indigos journal

excerpts from the wood song by the indigo girls

yeah but what it takes to cross the great divide
seems more than all the courage i can muster up inside

but the question drowns in its futility
and even i have got to laugh at me

just holding on for the ride

4 Non Blondes
What’s Up

Twenty - five years and my life is still
Trying to get up that great big hill of hope
For a destination
And I realized quickly when I knew I should
That the world was made up of this brotherhood of man
For whatever that means
And so I cry sometimes
When I’m lying in bed
Just to get it all out
What’s in my head
And I am feeling a little peculiar
And so I wake in the morning
And I step outside
And I take a deep breath and I get real high
And I scream at the top of my lungs
What’s going on?
And I say, hey hey hey hey
I said hey, what’s going on?
Ooh, ooh ooh
And I try, oh my god do I try
I try all the time, in this institution
And I pray, oh my god do I pray
I pray every single day
For a revolution
And so I cry sometimes
When I’m lying in bed
Just to get it all out
What’s in my head
And I am feeling a little peculiar
And so I wake in the morning
And I step outside
And I take a deep breath and I get real high
And I scream at the top of my lungs
What’s going on?
And I say, hey hey hey hey
I said hey, what’s going on?
Twenty - five years and my life is still
Trying to get up that great big hill of hope
For a destination

things are pretty much the same as when we wrote last.

we finished the social security review paperwork and got it in the mail. now it is just a waiting game to see what they say.

i guess i didn’t really have much to say…

things are going along ok. still working on the stuff with the Seekers, but we are not in trauma or anything. they spent some time out recently, and we are dealing with the programming triggered by that. feelings of shame, etc.

it feels like the process we are going through in dealing with all that is going to bring about monumental changes. i don’t know where we will end up. that is scary. but the Wise Ones keep telling us to hold on. that things will be ok. that we will make it through. i am trying to trust in that.

the other night we watched Conspiracy Theory. up till this point, we had never been able to get through that movie. within the first couple of minutes we always get triggered. i guess we have grown, because this time we were able to move beyond getting triggered to see the movie. it’s kinda creepy how accurate it is in some respects. we have also grown in that we don’t fear triggers like we used to.

we got a huge envelope in the mail from social security. they are reviewing our disability. we are really scared about that. we hate it!

our therapist is going out of town. we will miss three sessions. we are having major mixed feelings about that.

of course, that would describe our whole life right now. (mixed feelings.)

Last night I heard the screaming
Loud voices behind the wall
Another sleepless night for me
It won’t do no good to call

(Behind The Wall by Tracy Chapman)

we are sitting here…up late. we know we should be in bed. but we’ve tried that, and it doesn’t work. and then i remember that we wanted to write here with an update. it seems, lately, that every time one (or more) of us wants to write the thought is taken away from us. and so we forget all about it. the result being, of course, that we don’t get it out of us and no one else knows what is going on.

then…when i try to write, there are voices telling me how inane and pointless and stupid it is….

(Because it is.)

let’s see…at 2 lines every 5 minutes, how long will it take us to get through this?

(Who the fuck cares?)

so we kinda wanted to write down what has been going on this week…both for us and for others in our life.

on tuesday after therapy, deb and us were talking about some really emotional stuff. (for both of us) stuff about the conflict that is occurring here in wolf-land. (this stuff affects our relationship with deb as well)

the guilt that some of us were feeling was enough to give a certain group inside control. this group has been trying to gain control for a while now. so one minute we are there in the room with deb, the next we are gone.

apparently, we were gone for 2 days. catatonic. we slept some of that. when we were awake, we were staring off into space. no one was able to arouse us. we were having pseudoseizures. (we’ve had those before.) Luckily, we have gone catatonic before, so linda and cassidy were able to help deb through this. however, we have never been gone this long before.

after two days a little girl was able to get out. at first she was only out a little bit of the time. she can’t talk, so it was really hard for her to communicate. then finally shean was able to come out as well. i think at some points throughout it some of the autistic group was out. it wasn’t until today in therapy that a big was finally able to get out.

since we were gone for so long, we missed our medicine for several days. we have VERY bad withdrawals if we miss our medicine.

when someone was out, if they did or said something that this group did not like, someone in that group would hit us. (on the inside and on the outside) they hit us repeatedly in the face and head. we have a very painful bruise on our forehead right at the hairline.

this group was also yelling at us constantly. yelling things that i still can’t bring myself to say. they, of course, say that i won’t say them because i am “gutless.” perhaps i am.

they also showed us pictures constantly. pictures of things that happened before and that they were going to do to us again. whenever we fell asleep they would give us nightmares.

they had us all “in jail.” when the one little girl was able to get out, they had her convinced that everyone was dead and/or on death row. i don’t know if anyone did die, because i don’t have any kind of count of folks. linda doesn’t think anyone died.

so…after all that….where are we? in the same place we were before. the conflicts are not solved. will they be? so i hear.

i think the words are done for the night.

it is amazing to me what can be accomplished in one therapy session. we went from despondent and suicidal to more hopeful and not suicidal in one session.

the core issues are still there. we still struggle with the two “new” groups. but i guess we have a bit different perspective now.

we have still been thinking a lot after the therapy session on tuesday. we came to the realization that if they (the group we have been calling perps) are not hurting anyone, that is not really appropriate to call them perps. thoughts and feelings are not actions. so we are calling them “the rageful ones” now. that seems to have and convey a lot less judgement. which is good.

it is still hard to get beyond black and white thinking. in a way it is easier to see it as “they are bad” and “we are good” than it is to see everyone as people with good and bad in them. it is also more confusing…cause if they are bad, that explains why they hurt us. but if they are not bad, why did they hurt us like that? and it brings us to a more equal level with them…i so do not want to relate to them in any way, shape or form.

i have a feeling that all of this in not very coherent…it is just a big mess in our head…and the best we can do is just get it out here…kind of like regurgitating…but it is all still a big mess.

oh well…

another good thing is that we actually got to spend some time with myriad last night…without having to worry about leaving at any certain time…and as we were driving home close to midnight, we realized how much we miss that…hanging out at her house as late as we want…coming home long after dark…

ahhh…it is good to be getting back to our life.

gotta go get ready for therapy now.

we was in a bad way yesterday. because of the stuff we wrote about a couple of days ago, and also we were having a lot of date-specific memories. not full memories, just flashes. but repeated flashes from three different memories.

and then we just had another flash as we started to write here. of being taught (programmed) that independence day did not apply to us. that we were not, and would not be, independent.

we are still not sure how we are going to handle writing about memories…if we should say “fuck it” and write it for everyone to see (and not worry about triggering anyone) or if we should have a password required journal for that stuff…or something else all together. so we are not going to write the memories down until we decide that.

excerpt from Dar Williams “What Do You Hear In These Sounds”

And I wake up and I ask myself what state I’m in
And I say well I’m lucky, cause I am like east berlin
I had this wall and what I knew of the free world
Was that I could see their fireworks
And I could hear their radio

we are learning a lot of new stuff about our system. new groups of people, new info about those people and their jobs. some of this info helps us make sense of shit. so i guess that is good. lots of the stuff we are learning does not making us happy. like we learned about a group of males who are basically perps.

we are very not happy about this new info. we are just as bad as the perps who hurt us. all this time we thought we were better than “the bad people.” turns out we are just like them.

we always said we would die before we willingly hurt someone else. lots of people think we need to die now.