I've been very slowly thinking through reconciliation. My inner split wasn't amicable. I ripped part of myself away, kept it away.
It's like going under anesthesia. You generally don't remember what happened, but it's only because the memory is disconnected as it's being constructed. It's literally still in there. I know because I have awakened under full anesthesia several times and have full recount of what was happening and things said, including me talking, even though I was given more to put me back to sleep. Under anesthesia we can still be responsive to commands.
There is a part of me that stays 'under' where I can't see. I don't have access. My best example is that library book I mysteriously went straight to without being able to remember the title or author. That part of me actively listens and interacts with me, but I'm not aware of it.
As I'm becoming aware that this explains why I've been looking for myself and things I've lost, I'm realizing I've had a running dialogue with myself all this time. I really do take care of me, I just can't see it happening. I've had to trust myself when I fear myself the most.
Me in my head has been like this for a very long time. I'm not sure how to reconcile. Should I even try?
I'm not sure how to trust the person who can help me. I don't know how to share dominance and let the others talk. It was so hard having to learn how to talk in the first place. The me saying this is the me 'under'. I'm just letting whatever comes out type itself while I watch.
We've been taking turns. Maybe some can tell when the words switch off. It's fun coming back later and reading it fresh.
But yeah. I'm the mean one. And I guess I'm ready to try negotiating or something. I want to retain my autonomy but it's getting more obvious that medication is the only way I'm not wrecking things up.
So Jacky, as a personality, has been around a very long time, known to be extremely obsessed with the color blue and easily infatuated with reams of information. Jacky is probably the closest I can get to seeing my own brain working. I'm not sure that the red stuff is all Pinky. Pinky is an interface, a smoother outer, a thinker working on puzzles. Yablo is the fun one but didn't get a name until I got on the internet back in the 90s, not generally a talker. Janika as a name has been around since everything fell apart in the 80s, but more like an extension of original me (Jan, a bit oblivious). (Oblivious blaze of glory is like Jan+Yablo, which usually backfires horribly once all the fun dies down.) Jacky definitely goes back the longest as far as an 'other' goes. I feel like there is at least one more, possibly two (there were 6 in the car during the lyrica incident). All of this goes back to childhood trauma of varying types and degrees, but it's very important to notate that, as far as I know and can tell, none of it was sexual abuse or maliciously done. I think it's very important to realize that the older gens raising my generation were expected to be tough on kids, and all that was both prompted and rewarded via socialized propaganda and religion. However, when your parents are also mentally ill themselves, this slants a child into a special sparkly place where the brain mildly splits into compartmentalized personality slots that handle various stressors, if I'm understanding the material correctly.
Getting names on my slots was accidental. I never talked to an imaginary friend with a name growing up, although I can look back and see that I did talk to myself constantly inside my head. Constantly. I was there with me all the time. I was even mean to me, and I didn't like me, and it was all very confusing who I was and which side I was on from moment to moment. I was probably lucky I could even see some of that. I realized during high school that I was 'crazy' and deliberately asked to be tested in college. That is documented across a couple of blogs.
Whenever there was something very hard going on, though, one of my two dominants would step up, step forward, however you want to think of it. One had no feelings, one was sweet and kind. They are like oil and water. It was like literally being ripped in half, and sometimes I was glad for that because having no feelings in the way during hard stuff makes it much easier to do what needs to be done. But that also means having to come back later and feel the brunt of what wasn't felt earlier, so my life was a bit like move over and fear me being cool vs weepy puddles of anxiety and sadness. Sometimes I'd go a long time without a tear and then be a mess for awhile afterward, but when it all rolls up into going back and forth on the same day, it gets rough. Imagine having a discussion about whether you're bipolar on top of all this going on. How do you pin down what you even need if you can't see what is really going on in your head? I am understandably reticent about going on head meds until I can get help with whether that might make it all worse.
Anyway, the goal is trying to find the moments where the splits happened, pretty sure I've got the Jacky split discovered, not a clue yet about Yablo since it's not dominant at all, but since Pinky is definitely the yappiest, Pinky split must have come later enough to own the verbal IQ. Pinky is also the chess player, although I never thought of myself as Pinky when I learned to play chess. The interaction is what Pinky is better at than the others. I think I've got the Pinky moment down.
That is the first time in my entire life I've attempted to define these parts of me in a useful manner other than my own amusement.
I think the most frustrating part living inside all this is that I can't see my own self switching off while other people can't help noticing, and they don't know I don't know it's going on. It hasn't been until I started talking about it out loud that I started finding out it's very real, and that other people can see me flip like a light switch in and out of conflicting personalities. I may remember what I say and do (or not remember patches of it), but I don't see, feel, or remember 'switching' unless I'm paying attention to it. Once this was validated by family members, I was able to learn how to pay more attention and see it happening.
The hardest part is when I am watching my mean self take over and I can't seem to stop it. My mouth keeps going, I know I need to make it stop, I know the consequences I'll have to deal with, but I'm simultaneously locked into a mode and somehow completely unaware of the me watching in horror. Imagine living two perspectives at the same time. I live like this.
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