It's been a difficult few months recently. Two of our partners broke up but still live under the same roof, and that's been causing a lot of issues for us trying to balance spending time with everyone in the polycule and also taking care of ourselves. It's gotten so bad that we realized we've developed a split in the system, one we call the "[Partner A] side", one we call the "[Partner B] side", and one we call "can't be bothered to deal with this bullshit" side. We didn't realize how bad it had gotten until one partner confronted us on how we had told them we were going to spend time with them but as soon as the other partner started talking to me, I had immediately forgotten our plans. And this kept happening for both partners to the point I had to finally admit that the dissociation actually *was* that bad and gone back to being disordered.
Anyways, after trying to juggle all of this and get a handle on my conflicting thoughts and feelings along with trying to also help my partners handle and figure out their own thoughts and feelings, I realized I just.... really need some time away from all of this. Thankfully, all my partners have been really accommodating and agreed that this was probably the healthiest thing for me to do, so now I'm trying to find ways to reconnect with myself and hopefully reintegrate.
And yeah, I'm genuinely glad I spoke up about needing alone time and processing time, because holy hell there's been so much I've just kinda shoved aside in the name of just trying to make it to the next day. I've repressed so much of my own hurt and pain throughout all of this, of being the partner caught in the middle of this breakup, in an effort to both support my partners but also to avoid feeling that pain myself. Because fuck, this sucks so much ass. I love them both so much... but they cannot be my priority. My own wellbeing has to come first, and I've neglected that a lot.
Reconnecting with myself has been really difficult. I haven't felt this headachey and nauseous since the early days of DID recovery, which highlighted just how bad things had gotten for me internally. Thankfully, though, it was much easier to re-establish communication, we just needed to dust off the cobwebs and reinforce those pathways and remember how to use our tools in the toolbox. We're still working through things, but it's going pretty smoothly all things considered. It's pretty reassuring to see how, despite regressing quite a bit, we're not starting from the same place as we had been before.
But yeah, I guess this too is recovery. I made a few (or even several) steps backward, but I have the skills and knowledge to help me back up now that I didn't have in the past, and that's genuinely been giving me a lot more hope and motivation to keep trudging forward. And, well, I guess also a decent amount of pride, too. It's hard to feel like I've failed or gone backwards or whatever when I see how I'm handling things now compared to how I handled them even a couple years ago.
