Merry Thankseaster

Oh. My. Crap. She cut herself. It was directly after a horrible, heated argument sparked by her uncle's crazy attention-whore wife taking a swipe at H's beloved stepdad. It was not a pretty scene. For a minute there i thought it was Thanksgiving, but it turned out that nope, it was Easter. Fah! Shit.

So... yeah. Not an incredibly great day.

Thankfully, it isn't horrible. Just one set of cuts* with her insulin needle's tip.

* it occurs to me that i haven't really described these patternistic cuts yet. They are usually 2-4 inches long, in parallel groups of maybe 6-10 or so. Occasionally they will be highly erratic, but usually they are unnervingly even. Not perfect, just a lot more even than one might expect. Straight. The group might be somewhat off-angle, as is usually the case, probably owing to the angle of application and handedness. So, they wind up looking like tally marks, only a little on the rough side, and written in blood. (And yes, it is pretty much exactly as creepy as it sounds, only one gets used to it after a while.)

Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)

I have just been informed, immediately prior to my losing control and freaking out and smashing one of her nice plastic cups to pieces, that four days ago, Cathy cut her leg a little bit.

I really freaked out. This is all very difficult for me. I know i'm not the star of this show and that it's far harder for H, but all the same, it is still really taxing on me.

It doesn't help that i am clearly not protecting her from herself if she is continually able to do this sort of thing without me even knowing, and now that i had a meltdown about it, i'm pretty sure she's going to be more careful to keep it from me.

All of which amounts to the following carefully-determined conclusion:

FUCK.

Heeeeere's Cathy!

She's back.

Nothing has happened. We just know that she's back. She seems less intense. She has not taken over, as far as i know.

That is all for now.

To sleep, or not to sleep?

I can't go to sleep. Last night i got only a couple of hours because i was freaked out by a deadly spider i lost track of in the apartment. I need sleep. But then, what happens if she wakes up and does something horrible?? Should i sleep now, while she's sleeping? Should i trust her for the night? I have to. I have no other choice! I can't sleep when she's awake, unless tomorrow she's okay enough to return to work. But what if tomorrow would have been okay, but tonight isn't? I think i have to just trust in her sleep cycle not being interrupted.

I am so afraid of what i may wake up to.

Good night, i think.

I hope.

Under Pressure

Suicide watch.

She's terrified of going in to work tomorrow, after having been out for a full week+. She's feeling the pressure. Plus, her shopping addiction is getting to her as well. She is feeling so much pressure right now, and her Geodon dosage just went from 20mg to 40mg per her psychiatrist, which has been making her happy but loopy, so today we went back down to 20mg. Also, she forgot to take her Ativan for most of the day, which didn't hurt so much until the end of the day when everything came crashing down on top of her.

She said she was thinking of cutting her wrists so it would all be over. She said it was only a fleeting thought, but i don't want to take any chances. She's clearly extremely anxious right now.

I needed to go to the store to get some groceries, but that will have to wait. Either she's coming with me tomorrow or i don't go. Unless she's able to return to work.

On a directly-related, yet completely-irrelevant note, this is taking a massive, massive emotional toll on me.

Gravity-impaired footwear

I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. So far, H has been doing so incredibly well on Geodon that already i have actually begun allowing her free access to her insulin needles, and even let her shave her legs in the tub by herself. She's really doing well. It really does seem like Cathy has reintegrated now. Very strange.

And very welcome.

In some weird sense, i will almost miss Cathy. She's the one alter that i came to see the most of, besides the little girl Charla. I certainly feel really bad for that part of H who became Cathy. She was a very hurt young girl, and you know my heart just really goes out to her. I felt awful all the times i couldn't seem to get through to her myself. I really wanted to help her. Certainly, she made me very angry, because she hurt my girlfriend. But now she's gone, and it's a bittersweet feeling. Were she a separate individual, i would wish her the best. As it is, i think if she's integrated back into H, then i'm happy for her.

This is all very confusing innit?

