly believed that, as bodies went, hers was pretty good.

It didn't matter to her though. She had one body. This one. And it was hers. She had long ago decided just to get on with her life without worrying about whether she was too thin or fat. Or the wrong height, or had the wrong hair or had the wrong skin tone. Life was too short to worry about any of that kind of nonsense.

In any case, she didn't actually want a man. She wondered what Mr. Fry would think about that. And while she didn't go to a gym, she did go swimming regularly. And she had already been planning on going the following day. She liked it there. The feeling of the water on her body, of the little waves that lapped against her chest, comforted her. And the knowledge that she had in the last year learned to propel herself through that water was something that she took pride in.

A year ago she had been afraid of the water. Very afraid. She had needed one to one help from a therapist before she had even been able to get into the pool. The size of it was daunting enough even without the fact that Joan couldn't help worrying about drowning. She knew it was unlikely. She knew that even if she did get into trouble the lifeguards were well trained. But she couldn't stop worrying. She didn't quite know why she had been so afraid, but now that fear was replaced by a confidence she hadn't even dared to hope for.

When Joan got up that morning, the encounter with Mr. Fry was still at the back of her mind. She wished it wasn't, but even that bad night's sleep had refreshed her, and she knew his words would fade and she wouldn't allow herself to be affected by them much longer. In future she decided that she might politely say hello as they passed in the street but she wouldn't be so willing to stop and chat with the man.

Maybe it had affected her more than she thought. Or maybe it would have happened anyway, just one of those things that happen, we deal with, and then later can laugh about. Whatever the case, she didn't know quite what to do.

Here she was, dripping wet, naked in a changing cubicle.

And she had forgotten her towel.

Joan had walked to the pool that morning, happy in the thought that she was returning to the pool again. Since she had started to visit regularly her confidence in the water had grown immensely and each time she tried to push herself further. To swim that extra length. To spend more time trying the butterfly stroke which, for some reason she couldn't fathom, seemed much more difficult than any of the others.

Today's swim had been excellent. She felt physically strong and full of energy and it was as if her body contained more life than it ever had before. She didn't just swim one extra length. She managed several. She broke her personal best by swimming thirteen lengths of breaststroke. She swam seven lengths of front crawl and felt far less tired than she had ever felt before. And then, from that position of strength, Joan turned to the dreaded butterfly determined to try hard and focus on what her arms and legs were doing, to follow through as best as she could. It hadn't been perfect by any means but today she had seemed to move through the water faster than she ever had before and it felt easier to do it. Something must have been going right.

She had sat by the pool to rest after that. She dangled her legs into the water and could almost feel the softness of the meniscus on the top of the water as it gently rose and fell on her calves. For a moment she allowed herself to close her eyes and found herself imagining what it would be like to be a pond skater and to walk free on top of that thin layer. She slowly lifted her toes in and out of the water and let herself feel each little drop of water as it fell from them and each moment of pleasure as her toes sank again. She smiled at how far she had come. Just one year ago these pleasure moments had been moments of painful fear.

Everything felt as if it were suspended in a drop of perfection, into which the light spreads into colours and breaks brilliant across a face held in calm.

And at that moment, Joan felt mentally strong enough to go beyond anything she had ever managed before. She resolved to try something new. Something she had never faced before. Today would be the day. Today she would jump off a diving board. Just the low one, a few feet above the water. Just the low one. Hey, just the low one? She corrected herself. For Joan this wasn't just anything. This was a big step and she felt proud of herself, immensely proud, for making that decision to try.

She walked up to the board and stared at it. Joan knew that the drop was small. But standing in front of the board it looked insurmountable. Her mind fantasised about the possibilities and Joan couldn't shut up the torrent of images and fear and self-doubt. As they multiplied and got more catastrophic it felt as if the water under the board was a maelstrom which would swallow her up and never let her go.

Joan was afraid. She had wanted to try diving off the board for a while but never before had she made it to this point. Just the thought had been too much. And here she was, fighting the fear with all her strength. Today was the day. Joan promised herself that if she did this she would buy herself a nice reward in town afterwards. She would deserve it.

She took a deep breath.

Then another.

And then an even deeper one.

Then she slowly climbed up the two steps leading onto the board. She stared at the end of the board. It's fair to say that were she not worried what people would think of her if she turned round she might have stopped at that point. And even that would have been great progress. But Joan didn't want to be ashamed, even if she knew there wasn't anything to be ashamed of.

She walked to the end of the board, hoping that nobody was watching her too carefully, hoping that nobody could see her shaking.

Joan looked down at the water.

It was just water. But her mind transformed it into acid, into a crocodile infested swamp.

It was only a few feet below her. But it looked like a hundred, a thousand, as if she couldn't possibly survive the drop, that her body would be smashed to pieces.

