Entry III.16 (1994)

I ran into a wall of intractability when it came to the troups. I discovered I was at the place where willpower alone could not ensure safety. I wasn’t safe alone. Consequently, I had to resort to some very old technology.

It consisted of a contract written between Rahne and I. Due to the nature of the troup's stunning ability to discover loop holes, the contract had to be very specific. A mere "We all promise not to hurt the body" was not enough.

THE CONTRACT:  Agreement to take effect from 2/12/94 at 3:30 p.m. to 9:00 am on 2/13/94

In exchange for Rahne's special necklace she wears all the time and her spare pinkie ring of a winged heart, this contract equals no harm which means specifically:

1 ) No biting or scratching; no punching or running body into doors, walls or hard objects; no burning; suffocating or use of gas (liquid or gaseous). No hanging; jumping off roofs--no climbing on roof for cleaning without assuring 100% safety. No climbing other objects. No jogging. Walking around neighborhood is okay.

2) No calling 911 unless I have decided to ignore this agreement. Calling the crisis clinic or Barbara and leaving a long protracted message is good. Or call Mary Devlin.

3) No weight lifting, but stretching or meditative breath counting okay. Bath okay, but no holding self under water. No cosmetic surgery. No breaking the integrity of the skin in any manner, shape, or form.

Unauthorized accidents require telling true circumstances including any wounding whether pain felt or not.

It is understood that NO HARM is the overall intent of this contract. No exceptions may be gleaned from semantics or specific exclusions.

SIGNED:

With all my love, Rahne Joceile C. Moore, Et al.

The contract renewal from 2/13/94 at 9 a.m. to 2/14/94 at 6:30 p.m. required the following additions:

4) No stopping on bridges.

5) Traveling from home is acceptable only to locations where:

a) It would be just as okay to have someone with me or who could go for me. In other words, errands. OR 

b) Where people will be meeting me there or by appointment like work or doctor’s appointments. These people must be real with bodies and birth certifications.

SIGNED:

I still love you, Rahne Joceile C. Moore, Et al.

The contact was renewed repeatedly for several days:

From 2/14/94 at 6:30 p.m. to 2/15/94 at 6:30 p.m.

From 2/15/94 at 6:30 p.m. to 2/16/94 at 6:30 p.m.

From 2/16/94 at 6:30 p.m. to 2/17/94 at 11:57 p.m.

From 2/17/94 at 11:57 p.m. to 2/19/94 at noon

I kept the necklace for a week or two after that. But I still had the spare winged heart ring as an ongoing contract of NO HARM. I was safe at least for that period of difficulty. 

* * * * * * *

I just want to say for the record that this stuff is embarrassing to me. I know it is absolutely important. It's just that I KNOW what safety is, but those munchkins in my head DO NOT. The problem arises when they have ongoing dialogue with me about the thousand and one ways they could really get behind hurting me threatening some really mean stuff. After that, a little harm sounds like not so bad a thing to me, and we're off. But when I have something like a ring which symbolizes the above contract, I can point to the ring or contract and tell them it won't wash. They'll just have to move onto something else.

Fortunately for me, they are desperate to not harm my relationships with Rahne, Adrian, or Barbara. I use this to its full extent. It helps that I know Rahne, Adrian, or Barbara have almost no threshold of tolerance for violence. Thank god. Somebody has to.

Entry III.15 (1994)

I have been mildly berserk for several days now. I have had the neurological disease—lack of coordination, poor fine and gross motor skills, and for a while there yesterday, the stunning but always entertaining inability to speak English. Unfortunately, all this trouble has also lead to the harming of my body. All of which leads me to the conclusion that I am in trouble.  Actually, I have been in trouble. I now know a great deal more is going on than I’m aware of.

ONE BIG PROBLEM IS THAT I DO NOT KNOW WHY ALL THIS IS GOING ON.

