Main » The Bad Days

January 26, 2005

one tried to make a friend

i remember trying to make a friend once. she was in 11th grade with me. her boyfriend and our boyfriend were best friends.
"David", our boyfriend... he was a nightmare. Possessive, mean, abusive, scary.
One night Pilgrim decided that she was going to stand her ground with him. He didn't want her to do anything without him. He stalked her all the time, always finding her wherever she was. But she insisted this one time-- her and this friend were going to go out. To the mall, on a Friday night, like a normal girl, the boyfriends were staying home, that was that.
I remember being incredibley scared.
I can remember one part of being out that night with this girl. I am sure they walked around the mall and talked or something, probably did some shopping, but i wasn't there for any of that.
I do remember being at Subway... being anorexic I was super stressed out. I remember staring at the table, at the napkins, at the sandwich I was supposed to be eating, and trying to talk. It felt like I was down a long tunnel, things were echoing and hard to understand. I tried to make eye contact but couldn't.
But I remember wanting to, so much, because I wanted a friend so much. I'd spend so many years at night saying my prayers, begging God for "just one friend, just ONE, that is all I need, just ONE, PLEASE. please." Just wanted a friend to laugh and play with and hang out with and talk to and do normal things with. But didn't have one yet.
still dont.
I guess Pilgrim, and especially Missy, had fun that night, out at the mall with their girl friend.
What I remember though is seeing "David's" truck in the driveway when I got home.
He was waiting for me.
He wasn't in his truck-- he was actually in this framed-out house next door, where the cement slab had been poured and the outside walls had been put up.
i was. so.scared.
I found him waiting there for me in the dark, sittng against a wall.
He was so, so angry.
I learned that night that it wasn't worth it to try to go against him anymore. I never tried again to "disobey" him. When he said he didn't want me going somewhere without him.... i was weak and didn't.
It was at that point pretty much that Pilgrim lost all her friends. And I've never gotten over that night... and i just am so ... lonely.

i shouldnt have written this. i'm sorry.

Posted by pilgrim at 4:34 PM | Comments (0)

January 22, 2005

early explanations- reincarnation, past lives

No self-injury today so far. This is the 1st day in almost 3 weeks. Want to make it through the whole day. I distracted myself by wandering around acouple bookstores and a toystore.
SHUT UP YOUR WORDS DON’T MATTER FAT GIRL!!
God Missy’s on a rampage today every time I try to write she starts to yell. Theres 2 things I keep trying to write to you about this week and she wont let me.
Sorry sorry sorry my words are a waste of time.

This is nobody.
What she wanted to say was that in 7th grade she had this theory to try to explain why she felt so weird. Sometime around age 12 (why by then Missy was there, I was there, Tuck was there, Mae was there,etc)… she came up with the idea that she must have had a bunch of past lives, that’s why she felt like she was so many different people. She must have read something, or heard stories about, reincarnation. And when she was 12 that was Pilgrim’s reasoning to explain why she felt like so many people--- it was just remembering all the people she’d acted like during her past lives.

Posted by pilgrim at 9:26 PM | Comments (0)

October 16, 2004

separate lives

Separate Lives
When I was little,there were 2 separate girls. The daytime Pilgrim was a happy girl. Popular and outgoing, a show off, a little girl who always got staight A’s in school, and was the teacher’s Pet. The daytime Pilgrim had no problems with her mom and dad. She was fine with the fact that even though they were always busy, and didn’t pay her much attention, that they at least gave her presents at Christmastime and on her birthday, and that sometimes they sang funny songs together. The daytime Pilgrim was a healthy kid. The nighttime Pilgrim was just the opposite. Withdrawn and silent, never wanting to draw any attention to herself, she hid in closets and was too afraid to talk to anyone. Talking might mean someone would find out her secrets, and she knew she’d get in trouble if anyone found out what she was hiding. She felt like she didn’t have any family, always being left behind and forgotten about. There was no one for her. Her life was about survival.
The thing that I have to figure out how to handle is, that both of those girls were me.
Now that I’ve learned a little more (with a great deal of help fromCaroline, who seems to have a lot more insight than I do), the daytime Pilgrim was actually made up of Caroline, Missy, Blue, Claire, and Tuck. A group of kids who were able to cope with just about anything. The nightime Pilgrim consisted of Mae, Nobody, fat girl, and who knows who else may have been hiding in there. Where was I in all this? I still haven’t figured that out. Sometimes I wonder if all I have been is a collection of all the others, a compilation of a bunch of other people who make up the global “me”.