She knew she was safe. But the fear, the fear, the danger. Joan couldn't control her breathing. Her heart steamed ahead as if it were a race to get to the end of her life. Her limbs felt unsteady and the building seemed to sway up and down with every moment of the water. Just for a moment she wished she had never decided to jump from the board. Why had she agreed with herself to do such a difficult thing today? Why? Was she just a stupid woman with ideas beyond her capabilities? Was this too much for someone like her and she just an idiot for suggesting it?

She didn't know how much time passed. It felt as if surely the pool must have closed for the day, reopened, closed again and repeated the cycle many times. She knew it was probably just a few seconds. But the illusions we create are such as would drown our dreams.

Something fell into its place within and Joan found new volition. She could do this. She would do it.

And she jumped from the board, in as graceful a dive as she could manage.

She was only underwater for a moment and then was able to breathe again and she breathed hard and an immense grin spread over her face and she laughed out loud.

She lay on her back in the water and paddled back to the side of the pool, laughing and feeling as if she could swim the English Channel next week rather than lengths of a swimming pool.

Joan had conquered her fear, or at least taken a pretty major step in that direction. And the exuberance was perhaps greater than she had felt in her life.

She climbed out of the pool. She looked at the clock on the wall and noticed that it was time to stop. Joan had been at the swimming pool for longer than she ever had before. And it had been great. She could hardly wait for the following week to arrive and then she could do it all again and jump off that board again, perhaps with a little more grace and a little less of a splash. Her dive wouldn't have won any awards but she couldn't care in the slightest about that.

She walked back to the changing room, took a shower, retrieved her bag from her locker and then shut herself in the changing room. She took off her swimming costume and let it drop, making a pleasurable splatting sound as it landed on the floor. Joan opened her bag. And that's when she realised.

She had forgotten her towel.

The shock was as if her world had fallen away. Just moments ago everything had seemed so perfect and Joan had felt better about herself than she had done in a very long time. Now there was this to deal with and she had no adrenalin left to carry her through it.

Everything from the last day added up to a point at which she couldn't deal with anything new. The way she had allowed Mr. Fry's comments to affect her so much. Her lack of sleep the previous night. Physical exhaustion from pushing herself so hard to swim so far and so well. The great fear of that diving board and the sheer bloody minded determination it had taken to overcome it. Even the hormonal rush in the euphoria after her success. It all added up and Joan couldn't manage to look past the little crisis.

For a while she just stood there in the cubicle, still naked, with her hair still dripping water down her body.

Then she sat on the wooden bench, put her head down to her knees and started to cry. Feelings of pride became weapons of shame as Joan internally shouted at herself. How could she have been so stupid as to forget her towel? And how could she be so stupid to be crying about it now?

Slowly her head achieved some kind of focus again and a plan formed. First she would get dressed again into her swimming costume. That wouldn't be pleasant. Putting on a wet and cold swimming costume wasn't ever going to be her number one choice of activity for a relaxing night in. Then she would put her bag back in the locker. Then she would shower again. She knew that would leave her more wet than she presently was but after so much time standing and sitting naked she felt decidedly chilly and she knew that the warm water would help make her feel at least a little more relaxed. Warmth and relaxation wouldn't solve her problem but at least they would be preferable to cold tension.

As Joan showered she was able to pick her world up again and look at it. She wasn't stupid. Not at all. Anyone could forget a towel. Anyone. It was unfortunate but it didn't mean she was stupid. Or bad. Or a disaster. Or a loser. Or any of the other names she had been calling herself. In fact she was pretty damn good. She was. She had done incredibly well in the pool and not just today but every day she had been there. She was an overcomer. And if she could overcome her terror of the water then she could overcome a missing towel.

Maybe the swimming pool staff would have spare towels. That would be sensible. Surely other people forgot towels and the pool would keep some handy in case of just such an eventuality. Yes, that would work.

Joan turned off the shower, feeling a lot better and padded her way to the little booth near the changing room entrance. A staff member was sitting there looking very bored. There wasn't a lot to do in the little booth near the entrance. Unless a school party were there and you had to tell them to be a bit quieter. Apart from that she had never seen the person in the booth do much of anything.

“Hi, excuse me. Sorry to bother you. I seem to have forgotten my towel and was wondering if you had one that I could borrow. Or even buy – I can pay for it when I'm dressed.”

The woman in the booth looked Joan up and down and smiled sympathetically.

“Sorry dear. I'd love to help you. We do keep a few spare towels here usually but we had a children's party here this morning. They had all come to swim and then enjoy refreshments and cakes in the café. It was ever so funny in a way because nearly all of them had forgotten to bring towels and they ended up having to share our towels, one towel between three. The man and woman in charge of the group had such a time getting them all organised. Oh yes, I had to laugh and when I told John about it during my lunch break he nearly burst a blood vessel he laughed so hard.”