Okay, I do know that I have been upset since seeing the movie Philadelphia. I do know that I am upset about what is going on between Leslie and Adrian. I do know that I am upset about the stunning number of abusive boss to subordinate relationships that are blossoming in my office. I am current even upset that JB died of AIDS in my wheelchair the night before last. Okay. Okay. Okay. I am also upset about my daughter's seventh birthday, but why?

My counselor, who is known for knowing about this sort of thing, does not think I am merely mental, suffering purely from poor brain chemical interactions. She is certain I have been triggered into some memory backlash. She is certain that my troups (alters by any other name) are riled up, stirred up, reacting out of the past, and thinking even now they are experiencing the past.

All I get from them is anger, more anger, and a stunning number of ways to hurt myself without using weapons. Here, it is very important to define weapons. Is jumping off a bridge using a weapon? We have already determined that biting and scratching is within the bounds of no weapons. But is raising the car off the floor and dropping it on your hand using a weapon? And, let me just say that not using weapons, i.e., only those body parts that god intended be used to alter an environment, can still make really horrid wounds.

I know it is important here for me to carry on about what they are angry about...if I knew. But I am not quite ready. I would also like to add that I have been shaking/convulsing on and off for three days. Today, I noticed that my eyes are not focusing on distance well. Of course, my head hurts, and I haven't a clue as to which drug is doing what to me which in itself makes me angry. But now to that other venue…

* * * * * * *

They ask us why we're angry. As if we know. As if we can think. The roar is deafening. No one can hear anyone speak. It is too loud. It is the noise of 25 years of rage. It bounces from all the walls and corners, crisscrossing itself until even pictures are muted.

I (One Blink/John Thomas/David) can say there was killing, meanness, anger, and blood. It was unforgiving. There was hurting that never quit, couldn't quit, and can’t quit now. Everywhere we look we see it. We know it has not stopped. We know it will not stop.

Usually, that pain in the butt one makes us not look too closely, because she knows that we will leave the planet and take her with us. 

But, resolution, what is that? We do not know. The killing and hurting is continuing. We cannot stop it. We only know how to be a part of it.

That woman she pays money to says, "It is not happening now. You are remembering that which was but is not happening in this reality, right now, for Joceile. You are remembering.” It does not feel that way to us. We are hurting. We want to hurt back. We do not understand how we can stay here. We want to hurt back. But that woman and Joceile do not want us to hurt back. But staying here is not tolerable. I (One Blink/John Thomas/David) can still hear the screaming. I hear it now. It makes me want to lash out and hurt. There is only one person I am allowed to hurt. It would be the corpse I live in.

There is nothing new here. There is no reason to go over it again. That woman thinks there is something. Something about more meanness that I am remembering but my experience is that it's happening now. I feel it in my body. It hurts. I am hurting. I do not feel safe. I feel imperiled and now that I have written this, I feel more so. So that stupid corpse I live with will take a pill (“Another one?!” I say.) and crawl off to bed hoping to stave off the nightmare that does not end. Hoping to keep talking and walking and being a productive member of society. But that is only one side of her. The other side lives here and takes control when one no one else can. 

I hate you. 

L'Claim.



* * * * * * *

"So, I am wounded," I say. "Isn't that enough?"

"It is never enough," they say, "as long as blood flows.”

Entry III.14 (1994)

All right. I am finally having some peace with it now, but it took many days. The lesions, the sleepless nights, the self-harm…

* * * * * * *

My eye had been hurting me. My right tear duct kept getting clogged. Warm compresses made it better but it kept coming back. Finally, it occurred to me that it might be be my night time anti-depressant, Elavil. Elavil dries out my body’s systems. It is called a something… I’ll think of it later. My mouth gets dry. I get constipated. It affects my vision. My eyes temporarily lose some flexibility. Sporadically, I have a hard time reading.

