Never been one to let the carrier drop

(Among other things these are the only way I have to communicate with her)

I do understand that you have a serious mental illness. I also understand that the person who strangled you – leaving bruises on your neck – wasn’t me. That is almost certainly where you picked up the PTSD. I’m sure many things I’ve done have triggered your PTSD – if I’d thought about the fact you had it, and understood how it happened, and not been all tied up with my own story, I would have behaved differently. I think I’ve already apologized for most of the things I’ve done. I also regret anything inappropriate I wrote in the letter to you while still in severe B-12 depletion and half-crazy from my time with Kayti while I was in Fred Brown. Or anything I’ve said while islanded / multiple during a manic phase that upset you.

You might *consider* apologizing for some of your behavior when we were younger. If you cared about me at all, which seems unlikely from where I currently sit.

I also understand I have made *no* attempt to contact you other than by paper letter lodged with our parents for *17 years*. The terrible danger that you’re in is in your mind. I’ve made every attempt to extend a olive branch and to apologize for the things I *did* do wrong. I’m not asking you to befriend me or even be in the same room. But it would be a big step forward if we could have *some* system of communication to at least do scheduling. This would be in your best interests since you *don’t* want to see me.

One of the definite bugs that’s been introduced via whatever I was exposed to in my childhood is I can’t cry when I want to. Like right now I feel like crying – I definitely feel like I’m being treated quite badly – my mom of course also can’t answer the phone while my sister is around, so I can’t talk to her about being kicked off my trip dates that she had agreed to without any attempt to apologize – so I feel like crying, but I can’t.

I can cry sometimes when listening to certain songs or watching certain movies, but I can’t cry when sad things happen. I still haven’t cried about my dad dying, for example.

I need to add a tag for my sister. Will probably make it easier for her to follow my blog since I imagine she only cares about the articles that mention her.

OK, that’s done. I’ll try and go back and tag some of the relevant articles. Anyway, the latest stunt is my planned trip in September must be moved. Now, keep in mind, I *asked for dates* repeatedly and didn’t get any. So I tried to pick some while I was there. There’s a paper calander I used to look for dates that my sister was not there. My sister clearly knew I was going to be at the memorial, because that’s why she didn’t go. (Her hate for me is bigger than her love for my mom, apparently). It had nothing. My mom’s iphone calendar had nothing. I asked my mom if the dates were okay. She said they were. I went back home and the next day bought tickets, and sent the itenerary to my mom. Nothing. Today – four days later – I get a email telling me I have to change my dates. No apology from my mom for making me jump through hoops, just her and my sister had already planned something for those days. Something not on the calander and hithero unknown. My sister clearly could have looked at the calander when she arrived and passed the message on to me *then*, but no.

This is not totally out of the realm of what goes on. I’ve been asked to change dates for my sister’s convenience before. And I do understand my sister has a severe mental illness, probably in fact worse than mine, and given that I do also have one if there’s anyone who should be understanding it should be me. But I do also feel like whenever a choice has to be made, I end up being the one who loses. Part of this is my sister is extremely good at manipulating people, and I generally try to just be compliant with whatever people want.

But it’s almost impossible for me to imagine that, especially if my mom’s memory gets worse, I’m ever going to get to see her. My sister has pretty much demonstrated to me that she has no interest in treating me fairly. I don’t think there’s going to be anyone to intercede to make sure I can be at the memorial service for my mom, or that I can see her in her last days.

For those of you playing along at home, I have been able to, at least in some sense, walk a mile in my sister’s moccasins and I’m no longer angry at her, nor do I believe she is doing this to hurt me.

For my sister, if you are reading this – I completely understand why you came to the conclusion you did about me being a threat. I would never, ever force you to do anything but I understand why you would react strongly to anything that felt at all threatening. I don’t expect to see you any time soon, if ever, but for whatever it is worth you have my support. One thing you need to know is odds are you do have *severe* PTSD and you probably do not remember the event that gave it to you. I really hope you find whatever help you need to feel safe and I will try my hardest to not trigger you in any way.

What happened didn’t involve me – and it was NOT YOUR FAULT – and it would have broken almost anyone. I hope reading this message isn’t triggering and I really, sincerely wish you the best of luck in healing.

Recently I said to my sister we have got to stop this ridiculous not talking to each other. One of the things my sister said was “You will not like court”, which implies she has some terrible list of things to say about me – maybe she was planning on getting $PERSON to tell the tale of how I’d repeatedly tried to get to her and therefore was stalking her..