The woman chuckled about it for a while and then stopped all at once as if she had suddenly remembered that Joan was standing in front of her.

“Anyway. Yes. Anyway. Unfortunately it means that we haven't got any spare towels to lend you. It's a shame you couldn't have forgotten your towel tomorrow. We'd have got the other ones dry and clean by then. Sorry about that.”

The woman went back to looking bored. Useless. Maybe Joan would have to leave the pool in wet clothes. If she was clever she could get at least partially dry using some of them and would have enough dry clothes left to cover her damp body enough that she wouldn't get too many funny looks and comments on the way home. It wasn't ideal but it would have to do.

Joan turned round to walk back to her locker and saw a woman looking at her.

“Hey,” the woman said, “Sorry to intrude but I couldn't help but overhear your conversation just then. Maybe I can help you. I've just come in for a swim but I only live down the road and I've got a season ticket for this place. You could borrow my towel and I could swim later. That would be okay.”

Joan could not have been more grateful. Just for today, this woman could be her saviour. Nevertheless she said, “Oh, I couldn't impose upon you like that. You don't have to do that for me, you should have your swim now.”

The woman laughed and said, “Nonsense, it's fine. It's no problem for me and would solve yours. I'll tell you what. If it makes you feel better you can buy me a coffee once we get out of here. My name's Rosie by the way.”

“Well, if you insist. I'm Joan. Thank you. Thank you so much. It's very kind of you.”

Joan paused for a moment to gather together some confidence and then said, “Yes, a drink somewhere sounds wonderful. Let's go. Not to the café here though, it's not the best and to be honest I'd like to be somewhere else right now. I know a quiet place nearby. Brown's Tea Rooms. I guess you know it too what with living so close. Thank you again.”

“It's no trouble at all. Honestly. And Brown's sounds good to me. Hey, they do a totally tasty cheesecake too. You get the drinks and I'll treat you to a slice. I'll wait for you on those comfy chairs near the entrance. See you soon. It'll be good.”

Rosie handed Joan her towel and Joan went off to get changed. In the space of just a few minutes, smiles had turned to tears and here she was smiling again. Joan had seen Rosie at the pool before and had always been a little daunted by her because Rosie was a strong swimmer and always had the most gorgeous swimming costumes. Joan remembered that at least once Rosie had worn a flowery bikini and she wasn't ashamed to admit to herself that she had noticed Rosie more than usual that day.

“Oh don't get your hopes up Joan. Just don't. You're just going for a quick drink. Mmm. And maybe cake too. And she said it'll be good. She said it, not me. Oh stop it Joan, just stop it right now!”

But Joan couldn't quite stop her thoughts wandering to the possibility of a drink becoming something more one day. It was too much to hope for. But maybe on the day of diving from that board, anything could happen. A drink might turn into a friendship. Who knows? It could perhaps even become more. At the very least she would have met a good woman with a towel. So whatever happened, she was in a winning situation. Her mistake had made her life better. At least for this moment. At least for today. And today was all that mattered.

Joan kept smiling as she finished getting dressed.

As she looked in the mirror to brush her hair she couldn't help noticing just how big that smile was.

And then, trying not to make her feelings and hopes too obvious, she went off to meet Rosie.

Revisiting Some Ancient Wounds Then Letting Them Go Again

 

I did naughty things as a child of course.

Most are forgotten in normal ways. I did wrong. Correction happened. They drifted from memory.

The ones that remain as the strongest memories are different. My head threw three at me this morning, all from forty to forty-five years ago. Two arose because my child brain saw the world in an atypical way. Autism I guess. And my way of seeing wasn't going to be understood by anyone else just as I couldn't understand the "normal" way of seeing, only learn to obey and conform and mask. That's just how it was. Neurodiversity wasn't even a word then and Jim Sinclair hadn't written of ways of being.

The other event I realised many years later arose from dissociation and from having no memory whatsoever of doing something because "I" hadn't done it and so naturally assuming someone else must have done it. I got in such trouble on all those occasions and it's only in the last five years that I've truly understood what was going on.

Then there are the memories blocked and maybe lost forever, held by the very survival parts that lead, on occasions, to dissociation that's sometimes helpful and sometimes deeply unhelpful.

Then there are missing times when I've a few times ended up losing friends for things I can't remember or conceive of but which wounded them. Understanding came late and understanding helps immensely. It can't restore a friendship but perhaps it can aid in not destroying others through ignorance of the disconnects and parts that exist within me because of a past I cannot remember and which they don't want me to discover.

I revisit adult wounds too. Those that are my own doing. Those that came from others. Those that come from events when dissociative and not even knowing that dissociation is part of my life. Those that come from everyone having unspoken personal rules and expecting their rules to be obeyed.

We all revisit though. It's the human thing to do.

For all the talk of living in the present moment our heads will keep leading us back to the past.

