discontinuous

 

Last night got rough so I had to reach out. During the convo I got confirmation on a fairly big memory gap.

I think the most confusing thing is that not all my dissociations are mutually exclusive, and it's really hard to see where discontinuity happens and what fills in the space if a couple of us are sharing real time and don't notice a third slips in or butts in on whims in moments. And then that one presents with the over arching memory that doesn't make sense.

Other people can sometimes see my discontinuities when they happen. I can't.

I found my way through years of confusion, miles of confusion, stacks of confusion, trenches of confusion. I am still here because I have fought so hard to be here, continuously.

I'm in new territory now. I want to stop fighting with myself. This requires cooperation, or some kind of ceasefire agreement. The retaliation factor backfiring on us all has to pull back.

I wonder if this is why I went after academia so hard. Other people's minds using logic to figure other things out kept me stable enough to get through school. I learned to copy that. That method doesn't always apply well in relationships, but it helped to have it to fall back on.

If I had allowed my very emotional self to surface through childhood, I'm sure I'd have done so much damage that I'd either be in jail or dead, and aside from those two outcomes, I'm pretty sure I'd have hurt a lot of people at least emotionally, if not a few very physically. I feel like I'm coming to the other end of a very long marathon of me fighting not to become an extremely ugly person.

There is very little to find on aging through dissociative disorders, even though I feel like we're on the worldwide cusp of discovering  how common this is. The brain survives traumas in very clever ways. Who has not been through traumas? It is just that some go through continuing traumas and some don't, so the need to keep adapting might be more stringent on some than others. Either way, PTSD and depression are huge side effects, and our cultures are all saturated with these.

I am meandering now. Another Monday morning 'hangover' alone from a busy weekend with other people around. Where the line is drawn between autism and dissociation triggers is very squiggly. I feel like it's all smeared together and trying to categorize behaviors from moment to moment is probably a worthless endeavor.

Better to get back to distraction. Stay busy.