Umm.. Hi, we guess.

[Relinquishedpain]

Been a while since we've been on a forum so.. guess it would probably be best if we start by introducing ourselves..

We are relatively new to the concept of C-PTSD, but from what research we have done, it rings far more bells than any other personality or mood disorder have.. so we are here to see what we can learn more about it and ourselves so here we go..

We are a plural (No formal diagnosis of yet, but we don't really need one we suppose..) system of 6 primaries, and an unknown number of secondaries and fragments that seem to be in a near constant state of flux..

We are Erin, our defacto host and protector, tends to be the one people in meatspace meet first since the rest of us are not very comfortable around new people face to face.. Crysti, Crys, and Crysta, the three alters of the 'Crystal' median subsystem, a little (age 9-12 ish estimated), a primal, and a formal mature adult, in that order. Kali, our most aggressive and dominant alter, tends to burn herself out if she fronts too much too often, but tends to keep us moving when things need to get done and Erin won't do so.. and last.. but Crysta says not least.. Me.. I'm Tara.. Crysta says i'm soft spoken.. so if you see the '..' a lot.. there is nothing necessarily wrong in that moment.. I just.. this is just how I talk..

Umm.. We.. guess a quick overview of what happened would be good.. we.. spent probably 70% of our youth alone.. We had a very strict schedule pretty much every day for the first 10 conscious years of our life.. (We don't remember anything at all before... I don't know.. I think our earliest memory is somewhere in kindergarten.. so.. 6..?), but umm.. so, mom would get up about 4:30 am and leave for work by 5.. we got ourselves up between 6 and 6:30 so that we could get ready and watch tv.. and went to school.. dad didn't get up until after we left.. the first couple years of that our sister was still at home so she was there with us.. but she was out of the house before we turned ten.. umm.. Got home from school about 2:30 pm so we had to go to our grandmothers house for an hour until mom got home about 3:30.. mom watched tv til about 5.. cooked dinner, dad got home about 5:30, we'd sit at the table for the ten minutes it took to eat dinner, then mom vanished upstairs to bathe, and watch tv in her room til she went to bed at 7:30.. dad vanished outside into the garage to work on his race cars..

So.. pretty much all day that we were not in school we basically had little to no oversight.. we lived in a town of maybe 700 people at the time, and we just had to tell mom we were going outside, and we had free run throughout the town on our own until dinner, and then back out til 8-10 depending on how old we were and the time of year.. Weekends weren't much better... mom was parked in front of the tv all day unless she had gardening outside to do.. dad was outside in the garage all day, or racing on sunday, or out getting parts... that was pretty much our whole life until we were almost 16..

We don't ever 'remember' being physically or sexually abused or anything like that... which is a part of why we never really considered our issues as anything serious.. we were raised with a very heavy handed 'someone else has it worse'.. constantly.. didn't matter if we were depressed, or anxious, or scared, our mothers  life was so much worse when she was a kid, so she was a good mom.. and we believed it too.. for a long time.. A lot of what gets us the most is the.. well.. what feels like.. the little stuff.. we don't remember our aunt Kitty.. at all.. nothing about her.. she died when we were five or six.. but we remember the moment mom told us she died.. and we were devastated.. but we didn't go to her funeral.. there was no mention of anything about it after that.. life just.. went on.. but to this day we have an aversion to motorcycles.. our mom's mom.. same thing.. we were closer to her than we were to our parents.. but there was nothing more than we went to the wake and it was just dropped after that..

We remember we never leaned on our parents for anything, we've 'always' for as long as we can remember been independant, if we could do it by ourselves, we did. Took off our training wheels, made our own lunches for school, took care of our own injuries when possible.. we never if we could help it, leaned on them.. or anyone else for that matter.. to a point, we still don't. We can't.

We had our bullies, but they were never physical.. we don't think.. we've never in our life been full on scared of someone so that goes to (in our mind at least) help prove to me that we were never openly abused in that manner. It was just... emotional * I think. Hmmm. I'm Erin by the way. Let's see, down the list we go. I remember grade, middle and early high school we spent a lot of time grounded, and shut down staring at the floor in front of our mother, yelling at us about our grades, homework, things around the house not done... etc etc. As long as we can remember, we have been plural, there were at least 2 of us when we were young, we do not know for certain though, it is not something we even considered as a possibility until a few years ago. We are 31 years in body by the way.

Just as well, we are trans female, we can see that expressed in certain ways as young as 9, though that was something that was deeply, deeply hidden... even back then we knew that, that side of us would not be accepted in our home town or by our family, likely one of the main reasons I remained our host, while Crysti hid in the background until we were alone.

Let's see... moving on.. Ah yes, dad died. 15 years old, and this was a major downward turning point in our life... I am going to pause here and offer context because I could not properly express this thought without it. Our father was very laid back about us taking days off, it was not something we did often so all we had to do was say we were sick, and dad would call us off school. No questions, no proof, just... boom, and done. The day dad died, we woke up feeling like we were dying. Our whole body ached from head to toe, we had a temperature over 100, we threw up once before leaving the house, and continued to hack up dark brown phlegm and bits of blood on our way to the bus stop. There was 'no' reason in the world, for us to go to school. We had 'every' reason to stay home and recover... but we went to school anyway.. I cannot think of any reason why other than divine intervention... however... The moment they called us to the office, we knew something was very wrong.

For the longest time we blamed ourselves, we spent years thinking about that day, and what might have been different if we had listened to our body and stayed the * home. But.. no matter. That day, mom stopped being a mom. She stopped cooking dinner, she didn't care about much of anything beyond going to work and coming home to watch TV. I had to learn how to cook and from that day on I pretty much took care of myself start to finish. Mom went out of her way to get rid of every trace of him she could, sparked a war between her and his family over things he wanted done that she refused to do.. that just goes on and on... So... moving on...

Back to the 'little' things, we had infected, deeply ingrown toenails for 3 years. I didn't want to go to the doctor. So mom didn't make me go. I cleaned them, I cut them, I pulled the splinter out of the bottom of my toe when it grew out the front. It wasn't until I broke down and asked her to take me that 'anything' was done about it. That is the kind of stuff that pisses me off about those years... I cannot count the number of times I could have killed myself, burned the house down, broken bones... etc.. and there was no one there to stop me or make sure I didn't... We skated by on luck and our own independent wits until we met our mate and had a reason to care about the world around us.

Just a few examples we can think of in this moment I guess... But things are getting foggy, so I am going to end it here before it gets any worse so... yeah. Rambly rambly ramble.. and here we are. Hi.

[Hope66]

Hi Relinquishedpain,

Tara - Welcome to the forum and I hope you'll find it a helpful and supportive place.  I think you write really well I hope to see you around here more - there are lots of friendly people and most importantly, people are able to share experiences and feel validated here.  I hope you will too.

Hope 

[Blackbird]

Welcome  I can relate to the absent mother, you're definitely not alone.

[sanmagic7]

hi, and welcome to all of you.  so glad you made it here.  this has been a community of acceptance and caring for me, and i hope you find that as well.  we're all here together, singular, plural, or fluid.  doesn't matter.  what matters is that you're here, beginning your own recovery.  you're not alone with that. 

[Relinquishedpain]

We thank you all. It has been a while since we were part of a forum style community, and given how shy Tara and Crysti have been of late we will most likely be a wall flower off and on.

[Kizzie]

Welcome RP      Wall flower is just fine     Sometimes it can take a bit of time to feel comfortable posting.  I know I read for a long time before I made my first post and then felt so vulnerable it took a while to make another.  Eventually I started posting regularly and it has really helped in my recovery.  I hope the same is true for you.