And so now I meditate. Focus. But at least today lie in the half awake and revisit the scenes of everything I couldn't possibly have understood when I was seven.

Forty years on I know consciously I don't need to live my past.

Our brains don't much care about our knowledge though, do they?

Even in my dreams last night I revisited. In a dream the journey took us past a place and I said I'd used to have lots of dreams in that place. It's a large and strange market with a big meeting hall adjoining. Last night the outside of it was in Chester. Except a part of Chester that's not real because usually those streets are elsewhere. A meta-dream. The recurring dreams begin again but if I don't go to those places where he and she have influence or presence then perhaps we may avoid terror.

May my sleep not revisit those old worlds. Not again. Never again.

May our awake times learn not to revisit old wounds on days filled with promise. May we learn transcendence in presence not in the creaking decay of what is no more except in the half remembered glimpses held by neurons.

The poem that led to these small thoughts

Don't Shoot For The Moon, Whatever You Do. Unless You're NASA.

 Warning:  This is the silliest thing I've posted for a very long time.

Shoot for the Moon.  Even if you miss you'll land among the stars.

I implore you. Don't do it.

Given physics and the cost of rocket technology it's much more likely you'll smash into the ground if you shoot for the moon. If you hit water it'll still hurt lots.

If you did manage to escape the gravitational attraction of the planet and missed the moon you would be dead for thousands or millions or even billions of years before reaching a star. You may never reach one at all. And you might get caught by a black hole or smashed to pieces by a piece of rock.

Even if you did have a suspension unit to keep you alive for so long, what are the chances that you would land not crash and what are the chances that you would fluke a habitable planet with an abundant food source and no large creatures or microorganisms to bump you off?

If you did hit the moon that's an incredible achievement for an individual endeavour of course and NASA would be very annoyed if you got there before they get someone else there if their current program goes to plan. In this case though, I don't believe in you!

The moon isn't the best place to be. Why would you aim for there if you weren't part of a space agency? No rain or storms but it's a bit cold and while the atmosphere is pollution free it's also almost entirely atmosphere free. There's not even a KFC and Deliveroo don't deliver that far. It's also an extreme move even for the most dedicated hermit and there's neither WiFi nor a landline and the municipal plumbing is underdeveloped. Plus the lunar charity shops never get any good donations.

So my advice is not to shoot for the moon. Even if you have a sufficiently well developed personal space program or have illegally invented a firearm far more powerful than anything the army has.

No. Don't shoot for the moon.

Get an extra cushion. Make a cup of tea. Read a book. Watch a comedy.

Life's good enough. Accept its beauty even on days when you've just posted about how rough it's being.

You don't have to shoot for the moon.

Your life here is good enough.

It can hurt here but it's better than trying to survive alone on the moon.

[This post has been brought to you by Autistic People Struggle With Idioms Inc.]

A Queer Person Gives Glory To God By Being Queer

 

Quotation by Thomas Merton
Photograph source unknown

I nearly quoted this statement by Thomas Merton in the two blog posts I wrote recently in response to religious homophobia.

There are lots of ways to read the quotation and it's perhaps dangerous to read it out of the context of its chapter. There is a lot more in the chapter. It is, after all, by Merton. The quotation is merely a beginning.

But one way is the way of the last sermon I ever preached back when I was a theist. We are beautifully and wonderfully made. Part of that is our sexuality, gender and our potential to love others generously and love ourselves just as generously. I still use the word god. It means something else now.

So a homosexual gives glory to god by being gay.

A transgender person gives glory to god by being transgender.

A cisgender heterosexual of course gives glory by being cisgender and heterosexual.

Some disagree, some with unintended words of violence to humanity disguised as claims of love, but to me that's like wanting a tree to be a different tree or a flamingo to be a sparrow. In my old theistic belief, god made you fabulous.

In any case it's hard to give glory to God, to reality, to each other, to complexity, to being, to a full dose of awestruck wonder, without self acceptance.

Yes. That's only part of the story. I know. I can hear the old religious voices in my head responding with a series of Buts. The old religion could put many buts in the way of radical self-acceptance. It took a lot to learn to respond to the buts.

I also know that acceptance is a beginning not a stagnation. So as I read about nonviolence this week I looked inside and found violence and I find it in the way I sometimes speak too. Love your enemy? Accepting both the nonviolence and violence within is a place to work with the shadows. Accepting both our purity and our messing up, our progress and our non-progress is an act of balance and we can all fall either way. I know I can but that's okay too. Even Blondin must have fallen many times before gaining the skill to attempt Niagara and Alex Honnold fell many times before ever seeking to climb El Capitan or Half Dome with no rope.

No. That's not being down on myself. It's recognition of complexity, a complexity we all have as humans and which a tree doesn't have. We all shine like stars and we all throw mud. Often in the same day, sometimes within the same sentence. That's our brains' evolution not the intention of any designer.