Um.. wait a second. I *never*, after the first time, got to $PERSON’s house. I kind of assume this was by design. I certainly could have. I was often within a few blocks of it, but I knew she didn’t want to see me. I don’t know what I was doing, or looking for, exactly, my subconcious is full of interesting stuff, but I don’t think it’s really all that scary to come to within a mile of someone. Especially given that I’ve never owned any weapons, never been charged with sexual assault, and would rather die than hurt $PERSON or force her to do anything she didn’t want to do in real life.

Did I send her a bunch of very confused and probably scary emails including one that could easily be interpreted as very inappropriate? Yes. Wish I hadn’t done that either. It felt so good to be able to talk about what was wrong with my mind.. I tried to back off and range by asking her where her lines were since I’d obviously crossed one – and I was so used by this time to having friends I could say almost anything to – but. alas. It was a fuse, not a breaker, that I had opened.

I’ve offered my sister a apology for anything she wants. I think as far as changed behavior I already have. she has *NEVER* apologised for her psychological abuse, for her threats to kill my family, for her repeated physical abuse. I wonder what all she would trot out in a court case, and what she would say. At this point my theory is her goal is to get me disowned so she can get all of the inheritance.. or maybe she still, for reasons I can’t fathom, just takes joy from hurting me.

So, I have multiple personalities. Blame never really helped anyone, but I’m really curious what happened to me to make this true.

1) My inability to say no resulting in my parents not recognizing I was refusing their religion. I tried to say no, but I’m not that great at it now and I was really bad at it then. I did tell them I wasn’t sure I was ready for this. They essentually said that I had to. Now, at this point I know the right thing to do – Kids, if someone does this to you, explain to anyone who will listen why you’re not ready for it. Walk down to the center of the building, grab the mic, and start talking. You have just as much right to be talking as the preacher – if he’s trying to force the religion into your mind, you have MORE right than he does. Your mind belongs to you. You get to choose the software that runs on it.

2) My sister’s attitude towards me. I don’t know how many of my memories are viable, so I don’t know if remembering her punching me in the stomach, pulling my hair, taking my things, criticizing me in a carefully crafted tone, etc are all real. But I do know that my impression is she hates me and wants me to hurt, and is quite willing to use all her skills to make that happen.

3) School. In general, I find Earth’s schools fatally flawed for my type of cat. The best way for a person like me to learn is to be given access to information and left alone. Grading me does bad things to my self-image and even worse things to my feelings about you. Telling me what I should learn when is just plain selfish.

4) Whatever $thing I can’t remember that makes sexual contact with males unpleasant and the idea of being on the receiving end of anal sex terrifying. I remember finding both boys and girls attractive at one point. Something happened to me. I am not sure I *want* to know what.

5) My mother’s extremely screwed up attitude about sex. I’ll just leave that there. Don’t be so afraid of your children doing what they naturally are going to do, what they should do, that you send hardcore negative emotions their way and are hypercritical of them for cuddling with one of their friends and listening to music.

Okay, so this is going to be a difficult couple of posts to do. I am crossing my paws I manage to do it all accurately and with as little observer bias as possible and in a way that doesn’t cost me any more friendships.

Whoever you are, you might want to start with Assume Good Faith. I don’t want to add any more pain and fear into a system (Earth) I already clearly see as having too much.

However, let’s talk about the deep dark past first, when my intentions might not have been so well formed. I feel the need to bring up the past because one of the reasons for one of the things I wish was different in the present *is* the past.

In particular, I’d like to start out by talking about my sister, who I think is probably the victim of a mental illness at least the size of mine. Now, at this point I have forgiven her for everything she has ever done. But, in my young-Sheer adventure, she was weirdly and scarily violent. I later discovered there was a lunar cycle thing going on there, but at the time it just seemed like sometimes, I got my hair pulled, I got punched, I got kicked in the stomach, often for apparently no provocation at all. And she had.. well, still has, last I checked.. this way of talking to me that made me feel about three inches tall. She was a master of word choice and tone of voice and all the things you need to make someone feel tiny and she used them.

Now, at some point in our cohabitation, I did something which I still (Sort of) regret and which is still (apparently) quite in her memory.. she was pregnant, and she had been attacking me pretty much whenever she wanted, and I threatened to kick her in the stomach. I don’t think I would have actually ever done it – my parents check my memory (or at least claim to) that I wasn’t violent towards *her* generally. But I had reached that mental and emotional place that I think is often referred to as “Enough”.