I'm happy for H and for that severely distressed part of her which was Cathy. I won't miss what Cathy did, but i can't help feeling as though someone in desperate need of help has suddenly disappeared. I wish she could have been well right from the start. I wish she had never had to go through whatever traumas she has had to experience. I know that if she's truly integrated, she'll be much, much better, and that's what i hope for her.

Well, i think that's about all i really have to say about that.

Home again

She's home again. The hospital psychiatrist has switched her from Haldol to Geodon. She seems to be doing much better.

Interestingly, we watched the extremely intense (and brilliant) Aronofsky film Black Swan, and it didn't seem to trigger anything.

Also, Cathy seems to be gone (!). H said there is a new alter, however. This one, she said, had some slight negative trait which i have already forgotten because i was just happy it wasn't psychosis.

That is all!

Hospital stay #2, day 2

We spent the weekend bargaining. Although resolved to her fate, we still wound up not going to the hospital, until Sunday. Each day brought new cuts. She's using the lancets as her favored weapon these days...

On Friday, H tried calling her mother, although didn't call her best friend, as her friend usually does most of the talking, and H just needed someone to listen. Desperately. I think it was part of the bargaining process: wanting a second opinion.

• You have to understand that her first hospital stay was not very positive. They never are. Hospitals have to be excruciatingly strict, and can't afford to rewrite the rules for each individual case. The local hospital, additionally - or rather, subtractionally - didn't have anyone on staff who had ever dealt with DID. In fact, not only were they excited by her tragedy enough to want to book her a speaking engagement (wtf? she's barely even begun her therapy!), but at least one nurse was thoughtless enough to advise that she "just stop" being crazy. Well... et cetera, etc., &c.

Fearing a breakdown in communication, as both her and her mother had been casually avoiding calling each other, i sent her mother a message on Facebook pleading her to answer her phone or call H back. She called, explaining that her phone had died, and offered to come down right away. (We live a little over an hour away.) So Saturday was spent with H's mom and stepdad, and was overall a pretty good day, really.

But by Sunday morning, it was clearly time to act. Any more cuts and she'd have to start re-using space before it had healed - not to mention that i'd be liable for not taking her in for too long a time.

She's not been having a great time since. They won't let her have Ativan, so instead are giving her some other unpronounceable thing. The psychiatrist is cranky as hell with her. They barely understand the new-fangled insulin calculation method (which has been around for at least a couple years now). They make her sleep with the light on, and a group session touched her arm uninvited, which triggered an episode of lost time as well as a nice crying jag afterward. Do they not realize that some of their patients are in there because of some kind of past trauma?

Oh, and i found a paperclip on the floor in her room, just begging to be driven into flesh.

To be continued....

Sigh

More cutting. Really scraping more than cutting. Thankfully, latest, deftly and stealthily executed by an alter who is becoming rather adept at this skill, was done using the bobby pins i prefer for her to get her hands on, and not lancets or anything particularly sharp.

She doesn't want to go to the hospital yet. She's scared. She wants to spend time with her dogs. I understand. Time is running out though. If this behavior does not improve swiftly and dramatically, she will soon find herself being dragged there.

To the ER

It's official. We're going to the hospital to check H in for self-injury.

She's napping right now, and i'm waiting for a package or i'd be napping right along with her. I'm so exhausted. Last night i was up late. I needed to go to the store to get more bandages (also something to keep the dogs from eating each other's poo, but that's a story for a whole 'nother blog, brother), but i couldn't leave her alone, and she didn't want to go with, so i had to wait until she fell asleep. I had decided that i'd wait until just after her routine midnight bathroom excursion, which never came, so i headed out at 2am and didn't get back until 3. (I was also looking for a specific brand of stuffed animal to surprise her with, which neither of the two stores i visited carried, probably since they're apparently only sold online, which i didn't find out until this morning.)

Anyway, i ended up not going to sleep until almost 5am, preferring instead to sit up worrying, i guess. I woke up, of course, to a fairly bloody girlfriend. Crap! Thankfully, she's still only using very small, short things, so she's not doing any particularly bad or permanent damage.

I need to shower somehow amid all of this chaos, also, or nobody's going to be incredibly pleased to be in the same city as me, at least not during the same epoch.