It's the examen, the noticing, the wanting to be more aware of what raises the many defences and fires the arrows. It's a difficult way. As I read of nonviolence in different traditions I realised again how much easier violence is in all the little ways in which it manifests. Is the dark side more powerful? (pauses for thought). "Quicker. Easier. More seductive." Perhaps the most wise response ever given by a puppet in a movie! We all know it to be true.

Sometimes it would be nice to be a tree in an ancient forest, not even aware perhaps of lumberjacks and industrial scale forest destruction. Better to be an ent though and have the ability to act when needed. I think I'd be a happy ent.

Sometimes it would be very nice not to care and to not have this temperament that won't let go. Sometimes it would be nice to be able to think more about soap operas and Love Island than to be a nontheist but still have a pile of Thomas Merton books to get through!

Things That Went Bump In The Night - Knocks On A Bedroom Door

 

One year ago today

Three years ago tonight

Three raps, urgent, loud, on my bedroom door.

And I wake. Hard, harsh intrusion.

Terror lie, listen for pinpricks, burglar creeps,

Or ghostsound in an upstairs hall.

Adrenaline outpourings to an unknown god.

That happens sometimes in this house. Knock, knock, knock. Who's there? No, don't ask. Just in case there's a reply from the estranged twin underworlds of crime and Hell.

After a while I can convince myself that nobody, alive or dead, was knocking on the door. It's the pipes. The wood. The roof. The expansion contraction of the cooling house. But I can't quite believe it and fear reigns, believing they will knock again that robber or dead child is there, that if I move I'll be attacked or worse, have to comfort the lost or experience their agony.

Then I have to look, like the second to die in the horror movie.

And that's why, approaching 4am, I'm sitting downstairs and every light in the house is on. Even now something in my mind can't quite believe in the rational explanation.

Gone are the days of confirmatory hallucinations. Only memory remains and it's the hate sunk eyes and fallen skin of the man in the sour ripped purple suit.

When I'm able to return to my bed, knowing I am alone, I'll still be listening. Fearing three more angry knocks on my door. Wishing I still had a god to deliver me from evil. Not that he ever did or ever could but the story comforted when I felt presences in Fawdon, in Crawley, and when I used to see the old woman who died in the Victorian college lift shaft or place-memory murder at the castle.

Where does hallucination end and vision begin?

When does contracting wood become a stranger at the bedroom door?

When does another world tumble into ours?

Don't ask those questions at 4am when hormoned fatigue is sovereign.

At 4am the answers may turn out to be here and now. At 4am phantom or Fantomas may be waiting for me on the stairs back to bed.

Six years ago today

One Hundred Million - Sanctuary for the Displaced

 

One hundred million. Chained by separation.

A first world problem.  A first world complaint.

Last night I received a message asking for responses to "Sanctuary" by lunchtime today.  That's tough for me.  Usually a word will wander round my head for a week and then some kind of response might fall out on a page.  Nevertheless thoughts arose as distractions in meditation and I wondered whether to write last night.  And that's the point at which Windows decided to update, scuppering my plan.  Isn't my privileged first world life difficult?!  So many problems and hardships and the immense stress of computer updates.  So many things to complain about.

This morning I've tried to write.  Most of the thoughts from last night are gone now, lost in a maze of peculiar dreams.  I had a spare hour to sit down with a keyboard and see what happened.  What happened is mostly not to do with sanctuary at all.  I honestly find my response this morning simplistic, almost banal.  One photograph from a refugee camp, one conversation with an asylum seeker, one shared moment of humanity tells much more than my words.

I have no experience of being displaced.  I have no experience of working with those who have been displaced.  Like most people I don't claim to have any answers to what is a growing problem that will almost certainly continue to grow globally especially as climate chaos increases.  I sincerely think the words of others have far more weight than anything I could write.  

Nevertheless, these are my words.  I'm posting them largely because it's an easy way to get them to the person who asked for them, definitely not because they carry any authority or any of the wisdom that comes from experience.  I might have refused to write at all except I know that the project that this may be a very small part of has refugees, asylum seekers, displaced people at the centre and it's organised by a charity that places the voices and experiences of such people at the apex of importance when discussing the issues, educating, campaigning and doing everything else it does in working in this area.

It's a privilege to be asked, not a divine right for a western white woman who may not be comparatively rich in her own country but who is fabulously wealthy compared to much of the world's population.  I've been watching a video series about life in South Sudan.  My life is carefree compared to the lives of South Sudanese people.  Windows may update.  I may only have an hour to spare this morning - and I'm running late.  But I don't have to walk miles through flood waters infested with venomous snakes just to find enough wood to sell that I can eat.  And I don't have to keep doing it if bitten.  Nobody is trying to drown me.  I have no answers for those people either.

