The Hard Road is Always the Best

[SarahC]

I am 51 years old. 

My "how I got this way" story isn't what I want to tell right now.  Mostly because I spend so much of my life telling my story, and working through trauma, and recovering from the work, that I'm tired of the sound of my own voice, the clicking of keys on a computer, and the headspace that I live in where I am constantly on alert for "what fresh * is this?" sorts of experiences.

I found this site, and once upon a time I participated in a forum which proved to be very helpful to me for a few years while I worked on the past which had resoundingly invaded my present, and I'd like to try again with the whole "forum" model again.

Unfortunately the forum I liked went the way of many of these sorts of things.  In-fighting, paranoia, creepy outsider trolls, admin with personal agendas, and a disgusting array of chaos due to the sheer volume of uncontrollable, crowded people.  I am therefore also skittish about forums.

But, the briefest of why, nonetheless...  I spent eleven years from 2004-2015 completely shut down.  Outwardly, I was fine, the model citizen, devoting my entire being to charity work, teaching children to sing, being the traveling choir director, raising my autistic son.  It was a scramble to outrun death, because I had Hep C, a leftover from a transfusion I'd had at 11 years old, some 40 years ago now, and my functional life was drawing to a close. 

Then, the cure happened.

And it happened to me.

I had stopped doing my intensive trauma healing work when my autistic son was born.  There weren't enough hours in the day to do both, and he was labor intensive in ways I scarcely can communicate.  When I woke up out of my fog last summer and realized I ACTUALLY was going to live, everything crumbled.

So, for 8 months, I've been trying to get the work done, once and for all.

It has been a hellish nightmare. 

I seek people who understand.  I seek people who are on the journey and have triumphs and darknesses to share.  I seek to be a friend, and find friends.  I seek companionship on the long hard road.

I get 30 years back in which to forge a new life, once and for all.

The basics you need to know:  1) I'm a polyfrag DID, with CPTSD.  I'm working through integration issues, but have a strong forward frontal alter (me) who does all the communicating now, so it's not confusing to interact with me/us.  Since the core of DID is trauma, all I do now with my spare time is confront the things that were forgotten/repressed and work through the feelings.  The work sucks swampwater, but it is fruitful.  2) I have a soon to be 12 year old autistic son, and he is amazing and also quite a lot of hard work.  3) My brilliant 22 year old daughter is currently planning her wedding.  They are healthy happy people which tells me I kept enough of the chaos away from her to keep her safe.  Yay ME! 4) My marriage is a mess.  Just FYI.  Married an autistic man (grew up with an autistic man, so.... yeah...  just repeating life, not living life is the thing I am trying to overcome).  So, um, yeah, that's gonna be a messy thing to disentangle after twelve years of avoiding each other around the house.  5) I like science fiction, I have a booth at sci-cons that promotes awareness and acceptance of Autism, and I own two Daleks (in my living room as we speak) and we are an entire family of award-winning cosplayers.  Life is fun sometimes.  I just need to finish the dark hard long road...

Thank you always for honesty, thank you for trust and compassion and kindness.  I will bring mine to the party too.  Let's do this thing!

Toodles,
Sarah

[Talisien]

Hey Sarah.

I just joined this forum as my first. I have not been 'diagnosed' or labelled but I recognise my own symptoms from the descriptions on this site.

I am a gentle soul just trying to find my way out of the morass of past trauma I have 'managed to cope with' up until last year.

Happy to meet you and be part of a support system for you if I can.

[Kizzie]

Hi Sarah and a warm welcome to OOTS     Hopefully you will find the safety, information and support you are looking for here.  We do try and keep this a respectful and  considerate place to share, but being the internet there are occasionally trolls, etc., to deal with.  We do try and get on top of that kind of thing as quickly as possible.  What helps with that is if members let us know about any problematic posts by using the "Report to Moderator" button on the lower right hand side of each post.  We are volunteers and in recovery ourselves so can't always read every post in a timely fashion but if you alert us we will review the post and as required take action ASAP. 

Please feel free to have a look around and when you have a moment read through our Member Guidelines .

Again, welcome