#hm.bd

[deaddogsdocry]

are we healing from our trauma or are we suppressing it?

we haven't felt like a dog in a long time. is that because we're healing, or suppressing?

[deaddogsdocry]

our owners made us into a dog, not because they loved us, but because it made us more vulnerable and easier to control. this is true regardless of whether our doggishness is literal (as we've been saying) or was a trick and a lie (as the book we've been reading would suggest).

in one way or another, being a dog has been an integral piece of us for some time. even when we tried to repress it. it is representative of our abuse... and i like to think it is representative of our tenacity in the face of that abuse. in the face of our trauma.

some parts think we're still with our old owners. some want us to try and go back to our owners (even though we don't remember who they are or what they looked like, with only some snippets of sound). some want us to find new owners (who would act the exact same) to take their place.

more and more parts are beginning to understand. as the brave first few share their memories with me, i can hold them to show those who are resistant to change. and i can show them that, when we don't have an owner, we're safe. or at least, safer than we were.

we aren't forced to be naked. we aren't made to eat bug-infested "food". we aren't blasted with ice water from a hose or from the shower head when we do something wrong. we aren't auctioned as a toy to play with for an hour to the highest bidder, least of all in competition with our peers. we aren't kept on a leash, we aren't called names, we aren't threatened with broken bones or being experimented on in a lab or being sent to and euthanized in the pound.

we're not a "good dog" or a "bad dog". we're just a dog. and now that we're away from them, we can show them that we're allowed to just be a dog--and more than that, we're allowed to be a happy dog. which is something we never, ever knew with our handlers, even as they tried to convince us we were happy. we're still a (were)dog, we're just a happy one now.

[deaddogsdocry]

really wish the human mother hadn't mentioned there was rice in our dinner because like. a lot of our parts were forced to eat maggots and bug eggs (and food with each of those on it, including stuff that would ordinarily include rice) as punishment as part of our abuse. and it has turned into a thing where now in their heads rice = maggots/bug eggs. we were able to get over this for like, a year (and god, just thinking about how our ex said that our fear/paranoia about our rice actually being maggots and bug eggs was a schizophrenia thing even though we weren't hallucinating, we knew it was just rice, we just couldn't get over the lookalike association), but now that we're starting to dig through our trauma again to try and heal it, it's come back full force. like, "not even being drowned in sauce can make it feel Okay when it used to be that so long as our rice was doused in loads of soy sauce or teriyaki sauce or whatever else could make it seem edible, we just Can't Eat Rice At All so long as it's visibly still rice" kind of bad.

and we didn't know that there was rice in these stuffed bell peppers. great! until she told us. and our parts have turned the association of "rice might be maggots/bug eggs" into "rice is maggots/bug eggs (or is too likely to be maggots/bug eggs to take the risk)". Not Great.

[deaddogsdocry]

one of my parts says that we were forced into dormancy when the body was seven. others were saying it was when we were eleven. but when i ask what year, the only answer given would mean we were nine.

i think what is happening is each part is remembering how old they were when it happened. some are older, some are younger. but when asked for a specific year, they all can agree on it.

now, we don't know that that's when it stopped per se. there's the other sidesystems, one of which was supposedly in play until we were eleven. but again, that could be a case of "individual headmates remembering their own ages, not the age of the body, and convincing themselves the body is the same age as them". maybe it all stopped when we were nine. i don't know.

why must this all be so complex?