................

They told us of Archimedes,

Inspiration, naked in a bathtub.

They told us how water is displaced

By a crown of power or by a person.

They never told us how power

Could displace a person.

One person flees a home

One hundred million displaced.

We scattered petals on the sand

For those lost, defeated in the desert,

Threw petals while crossing the Tyne

For those drowning each day.

One hundred million scattered

One hundred million scared

One hundred million seeking

The simplicity of what I take for granted.

Today, in freedom and peace, I ride a

Metro train to Tynemouth and smile at art.

Shatila refugees brightened our coast.

Palestinians from a short-term camp for

short-term problems outlasting a generation,

Two generations and still their numbers grow.

Five million now packed tight in deprivation

Ten million more subsisting beyond the camps.

I am closer to the one percent than to the

Two percent who fled from floods, governments,

Guns, paranoia, persecutions, and all

the crimes our species finds so easy to commit.

At least for now.

Hate-crimes increase while writers, religions,

The blind in spirit encourage the hate and

Government ministers threaten to strip human rights

From those like me.

One day we too may have to flee.

I am not the one hundred million seeking sanctuary,

Not the rainbow homed, torture scarred, homosexual.

Not one of those displaced internally,

Fighting for lives unwelcomed on their own land.

I cannot, must not speak for them,

Impose my safety on theirs in a land of Hassockfield IRC,

Forced evictions, and threats of deportation,

Or think my white western woman idealism

Has any clue what it is to run from bullets and brutality.

Yet I want for myself what they want for themselves.

Safety, acceptance, a place to call home, community,

Eyes of compassion not suspicion

The open hand not the fist

Freedom to be, to create, to worship or not worship.

We seek space to breathe deeply, to find healing,

To have our dignity enshrined in society and law.

Sanctuary is no complicated thing

It’s essence an agreement to find our commonalities

To see the beauty in our differences and

To accept that stranger and friend can be the same word.

I am not the one hundred million.

While they may want to return home,

I am already here.

They face wars, civil and international.

Violence, imprisonment, death, disease.

They cannot return.

I need only turn a key in a door

To be free in centrally heated peace.

Revamp slavery act to halt the tide of migrants

Quicker deportations to halt the surge of Albanian migrants

Channel migrant crisis out of control

The words of the front pages today.

Migrant. Migrant. Migrant.

No beds. No fresh air. No toilet doors. No compassion.

The words of a front page yesterday.

But how many of us care? Truly care?

Is it health, hopelessness, or merely selfish complacency

That means that even I do sweet FA?

One hundred million displaced

And I’m just another pointless keyboard warrior.

At least for now.

One day I too may be forced to act, campaign, offer myself.

No government can force compassion.

Perhaps it will flow like the petal strewn Tyne

Out of the depths of my own despair at the next headline.

There will be more headlines.

The one hundred million increase every single day.

Every one, more important than words in a newspaper,

More dignified than any thought or phrase on this page.

To be Queer is Part of My Identity. Four False Responses From A Church.

 

Last week I discussed sexuality while visiting, as a tourist, a church that has unfortunately regressed from embracing acceptance of the sexualities of LGB people and so become a space that would no longer be safe for any LGB person who accepts their own sexuality and affirms any same-sex relationship they may have. I am leaving the T from LGBT here because in our discussions we discussed sexuality and not gender but I get the feeling that the place would also no longer be a safe space for transgender person, even a heterosexual one, to “live and move and have their being.”

During the discussion I made the claim that sexuality is a part of our identity, part of what makes us who we are. I grant that there may be some mystical state where sexuality is immersed in some deeper reality. I’ve not experienced anything like that and to my knowledge don’t personally know anyone who has but I grant it as a theoretical possibility. For the rest of us though I believe sexuality is a part of our identity, a part of who we are, rather than being an added extra that we deliberately build onto our core being or than being merely a belief about ourselves.

I received several responses to the claim and want to respond to the responses in writing. I won’t say much different to what I said in the spoken discussion but may fill out my views.

A. “But it’s not all of our identity.”

I had to agree with this. Of course sexuality isn’t all of our identity. I hadn’t claimed it to be and I know of nobody who has made that claim. However, to say that something isn’t all of our identity or all of our core person is no reason to deny that it’s part of who we are.

Several years ago I made a short film about autism during a short course about basic video making lasting in total about four hours. I’ve received a diagnosis of “autistic spectrum disorder” though I’d much prefer to think of my autistic nature as a condition, or even more as a way of experiencing and interacting with the world and a way I happen to think. Within the broad diagnostic criteria I am autistic. It’s a part of who I am and a part that for many years I was ashamed to consider might be the truth. Or perhaps it would be more true to say that being autistic is parts of many parts of my identity and core person. If at any point autism ceased to be a recognised diagnosis those parts of who I am would still be parts of my person. They would be called something else but would still be parts of me. In current use of language though I am autistic. It’s a part of my identity.

