May 6, 2006

It feels like time is standing still.
Everything... has just come to a stop. At least in my world.
And if its this hard for me, I can't imagine what its like for my sister.
She is going to the hospital to be induced on Monday.
Her last pregnancy didn't go so well. I can't let myself go into it right now, it scares me too much.
Right now we are just hoping for the best, that it won't happen again. Its been a fight inside my head for several days trying to decide if I should fly out to be with her or not. But in the end, my sister wants me to stay at home, so I am staying at home. I REALLY want to be with her on Monday though. I want to be there more than anything.
Right now we are all just waiting. Its worse than waiting for Christmas!
My poor sister has swollen ankles and feet and is just waiting for Monday to come.
I am just waiting and praying that everything will be all right, and worrying about her and wishing I could be there.

Posted by pilgrim at 9:07 PM | Comments (1)

May 8, 2006

I have so much chaos in my head right now. And I'm worrying myself sick.
All day I've been pacing and I barely got any sleep last night.
Cant calm down. Keep trying to take deep breaths but its difficult.
My sister is in the hospital.
Her baby is supposed to be born today (good news!)
I want MORE THAN ANYTHING to be there with her. More than ANYTHING. I wish to God that I had just flown up there like we were thinking maybe to. I wish more than anything else that I was there.
I got a little update several hours ago directly from my sister-- she was in labor.
But I have heard NOTHING since then. NOTHING. I keep trying to call, no answer. I tried calling my mom
on her cell phone, but all of a sudden its the wrong goddamn number!!! When the HELL did my mom change her cell phone? NICE OF HER TO TELL ME!
I can't get ahold of ANYONE.
I am scared to death right now. I cant think. I am just scared to death. With my sister's pregnancy, no news isn't necessary good news. :(
i am so scared. I WISH SOMEONE WOULD CALL!
My mom said she would call with an update and she HASNT.
My sister said she would call with an update but at least SHE has an excuse-- she's in labor! My other family though-- NO EXCUSE.
I cant get ahold of anyone and I am scared to death and I am so worried about my sister and I'm just terrified and its causing inside people to act up and Mae is just scared to pieces and acting up
and i wish i was there and I'm just feeling like the worst sister in the world for not rushing up to be there. Why did I listen to my sister and stay here? I should have just gone there. Why am I still on the other side of the country?
I SHOULD BE WITH HER!
What if sometihng is going wrong?
What if something is happening? And I dont know about it?
I keep praying that things are ok but I WISH SOMEONE WOULD JUST CALL AND LET ME KNOW!!! I AM SO SCARED!!!

Posted by pilgrim at 4:28 PM | Comments (0)

May 11, 2006

I am overwhelmed. Trying to finish up the school year. We have 3 weeks left and then it's summer. Right now I've got a stack of paperwork on my desk that keeps growing instead of shrinking, no matter how much I work on it. Thankfully my sister is ok after having her baby (YAY!) and she is home now. I have seen 1 picture of the baby and he looks cute from what I can tell, although it was sort of a bad picture. But hopefully someone in the family will send some decent pictures soon. It's a big weight off my shoulders to know that my sister and baby are home safe and doing ok.
But I am still trying to recover from all the panic attacks I had over last weekend and on Monday, which took a lot out of me. I did't get much sleep last week or over the weekend from worrying so much and I wore myself out. Then i worried myself sick. So I'm still sort of worn out from all that. Plus all that dang paperwork and a bunch of stress from school. Its just constant drama at my job. Its amazing how adults can act like such children.
The last few days, just out of exhaustion, I've been switching a lot and not able to get myself out of this fog. At night Mae has been extremely whiney and taking over because I fall asleep, and she takes over. I dont know what she's saying or doing but I'm finding papers torn up and lots of whiney things written on my computer. I dont know if she is writing any emails to my therapist or not. I hope not. We bother our T enough as it is.
I just feel really low, stupid, and worthless right now.
We don't have anyone to talk to now anymore. My sister will be too busy and too tired for the next few years, and she was the only person who talked to me for real.
I guess I'm just lonely and tired. Maybe having all this work to do is good for me. Something to throw myself into.

Posted by pilgrim at 3:59 PM | Comments (2)

May 12, 2006

If you have been e-mailing me personal comments, please make sure you have my new e-mail address. Click on the link to the right where it says "Email me" and that will take you to my new address.

