All Messed Up: A disturbing discovery

I don’t remember what day it happened. I was walking in the dark. Right before dawn. I should have waited.

I lost my bearings. Veered from the footpath. Couldn’t see. I walked right off the edge of a 4 foot high retaining wall. For my feet, no big deal. You’d think.

I remember the fall, but not thinking anything except for “shit!”

I don’t know how long I was out. A man was standing over me, asking if I was alright. I couldn’t get up. Pain was everywhere. Broken bones were involved. Blood was everywhere. I couldn’t use my left arm. I very hazily reached up with my right and asked for a handle. He pulled me up and walked me, holding me up, to my door. I was sick with the quickly building pain. I knew my thumb was broken but something else was wrong. It didn’t look right. It hurt beyond my ability to comprehend.

My leg was bleeding. My right foot was just weird. The worst was the right side ribs.

I spent all day in the ER. Y’all know how much fun that is.

But ever since conglomerate Johns Hopkins took Howard County General in, the ER has been a hostile place. They don’t give a damn how hurt, how much pain, how severe. You’re there for the duration. One nurse gave me a Tylenol for pain. Or maybe it was aspirin. I was there for her entire shift.

I saw her twice. She’d said “I’m your nurse…” When I arrived by ambulance.

I saw other nurses who gave me a urinal. Near nightfall, a nurse came in with IV bags. I’d been pissing all day and sipped a drop when taking that token pill. Obviously I’m beginning kidney failure. I was filling urinals while taking in no water.

Meanwhile the pain got worse. That 1 to 10 scale? Fuck that. They think you’re lying. That you want dope.

This was a month ago I guess. By the time the imaging was done and I was told my thumb was broken and dislocated, this old man was pissed. A nurse quipped, “What do you expect, it’s an ER.” What does that mean?

But all day they hadn’t released a single patient and it was silent in there except for lasciviously weird conversations. How calloused we have become when inappropriate talk is freely done where patients can hear!

I’m not fond of knocking nurses. I’d prefer not to need to. But after one surgery in 2006, I heard one black nurse leave my room, go to the nurses’ station and talk total shit about me. I seethed. Seems she hated white people.

I’ve been in too many hospitals. Met too many professional and courteous nurses. I’m not ever going to take that shit again. I don’t have to and I’m not going to.

The pain didn’t, to me, fit between 1 to 10. I’d never, since my last heart attack, felt such severe pain. One to ten? That’s a joke.

Late in the day an orthopedic doctor came in. He just had to touch the thumb. He popped it back in place then put a half cast splint on it. I left with a few 5 mg of Percocet. That will not touch bone pain. I later saw my PCP and he gave me 30×10 mg Percocet. That got me through the worst days, but about a month later I’m still in agony. And nobody cares.

I had also, before the fall, thrown a different EKG (it was already abnormal) and had to see my cardiologist.

A receptionist dogged me going into the exam room and coming out with a ream of papers bearing my balance.

Before my follow up for an echocardiogram, I got an email stating that I had to bring $800.00 with me, or pay it before, I’d be seen. I called the office. Despite such a rude ultimatum, I was willing to set a payment plan. But I got voicemail. I boiled!

“Hey, I got your nasty message so ya don’t even answer your phone? Well here’s a message for you: fuck off, I don’t need you.”

And despite the doctor being excellent, I can’t go back. And his bloody bills can go to the bottom of my incredible stack of bills.

And this is our healthcare system before the shutdown and whatever deals Democrats are making with the Devil.

I don’t walk right. Maybe I never will. It’s funny, the right one drags a bit. My ribs on the lower right posterior hurt like nobody’s business, I lie in a heating pad most of the time, I need dope and if I ask for more, I will be flagged as an addict. Look, I don’t like the shit. I merely need it.

All this time, I’m feeling like a big pussy. But then it struck me, and hard: you know you’re old, you know injuries hurt, you know they’re slow to heal, so shut up already.

Now, I am not schizophrenic. And I don’t hear voices. I’m not delusional. But that inner voice scolding me, what’s that?

I’ve “heard” it before. I talk to it. It answers or whatever. It’s me.

After all this time. So many years, decades, of things I didn’t understand, wasn’t even aware of at times, now it came to me.

I was ashamed. I hated myself again. I didn’t want to talk about it but I had to, and I trust my friends.

Dissociative Identity Disorder

This is not multiple or split personalities but I accept that you might want to call it that.

