First breaths

Yesterday i spent the day with an old school friend. We watched the footy which was adraw and has to replayed next week (only three times has this ever happened at a AFL grand final) and then later on she came up to me and asked what was wrong. I must have had a look on my face or something im not really sure. In fact this must have happened a few times as she asked more than once if i was ok. Finally at the end of the night all kids and others were in bed and we finally had a d&M.

She was saying that this was the first time since a long long time she had seen others appear and leave. I replied that i felt that at this time in my life and the healing going on i was over trying to always keep control and when i was in safe company i would simply be myself with ourselves. Hope (our friend) had seen us in school at our worst and best. She has never ad a problem with our alters as very few of our friends do. But she asked how come id started to relax now and just be whoever whenever (within reason).

My response was two fold. Leaving the Acnatha legacy behind had freed our system of a seemingly hard burden. The more we heal from her madness the more unified we become. Its almost like when we talked about the alter gasping for air when we were Rachel in therapy one day. this alter was taking her first breaths to healing and for us we feel we often are taking fresh clean breaths away from Acanthas demonic ordeal. The reflection of that is our unwillingness to try and stifle alters when we are with safe people. Hope on the other hand had her first opportunity ion years to get to know specific alters. we in turn didnt stop that process. As we talked i realised how little sometimes i can remember.

Hope was talking about events that she had been part of in our life and i kept looking at her blankly saying wow i dont remember that. She talked about visiting me in a youth house and how her dad had driven her over and im like you did. I have no memory of that whatsoever. But i do know that what she did must have been important because over twenty years later we are still freinds. Instead of freaking out with what we didnt remember we simply let hope fill in the gaps and we could explore that more privately later. we instead talked to hope in a way we hadnt before, as for hope i know that helped her get to know us beyond the blogs she always reads and re get to know her friend in new ways as we got to know her.

the only time that perhaps i felt uncomfortable is when Hope put on her music. Hope relaxes with her music we find it hard to relax in the same way. Loud music blind sides our system. We haven over found loud music or even music a lot relaxses us. We find instead it makes us nervous and unsettled. We feel exposed when music is on. Almost like no one will hear us if we scream. Dont turn the music on loud we want someone to know when we are hurting and screaming. Often mum had the music on loud so no one could hear when she went off maybe its that. Whatever it is i dont relax to music playing we prefer the tv its safer for us. Bu we know we have grown when we instead of insulate and start to freak out we understood we were in someone elses house and we needed to respect their choices, in turn hope was wonderful at accommodating us even if we didnt completely explain why were uncomfortable.

One of the things that hope talked about was how privileged she felt talking to us and our alters and getting to know them as we allowed her. what i guess she doesnt relaises is that she also gives to us. We learn from her always have. I guess our decision to stop placing ourselves under pressure of trying to hide does have its blessings.

jip-etal