I’ve tried to go off Elavil several times due to one irritating symptom or another. But there’s one thing Elavil does that hasn’t been duplicated. It lets me sleep, deeply, and reduces the extreme impact of my nightmares. This is no small thing. I can’t go many nights without sleep assistance without getting weirder and weirder. The good thing is now I recognize the weirdness as different than my normal state.

OK, picture this. I had to cut down the Elavil because my eye was bothering me which leads to increasingly difficult nightmares. I wake up with “convulsions” (I’m trying to get away from the euphemism of “shaking”) several times a night. This alone is enough to make me not want to go to sleep.

Then, I think somewhere just before or just after I saw the movie Philadelphia I quit taking Elavil all together. The images of the lesions triggered a memory or multiple memories. My ability to deal with the triggering was impaired by my sleep disruption. (HEY, DON’T EAT PIZZA ON TUESDAYS. “You are just trying to distract.”) This is heady stuff. I’ll elaborate… in a bit.

* * * * * * *

My head hurts and my body feels weird. Doesn’t it just always seem that way? I get sick of it. I’m sure everybody else does too.

I am also suffering from marginal self-esteem. I’m good enough; I’m not good enough. I work hard enough; I don’t work hard enough.

Am I going to say anything more exciting than that? Am I going to lead the reader into my Byzantine world? Open the swinging door to my consciousness? I think not. But then again…

* * * * * * *

Angry. I was profoundly angry. Always angry. Every Damn Day. Angry. Angry even as we speak. Angry in the morning. Angry in the night. (I’m sure this is a good thing but it seemed excessive.)

Coupled with that, I had the perpetual headache and body nausea. At this very moment, I’m probably the angriest about work.

I had started my brilliant career innocently enough as a typist with insurance companies. Naturally, insurance companies are not known for their high wages. Consequently, I didn’t made a fortune and couldn’t hang in there for the long haul.

I quit and landed a state government job at the tender age of 20 as a file clerk. Would you believe, the pay was better? Really, my dream of finally bringing home $100 per week came true. For a long time, I was fairly content being a file clerk especially after I was able to work part-time and got the rest of the time to enrich my life. (YOU’VE GOT TO BE KIDDING. “Mental health treatment, dim-bulb.”)

Eventually, the day came when I quit being a file clerk and became a clerk typist for the Human Rights Commission. I was content with that too. After awhile, I promoted to an investigator with the Commission. That’s where I was now.

Being an investigator was compelling. I liked the work, got along well with coworkers and the public, and felt challenged. In fact, things would’ve been perfect except for those very little things like bureaucratic management bullshit which waxed and waned like the tide.  Currently, we were in a wane phase. I’d worked for the Commission for ten years and ridden through many of these times. However, I’d reached too high a level of awareness to ignore them with any degree of success.

This particular night was the night before a unit meeting. “ I hate meetings,” I told my coworkers. “All I want to do is the work.” Unfortunately, the current management was of a mind to have meetings to discuss the content of future meetings. What the meetings provided in the way of assistance for my work could be reduced to two paragraphs in a memo. Other than that, they were what several coworkers grimly described as “fluff” and lacking any real substance.

“Do you know what we discussed in the last unit meeting?” I told an ex-coworker. Without waiting for an answer, I said, “We had five agenda items. The first two, we tabled for further discussion after much discussion. The third required further study. And the last two, we couldn’t get to because we ran out of time.”

I ranted and raved. It was clear to me we were on a downhill slide and had yet to reach the bottom. In any case, it made me blisteringly angry and disrespected as if my time and energy meant nothing. Oh, of course, these idiots meant well but since when did that help anything.

The Commission had a one-year backlog of cases. This meant that from the time a person filed a discrimination complaint we would not get around to investigating it for a year. How would that make you feel especially if you were working the same job all this time? “But don’t worry, the Commission has devised a new mission statement. We are working on new policies and procedures all the time. We are buying computer equipment, attending meetings, and traveling to and fro. But don’t worry, we’ll get to your case eventually. But we can’t agree on the definition of customer service so we’ll have to set up a task force. Are you free next Tuesday?”