It had a dramatic effect on her. At the time I was quite pleased. she moved out! I think she didn’t trust her ability to not attack me (not something she had a lot of practice with) and she wasn’t sure she could still get away with attacking me whenever she wanted.

Anyway, I’ve never been proud of that particular moment.. as I said, I don’t want to add more pain and fear into a system that has too much..

Somewhat recently.. about five years ago I think.. my sister decided that she’s terrified of me and wants me to stay as far away as possible. As far as I can tell she thinks that at some point I’m going to end up raping her. This is difficult for me to credit insofar as A: I’m really militant about this whole nonviolent thing, B: I wouldn’t want to have the memory of having done it and C: This is so far out of my core personality that people who know me often laugh at the idea. But I guess if you’re 3000 miles away and learning about all my exploits via the internet it sounds credible, and I think there’s a little group of people in that position that have started passing the idea that they should be afraid of me around like a joint. And my sister is definitely a big part of that. Okay, for me this has been mildly annoying, insofar as she can’t be present at any family gatherings that I’m present at.. at some point I started realizing that it is yet another way for my sister to bully me, which resulted in me rolling my eyes a bit and sighing and wondering if she’s ever going to get over her Issues.

But lets move to nearer times for a minute. As most of you know, I have this repeating issue I’ve been having where every six months or so I go manic, black out, and end up in jail or a mental hospital after sending a bunch of emails to one person who wishes at this point I would go away.

Now, let’s get a few things out on record. If I had one wish without wishing for more, at this point, it would be to have my friendship with this person back. And I undoubtedly in these emails say a few things which are inappropriate insofar as a lot of my internal censors are not working correctly. They’re never threatening (because that’s not the person I am) or graphic, but clearly they make her unhappy and my inability to just stop has been upsetting everyone, myself included. Now, it’s possible if my sister wasn’t ostensibly afraid of me, this person would be willing to just talk to me and everything could come down from defcon 1, but that is not to be.

Obviously something inside me is not working right. For a long time, I went through the motions of going to shrinks and doctors and taking pills and surely this will fix me. Of very late (the last few days) I’ve started to ponder whether I need to take a somewhat more self-directed and aggressive approach insofar as I do have this sinking feeling that nothing is getting any better and it has been not just years at this point but a solid decade.

Anyway, so, it’s gotten to where friends can tell when one of these events is about to strike me.. I recently came from SoCal wound tighter than a clock spring and decided, if such a word really describes how things happen in this state (I think maybe the words “it eventiated” ) that I was going to go, not for the first time, to Virginia.

Now, there were some signs from the beginning that this trip was going to be different. Normally, I don’t actually get there, and I think that my mom has a good time calling the person who lives in Virginia and gossiping / winding her up about how afraid she should be of me. (If it sounds like I don’t have a lot of trust in my family, well A: I’m paranoid, we know that B: I don’t C: I have DID. That doesn’t happen because you come from a great family situation). However, first of all, the ‘Blackout’ phase of this trip was a good deal longer than usual.. over a day is completely missing, and the resulting jump looks to me like a teleport from the west coast to the east coast.. second of all, I spent so much time with crosstalk among alters that I ended up with a blister on my tongue.. I was present for some of that, and it was delightfully weird, as crosstalk among alters generally is. Third of all, none of the usual thing stopped me. I got a ticket in Minnesota, that didn’t stop me. I got stuck in St Louis because of the usual confusion of why we bother to do resource allocation tracking for food. That didn’t stop me although it did get me a three day hold. I finally got to $CITY and carefully did *not* go to person’s house (I was really hoping person would come out and talk to me on neutral ground, and either give me a Last Goodbye or, there was a bit of me still holding out hope, return to being my face to face friend)

What I did do was go to a bar and sing “Little Pink Houses” and “When The Saints Go Marching In” – I actually got invited up on stage with the singer, which fit my energy just fine. I talked to some old timers about being patriotic. I went to a church.. twice.. and both times had some pretty authentic (not to mention awesome) spiritual experiences that I have yet to fully grok but make me think I should go back to some churches. The church service was in Spanish. I think that helped *a lot* because the words didn’t make me mad.. and recently at a class I learned that only 7% of human communication is the words.. so I was a lot more aware of the tone of the experience etc. The second time I went to the church (a day later) they had live music and I think they were expecting me and ultimately I cried my eyes out about the whole situation, which has probably been something that has been needing to happen for several years now.

