There is so much more to say about her passing, her loss, our grief, and our processing of this news. I guess we aren’t quite ready to delve into it and we are also just utterly exhausted and overwhelmed at the next few days and everything else externally that is screaming at us that needs our attention immediately with energy we just don’t have, and yet we have to find it, as it has reached critical emergency problematic levels.

Most of January we were out of town with Sean visiting his grandmother and other relatives as his grandmother was dying and then she did pass away. She was a great woman that I didn’t have nearly enough time to get to know and whom Sean was pretty close to. I’m just glad that I was able to meet her and spend time with her a little bit in visits since getting to know Sean. I didn’t see her at her best, but there were times when she was more ‘present and coherent’ than at other times we visited, and I feel touched to have known her delightful self.

Leaving the house is a hard thing for us to do, but leaving town is even more challenging. We always need many days or lots of time to recover from being gone. We didn’t have access or convenient access to the Internet while we were away and so that is part of why we haven’t been back to journal until now.

We wish to thank everyone for their responses and we will respond more directly very soon. We’re still just trying to get a handle and grip on life and regaining some ground since coming home.

In many ways we’re still divided about journaling, but it does seem like the shift is more towards journaling and taking the risks that our mother or someone (that we don’t want to know) finds it and just trying to take the ‘screw it’ attitude if they do. The purpose of this journal is supposed to be for us and then for anyone else who may find something helpful or useful to them. There is more to say about that. Perhaps instead of trying to process it internally we need to just process it externally in our journal about the process and divided thoughts and feelings about journaling openly here as well as scanning our handwritten journal here. Ha. What a concept. Journaling about our attempts to process something internally in order to sort something out, particularly as it relates to journaling here.

So much going on, but we’ve been wanting to update, and this was our attempt to update. I guess we’ll tackle the journaling processing as well as the processing of our loss of our friend, someone we’ve been wanting to reconnect with over the years.

Julies (and others around too, just not sure who)

then there has always been the awareness that we’re so out there or at least can be and there’s always the chance that our mother could accidentally stumble upon our site or someone else who knows enough about me and my life and put things together. if someone read enough, and they knew my mother or my family, they’d probably put it together, even if we used pseudonyms for the people in our life that we mention by first name in our journal. this is why we finally settled on that debate regarding whether to use pseudonyms or not– we decided it didn’t wholly matter as anyone knowing us and our life, family, friends, etc. could figure out who was who even with pseudonyms and so it didn’t make sense. we know on some level which people in our life absolutely require complete anonymity and hope that others who might take issue with it would let us know.

anyway, so we’re thinking that this fear, worry, anxiety, etc. is behind a large part of the silence and struggle with writing anything in our journal. we used to write daily or almost daily… though some of those journal entries are not posted here because we still have to import them. we’ve done a reasonable amount of journal writing in our handwritten journal throughout these periods of silence, but that hasn’t been scanned here.

we want to be the ones with the courage, the braveness, the openness, rawness, etc. that we see other friends and bloggers do. we admire that so much. we want to not care or to feel free to reveal, to tell how it is, to help others in some way hopefully, to share with those who know us (and we know they’ve been to our site or been given the info) so that they can know how we’re doing if they want to know. we want a strong living record of our life, our healing journey, our thoughts, feelings, etc., because so much of it is forgotten and lost somewhere and so much more is captured with words… and words we can return back to for reference, patterns, growth, healing, etc.

instead the silence lives and we argue and are divided inside about so many different thoughts, ideas, feelings, philosophies, dynamics, etc. regarding whether to journal or not journal. we’ve debated whether to go to all password posts and whether to just push past all of this and be an open book and whether there is some kind of balance. in the midst of all of this, we end up at this standstill, the standstill and safety of silence. but where does that get us? silence eventually leads to a sense of failure, badness, shame, etc. of its own making because we aren’t writing when there is so so so much going on inside that we need to share, want to share, explore, and take further along that writing and processing brings for us. instead it just sits within, spinning, circling, withering away, with only a small chance of living and not being buried deep within with everything else. our life is about burying things. it is so automatic. even the good things… they get lost or buried and we’re left with only the hope it will be remembered instead of splintered and scattered pieces or nothing of it left.

we know it really boils down to whether we can handle our mother or someone else we know that we prefer to keep this journal private and away from them, from whether we can handle and accept that happening and the potential effects of that. we aren’t worried about the father because we’re pretty sure he is fairly computer illiterate or really doesn’t use a pc much at all. there’s always the worry that if we post links or info about a certain friend that our brother might decide to google her and eventually find our site and then that would be bad as our family would then know.