I also have a Myspace.com page now also (Pilgrimsjourney) if anyone would like to visit there as well.

Posted by pilgrim at 8:09 PM | Comments (0)

I AM .... alone. a child. a teacher. a wanderer. a worrier. a soldier. an artist. a writer. a loner.

I WANT....comfort. a kitten. a baby. a hug from my therapist.

I WISH.... for peace. for everyone to have love, a safe place to live, and enough to eat.

I HATE.... people who are mean. Being fat.

I MISS... old friends. Looking anorexic. feeling like I belong somewhere. My mom.

I FEAR....gaining weight. Expressing myself. Being abandoned.

I HEAR....my dog sighing in his sleep. My other dog lapping up water. Law& Order SVU hottie Detective Stabler

I WONDER...when will Jesus come back? Will I ever be thin enough?Will I ever recover from this eating disorder?

I REGRET...moving away from my sister. Things not said. Not getting therapy sooner.

I AM NOT....a doormat. A mean person.

I DANCE....with preschoolers to "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" at work just about every day!

I SING.... nursery rhymes with my students.

I CRY.... alone in the bathroom or alone in my car or alone into my pillow.

I MAKE WITH MY HANDS.... a warm comforting place for children to come get a hug. Playdough animals at Art time.

I WRITE....too many damn e-mails to my therapist, probably.

I CONFUSE....myself, with the facts. Reality with pretend.

I NEED.... assurance. Comfort. A friend. Someone to talk to in real life. Someone to just hang out with.

I SHOULD....not say "should."

I START....each day with a big yawn, a stretch, and a prayer.

I FINISH... most days in exhaustion.

I'M GLAD.... that my sister had her baby. That I have a great treatment team. That I am eating more healthfully. That I am not in the hospital like I was last year at this time. That God is in control of the world.

Posted by pilgrim at 9:35 PM | Comments (1)

May 14, 2006

*Beware* I'm exhausted and whiney today....

Everyone is driving me crazy and i hate it. Its too much pressure and it just makes things more crazy inside and I just want to disappear inside and not come out. People inside and people outside. Whatever I do, its not enough. No one is ever happy with any decision i make.

For instance, I just bought a ticket to go visit my family for the summer. I decided to stay 9 days. My family says I don't stay long enough. My husband says I stay too long. Does anyone even CARE what I want? I am going to stay that many days to help out my sister since she just had her baby. They are tearing me apart. Personally, 9 days with my sister isn't long enough. 9 days with my parents is about 8.5 days too long. My husband wouldnt like it if I left for only 3 days. It doesn't matter how long I am gone. Whatever I do, its wrong to SOMEONE.

At work I have too much to do. I spend time on X, but then Y doesn't get done. So I spend some time on Y, but then X and Z isn't getting done. Then comes A,B, and C. So now I have A,B,C,X,Y,and Z to all work on. Well, someone's going to HAVE to wait.My students want my undivided attention 8 hours a day, all 17 of them. My aides don't do their jobs right. I think my husband wants a perfect, loving wife who's always in a good mood and cleans up messes and does the laundry just right (no wrinkles). Mae wants to play every day. Jo wants to starve herself to death. My therapist wants me keeping track of everything I eat and forms filled out on how I'm thinking/ reframing thoughts/ whatever. Caroline wants to do research and always has HUGE plans about what she wants to do every day. Missy wants to exercise and research things and talk to people. Friends want me to be there for them and help them solve their problems and listen to them and offer advice. But everyone wants their thing done NOW. Add in husband and students and pets and colleagues and inside kids and my mother and laundry and report cards to do. It all makes me CRAZY.

I feel like I can't do things just for ME. I have to check around first in total paranoia and make sure that husband/parents/inside people are going to approve. Because otherwise, I will never hear the end of it.

I feel like I can't do anything right. Then people tell me I should have higher self esteem and I shouldn't be so hard on myself and that I'm not fat and that I ought to talk nicer to myself. WHY? When apparently all I do is constantly fail everyone all and not live up to your expectations of me, say stupid things, make you all sigh in embarassment, and apparently I'm a stupid idiot? SURE. I should have LOTS of self-esteem.