And I sat in my car and I waited. When it became clear person was not wiling to come to me, I decided.. partially as a matter of a way to make myself even less threatening and partially because I had reached the point where I did not trust myself at all to be myself after trying to operate a car while peaking on seroquel.. to check myself into a hospital and see if *that* would get me some kind of something.

Well, it did. Last Goodbye was apparently the answer, but instead of showing up to deliver it in person, I got a court summons and a protective order. This was both good and bad, and I still feel like I should have done things a bit differently here. It gave me a chance to hear person talk (and I *love* hearing person talk.. the way she uses her voice and her hands when talking just pets my brain somehow) and it also gave me something I had been really badly needing, a 3d memory that wasn’t text of rejection. See, the last time I saw her face to face she was behaving as a friend to me. And knowing as much as I do about information theory.. not to mention having *had the experience* – I know it is trivially easy to hallucinate text.

And I will say, she wasn’t actively mean about it. If my sister were ever to take out a protective order, she’d take advantage of the time to also make me actively wish that suicide is something that woudl work. (Repeated testing has told me, at least in my case, there’s a hypervisor, suicide doesn’t work. Not that there aren’t times lately where I wish it would). I can actually sort of imagine my sister describing how sick, perverted, useless, stupid, ugly, weak, and other undesirable behaviors I am.. I guess I have a alter who is a software model of my sister. Now there’s something I could use to lose.

Anyway, protective order… initially my response was “Well, if that’s what she wants, she shoudl have it” since I’ve never been of the position that if person wants distance from me she should have anything *but* that.. it’s just the alters that come up during a mania that, I honestly forget, have no memory of the times between. But, it occurs to me, this is giving said alters a tool to hurt me a lot a lot since person can now have me thrown in jail for sending her a email. I wonder if person has ever worn handcuffs the way cops put them on, which always hurts you paws, or been in a cold room of cinderblocks designed by idiot humans who think punishing is a good idea to send the message “You’re a bad person. You deserve to hurt.”. I also wonder if person really does think I deserve to hurt because there’s something wrong with my mind. I doubt it a lot.

Anyway, I already do hurt because something’s wrong with my mind.

I’ve begged God for a early death.. like, now would be good.. bu that’s not the sort of wish apparently that we get. So I’m stuck here, wishing I wasn’t. Maybe if I had a better attitude you’d still want to be friends. I do have a lot of friends, and I’m grateful for them, and I’m loved, and I’m grateful for that, and sometimes it gets all the way into my core and that’s very nice, and sometimes it can’t and that’s not so nice.

So, I was talking about things I might have done right or wrong. I got a lawyer, which might or might not have been a good idea.. as I said, I didn’t really exacly want to win but I also was willing to admit that it would be a good idea for me not to lose. THe judge, not too suprisingly, sided with person – I can’t really conceive of the situation where the judge doesn’t, since person is there saying “I want this person not to talk to me”, which really is a reasonable request and something we should all be free to ask for. My position doesn’t look very reasonable at all, since it’s “If I forget and do talk to you, I want to not go to jail.. “. I keep hoping if I develop the habit of writing the things I would have put in the emails into blog posts instead, maybe the next time I go manic.. plus, of course, as I mentioned, I now have a very real, visceral, 3D memory of rejection. And the wish that I hadn’t dragged person through all the unhappiness in the spaces in between. Not to mention dragging me through all said unhappiness.

What I wish most is that none of the ‘be afraid of me’ club were convincing themselves of something that, as far as I can tell both from the way I’ve behaved my entire adult life and from the way my friends treat me, makes any sense at all. However, this is America, and fear is something we love to sell ourselves, so I guess I’m not surprised to find people convincing themselves that I’m a threat.

More later.

Okay. I’m definately not a stalker. I’m something undesirable, but stalker is not it. Stalkers, you know, show up. More often than once every ten years. I don’t even really cyberstalk.. I often lock myself out of facebook because the traffic in general makes me sad, I read her blog maybe once a month, haven’t checked any of her image lists in a while.

I just.. think about her a lot. And now, write about her a lot on my blog.

I’m actually even more impressed about my sister being afraid of me. My sister, who I am fairly sure managed to give me stockholm syndrome. My sister, who even after I got done blocking out my childhood I still remember insulting me, tearing me down, physically attacking me, threatening me, bullying me, and somehow managing to make me feel sick and weak and small and powerless. And who apparently doesn’t get that yes, I will ask anyone for sex that I would like to sex, but I accept no. And you can always tell me where your lines are, and I will not cross them. She thinks I shouldn’t have had to tell her where her lines were. Really? With the huge variety of lines different people have, and how good things can be if you’re willing to trust in love and believe people’s lines are sufficient for them to be interested in experiencing awesome with you.. I generally go for thinking the best of people, both in that they’re as capable as me and they’re as open and loving and real. Some people, though, just aren’t.