there’s just so much about this topic and issue and there’s a lot more bottom lines that we know exist besides what we just wrote. we’re not sure how to settle this within as there are loud and competing philosophies and ideas and stuff about this topic and uggh, it sucks.

this has been going on for us for a long time, and we’ve been fighting it within for a long time, and lately it seems, the silence is winning the battle. the ‘do nothing’, ‘say nothing,’ etc. because it is safer seems to be the default right now. and there are quite a few of us that want it different or think we want it different or something.

so here’s a start to conquering this and finding a solution for ourselves.

julie/s, julies, Julies

So as our dearly loved friend, Naomi, says in her song, A New Day, which can be listened and/or purchased here along with her other songs, we are once again at the start of A New Day, A New Way, and A New Chapter in our life. We’ve been gearing ourselves up for more changes, particularly as it relates to journal writing, working on our website, and of course the usual challenges and strivings towards changes and healing with everything in our life.

We realized recently that our one year Engagement Anniversary was coming up and we decided that was when we’d begin anew with our journal writing. Of course the funny thing is that eventually we’ll scan old handwritten journal entries and back date them here so it will be slightly irrelevant, but we like to believe that it is fitting to have these changes happen on such a special day for us.

So today we will be celebrating our one year Engagement with Sean and his system. It’s our turn to surprise him/them with extra love, attention, and celebration. We’re both very broke financially, but we’ve managed to come up with some ideas on how to spend time together without cost, other than a small splurge to the very early matinee of Where The Wild Things Are for the kids. We’re making breakfast for him and so we shouldn’t feel the need to buy junk food and things at the movie theater. We’re making all the meals today for Sean, planning a nice candle lit dinner, a very early matinee kids movie, playing some cards together, playing with Zoi (our amazing dog), talking, cuddling, maybe watching a movie at home later tonight (not sure what exactly, but will figure something out for us teens and adults) and then more grown up time. So anyway, we’re looking forward to today with him/them.

On October 25, 2007, Sean and his system came to a multiples support group that we attend, and our paths in life crossed. On March 25, 2008 (totally not on purpose date and number wise, it just happened that way), we went on our first date together. On October 25, 2008, Sean proposed to me on a bridge overlooking a huge waterfall and there were many other wonderful details he thought of and surprised us with. And today, October 25, 2009, we have been happily engaged for a year and we are looking forward to our future together with him/them. We have a really good relationship with them and it’s interesting and amazing to discover how having a significant other, partner, who loves all of you, accepts all of you, and is safe for everyone inside to be around, how it can really make a big impact and difference in a person’s life. In this case, my life, our life, our lives. It doesn’t fix all the bad stuff, the hard things, the things that are wrong with us, the things we’re working on, etc., but it does help and it does make a difference, one that we couldn’t have ever really understood until Sean and all came into our lives. We are very thankful and aware of the blessing we’ve received with Sean and all loving us and being in our life/lives.

Changing topics here…

We haven’t been sleeping at night the last few nights and only getting some naps in the daytime or early evening. So now I’m exhausted and thinking of trying to take a very brief nap before our big day begins. We’ll be back to write more about how we’re doing and what’s been going on with us regarding therapy and healing and other life things.

Julies

we so badly need to write about so many things. we need to process things and yet nothing comes and the emotional or physical energy is zapped and something or someone seems to be silencing things.  i suppose Blocker and Eraser and the other Function Keys are busy doing their jobs.  and whomever else inside is involved in all of this.

we’ve had some very intense and symbolic dreams that are very revealing about the extent of our processing of various stuff and so many of us believe a lot of deeper processing is going on as we work through some tough healing issues.

there’s pain and sadness and such a deep lack of energy from all of it.  sure, some of it is physical related to our anemia but it feels like some is also just the emotional zapping of our life energy that has already been trampled on for so many years and so it really isn’t up to par.

whatever. we are getting chastized for writing what we’ve written.  so much criticism from so many inside to a greater degree than usual, or so it seems.  i wonder if self-hatred and badness has a need to increase when you are processing stuff that might eventually help release some of that.  sort of like don’t you dare get rid of any part of me like that and to make sure you don’t, i’m going to reinforce my stance, grow bigger and stronger, and cage you even further than you were before. roarrrrrr.

we don’t even feel like finishing with tagging things or categorizing things.  i mean it is common to be overwhelmed to do it and thus the exhaustion comes with it and just unable to cope with it and so we pass it up ‘for later.’  we still have sooo many entries left to tag and categorize properly amongst all the other entries with backups that we need to import and also tag and categorize, etc.  we always manage to forget that when we are torn between wanting to come here to our journal and do something, write something, etc., that even when we find we can’t do it after all, that there is always the need to review entries and do the organizing of them.  even the ones we’ve tagged and categorized already, they also need reviewing because sometimes (like this one), we’ve been only able to tag a few things and haven’t thoroughly thought and decided on whether to add any more, etc.

