She Can Feel

I received several comments on the post about my graduation. One comment in particular affected me in a way that surprised me. I love reading your comments – it is one of the best things about blogging. Writing in a journal is helpful, but feedback from real live people often helps advance my healing process.

This is the kind message I received this morning:

“As an aside note... thank you for talking about no-one... oh my goodness, how I can relate and how that makes absolute sense and how now I wonder whether I have a similar either alter or defense mechanism floating around... I don't know... but I've never met anyone that had similar experiences in that way or at least could voice them in a way I relate to. Thank you for sharing about no-one - who incidentally is not no-one to me.”

This comment refers to my alter named no-one. No-one’s role in my system is to numb emotions. She keeps me from getting too excited, too sad, too anything. She is happy with her name of no-one even though I wish she would pick a different name. I appreciate the protective role she plays, but she still insists that she is no-one.

I was excited to have several comments to read this morning. When I read this comment and saw that no-one was mentioned in it, no-one really got a bit excited. She felt happy that she had been acknowledged, but then the fact that she felt emotion scared her. I had to physically get up and leave the computer. I couldn’t even read the rest of my comments. No-one was crying – and she never does that. She was scared and pacing the kitchen. It took her several minutes to get back to her emotionless self, eat her breakfast, and process what had happened. No-one can feel emotion, but her role is to numb the system and keep the system safe from the danger an emotional outburst could cause. She also protects us from emotional pain and stress – but here she was completely freaked out.

Once she was back in her work mode – numbing – everything was fine for her. We could go back and read the comments again without feeling emotion.

The wonderful thing is that it feels like a breakthrough for no-one – at least the rest of the system feels that way. She can feel. As I write those three words, non-one feels scared and out of control. She is quickly trying to cover the tears and be hardened again. She is capable of feeling. She doesn’t want to be capable of feeling, but she is. That makes me happy.

This same person also commented that my system seems to work well together. They do for the most part, but yesterday I discovered a break down in the system. If someone calls and leaves me a telephone message or if I call someone from home and leave them a telephone message and then run into the person in real life somewhere, I have no recollection of the message – at all. I had this happen yesterday (again). I left a message about school for a lady who goes to my church. When I ran into her yesterday after services, she commented on my message. I had NO IDEA what she was talking about. I may need to take notes when I leave phone messages or am left messages so that I can appear more normal.

I greatly appreciate those who take the time to read this blog and those who are kind enough to let me know you were here by leaving comments and questions. Thanks for being part of my healing process.