Elly-viate the Pain

[Elly]

Greetings, all! New year, new life.

I have actually barely noticed those significant markers such as new years, or even birthdays and anniversaries or any sort, because the past decade has been...a challenge, one that I can only say I was lucky to survive.

I've had the good fortune to start to get away from that, and maybe it started ten years ago with a new perspective on my family's dynamics, but only in the past year have I been able to strike out on my own. It's been difficult, though very well worth it, and I just want to be able to sustain this newfound whatever-is-this-it's-so-warm.

I've only been diagnosed and treated for depression, but am also given to disordered eating, imaginary friends (I'm in my mid-20's), dropping out of school even though I love learning and have a variety of academic interests, and going way off the rails in my career even though I should be doing everything to keep up with it considering that I'm too undereducated and unstable to lay the foundation for financial security (and I live in a nation with developing world standard infrastructure.)

Somehow, I'm happy and I get by.



I'd like to introduce you all, too, to my imaginary support team (except for those two, the creepy ones, they're jerks):

Mr. Foxglove oscillates between an urban survivalist and a romanticized pirate captain. He doesn't have a crew. I refer to him as my Animus because my therapist is a Jungian and Mr. Foxglove and I have a romantic bond. I guess he's the part of me that fulfills the need for unconditional love, but I keep wondering if he's a splinter of my psyche then where did he learn love from? It's just weird.

Captain Marigold is some sort of nobility but she takes to the high seas on her ship and does pirating anyway. Being the go-between the landlubbers and the outlaw seafarers, she's big on ideas such as Honor and Duty but isn't all idealistic and I hope to learn more from her, that is, if she (like all my imaginary friends) are going to be popping up as dissociated shards of my own psyche. If I can come to the same conclusion just by living life and holding the pieces of my mind together with spit and gumption, then fine.

Lady Hawthorn is a sort of psychopomp who seems to appear when I'm at a low. She doesn't talk. She's kind of creepy.

Rose has so many moods and faces that I can't fathom what she's "for" psychologically speaking.

Poppy is my pet dragon. It doesn't talk, either, it just breathes fire at my anxieties and eats up pieces of my heart before they float off to somebody else. (Which, horrifyingly, I can witness and have to find a way to act normal or translate it into real-life relationships with words and actions, not just, "My invisible pet dragon doesn't like you.") In a way, Poppy is my heart, or my personal boundaries, or something, I don't know. It has reactions more than it has a personality.

Rafflesia is my adversarial dragon. It's part reptile, part insect, part clockwork, and speaks insidiously destructive beliefs to me in the voice of my mother. I've gotten slightly better at winning arguments against it.

The names are all deliberately chosen by me to some extent, although they all have taken on lives of their own, so for example Mr. Foxglove had to do some insisting until I quit considering "Captain Kelp" as my name for him. I can't make them appear in my mind or before my eyes if they're not already there, I can't make them go away if I don't want them around, but at least I do know that nobody else can see them and, while I believe everything they say deserves consideration (even, or especially, Rafflesia, if only to engage in a belief-deconstructing debate) it's my responsibility alone to stand by what advice I follow in my life if that affects other people who aren't imaginary.

[Rain]

Hi and welcome to you, Elly and all the parts of yourself, your not-so-imaginary friends.

I'm sorry you have had these tough, tough years in your recent past, and that you are on the road to recovery.   I look forward to your posts, and support you have for others here as well.

Grace and Healing in your Journey

Rain     

[Elly]

Thank you immensely for the warm welcome This past year has actually been  ray of sunshine after the storm, and I would definitely want to spread that around where it's most needed.

[Rain]

Then do spread the joy, but also the sorrow.   They are all part of who you are, what you are experiencing, Elly.