It’s not the whole of my identity though. The film I made was partly about overcoming the internal and external stigma I had about being autistic but the main point was that I am so much more than autistic. Identity and personhood is so much more than autism. As people say, if you’ve met one autistic person then you’ve just met one autistic person.

If you want to see the film, it's only about four minutes long.  You can find it here.

The same is true for sexuality. If you’ve met one gay, lesbian, bisexual, asexual, demisexual, heterosexual person you’ve met one person and if you see them only for their sexuality then you fail to see a human being. We all belong to many groups and within those groups we are all unique. To know someone’s sexuality doesn’t mean you know about that person, their character, their likes, whether you’re going to become good friends, whether you share a sense of humour or political views or love noise or quiet or anything else. Sexuality is a part of who they are. An important part perhaps in terms of relationships, partnerships, marriage, and other good things. It’s also often an important part because of the effects societal attitudes have on different groups. Simply, being gay is still a tougher task than being straight. Straight isn’t an insult written on walls. Straight couples aren’t asked to kiss on trains by scumbags who get turned on by wanted to see some “lesbian action.” They aren’t beaten up for being straight either and they aren’t illegal or socially unacceptable in any country or religion in the world.

So yes, sexuality isn’t all of our identity. It is though, as I claimed, part of it.

B. Celibacy is good. We need to state that more.

I agree with this too. There is too much pressure in our society to be sexually active. I’ve been called weird because I have never downloaded porn and don’t want to watch other people having sex. Films are made about quests to lose virginity. Virgin is used as an insult and for some people to still be a virgin is to be thought of as a failure. Sex is the default assumption too often and a decision to abstain is seen as the peculiarity. I believe not having sex should be seen as equally normal and fulfilling and that it’s too tough for asexuals and demisexuals to find role models in the movies or in romantic novels.

I also agree that if a gay Christian freely chooses celibacy then they should be allowed to choose it although the religious coercion that tells them they are in some way disordered is entirely not okay. People should be free to make this choice, without social pressure and definitely without dogmatic pressure. I may find the reasons behind someone’s choice to abstain from all same-sex relationships to be against their humanity but they can make their choice and I’m happy to support them in their right to make that choice even when it’s made out of shame or fear imposed from a religious authority.

Having said that, I didn’t agree with what was being said because what was said wasn’t that celibacy should just be a personal decision or that it was okay to not be having sex. What was being said was that God wants all gay people to be celibate. Consensual gay sex was being stated as a sin as opposed to sex between a consenting man and woman. At one time, because of my own religious indoctrination, I would have agreed. Now I can’t conceive of a god who cares about what consenting adults in a relationship do to give sexual pleasure to each other no matter how half a dozen clobber verses in the Bible are interpreted and I can’t conceive of it being anyone else’s business either. I’m not even going to touch on the biblical context here and others have discussed it far better than I now could, including strongly “biblical” believers who affirm LGBT people being fully themselves. I confess I don’t much like the word biblical. As a theologian said in a podcast a couple of weeks ago “The Bible doesn’t get on well with biblical Christianity.”

I also didn’t agree because what was being said seemed to apply only to gay people. There was a treasuring of celibacy, of singleness but that treasuring wasn’t being applied in the same way to heterosexuals. I believe a single life of celibacy can be excellent for the right person, gay or straight. However I also believe that any form of coercion or pressure towards celibacy to be an evil. Hold out the option in a way society and churches very often don’t, but don’t coerce. I saw a lot of coercion towards celibacy in a church I was part of for a few years. People were made to feel they were being disobedient to god and unfaithful to the church unless they prayed and agreed after that prayer to take a vow of celibacy. Freedom of choice became coercion and abuse.

I also didn’t agree with what was being said because in the context of the discussion a category error was being made. My claim was about sexuality. It wasn’t about sex. Two married gay men having sex aren’t any more gay in their identity than a gay man who doesn’t want to have sex at all. Sexual acts don’t create identity or personhood but this confusion is quite common within religious homophobia. The pastor of a church I attended for a while claimed that he could choose to become gay if he slept with a man. He said much worse things too and it was the last time I went near that church. He was wrong. A sexual act won’t change your sexuality. I’ve known gay people who tried to prove to themselves they weren’t gay because they had been told to be ashamed of who they were and they had tried to prove themselves straight by sleeping with lots of people neither of the same sex nor gender. It didn’t work. If a lesbian sleeps with a hundred men because of the shame she’s been taught she will remain a lesbian. As we know, people in denial have often married too in their desperation not to feel shame.

In short, sexuality is something we are. Sex is something we do or don’t do. Sexuality is an is-ness. Sex is not.

