Hard Won Truce

How do I do it?

Ok, let's look at the timeline, then? This is certainly not all inclusive.

18 - I break apart almost completely. I have no idea why and the people around me are scared. I begin the really heavy therapy. Begin wandering around old neighborhoods trying to "trigger" some kind of memory of my past.

20 - I seem to be making progress in therapy. I am currently working with my third (?) dx, cyclothemia. Develop my first major mystery illness. Voice is gone, can't swallow, lymph nodes huge. Nothing shows up on tests. When I am healthy, I still wander neighborhoods. Begin questioning family and friends about my childhood.

21 - Somehow I manage to appear, for the most part, sane in public and at work. The anger in me grows. I have spent countless hours wandering old neighborhoods and old schools. I've found myself weeping harshly in old classrooms I didn't recall entering. I have body memories I don't understand. Enter faith. I begin talking to God. No church. No bible. Just me and him. The load lightens some, but I remain angry and sick.

22-24 - I live in the larger city near me now. I am having the hardest time ever maintaining the look of sanity. I take trips back to my home town a lot to drive the old neighborhoods. My mom says I was "a courageous child" and this just makes me more angry. Why does a child need to be courageous? My veneer begins to crack again and I re-enter therapy. Immediately they put me on lithium. My system collapses. Third major mystery illness puts me down for 6 weeks. Nothing on tests, I am healthy. I lay on my bed and talk into a small recorder because I am too sick to write. If I had the strength, I would throw myself out the window. I want to die now from the physical pain. The mental stuff is old news. I have stigmata on my hands sometimes. I am convinced that I will not live to see 25. I begin to live in the shadow of my own mortality.

25 - Final dx. MPD. Awareness. What now? I begin working with this new therapist with tactics aimed at MPD. I begin to see marginal results. I remain angry. I continue to scream at my God. To hate my mother. I remain convinced that if I could just remember my past that I'd be well. The voices always in my head tell me this is untrue. At some point, I find myself in the church of my childhood. Alone. I have it out with God and He makes it clear that I can come home. My faith is so strong. All I want when I die is to hear "Well done, my good and faithful servant" and I don't think I will if I let Him take me now. It pisses me off. I rail at Him. How *dare* You think me unable to do this! My choice is to know and maybe never ever be well, to always be so terribly sick. Or to not know, to maybe never know, and be well.

My choice is made. I chose to live.

There are times when I am still angry. I have sacrificed much for this fucking illness; lost more than I admit to it. But by 28 I was doing really quite well. I am still sick. I still have episodes. I still have voices in my head and I still make major sacrifices for them.

But it occurred to me in that church that day that God does not give you more than you can handle. He gives you tools along the way. I'd tried so hard for so long to "fix" this thing in me. But He'd given it to me. And maybe, just maybe, if I stopped trying to "fix" that which was in His eyes not broken but exactly as He'd meant it to be... if I stopped trying to change my lot and instead work with what I'd been given... maybe I could make a real go at life.

So, to you it sounds like this peace is something that has always been. That is not the case. For a whole decade I was so sick I should have, on at least three occasions, been hospitalized. My therapist wouldn't hear of it. Never truly suicidal, she let it slide and we got through it.

Yes. I am at peace with this monster. But it was a hard won truce that remains sometimes shaky. I am battered and bruised for those who care to look. I am damaged goods.

But that is as my God intended.

I don't know that this answers the question. But it is what they gave me to write.