I had nothing but rancor for the madness and the night before unit meetings gave me headaches. All I could think of was just surviving it and getting on with my work. “Oh, and just for the fun of it,” I’d say to coworkers, “I’d like to be distracted by work.”

I knew this cycle would pass. I had already lost many friends though I kept in touch. The process of attrition had not left a lot of people I had started with. I was never quite sure when a cycle would take me too. I assumed not until I left voluntarily, but one could never be certain with the Commission.

Upon returning from any kind of extended leave, I would always enter the office by saying, “ Okay, has anyone been laid off, fired, demoted, promoted, or transferred?” If so, I usually hoped that it wasn’t me. Most of the time, I was right.

* * * * * * *

(“Okay, I feel like I can go on now for a while.” HOW’S YOUR HEAD? “Better, I think.” THANK GOD, I CAN’T STAND ALL THAT WHINING.)

Entry III.13 (1994)

When I look at someone, I can’t tell what their orientation to the world is.  When they look at me, they can’t tell either.  Right now, I am hurting and angry.  It is deep inside.  On the outside, it doesn’t show. It’s a feeling part of me and not usually a functional one.  Although, I have that too (see below).

Orientation. Is the world safe for me? Am I safe for the world? No one can tell without a careful peer inside which can’t happen casually. I want my mom. You can’t tell that by looking at me, can you?

* * * * * * *

I vacillate between which is the more overpowering: the hurt or the anger. A moment ago, I seriously contemplated killing my cat. But I know she's harder to kill than she seems. Everything is. And once I started, I'd have to finish and would probably be thoroughly overwhelmed by the time she was finally dead.

("Hey this must be that awareness of reality thing that keeps people from breaking laws. YOU ARE SOOO SMART.)

* * * * * * *

So, I say to myself, being nearly intelligent, "Oh, this is going to help a lot.” I was referring to an issue casually dropped by Adrian regarding inappropriate touch. In no way do I wish to imply, I did not want Adrian to tell me what was on her mind. It was just a case of "timing is everything.”

Anyway, Adrian told me that she hated school, everything about school. I found this unlikely and said, “To coin a phrase, Adrian, there must be a reason.” Well, the reason turned out to be Beth. A kid that was a little older in Adrian's multi-grade class. Adrian haltingly told me that Beth had stuck her finger up her tush and did not stop when Adrian repeatedly asked her to until Adrian sat down on a chair and that this happened

last week.

Hey, I know that maybe all the details aren't right, but the feeling of being inappropriately touched had to be addressed. Consequently, I got on the phone to Leslie to ascertain what Leslie knew and when. Leslie said she knew only that Beth had pinched Adrian, but she agreed this more serious concern needed to be addressed. A meeting was set up with Adrian's teacher and hopefully some clarification could occur which would be good and useful.

Like I said, it helped the general upsettedness a lot. But that’s what being present is all about.  I got to do something about a problem while it is happening not twenty years later when the trail was a bit cold.

* * * * * * *

We are experiencing a moment of technical difficulty. It is not clear to us how long this moment may last. It has already lasted longer than we like.

What are the elements of this moment? It is called Planned Upsettedness. Let me explain.

I know, you know, and they know that there is more work to be done relative to the term “lesions.”  However, there was the distinct impression that “time” needed to pass before any of us had the strength to confront “lesions.” Of course, we all know that once the little box currently known as “lesions” is opened we will not be such a happy tribe.

Ah, the problem:  When to schedule an event as unfortunate as the “unhappy tribe.”  Logically, it occurred to the driver of this ungainly ship that the Night of the Counseling Appointment would be a very good time for this to occur.  As always, our captain is just a little more hopeful than reasonable. Consequently,  we are in the last nine hours of waiting for the Counseling Appointment and…it might be just a little more time than we have.

Hence, the writing of this missive.  It is called a Buying Time Devise. Wish me luck.