C. I need to repent of things every day.

This is a bit of an aside from identity but I want to include it because it was part of the discussion. I said I had been worried since the announcement of the current priest of that church. I looked him up when the announcement was made because that church was one where I had found safety at some events and in discussions with the previous priest. I found he was on the board of an organisation that, at least when his appointment was announced, had discipleship materials online stating that in order to move on with Jesus the Christian had to repent of being gay.

I deeply hoped that when I mentioned this the response would be one of horror. I know many clergy and many Christians who are deeply horrified by such suggestions and who think there should be no place for homophobia or transphobia anywhere in the church. They include Anglicans, Catholics, Methodists, Baptists, and people from many different denominations. My old church hands out badges when marching at Pride every year that simply say “God made me fabulous.” I’m not a theist but I still have that badge on my bag when I’m out even though Northern Pride was four months ago. It’s a message that’s still needed. At the first Pride Vigil service, an event which now closes Northern Pride ever year, someone said that they knew they were going to go to Hell because they were gay. They meant it too. There was much crying that night as they began to learn from some Christians with a deep faith in Jesus that they would not be condemned for their sexuality.

I did not get my hoped for horrified response. The response was, “I repent of things every day” and I knew at that moment, still early in our conversation that a church that had affirmed LGBT people was no longer safe at all for anyone who would live out their humanity as a queer person of whatever kind.

Yes. I know repentance. In a different way to the Christian asking God for forgiveness I repent too. I know that I have “fallen short in thought, word, and deed, in what I have done and in what I have failed to do.” I repent in my own way although I know I have to be careful because of my past, a past which means honest consideration of the times I’ve gone wrong or sometimes royally fucked up or been mean can become a self-abuse rather than a self-examination. “I got that wrong” can so easily spiral into “I’m a scumbag and deserve to suffer.” Probably I will have to be aware of that tendency for as long as I live unless the inner scars of the past totally heal. Self-examination can lead to life, to becoming more human, to a resolution over and over again to grow in compassion. Self-condemnation is a kind of living torture. It’s one that I’ve seen in too many Christian books too. A hymn in the book a local Anglican church uses makes you sing out that you’re vile. Not only that, everyone else is vile too. I think that’s something else Christianity could do with rejecting as a bad thing.

I know repentance. What I also understand now is that I do not have to be ashamed of my sexuality or gender. It took me a long time to learn that these things are good. Some Christians and some churches would condemn me. A few would even try to ban me from entering the premises, but not the one I was in last week. I was told several time, with great pride, that gay people would be completely welcome to come to a service as if letting someone walk through a church door absolves a church of responsibility to turn away from all homophobia. I took no comfort in that though knowing that churches will often reach out in an appearance of love to gay people and only when the gay person is settled and has an emotional tie to the group will they be called in for “the chat” and be told how they really do need to repent, either of living their life as gay or sometimes of the “same-sex desires” and or how it’s okay to struggle with your sexuality as long as you don’t succumb to the temptation of forming a relationship or going even as far as a same-sex kiss. It’s happened to me and many queer Christians have experience of “the chat.” I was told I was welcome to attend a church even after the pastor told me I was an abomination and that he couldn’t consider me a Christian of any kind unless I repented of my gender. So being told the same thing in another church gives no reassurance of safety and acceptance whatsoever.

D. If I had a broken leg I wouldn’t call it part of my identity.

I’ve left this until last because it’s the only response that took me by surprise in any way. I thoroughly agree with it too. I wouldn’t call a broken leg part of my identity. Nobody would although a long-term disability, and especially a congenital disability can be a part of identity whether it’s physical or mental. It’s never the fullness of anyone’s identity of course but it can definitely be an important part of who someone is and how they learn to relate to society and indeed how society relates to them.

A broken leg is a broken leg though. If I’m in a car and it’s involved in a crash I may end up with a broken leg. I wouldn’t get a new sexuality though!

Sexuality is not a broken bone.

A broken bone is a have. Sexuality is an is. They could never be the same thing. Sexuality is being. Sex is doing. A broken bone is having. Three very different verbs.

Besides, to be LGBTQ+ is not to be broken in anyway. It’s not a disorder no matter what anyone may claim including psychiatry not so long ago when not far from here gay people were offered or forced to endure electric shock “therapy.” I can only wish that arguments about so called “conversion therapy” had been over decades ago and I wish that it wasn’t so often churches, where love is suppose to reign, that were continuing the arguments and the resulting abuse. It’s not gay people who need to repent. It’s Christianity.

To be queer, gay, bisexual, transgender, is to be celebrated just as to be straight and cisgender is to be celebrated.

We’re a gloriously varied human race and together we have the potential to be an utterly fabulous species if only we could stop mistreating each other for our sexuality, race, gender, disabilities, health, poverty, sex, nationality, language, or anything else and get on with learning how to love everything that makes us unique parts of a humanity with much in common.