So, my brain kinda went explody back in August and the fallout continues. It's been slowly going explody on this front for literally decades. Then, for some reason, August, my brain decides everything is safe enough to ratchet up the anxiety, the dissociation, and nightmares. And, on top of it, the feeling that my brain/psyche is fractured got to the point that I couldn't just ignore it and push forward.
I've been spinning my wheels trying to figure out how to approach the prospect that I have a dissociative identity disorder issue going on right now. As my psych explained it, there's a spectrum to trauma responses. DID (formerly known as multiple personality disorder) is at one extreme and mild panic attacks is at the other extreme. Lucky me, I get to experience the entire fucking spectrum. For a little while this had me questioning everything, like is my spiritual experiences *my* experiences or something my brain manufactured?
The All-Father sat me down and had a talk. He has been coaching me through the process of journaling to get these separate/not separate elements of my psyche to communicate. He explained to me that my trauma responses are valid and that the more I dive into them and work through them, the healthier I will be. When I say that Odin sat me down and had a talk, I should say it was more like Loki, Freyr, and Odin staged an intervention.
I was sitting there experiencing an existential crisis for the umpteenth time that day when the three of them just showed up. Loki on one side, Freyr on the other, and Odin in front of me. It was put to me that I had to stop being in denial about this element of my life, that it was getting detrimental to my health. The three of them assured me that I wasn't getting crazier. I was just recognizing what was always there and gaslit/taught to deny/punished for being that way. It was shortly after this discussion that I talked to my psych about this business. Cue the man being completely unsurprised and telling me that he had suspected it was a latent thing that I was repressing. That completely floored me.
Since November, I've been struggling with trying to do the journal work. I've got a lot of emotional trauma that I've been working through and Loki keeps nudging me over to Freyr when it gets too much for me to handle. It's less 'not my department' and more 'he's going to do a better job supporting you right now.' I've been having nightmares, a lot of them. I am medicated to the point that I shouldn't be remembering my nightmares, but that particular medication wears off about 4 am and then they hit and either I am stuck in a nightmare or I wake up in a panic and wander the apartment not entirely sure where/when I am but that I have to check to make sure that my family is ok.
HappyFunBall!Loki has been trying to cheer me up since the seasonal depression hit. The sheer volume of dirty jokes that he can come up with is impressive. Somedays, however, he puts aside that demeanor and just sits with me, telling me that I've lived through the worst of it and I can get through this. I have gotten the distinct impression that Loki is keeping a close eye on me right now and that he may actually be worried, though he hasn't said it.
Freyr has just been quietly doing things like reminding me to take my medications and engage in self-care. He's been gently prodding me to start doing more physical exercise again. He also was the one who told me to stop eating the shrimp when my mouth and throat began to itch and call the pharmacist RIGHT NOW! The pharmacist was like 'That's an allergic reaction, take some Benadryl and if it doesn't go away, call you doctor immediately.' So, now I'm allergic to shellfish. Freyr was also the one who told me to put baking soda on my hands after I had a reaction to latex dish washing gloves. My reaction felt like a mild chemical burn and the baking soda stopped it so that it was just itchy and not feeling like my hands were on fire. They were bright red for a little while but then that passed. Of course, both of these things happened one day after the other. And, because trouble comes in threes, Freyr caught on that I was beginning to have an allergic reaction to Aleve similar to the one that I have when I have taken ibuprofen. So, the only thing I can take for my migraines is Tylenol, which is bullshit and useless for a migraine.
Freyr has also been talking me down out of panic attacks that have started hitting me at random when I'm trying to go to sleep after Beloved and I are done cuddling for the evening. Just last night, I was beginning to wind up and Loki told me to look at Freyr. So, I did the trance thing and looked at Freyr and Gullinbursti. That boar is frigging huge. Freyr was just sitting there leaning against him. We talked a bit and I got to give the boar some pets, which I think he liked. I don't know. I don't understand boars, hogs, or pigs. I grew up on a grain farm. They didn't start raising hogs until after I had gone off to college. (And that venture is going really badly, as in there are hogs dying of malnutrition and disease because of neglect.)
I've only recently really started doing the journal work. It took me about three months to work up to it because of all the emotional baggage that Odin, Loki, and Freyr talked me through. I'm not enjoying this journal work, it feels wrong. But so does self-care when you were gaslighted for 20 years that you are not worthy of such a thing and that your very existence should be apologized for.
My parents are real winners. I haven't had anything to do with them in literally years. I don't intend to do so in the future either because of how toxic they are. My children don't know them. They know of my parents, but they don't know my history or anything else about them. Fortunately, they did get the opportunity to get to know their Great-grandparents (my paternal Grandparents, the ones who were not crazy) before they died. As I have said before in other places and on other platforms, the next time I intend to see my parents are when they're dead and then it'll be to make sure that they actually are deceased and it's not some elaborate mindfuck.
Obviously, Odin has strong opinions on how I was raised and the reverberations from it. He's basically stepped in and said "I'm your Dad now." It's been an interesting experience but also a hell of a lot more healthy than any of my experiences with my parents. He's generally been pretty laid back about a lot of things, but he does get a bit cranky when I start to do stuff like forget to take care of myself. Cranky Dad!Odin is an experience. I get the glare of disapproval and the "Haven't we talked about this?" speech. Then I go, "Yeah, you're right. I really should do XYZ. I'm sorry." To which he almost always responds, "Don't be sorry, just do better. You deserve it."
And then there's the times where Dad!Odin and Loki get going on the cheezy jokes. It's hilariously awful. For example when my Beloved was reading a Dr. Seuss book to one of the boys and there was the line 'and you'll never find a pet wetter than that', Dad!Odin said dryly "They've obviously never met a fish." Loki then supplied, "Well of course not, they're in tanks. You don't want to mess with a tank."
But, that's wtf has been going on and is going on right now. Things are crunchy, weird, and uncomfortable. My PTSD has been acting up a fair amount and I've been having them talk me through flashbacks. It's been an experience.
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