Not Broken

Morning comes, and life moves on
And when it changed, you didn't know where you belong
And I'll still catch you when you fall through a past that steals your sleep
And scrawl these words upon your wall, remind you to believe

It's been well over a year and a half since I wrote a blog entry, and so much has happened. It had been about a year since I had come out at work, and more than a year of living full time. The magnitude of the changes yet to come, nor their impact, are still something I am grappling with even now. But i am getting ahead of myself.

One thing was certain... I had hit a dead end where I was. I had stagnated not just socially, not just career wise, but even in my growth. Back when I had gotten out of rehab, I sat down and wrote out a list changes I had wanted to make and goals I wanted to achieve. Aside from transitioning and living full time, I really hadn't gotten very far. I lost my family, and I was miserable.

And then there was the DID, and how I was suffering. I struggled to make sense of lives I could not recall, of experience and pain and memories -- fragments of things that I could not piece together. As I continued to struggle, so to my health started to suffer. Signs of relapse started to creep in, some subtle, others not so much. I was terrified. 

Two life changing things changed for me. One was something that hit me so profoundly I could not make sense of it. In August 2018 I lost a friend to brain cancer. She wasn't the first friend I lost at such a young age, she was only a few years younger than I. In fact, I lost so many friends in the last few years to cancer, to suicide, to homicide... and even the death of my parents had a more profound effect on my than I had realized. Her death, however, hit me hard than all the others. I am still unsure why.

Then came my accident last April. I fell from the top of a  6 foot ladder backwards to the concrete floor below. I was in denial and refused to go to the E.R. for over 24 hours, and it was at the insistence of my therapist that I finally went. I ended up fracturing two vertebrae, had a sever concussion and sprained both wrists. In short, I was lucky I didn't end up paralyzed or dead.

Tomorrow is promised to no one... and so I decided enough was enough. I looked back at that list, and knew I needed to tend to my happiness. I needed to make a change.

So I made the decision to pack up and move to California. Found a job, loaded up the Ford, and off I went. Lived in a hotel for the first couple of months, then in November found a house to rent. Everything started to fall into place. Except the DID was still getting worse. But more about that later.

Then came 2020. Ah yeah, the magical year we are now living in. January i decided to return "home" to prepare the house for sale and bring more of my stuff back to California. March was my time frame, and I made plans. Woman plans and the Trump administration laughs...

February 15 I was fired. I should mention that I ran into trouble weeks into this job for "bathroom" issues for being a trans-woman. After that "incident", my boss basically stopped interacting with me. I decided to come back as planned anyways, but then COVID hit. The plan was to fly home, and drive back with my stuff. Last minute, shelter in place and I had to rent a car to drive home. That was just suppose to be for a couple weeks. More on that in a moment...

I came back in March, got another gig which I worked remote. I decided to just pack up the house while prepping it for sale, and moved my stuff into storage as I packed whatever I wouldn't be taking back. Shelter in place eventually meant I ended being stuck for over two months. COVID meant I lost a second job. I was devastated.

Mid May I finally drove back to California. I spent the next two months looking for work. I failed one interview after another, all the while dealing now with memories and fragments surfacing. Crap! Now to deal with the shame of not just sexual abuse and violence, but I am now discovering that the DID has been serving as a tool to protect me from remembering just how much violence I have been enduring all this time. It was bad enough remembering being so sexually active with awful and ugly strangers... now to remember being slapped around and beaten by them as well is just more than I can bear. 

Somehow through all of this I did manage to sell my house back home. I did manage to find a job here. Most amazingly, I did manage to find a new place to call home. I just made an offer on a house, and if all goes well, I should have a new place to call home.

The opening lines of this blog entry? The are from Not Broken by the Goo Goo Dolls from back in 2010. I used to think this song was a conversation one might have as one friend to another who is struggling with perhaps addiction. Now I see it as something so different... instead, I see it as my protector sliver, Lizze, talking to any other sliver, reassuring them that she will always have their back. I'm struggling not to make this 3rd person, but often I can't see the others as anything more than strangers or uninvited house guests who often overstay their welcome.

When the world is insane,
You get used to the pain
And you don't even know what you feel
And I was like you,
All alone and confused
But you know it's not forever

I try to take comfort in knowing, and trusting that my ongoing therapy will lead me to a place where I won't feel as alienated, angry or ashamed with myself with each passing day. Some days are better, some are worse. It's a process.

Not Broken - Goo Goo Dolls