Memory Work Essays: THE CONCLUSION!
Oct. 3rd, 2019 10:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lb_leeThere is only 1000 words left of the memory work zine, and it seems a shame to leave that straggler, so I've chosen to exercise my blogly fiat and post it this month, possibly in lieu of the usual writing poll. (Since 3000 words would've been posted this month, had I not accidentally jumped the gun on part 12.)
Previous Chunks: see index!
Mom
Mom continued sending us text messages on our birthday and holidays until Thanksgiving 2017, when Rogan lost his temper and texted back, “Please stop contacting me. If you don't I will respond with stuff grandpa did to me and ask if he did it to you too.”
We never heard from her again.
Dad
Dad continued texting, calling, and emailing us until January 2018, mostly angry declarations of his innocence. He never once engaged with our accusations of Grampa and Lois, and once again jumped the gun when he claimed Mom and Bro never attacked us… before we made any statement of it.
He read our blog obsessively, looking for anything regarding him. Eventually, we gave him what we wanted: we made a public statement that for years, we had been auto-forwarding every email he sent us, unread, to our trusted friends.
He hasn’t contacted us since. But he probably still reads our blog.
Bro
We tried to stay in contact with our brother, but after that drunk-dial in February 2016, we had to cut ties. After an initial attempt to guilt-trip us about it, he has made no attempt to contact us. We got our first memories involving him a month later.
Why Did We Escape?
Our sole distinction in the family is that we escaped. We still don’t really know why. Physical distance helped… but our brother had that too and stayed in. Going crazy helped, but our mother is a dissociative too (though probably not plural) and she stayed in. Our best guess right now is that on top of those other two factors, we had one thing that nobody else in the family had: each other.
Our family is locked in constant power struggle; it keeps everyone together, at each other’s throats. But when we became multiple, we broke that dynamic. Our folks didn’t know about us, so they couldn’t turn us against each other. We built trust and alliances, tried to protect and help each other. Rogan and M.D. took a million rapes and asphyxias to protect the rest of the system. Sneak and Gigi ran interference so they could recover without triggering Mom (who was most dangerous when we were newly, visibly traumatized). Miranda and Lollyanna could mimic Erin well enough to pass for long periods of time, while Biff and Falcon and Mac gave much-needed support. Even when we didn’t get along, we had a sense that we were all in it together.
When we came out, Dad tried to use the old family tactics and turn us against each other. But by that point, we’d been thick as thieves for years. He couldn’t break our bonds with each other, and in the course of trying, he made himself look like a jerk. Mom might’ve salvaged the situation, but slipped up and admitted that she saw us as not her children, but the murderers of her real child.
If anything saved us, it was our multiplicity. Not smarts. Not bravery. Not strength of character. It was luck. A freak roll of the dice that gave us an unusual flavor of batshittery that our family wasn’t prepared for.
That’s it.
Where To From Here?
At this point, we’ve been doing memory work long enough to see some major positive changes in our life. Ironclad issues that wouldn’t budge under medication, therapy, or intense introspection are finally giving way. Our relationships with the people around us are flourishing, and we’re able to handle conflict and emotions like anger a lot better than we used to (though there’s still a long way to go).
And all of us just… feel better. M.D. hasn’t self-harmed in years. Biff got sober and quit smoking. Rogan can get laid and only get sandbagged 30% of the time, instead of 100%.
All that is to be expected. What we didn’t expect was getting answers to questions we never even thought to ask. All this time, we assumed that crazy brains didn’t make sense, but it turns out no; they simply follow their own logic. Suddenly we were getting deep structural information about our mind, our system, why and how it was the way it was. At this point, the abuse content is the least interesting part of memory work!
Since June 2018, memory work has started getting trippy, taking on a religious, almost metaphysical bent. It’s been really strange. We hope to make comics about it, but it’s been hard to express, because we don’t understand what’s going on.
So far, though, our brain has always given us our answers eventually. Hopefully, if we are patient and see this through, it’ll all come clean in the wash eventually.
Recommended Reading
As always, take all recs with a grain of salt.
ATW. (2005). G
Bancroft, Lundy. (2002). Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men. New York: Berkley Books.
Bass, Ellen, and Laura Davis. (1994). The Courage to Heal, Third Edition. New York: HarperCollins. This book has gotten a lot of flack, but it’s all I had. Our edition (the 3rd) has the now-removed chapter about the false memory controversy; newer editions skip it.
Bettelheim, Bruno. (1980) “Individual and Mass Behavior in Extreme Situations,” “Eichmann: The System, the Victims,” “Surviving,” and “Remarks on the Psychological Appeal of Totalitarianism.” Surviving and Other Essays. New York: Vintage Books.
DreamWriters. (2015). Body Focus, Communication, and Memory [web page]. Retrieved from https://sites.google.com/site/dreamwritersdreaming/about-me/the-dreamwriters/system-reference-files/personal-essays-surveys-maps-guides/guide-body-focus-communication-memory
Haines, Staci. (2007). Healing Sex. San Francisco: Cleis Press.
The Investigative Staff of the Boston Globe. (2002). Betrayal: The Crisis in the Catholic Church. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.
Itterman, Criss [Crisses]. (n.d.) United Front Boot Camp [web page]. Retrieved from https://kinhost.org/Main/BootCamp
Lee, LB. (2019). Headspace Discovery and Defense [blog post] Retrieved from https://lb-lee.dreamwidth.org/1049746.html
Lee, LB. (2018). The Psychological Badness Scale [blog post] Retrieved from https://lb-lee.dreamwidth.org/983237.html
McGuire, Danielle L. (2010). The Dark Side of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance—a New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power. New York: Vintage Books.
Scully, Diana, and Joseph Marolla. (1984) “Convicted Rapists’ Vocabulary of Motive: Excuses and Justifications.” Social Problems 31.5: 530-544. Web.
Schiraldi, Glenn. (2009). The Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Sourcebook. New York: McGraw Hill.
Siderea. (2016). Shopping for a Therapist [blog post]. Retrieved from https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1243643.html
Yeung, Robert. (2020). Some Risks of Hypnosis in DID Therapy [blog post]. Retrieved from https://www.engagingmultiples.com/some-risks-of-hypnosis-in-did-therapy/
Sources Cited
Many Voices Press. (1992 August). Many Voices: Words of Hope For People With MPD or a Dissociative Disorder. [newsletter]. Vol. IV, No 4. Retrieved from http://manyvoicespress.org/backissues-pdf/1992_08.pdf
Vickis. (1998). A technique to defer body memories [web page]. http://www.asarian.org:80/~vickis/body_memories.html Internet Archive. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/19980115122222/http://www.asarian.org:80/~vickis/body_memories.html
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Date: 2019-10-12 07:47 pm (UTC)That's brilliant.
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Date: 2019-10-12 08:02 pm (UTC)It worked! Though I wish we hadn't had to resort to that.