| Hello. My name is Lysergia (not really, but do you use your birth name in cyberspace?). |
| I am the "host" of the Paradox system (ed. note: this is no longer the case). This means that I am the person who most closely identifies with ownership of the body and the system's life in general. I am the same age as the body (almost 30... yikes!), and I always will be. My perceptions of things like my age, gender, and physical features are determined very much the same way yours are: by looking in the mirror. Because I have not had an "internal life" as some of the Pardox people do, I have never redefined any of these factors for myself. |
| It's actually a really tough job for me to define "who I am" in absence of the rest of my system. I think the best way to describe myself is as an interface by which people within the Padadox system can interact with the outside world. I provide continuity, so that we can carry out some semblance of "singularity" to show to the world at large. |
| For a long time, I didn't know that this was the case. I always knew I was vaguely "empty", incomplete somehow, not quite...real in the department of consciousness. It was a pretty disturbing feeling, never knowing what was really going to come out of my own mouth, not being able to follow the passage of time without obsessively checking my watch, zoning out through entire conversations but being thanked afterwards for the wonderful advice, wondering why I never did all of what I set out to do (but it somehow still got done). And, like every other survivor, I used denial and repression to the utmost so that I didn't have to acknowledge that something was wrong with me. I made excuses for myself so many times that I believed my own lies (I'm stressed, I'm tired, I was drinking, I never did that). |
| Denial was, in many ways, a great place to be. I was convinced, on most days, that I was happy. That things weren't perfect, but they were O.K. thanks. That I was strong and healthy. That the problems in my life were due to the people around me, but certainly never about me. I felt capable. I felt in control. |
| The problem with denial is that you not only avoid seeing your own pain, you avoid seeing the pain of others. Because I was blind to sadness and fear, I allowed a verbally abusive man to live with me and my baby daughter for the first four years of her life. I minimized the pain he caused me and, as a result, minimized the pain he caused my child. My survival skills had become damaging to my own family. |
| As I began to realize this, I began to take steps to STOP denying her reality (and therefore mine). I was able to acknowledge that the hurtful relationship must end, although my own instincts (as well as some of my alters) begged me to hang on and work it out. I started to reclaim a space in life that was safe for myself and my daughter. She began to grow and climb (toe by toe) out of the shell she had built to protect herself (it is by no means gone, and never will be... but at least now she can step outside it sometimes). I felt I could exhale a little. I made a REAL friend, one that listened harder than the words I used to fill the void. I spent time alone. I listened, really listened, to the voices in my head for the first time. I was scared to death. |
| I became horribly, unmoveablely depressed. I lost touch with reality on a regular basis. I drank a LOT. I stayed in bed for days at a time, only getting up to feed and care for my child. The telephone became my worst enemy. I stopped attending classes (which, for me, is a SURE sign that something terrible is afoot). I broke down and got a prescription for prozac. I succumbed to my very first antidepressant-induced feeling of JUST NOT CARING what other people thought, and it was WONDERFUL. One of my alters (Nikki) got involved with a male friend, and we all ended up in a mind-blowing, life-changing, SAFE relationship. I fell in love. I fell apart. |
| Name a PTSD symptom, and I've felt it at some time over the past three years since then. My mental state has been a rollercoaster from agonizing depression to paralyzing anxiety to borderline psychosis, inserting periods of well-intentioned denial so that I can function for a little while in the real world. Just as I think I am becoming accustomed to handling one symptom, I get a new one. I've played russian roulette with shrinks and psychotropics instead of a gun. I've wanted to die, and come close. I have lost the ability to care for my daughter in a safe, reliable way (she lives with her father right now). And yet I know I have only just begun to save myself and the rest of the Paradox. |
| Is it worth it? All this knowing, this awareness, this refusal to pretend that the past is meaningless? YOU BETCHA. Because if I stuck my head back into the sand (if I even could anymore), I put my daughter in danger of being treated the way that I was treated. I must remember and be aware, lest in my selfish need to protect my feelings I may hurt her more than I already have. If stopping the cycle comes at the price of this pain, I will gladly pay. I am reasonably confident (at least today) that I can live through feeling real real bad for awhile (maybe a long long while) - but I CANNOT live with knowing that I passed it on to an innocent person. |
| So here I am, at my computer, writing for my sanity, writing for my life. Through these pages I am hoping to discover how to answer "who I am". If you figure it out first, will you let me know? |