uggh, the self-hate and mean commentary is getting stronger.  we’re just going to shut up.  it seems easier right now cuz i just don’t have the energy to try and fight back.  it hurts too much no matter what.  and yes, according to the commentary, we are babies because of that and need to grow up and shut the fuck up and get over it and be okay and fine and on and on it goes.

us, julies

At the moment we are having some severe allergies or something… I’m hoping it is allergies in a way because I hate being sick and it really doesn’t quite seem like a cold, but it might be a cold or potentially develop from allergies into a cold.  Either way, we are miserably stuffed up and constantly blowing our nose and sound congested with the whole nasal throat thing going on.  The annoying thing is that taking a 24 hour allergy pill just doesn’t seem to be helping much.  I suppose it helps somewhat, but it just isn’t the magic pill that takes our symptoms away.  Bleh, complaining and whining here, but what better place than a journal for that.

It feels like we’ve been in this constant state of fluxation and change and transition for so long and it looks like it is going to continue for another 3-6 months at this point and that is rather exhausting to think about.  We’ve had 3 moves since either the end of 2006 or the beginning of 2007.  We’re actually still slowly working on the 3rd move happening and so that isn’t complete yet and it will be awhile longer before it is complete.  Additionally we suddenly found ourselves very unexpectedly in a serious relationship that is leading to marriage and hopefully at some point a child or children. Meanwhile we’ve had a number of therapists since losing Wendy in March of 2006, and although we did find Cec who has been helpful and we’ve been seeing her for some time now, we’ve known she isn’t the one who is best suited for us for very long term therapy.  So now we’re in a transition of seeing Cec and Kathy while we get ourselves settled in with Kathy.  There’s a bit more to all of that at the moment, but we’re trying to only highlight things right now.  Kathy is planning on being in the area and working for 10 years or more and so although anything can happen and change for either of us, everything is at least looking long term enough to finish up therapy with her.  She’s a good fit in many areas for our needs and ideas of what kind of therapist we are looking for to help us.  That is the hopeful and good news but it also comes bittersweet because we are having to start all over again with a therapist. There’s so much history to fill in and groundwork that needs to be laid down and so there is that frustrating component and we are feeling the pinch of time even stronger than ever as marriage and our own family becomes a reality in a few years.  We have SO MUCH work that our system would like to see done and accomplished in such a short time frame and when coupled with all the other dynamics and issues of everything, it just doesn’t seem like it is going to happen in the manner we envision or hope for.  I suppose we need to put into words what it is that we really envision or hope for and we will have to make that a therapy writing assignment for another day. Mostly we are trying to look at all of this as an opportunity to bring together all the years of our prior therapy and assimilate and associate all of that past information as we bring Kathy up to date and also as we progress in therapy with her.  We have a vague idea of how to go about doing that, but I imagine we will have to write about that as well at some point and put it into words with a more tangible form of measurement and concrete ideas.

We’ve had so very little time on the computer lately and in a sense, for quite some time now.  We finally got our computer over to Sean’s house instead of using a secondary computer that was used by our roommates, but then some additional things changed shortly after our computer came over and so it’s just impacted our time on the computer even more.  Sean and I have been trying to work on some things so that changes and is available to us and to him as well, but the ideal change is yet to come in the future.  So it will still be touch and go in some ways and we’re just trying to adjust to this change and structure that is very outside our norm or comfort zone.  

We’re exhausted.  We had therapy today with Kathy and tomorrow we see Cec and then Thursday we see our psychiatrist.  We also have to find another psychiatrist since this pdoc is through the agency and we can’t see this pdoc without having therapy there and stuff and anyway, it’s a long drive or long bus ride anyway.  

So hopefully we can actually start writing here again on a more frequent basis.  We know we’ve said this before, but our intentions truly are there, and we’re continuing to work on things so that they settle down and so we can settle back into writing.  It also seems like maybe the writing block and struggle to write may also have broken down a bit.  I think some of that has to do with the inspiration and renewed encouragement of having a new therapist that we can trust (well trying hard to trust and everything says we should be able to trust it and her) will be there for a long while and whom meets our needs right now in areas Cec just can’t and hasn’t been able to do.  We have nothing negative to say about Cec as she is a good therapist and her style does work for some inside, but not for all and not for our overall system, and even still, there were some things that we need in general as a system that we just weren’t able to have met by Cec. So anyway, that’s just a little bit of what’s swirling around in our thoughts and heart and life.