You made yourself afraid. I never did. And yet, I have a feeling if I had wanted to be a murder victem instead of a suicide, you would have gladly pulled the trigger. I think the reason you hated Kayti so much is you and her were so much alike.

1) Call my sister and wish her happy birthday.
2) Think of some kind of present suitable for my sister. It’ll arrive late, but hey, better late than never.
3) Call Andy Hong and see what he’s got up his sleeve.
4) Begin Step 4’s moral inventory
5) Panic a lot
6) Stay clean anyway.

This is Sheer, clocking out. Day 10 involved mostly work for Brett and a NA Meeting and getting in touch with old friends thought long lost.

By the way, I think I saw something by Tamex flash past. Please get in touch, my email is sheer dash panic at sheer dot us

Okay, now I usually don’t waste that much time thinking about the fads in children’s toys. When I do, it truly saddens me – I mean, when I was a kid, there were some really great toys. Construx, capsella, lego / technics – everything a aspiring robot builder could want. I’m not sure that they were as educational as they were supposed to be – unless you count lessons in how much stress plastic will take as education on materials science – but still, they were really great toys.

The things the kids play with nowadays…

But I actually have a specific rant in mind. Tiger Electronics made a small robotic toy called a Furby. My sister got me a spin-off model, the Shelby, for my birthday – along with a really gorgeous wall hanging.

Now, Shelby is definitely cute. Nice color of purple, soft fur, eyes that look almost eerily alive (especially since they can look around), antennas, everything you could want for a robotic crab… Except for a few little details. The first little detail is that he’s robotic. Not just mildly robotic – and not able to actually move himself from place to place, as would be truly cool. Just robotic enough to get on your nerves. A typical exchange with Shelby goes something like this:

Shelby: Ay Ay Too-Too Wahooo! (Speaking shelbish, his own personal language)
You: Shut up, shelby.
Shelby: Shelby say, the shell is Swell!
You: Shut up, shelby
Shelby: Where is Furby? I want Furby!

No, I’m not making any of this up. The toy actually asks for another toy by name! Not only that, but a toy I don’t own. And I have no doubt, were I to go out and buy a furby, the two of them would have lots of fun beaming infrared messages back and forth to each other because they do in fact have infrared transcevers.

But I haven’t gotten to the worst part yet. The evil, insidious, downright malicious part.

Shelby is lacking something that almost every other piece of electronic equipment in my house has (with the possible exception of the clocks)

He doesn’t have a power switch.

In order to shut him up, one must put him through one of the preordained sleep procedures. These basically all take at least 30 seconds – while waking him takes only the lightest tap, or hinging his shell open a little bit so light will touch the CDs cell inside.

And, if that all weren’t enough, shelby is not a content little robot. He’s not happy to just sit and browse on the batteries he’s been given, when he’s turned on. Oh, no. Shelby wants things, and he’s more insistent – and more critical – than a two year old. As follows:

Shelby: Shelby say, scratch my back! Back is itchy
Shelby: Shelby say, scratch my back please
Shelby: Shelby say, you’re a party pooper
Shelby: Boring, boring, booooriiing (imitating a 6 year old going on 15, if you know what I mean)

Of course, he might be in a affectionate mood instead. That’s even worse. There’s nothing quite like having a hunk of plastic (precious little metal in one of these things) demand a hug, or announce in oh-so-cutesy tones that ‘I love ya!’. Right. All four bits of you. Gee, that gives you a total of sixteen emotions…

The last question, of course, is under what conditions our little purple friend here was assembled. I’m going to hazard a guess and say any robot with sound, light, and motion sensors, the ability to move his eyes, flip his shell open, and flip his antenna – and infrared transceivers for crissake – that goes for $30 is probably not a robot that was built in the old US of A. I’m going to guess it is also not a robot that was built by adults – so the question is, when shelby isn’t making my life miserable, is he and fifty thousand of his ilk making some children’s lives miserable in some sweatshop somewhere?

Hrmm…

Hopefully my sister’s not reading this. If she is, Jen, I did appreciate the gift. Really. And the tie-dye was lovely… Until next time, remember, shelby says doncha dare drop me.

(And every time he does, I get sooo tempted.)

The least they could have done is make him easily reprogrammable