Caroline handles things so much better. Its better if I just disappear inside. I don't talk much at home. Its better if I dont. I dont talk much around my parents either, or at work. Caroline and Missy are the ones that do the talking. I can't handle all the stress that people around me cause inside. I feel like a big idiot around other people. I wish I could just disappear inside forever.

Posted by pilgrim at 12:33 PM | Comments (2)

this just is not the best of days, no one here handles it very good i guess not even Caroline.stirs up too many memories. Mae gets so sad too even when she remembers when there were nice times when she was littler making rice crispy treats with mom and playing tea party because its been such a long time ago. this is just not a good day. everyone is no one today here. i'm so fat and disgusting. i dont want any food in me. every calorie goes straight to my stomach and my hips and makes me fatter and fatter.
Last week we went to the mall (not MY idea!) and I walked past this girl and she looked at me and whispered to her friend "She's so skinny." Which is such a complete lie because its so obviously that i'm not. i can't even shop in the womens clothing department anymore because i'm too big to fit in the clothes. i have to shop in the mens department now to find clothes that fit. i'm fatter than everyone i know. i'm so ugly and disgusting. i cant stand it. i wish i was invisible.

nobody

Posted by pilgrim at 6:39 PM | Comments (1)

May 20, 2006

One more week of school and then maybe I will start feeling like a human being again. Everything has been absolutely insane all week. I go in early, stay late, and work through lunch to try to get tons of paperwork done and my classroom packed up. My assistant is driving me nuts and all the kids in the school are acting up, including my good kids. Five more days!! Next weekend at this time I will finally be able to relax!

A situation at work has my blood pressure soaring every time it pops into my mind, and I'm just so frustrated by it and having such a hard time letting go of it. The way that the world works just SUCKS big time and even though I can't go into detail here about what's going on at work, I think it totally sucks that people who do a bad job at work can still get a good evaluation, when there are those of us who completely work our butts off and deserve the good evaluations we get. The work world BITES. Apparently, it has no morals. Forget the real world. I like my world better. And I'm supposed to get better, and be out in the real world more? No thanks. I'll take dissociation.

I haven't heard anything from my sister for a whole week and I miss her a lot. I know she's super busy with her new baby and her little girl but I wish I would hear something. I just hope they're doing ok. My family doesn't give me updates either, they don't call and rarely e-mail. I feel very in the dark. With my whole family, "out of sight=out of mind" for them. I feel like to them, I don't even exist anymore.

This morning I woke up really lonely. Last night I'd had dreams about my sister, and some old friends, and my ex best friend. In my dreams it was just so nice to have people to talk to again. In my dreams we had been hanging around our old house and my old college. It had felt so good to feel included. Then I woke up and realized that those days are gone, and so are all the people in them. I went to DID group this afternoon, but no one showed up so I left after half an hour of waiting. There are just some people that I miss so much. It makes my heart ache.

My husband and I have been going on walks almost every night and I like that. He's trying to get into shape, and I'm trying to not be fat. It gives us a chance to hang out a little bit and talk some. Usually since we're outside, I dissociate and Mae comes out, or even Tuck, because they like to be outside so much, but hopefully my husband doesn't notice, because the kids try really hard to "sound grown up".

Mae has been making some more progress. She talked to my therapist for a little while at Tuesday's appointment-- I don't know what about. But when it came time to leave, there needed to be an adult come back to drive home. And Mae willingly pulled away from the front and let an adult take back over. Then tonight, Mae started freaking out about something and going on about the bad people, but only for about a minute and she let help her out and I talked to her for a minute, then took back over, and even though she's still scared, she isn't taking over completely and she isn't having a total meltdown. Yay for her!

I think that things will be getting much better over the next couple of weeks. I'm STILL sticking to my meal plan, so I feel healthier. I'm not doing any eating disordered stuff, no one has been cutting or anything. And I always do better in the summer anyway, so things should keep going well.

(I just have to survive the last week of school.)

Posted by pilgrim at 8:09 PM | Comments (4)

May 23, 2006

Still very, very overwhelmed. The school year SO.NEEDS.TO.BE.OVER!!!

my body has been shaking today from all the stress i'm under and then today someone needed MORE work from me and then i needed to stay later at work also.

and i can barely hold back tears and a complete nervous breakdown right now and i just feel like crying but then THAT won't accomplish anything.

there is just SO much to do and even though I am working my butt off, it looks like NOTHING is getting accomplished in my life or at work (the pile of paperwork on my desk grew THREE INCHES higher this afternoon!)and I have 4 meetings tomorrow and i feel like i can't make through 3 more days of this!! i just am shaking so much. i have to keep doing this for 3 more days somehow. then on saturday too.