I never believed in it and the one case I was presented with in a friend, well, I got sick of her. A faker who pretended when it was convenient.

Well I don’t know about her, we parted under less than friendly circumstances.

But I knew there was more. For two years I’ve had an almost steady deep southern accent. It wasn’t quite…right but, I couldn’t help it. After the fall, I returned to my light southern accent. “The Cowboy” was gone. I realized that he was me, but a different version, one who protects. I had him start up during a conversation on the phone after I figured out what was going on. I was able to control and stop him.

He’s really not a bad version of me, there’s no difference except the accent which sounds tougher and less vulnerable than me.

But there’s more. During any particular traumatic event in my childhood, my brain did this thing. I don’t fully understand it, but it goes something like this.

I’m being striped with my father’s belt. He doesn’t stop until he’s exhausted. His rage is uncontrollable. I’m bleeding across my forearms where I tried to protect my back. That didn’t work.

I scream and cry, but he’s not spent yet. That’s when, either that moment or not long after, a different identity is formed to come in and protect me. How it works in the brain, I don’t know, but hate, anger and guilt contribute. Anger because this just isn’t right, and I know it, hatred because of course a kid hates his life being nothing more than a sex slave and whipping boy to sick parents who don’t love him.

And finally, guilt, because brainwashed kids of trauma ceaselessly love and obey their abusive parents. Want to guess how many kids wind up dead that way?

The guilt gets carried by another identity, and so on, every time it’s necessary. Now the sexual abuse. This is something I really never knew happened. Yet another identity formed to handle that. That version was pure evil. An asshole. Sneaky and vindictive at first, it never even occurred to me that it was a sliver of me driven to exact revenge on enemies or innocents alike. Broken windows, slashed tires, cursing out a poor guy trying to make a living in an ice cream truck. Didn’t matter.

It seems like he vanished at some point. He didn’t. I just got better at holding back his trigger, which is deep anger. Rage.

That’s when, around 2010, I looked back and for the first time noticed a pattern of destructive behavior that went way back to the late 1960s. I was a runner, a sabateur of friendships, not only mine, but others’ relationships. When triggered, this runner would burn bridges, run away or insult friends into leaving me alone. I was so hurt that I didn’t want to risk rejection of any kind, so no friends, no hurt. By the summer of 1972 I was forbidden to play with any neighborhood kids. I’d done it. I’d left my mark.

This sliver of my soul would seem to be controlled but it never was. I became the Running Man. If someone left the place I worked for greener pastures and they had a get-together, I didn’t go. Especially if it was a friend. It hurt too much.

I spent a lot of time working just to stay away from my wife. Fuck her. She did everything she could to humiliate me. And she was good at it. Finally I sabotaged my marriage. I was tired of her screaming at me. I’d check on the kids and sure enough they’d be in their beds, wide awake. I loved them too much to let it go on. I just jammed the gears and stopped them from moving. I was on my own.

The DESTROYER

This guy somehow got out of my control. Perhaps because I put it down to behavior, before I knew about PTSD affecting not just veterans of combat but victims of rape, child abuse, and all manner of violence. Maybe not knowing let him loose; I’d say that’s a good guess. Anyway, it happened. I noticed aberrant behavior especially on social media. Triggered by anger or hurt over insults, whether real or misunderstood, he would block friends, talk horribly about them and they have been gone from my life since.

But I did it to people I knew in person too. And the worrisome part is that I don’t remember most of it.

I find out later when approached, or they ask a mutual friend what the hell is going on. The Destroyer wrecks shit up. But there’s a bright side to this. I can’t undo what wrongs I’ve committed. But now I know. And I’m in control.

It’s really a matter of holding on and pushing them away. I don’t need protection anymore. I don’t need to hide or run away. So if I feel angry I can pray. That always works. He may not heal me; that doesn’t always happen. But He does, with faith, help. Jesus is real. His life, death and resurrection happened. Even the insight into DID was a miracle; I could easily have died not knowing. And my behavior wouldn’t have changed.

I am in pain. My brain has trauma damage. Those things are true. And this is a thing I find bizarre and embarrassing to write about. But I have shared my life on this site. Nothing was off limits unless it would have been unproductive. My mission remains: tell others what I’ve been through. If they see me in themselves, I hope to be an example, an inspiration to get help. You can live with things that hold you down. A bit of faith, and lots of hope and courage are all you need. And you can accomplish the impossible.