Dissociation at night alone in her bed. Her body swelled up to fill the whole room, like Alice in Wonderland. Her tongue and thumb felt huge and swollen, but her ‘self’ had shrunk to a pinpoint in the middle of the huge void. The light under the door, and the window, were both really small as if they were a long way away.

She just lies there dissociated while he does it. But to cope, she turns the experience/memories into monsters and creepy crawlies that will haunt her for years. [edited for public view]

Like the Dance of the Seven Veils, she divides and divides, separating and wavering in invisibility. “As my body starts to ‘remember’ and come alive, feelings arise, very sensuous and feminine, a new feeling of actually being in my body. But it is all confused and I move in and out of the dissociation.”

Spinning

There was nowhere safe. In my own room the drawers held chaos, I couldn’t contain anything.

“Dark City” The world inside of me is chaotic, dark, unpredictable. There is a sense of my past overwhelming me, of buildings full of memories that hurt and confuse.

“Babushkas” There is adult me, child me and chaos me – chaos is my heart. Inside of me is an endless, mind-crushing blackness. I am fragmented.

“All of Me in Glass” There exist within me so many ‘me’s’: the chaos, the infant, the adult without child and the mother I am now. I am finding my colours, my warmth with my son, he loves me and he needs me and I can be safe. But how do I take the other me’s and put them in here where there is light and love? How do I tame the chaos?

You left me broken but inside of all that mess, there is a little me