Julie/s

I’ve been learning about myself and especially Julie or The Julies really learning more about me and crap.  It’s totally interesting as they are like things I knew about myself and whatever but never really had it cement itself or connect on some level like it is now.  And like Julie is really getting to know me way more right now and understanding my triggers and my issues that will get me to react or respond or whatever ya wanna call it. So even though some shit has really hit the fan and even though things have been really crappy and I don’t know what the hell is gonna happen or be decided as far as our system goes about some shit, there is at least some learning taking place.  So that’s all good.

We got our computer and stuff moved over late last night from our apt to Sean’s house.  It’s been unloaded from his car.  So we’ll be setting that up soon.  I think that’s gonna make a big difference in writing.  I sure as hell hope so cuz crap keeps swirling around inside and we are constantly thinking about writing this or that and stuff and it doesn’t happen.  I think we’re getting closer to that changing.  Which is so fucking necessary cuz there is just so much crap we’ve been thinking about and processing.  So much unsaid and so many issues and things we need to explore and put to rest.  So like life is happening.

I decided Saturday that I think Kathy is definitely going to work as our therapist.  It’s good I got a chance to meet her face to face instead of watching and checking her out otherwise that way.  I was surprised at how relaxed I felt and how quiet people inside were about this or that when I was just chilled and my regular self and not my annoyed or pissy or irritated or whatever self.  It was pretty weird.  I was way more comfortable being out with Kathy than I was the first time with Cec.  Well I got passionate or whatever about some shit I was talking about and so my pissy and bitchy self was there.  I mean it’s all me.  Just unlike what Julie thought for years a long time ago, I ain’t always fucking pissed off and I’m not always worked up about something and not always blah blah blah about something where people are all, “chill out.”  Usually for people who don’t know it’s me, they are all like, “CALM DOWN, Julie.”  Eh, whatever.  There’s a damn good reason I’m annoyed or irritated or pissed off about something.  Ha of course that damn good reason is from my perspective.  It’s all about perspectives.

It’s totally weird right now cuz in this latest deal, I’ve been realizing how much I’m “growing up” and changing and shit.  I mean I can see that I’ve come a long way from who I was years ago.  So that’s kinda interesting.  I want to stay myself and who I am or whatever and not have my style cramped by the Julies or Julie cuz I like being me but I guess I’m more open to being sort of different if it makes sense to me or is healthier or whatever.  I mean I’ve got all this psych crap stored in here and I can look at shit and myself or open to hearing what people got to say about me if they fucking explain shit to me cuz it is still hard to see myself as others might see me and there’s like basic stuff that I worry I don’t get or understand cuz it’s never been my thing to know or care about it as much since I’ve been all about protection and Julie’s all about people’s feelings and pc shit and way more dynamics than I ever worry about.  I stick with the basics and bottom line shit and Julie adds in all this other crap.  Okay well fine, it ain’t all Julie that does that.  There’s others inside here that do that.

Well I’ve written a book and a half.  So that’s it for now.  Just wanted to get a journal entry up and to say something.

Billie

we think to write here but the energy doesn’t come and something seems to keep us from writing as well.  we thought of just making this a place to write snippets of thoughts or ideas or things that have crossed our minds or has happened lately.  and yet we don’t write anything, perhaps in the overwhelming ideas of having to write more than a sentence or two about any particular thing, especially the anxiety of leaving out details.  and the irony that detailing things causes the overwhelmed aspect and lack of energy for writing. and of course the anxiety and things of leaving out information and leaving it unclear, unfinished, not thorough, not wholly and completely accurate in that it doesn’t provide the complete picture.

we’ve thought of writing and changing things to focus more of our writing coming from us to us and to disengage more from thinking of our readers and make this more of a journal from us to us and less from us to us and readers.  thinking and remembering and relaying things to ourselves and at times to readers is often on a continuum.  we desire to go back to more of writing for us and pretending there aren’t readers and yet glad that there are all at the same time.  it’s so strange and convoluted and confusing.  all of it is.

seems stupid and we feel so bad and stupid.  for what? just being i guess.  just writing this much.  not sure we stand behind all that has been written.  it’s like writing and saying things but so unsure of what we’re saying and expressing.  not sure that it is us and what we’re really feeling and thinking deep down.  it feels so subject to change or so unstable or something.

so we will come here again in some time, hopefully in less time than we’ve taken lately, and peek and speak beyond the shadows.  it’s been such a very long week.

us, others, and some julies around.  sort of don’t know and feel unknown.