I'm so lonely and needing a friend so badly lately.

Posted by pilgrim at 4:27 PM | Comments (3)

May 26, 2006

There is a lady who has become quiet a nice addition to my life.
She is an older lady who works at one of the spas here in the city.
I've come to think of her as "my masseuse".
Now that I've been to see her a half a dozen times or so, I think I can claim her.

I had a massage today. My body had become one massive ache and we needed to remedy that. So I went to the spa after work today. Caroline had thought ahead and schedule us a massage for the last day of school, thank goodness. I had never thought of getting massages before. Then a few years ago, I remember in group, my therapist mentioned that she was going to get one, and that sort of planted a seed in my mind. Last summer I had my first one, and since then I've been hooked. I didn't think I'd like the idea of some stranger touching me. Uck! But OH MY is it nice.

Mae had problems with it-- thinking about bad people and all, but now, she either sleeps through massages, or just lives with it because she has gotten used to the nice older lady we always see who has very comforting, strong hands.

At first, I really worried. Bad body image, I. See myself as huge, fat, grotesque-- that sort of thing, even though people tell me I'm thin. But I've never had an idea of how much space I take up-- I've always just felt like it was too much. I've always felt so weighted down by worries and by inside people and problems, I've just felt like I MUST take up a lot of space. Too many people stuffed inside, we must have a very large body to fit us all.

But today I realized, that getting a massage is really helping with this problem. I noticed that when we really take the time to relax, and try to really be okay with someone else touching me, that I can feel where her hands are. She rubs my arms, and I can feel that my arms aren't REALLY 4 feet in circumference, because her hands are not very big and they fit around my arm. She massages my legs, and I can feel that my legs and my butt don't REALLY extend all the way out the door like they feel they do. Same for my back, my stomach, even my feet. Its sort of like.... I really END somewhere. My body doesn't really go on forever with all that fat and flab. It has an ending. It sort of helped me feel contained. Like hopefully my body isn't really as out of control as it feels it is. Because I can feel her hands and her hands only go a few inches away and thats where my body ends.

I wonder if most people feel like they go on and on forever and take up too much space or if most people have an idea of where their body is in space. I feel like the autistic kids in my class, or the kids with sensory motor dysfunction. No idea where my body is in space. Just floating around randomly. I wonder if any of it my have to do with never being hugged or touched when I was littlle, after I was 4. I never had a place where I could crawl in someone's lap, or get wrapped up in someone's arm. I never had a tight squeeze or an arm wrapping me up. I didn't put my head on peoples' shoulders or anything. Things like that. I just always felt like I was floating around in space all the time, far away from people. I didn't ever get a sense of I start here and end here; you start and end there. It was always more like.... I am nobody, nowhere, and everyone else is far away.

As soon as the massage ended, and even while it was still going on, that feeling and that knowledge of being contained pretty much disappeared. But for a few minutes today, I felt it. I wish I could hold onto it longer.

Posted by pilgrim at 7:19 PM | Comments (3)

May 28, 2006

Loneliness can raise your blood pressure, make you sick, lead to sleepless nights, and even make your life shorter.

I don't actually have any friends. Not in real life. My sister is my friend, but we live on different sides of the country. And she just had a baby, and already has a toddler-- her life is overwhelming for her. I rarely get to talk to her.

I am extremely shy and introverted. I did have a best friend once... but... for lots of reasons, mostly because of me being multiple I think... she is gone.

In the summer I get even more lonely than I usually am. I try to pretend it doesn't bother me so much. I try to pretend that I enjoy having so much time to myself. I try not to mention how jealous I am of families in the park or friends I see together laughing. I pretend I like going places alone. I read a lot, and say that I just like learning new things.

.....but inside, its killing me. The loneliness is overwhelming.
don't tell anyone.

Posted by pilgrim at 8:35 PM | Comments (12)

May 29, 2006

In the middle of your picnics and your retail sales, please remember...
they gave up their lives so we could live free. [Click on the link]

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Posted by pilgrim at 4:36 PM | Comments (0)