Posted by pilgrim at 10:21 AM | Comments (1)

September 11, 2004

Searching for answers

I have been, for the past week, searching through all my old journals. I started keeping them in 7th grade; unfortunately, the one from that year was given to my "best friend" when I moved away and I never saw it again. I'd do just about anything to have it back. So I have only some sketchy writings from 8th grade to begin with, then my journalling habits really took off when I was 16 and in my sophomore year of high school.
They fill boxes.
The journals, which mainly start with chronicling my journey through anorexia, are in my opinion, very twisted. By the time I was writing them, there was something REALLY WRONG. It makes me almost sad to read them, especially when I was 16. I was already filled with so much self-hate, loneliness, and loathing; what a way to be a teenager.
All through my teenage years I complained of headaches, voices inside. There are lines in my journal where I call myself different names, write things in the 3rd person, scream at myself.
But it wasn't until 1993 that things really started to go wrong, extremely wrong (and I was still 7 years away from even entertaining the thought of finding a therapist.)
In 1990, one of my best childhood friends died. In 1992, some more deaths occurred-- in my family and with friends. Other things happened, as well as the ongoing abuse from my boyfriend.
It just looked like, in my journals, that in 1993, I had had enough.
By 1993, you can see the handwriting changes. You can read about the spacing out, the missing chunks of time. I can remember more vividly finding evidence of dissociation. I remember that was about the time I started hearing "Mommy? Mommy?" and "Go away!" in my head all the time (man, I hated that.) The journals really started to get strange, then. The self-hate, isolation, and fears grew even more, until I was hiding out in my bedroom all the time, afraid of being found out. I was aching for someone to help me,but terrified to reach out.
It took another 7 years, and quite a few miracles later, to find my therapist, S. Worth the wait, but what a long journey to make it there.

Posted by pilgrim at 5:06 PM | Comments (2)

August 29, 2004

how insiders came to be

I'd love to hear more about how you find out others have been created, or that they have been there, you've just not seen (heard?) them.

Someone asked this a while ago and I've been working on finding a way to explain...its difficult. Just very complicated. Some things come to mind...

I can remember being around 12 years old and in my bedroom. I spent hours alone as a child, in my room. But I would talk all the time. I had what others considered to be imaginary playmates. But the other night I remembered how my "imaginary" playmates... were ...really there. They talked back... and I did what they said. I can remember having conversations with Missy, in my room. I can remember "seeing" her, sensing she was there beside me. I know that Missy was created when I was around 12, although I'm not positive why, but I do know that she easily handles my dad and his sarcasm and his... "ways"...so she was probably made specifically to handle him. And it was around 12 when things with my dad got much more difficult to handle. I would imagine that I created Missy out of a need for someone to help me deal with him.

Caroline has come up with a reasonable explaination for the existence of Claire, which I would have never figured out myself. Claire is a little girl with long braids, who lives in out in a field of flowers, among horses and kittens and rabbits and there is always sunshine. She doesn't talk, and hasn't got any desire to. She does some sign language. But she doesn't worry about interracting with people. Her world is only animals, and with animals, you don't need to talk out loud, all you have to do is talk with your heart. Claire seems to be more fluent in caterpillar, kitten, fawn, and horse, and with them you dont need words. And interestingly enough, Claire looks very very similiar to how my little sister did when she was around 8 years old. Claire is also 8. My sister was very quiet. Claire is very quiet. My sister is wonderful with animals. Claire is also. My sister always had her hair in long ponytails or braids. So does Claire. Caroline reasons that because I saw, when I was little, my sister as the one who didn't get hurt, who wasn't the target of dad's hurt (she was, I just didn't know it at the time)...that I created Claire in an effort to model my sister.

Posted by pilgrim at 10:22 AM | Comments (2)

