nov 30

[prismaticbleed]

 

Today's been difficult.
(TW: abuse, self-harm, EDs)

 

We're dealing with a lot of old problems that keep re-surfacing as we haven't properly healed them yet: most notably, abandonment issues, eating disorders, sexual abuse, and suicide.

The therapist hasn't discussed any of that with us yet, despite us having seen her for 3 months now, twice a week. We're not sure whether or not we've even brought it up yet. We've given her a ton of printed papers on those topics but that's it.
The problem is, the people who front for therapy are notoriously bad at speech, but they're the ones with access to the most data. Ironically, their struggles with vocal communication cause most of that data to be communicated wrongly, and this causes a lot of frustration.

For the first time in years, the eating disorders are now a bigger threat than the sexual abuse, due to the consequences of the latter being quicker and more severe. We have a lot of dietary issues, so having an abusive fronter decide to force-feed the body something harmful can have disastrous consequences. Nevertheless, sexually abusive alters have always been tied to eating disorders, and typically their attacks would invariably follow in the wakes of binges or trigger foods. Thankfully we've all been hypervigilant lately, so even the ED voices are being watched constantly, and that reduces the risk greatly.

For those of you unfamiliar with the jargon: "atoners" are the voices in our System that were created to deal with the horrific aftereffects of sexually abusive alters, who would harm us via "hacks"-- forced and malevolent instances of fronting. Unfortunately, the atoners would "purify" the body via self-abuse, convinced that the sexual corruption was stored in the blood, and it needed to get out. Because of how long this has been going on, the body is quite covered in scars.
Furthermore, thanks to Julie's fondness for it, sugar (especially chocolate) has been one of the biggest trigger foods for us for as long as we can remember. Even small amounts of it would set off major inner alarms, as not only would it make the body extremely ill, but it would catch Julie's attention, which usually ended in another hack.

As you can see, this daily war caused the suicidal impulses of our main fronters to soon reach a fever pitch, and now that too is practically a chronic concern. Adding that to the total lack of a support system and the inability to function in social situations and it is a wonder that our fronters have managed to scrape by for so long, especially since many of them deny the existence of the System, and therefore isolate themselves from all possibility of help and healing.
That is why we have not managed to overcome these problems even after so many years, and so much internal work... after all, if you work to heal the current fronter for months, and suddenly they die or change dramatically, and are no longer the person you had been healing... well, that kind of throws a wrench in the machine. There have been too many failed attempts at system resets and integration by this point. We're falling apart from the inside out and most of us no longer know how to maintain such a terribly shattered System. But we are trying.


We're sorry for writing all of this here. It's just that we've never been able to talk about it before, and this is a battle we've been fighting for at least 10 years now. Bottling everything up for so long does nothing but cause things to rot, and fester, and become diseased.

Today has been difficult. But we've made it this far, I guess.
If we make it to the morning, we'll keep trying.