Round and Round 28 and forward

Like these old wheels life was going around and around and felt like mentally and spiritually I was getting no where but back where I started.    While in college this time around, I found myself seeking counseling for the initial reason I am not sure.   I know I heard voices inside but could not figure that crazy feeling out, nor could I figure out what exactly was being said.  I was concerned that I always knew where I was and was very panicked if I could not remember how to get home.   I felt this constant preoccupation with dieing but thought everyone did, but it robs a person of enjoying the present life.   There were many good times scattered among the difficult times but that is how dissociating is, different parts play the needed roles.  I was very responsible when it came to any work since I was responsible for myself and fearful of anyone taking control of my life.  Later I would realize more fully how this one part was such a pivotal part to keep life going as it is for so many folks with DID.

Back to college.  In seeing the counselor I don’t know for sure what started her idea for me to see the psychiatrist, but I did and think initially it was to be placed on medication.  I was, by this time having problems with someone inside fighting me for the steering wheel of my car and it was often a very fight for me to live, and not drive off the road.   Funny how we wanted to die but yet fought so to live.   God had His hand in all this I am sure.   Anyway I saw the psychiatrist and the meds she wanted to put me on she needed me in the hospital.   She was also concerned, as was the counselor that I was suicidal.   She called and talked to my doctor friend and I heard them at opposite ends of the medical spectrum that one standing before me felt I needed to go into the hospital and my then friend (no longer working with her), could not understand and was saying she knew me and didn’t think I needed that.   Since I told them about the voices and struggles with suicidal thoughts and driving difficulties on many occasions, the school doctor won out.  I was taken to the psychiatric hospital by my counselor since they did not trust me to drive.   I was worried I had blown school again but the teachers were willing to work with me but were adamant I had to get class work done soon since it was near the end of school.   I worked hard to get myself together but then when you can switch it makes it both easier and harder.

The day after I entered my first psychiatric hospital the doctor came into the room and said “why did we put you in here”.   I laughed like it was a game of sorts and said I don’t know.   She put me on psychotropic drugs for the remainder of my undergraduate degree.  I had a hard time starting them in the hospital and felt so dizzy,  weak and could not fully understand all that was going on.  I told no family of all this and was there only a few days until I was on maintenance dose of these strong drugs.  I left with a diagnosis of psycho-affective disorder, not schizophrenia since the voices were inside.     At this time there was very little public information about DID.   I did as I was told until the end of my undergraduate degree then stopped all these medications on my own and experienced  withdrawal with horrible nightmares I will never forget.    I really don’t know how I got thru college, passed classes and did well.   There was a part of me or is,  that likes very much to learn and a strong desire to take care of myself that spurred this along.   God probably had a big hand in it all as well.  

Friends encouraged me to go on to graduate school and it felt like I was on a cloud or a wheel, just moving along so I did.  Again was it God or my internal helper’s.  I don’t know but graduate work came next with mostly uneventful work and college work and no suicide attempts.    At this time and for the time until now I have felt suicidal many times but I have and did rationalize things to believe that if I accidentally died, not by my hands,  then it would not affect my place in the here-after.  I was still in my gay relationship and still experiencing times of finding myself in compromising situations only to awaken and not make sense of what was going on or how to get out of the situation without being found out.   Life goes on.   Emotions dissociated and times lapses and fears and still wanting God to fix it all but on my terms.