August 20, 2004

Hearing voices

i remember one of the 1st times i heard someone else's voice come out of my mouth. i was around 12 years old. My aunt and grampa were visiting and staying at our house. I can remember getting out of bed one morning, and carrying my doll and baby blanket with me out to the kitchen. This was at 12, when I was trying to be "cool".
its like... I got out of bed, and I was there, but someone was walking in front of me that i kept...tripping over. i remember thnking something like "i feel so strange".
But there I was that morning, doll and baby blanket in hand. I remember standing in front of the refridgerator looking for something to eat. I wondered if everyone could tell that I looked different... I felt smaller.My mom said something to me and my reply was "But I want a Pepsi"...in a child's voice. A little child's voice. I remember now how it struck me as kind of odd, because it didn't sound like me. Yet it had come out anyway, this disembodied child's voice.and i was sort of back behind this other person, thinking, that didn't sound like me, i wonder if they notice i sound funny, and i remember feeling embarassed and afraid of being found out. and then i remember feeling silly because i had my doll and blanket and there was 12 years old and figuring they would make fun of me.
Over the years, of course, I heard plenty of voices in my head. I figured everyone was just that way, hearing voices. In 6th grade my teacher read a book called My Side of the Mountain, about a boy that lived alone on a mountainside for a very long time, and to keep hiMissylf entertained he learned to have conversations going on in his head, different voices at the same time. I remember thinking it was a little strange that he had to learn that skill, since i thought it was something that everyone just sort of knew. I was used to other people taking over and speaking through me. but it wasn't until about a year and a half ago that I heard one of their voices for REAL. and that shocked the hell out of me. Some time ago, my (no longer) best friend called me, and the answering machine went on before I picked up the phone. Unfortunately she called at a time when the 5 year old was out and having a hard time. So it was the 5 year old's voice on the answering machine, caught on tape. Later, when I was back, I saw that a message had been recorded...and was I ever in for a shock. When I heard the tape I heard the 5 year old, carefully answering the phone with a small "Hello?" "its Mae." Thats when it hit me: it was her voice I'd heard that morning when i was 12.

Posted by pilgrim at 7:45 PM | Comments (0)

June 6, 2004

"That's just Pilgrim"

I had survived high school (barely). Still in an abusive relationship with a boyfriend that I didn't know how to escape, still being raped on a regular basis, still hurt, still trying to deny everything from my past, and doing everything I could to run away from ...everything. I'd always had tricks to deal with the things that happened. My favorite was "disappearing"-- going into a secret space inside my head where I couldn't be hurt. I would leave my body, and I'd imagine myself disappearing up into the stars in the sky, far away from whoever was yelling at me, hurting me, scaring me. Sometimes it got out of hand-- I'd forget to come back for a while. Or I'd "wake up" from my secret space and be somewhere different, or in different clothes, or... it'd be Wednesday afternoon, when I could swear it had just been Monday night a few minutes ago. I would put myself into trances by closing my eyes and telling myself "not me, not me, not me" over and over in my head for however long it took for some traumatic event to be over with, for however long it took for me to be gone, for however long it took for some other part of me to take over.
Sometimes I heard voices.
It was inside my head-- I knew it wasn't from outside, but it sounded so real--it could have been outside my head, but I knew no one was around.
I tried to shrug it off.
I kept hearing it. I wondered if I was schizophrenic, and did some research on schizophrenia, just to make sure. Nope, the voices weren't telling me what to do, weren't coming from outside my head,no hallucinations, thank goodness.
I'd hear things like, "No!" and "Go away!" and once in a while a child crying "Mommy?!" Especially when I got stressed out, or when my boyfriend was hurting me.
I still didn't have a clue what it all was. I just figured I was crazy, because I knew something was wrong with me and always had been. I had a reputation in my family as being weird, a little too creative, a little too smart, a little too everything. "Thats just Pilgrim; thats just how she acts; don't take her seriously, she's just weird."

Posted by pilgrim at 7:17 PM | Comments (0)

Something was wrong.

I always knew that something was wrong with me. Always. I didn't know what it was, but I realized that something-was-not-quite-right. Even as a little girl, I was extremely intelligent, extremely creative. I was often accused of "thinking too much." I was too sensitive. I always had a sense that I was too much for the world, and the world was too much for me.
Little things shook my psyche enormously. Things that probably would haven't affected other kids so much--- made my mind split. Into piece after piece. Parts of me went away, into hiding. Someone else would come out, and then split again. I led a double life, even as a little girl: there was a daytime me and a nighttime me, and its almost as though one didn't know about the other. One part of me got perfect grades, was very popular, was smart, outgoing, brilliant, loved, loveable. One part of me was sullen, withdrawn, isolated, with no contact with others, hidden away.
Every time something traumatic would happen... more and more parts would be created to handle it. And more parts would disappear inside for protection.
Something always was not quite right. I knew that much. But I didn't know what to do with it, didn't understand it, and lived with the best I could, coping by developing an eating disorder, cutting myself, and throwing myself into schoolwork.
Then , things got much worse.

Posted by pilgrim at 7:05 PM | Comments (0)