When I was 3 years old, I came to the horrifying realization that I would never know what it was like to be another person.
I would never see out of another person’s eyes.
I have always wanted to know everything that people were thinking, feeling, seeing, wanting, needing, etc. The first person I really wanted to know that well was my mom, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t be her. I couldn’t know what she was thinking, feeling, seeing, wanting, needing, etc. And it scared me so badly.
I first started out by watching other people very intensely. I would observe their actions, their reactions to things, their emotions. I had to know everything I could about people, especially the people closest to me – either by proximity or by relation.
It got to the point where I would need that control to function. I had to know how to act around people so I wouldn’t get hurt. If my dad was angry or upset, I had to learn how to pick up on it before he could hurt me really bad. I also had to figure out how to act around him in these kinds of situations.
I needed to know how to sense my abusers emotions when they would come around. I had to know how badly I was going to be hurt – how badly I was going to feel afterward. If there was any possibility of getting away.
I had to sense when I would be taken in the night to a ritual. I had to be able to function after I was drugged. I had to be able to sense how to act, how to be, how to hide inside myself.
This is my need to be in control of every situation. It is my want to be a people pleaser. I realize hardly anything is in my control, but I like to feel like it is. It is probably why I am very OCD about everything and why I try so badly to please the people around me.
This post was really hard for me to write. I feel like I didn’t finish writing everything I needed to...
I hope it felt okay to write that out.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if all this will ever be finished - writing, therapy, healing, therapy homework, medications, trying to figure out who and what we are, etc.
I was reading in "Dissociative Identity Disorder Sourcebook" that it normally takes between 2 and 10 years to diagnose and be a well-functioning person with DID, so I told my therapist that she has until October 2012 to fix me.
I don't know what I am (what I like, my core being, etc.) so I always emulate other people who I think are doing things correctly. I wish we had a crystal ball which could show us what we would have liked, disliked, had talent in, etc., before our identity was ripped away.
Keep writing things out. You have a good insight and such a bright personality when you write that I could just choke you. (I'm kidding!!!!)
Take care,
Lisa
I know what it's like to need to be that kind of hypervigilant child. Being able to read those around me was an important coping mechanism. It still comes in handy from time to time.
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