Divided into Three.

How long will I love you? As long as stars are above. Longer if I may.

The missing puzzle piece for all of my parts is love. Anna simply wants a mother and I have tried tirelessly to find someone but the sad answer is that professionals can’t be our mother. She wanted our last therapist so bad and hugged her on numerous occasions. She’s not over that ending and she’s still angry at me for playing a role in screwing that relationship up. She cries about this mostly at night when she wants to be tucked in and kissed on her forehead. And then there’s Alice who is incredibly sexually frustrated and craves a fix. She pretty much would sleep with anyone at this point which is both embarrassing and worrying. I am terrified she’s going to try to have a sexual relationship with a male staff member; there are a couple on men she already daydreams about kissing. Hard. And she wants more stuff from them but I refuse to write the graphic detail on here.

The problem lies in my chronic inability to meet their needs. I am useless at being a mother to both of them. I don’t know how to do it. I can’t exactly parent them the way my parents did me. They are already traumatised enough. Me being useless means they have little faith in my ability to help them. This little faith means that at times of heightened or numbed emotion either Alice or Anna ping into action and attempt to meet our needs. This usually ends in complete disaster leaving my physical and mental health at high risk. But somehow for a brief moment they get what they want and the emotion drops or rises to where I can tolerate and be in control again. And so the cycle continues.

Before I was sectioned in July this was my life. I was sleeping around and in abusive relationships taking drugs and downing alcohol as if it was water. In my bedsit you would find me sitting on the floor with my palms pounding the carpet after swallowing paracetamol like smarties. The mascara was running down my face and dripping slowly onto my tight black vest top. I was reckless and out of control. I was the girl who absconded and walked miles and miles to dodge police officers. I was that girl who stood too close to the train tracks hoping and praying that one day she had the courage to leap into the abyss. I was that girl for half of my days. The other half was very much just as distressing. I was binging and purging all day long for a few months until the child had a strop and ordered me to control the only thing I could. The teenager was making life chaotic and disordered. I needed order. So I restricted my food and I still purged everything that entered my mouth. The three weeks before I was admitted to the general ward I stopped eating. I relied on water and pepsi max and I stopped the alcohol because the calories scared Anna. But I kept up the sexual contact and the abuse because I needed some form of chaos. Then it stopped. I was forced to stand still and I was forced to lie back and then they passed the tube. Again. Liquid food filled my painful stomach and the child cried in defeat. And Alice? Alice became more and more angry because the chaos had stopped and the control was snatched away. 

In that moment I felt a mixture of relief and failure. I felt lost. All I could do was lie there completely still and feel the wrath of my parts screaming inside my head. This was my punishment for opening my mouth to mental health services. They hated me for many months and I think Alice still does hate me and I do think that sometimes she does go out of her way to punish me. She misses the chaos and the adrenaline rush she used to feel. It made her feel real and alive and the line between life and death was exciting. Anna was easier to soothe and her cries have lessened gradually. She is still adamant that we need a mother but she’s far more calmer than she was. Her two wishes are for us to have a mother and for me to be smaller. Both of which I can’t do inside a hospital. And Alice wants a sexual relationship and she wants alcohol and chaos and that rush but I can’t do that either. They want me to discharge myself and leave. They want me to return to the life that they both had more control of. When I was simply a body and my own mind was forgotten and lost. My actions were my definition.