Blast from the past, or blasted past...either way

I just got a call from a friend of mine in Germany. Not just any friend, the only remaining friend of the darkest periods of my youth. In one of my earliest posts I talked about all of the friends I had that I couldn't save. He was part of the same group, though a fringe part. He was the only one that didn't need saving. Except that now he's all wrong. Where he used to be kind he sounded bitter. Where he used to be thoughtful he seemed self involved, all pulled inward and out of shape. I read his blog; he seemed miserable. His skin doesn't fit him right, I could feel him struggling against himself even in the short conversation we had. Something isn't right there.
I've changed too. He wanted to know if I was still as ruthless as ever. I realized that maybe he thinks that now I'm all wrong. Last that we saw each other very often I was a teenager. To elaborate, I was a seventeen year old militant feminist. When he met me in my first year of high school it was the day that some guy walked up to my boyfriend and told him that he thought I was hot and he was going to steal me. Right in front of me. Without a word I walked up to him and punched him hard in the diaphram, leaving him curled up on the ground. Then I laughed. Not because I cared so much about my boyfriend, but because you only steal objects and I didn't want to be objectified. Another time I was walking to the mall down the busiest street in town. More to the point I was doing this in overalls with smart alecked buttons on them, a faux leopard skin lined bodysuit, four necklaces that were cross cultural courage emblems, ten bangles on my right wrist, five rings on my left hand, and blood red lipstick. A car slows traffic. Some thirty something guy inside starts screaming at me to get in the car. Full if piss and vinegar and teenaged arrogance I turn lazily to see if he has a gun. No gun. So I tell him to go fuck himself-direct qoute. He starts to get out and I hop a fence in under five seconds, giving him the finger on my way over (a miraculous feat of athleticism given the jewelry).
It was in part under the influence of this guy's habitual kindness that I grew up and softened. Now I am disturbed to see that I may have had the opposite effect on him. Either that or life has made him its bitch.

On multiples

I was reading Dewy's blog, Dewy Knickers, and had some new thoughts I wanted to share about what I've learned about multiple personalities over the years. Dewy is a woman that lives inside of a man named Brian. Dewy keeps a blog of her own, and Brian keeps a blog of his own. In her last post Dewy wrote that she wasn't "some symptom out of a book" to be thrown in her face, or something to that effect. I then reread my last post about my sister, and I thought about how that might make a multiple feel. You see, I lumped having a second persona under my sister's various illnesses.
I shouldn't have. It really isn't an illness. Multiples have enough bad press, they really don't need more.
In general multiples develop when children within a specific age range are abused in ways that are beyond their means of coping. There are lots of different theories about how exactly this happens, but they read like psychobabble. It just does. Also in general, psychologically speaking, something is really only a problem if it keeps you from functioning. I've known enough multiples to know that "same great tv, 12 different channels" as one husband of a multiple put it, doesn't necessarily impede someone's functioning.
My sister is pretty uncommon as far as multiples go. It was never being a multiple that made her violent. It just complicated things. You see, from what I can tell, Savannah is a part of my sister that was frozen in place at about age nine. She is a hyper jealous bully who operates with the thought processes and moral code of a small child. Anybody who remembers the schoolyard can get the concept. From what I can tell, every persona of my sister's suffers from the basic chemical imbalance that she has, namely bipolar disorder. So basically, within my sister lived (and possibly still does) a small girl who is a bully, uses child bully logic, suffers from bipolar, and at the time was bigger and much more powerful than me in outward form. My sister has the only violent multiple that I have ever heard of, and I don't think that Savannah was inherently violent. For example, my sister at present quite healthy and happy, collects dolls, my little pony figures, and other toys. Whatever else I may feel about her, I like to think that this is Savannah, all settled down, presenting herself benignly. I haven't seen her openly present herself in years. I was thinking after reading about Dewy grappling with the issue of her existence that I hope this doesn't mean that she's gone. Savannah may have been the malicious bogeychild of my youth, and I may loathe her (she did try to kill me in all fairness), but she is still after all a child.

Forgiveness as the path of least resistance

I am not the world's most forgiving human being. I am obstinate, and sort of surly on occasion, and I yearn for incredibly simple problems that can be solved by hitting someone or something with a large stick enough times. When I was younger I was violently inclined. Aggression was part of my personal program from birth, and it was channeled counterproductively by life in general. In my old age I've moved towards a more thoughtful, restrained approach to life. I am so restrained that by the time I am thirty I plan on grappling my way to Nirvana (yes, that is a joke, and I do know that grappling is highly un Nirvanan like ) (hence the joke). But in general I am more Baodaccia than Ghandi, as far as icons go.
I also believe in the fine art of writing people off. There are some individuals, no matter how well intended, who wreak personal destruction and emotional chaos everywhere they go. They can't be reformed because they really don't see the problem. They believe in what's known as the "mememememe" centered model of the universe. They also do not buy into occham's razor, and will attribute all of their personal flaws to someone else no matter how complicated a scenario they have to build to support this idea. Hence if they do see the problem, clearly someone else created it.
That said, you would think that I would write off the person who beat and tried to kill me when I was a child. The person so insane that I was convinced at one point that I had better learn to defend myself because the day might come when I would have to kill her or be killed by her. You would think that I would wisely do that. And I demand credit for trying. It didn't work out. It is hard, after all, when one is under age, to get away from your sister.
Yes, my sister. My nearly a decade older than me sister, who my mother was convinced despite all evidence was good child care. My mentally ill sister who as it turns out was bipolar, suffering from pshychotic episodes, and had multiple personalities. All of the above, or just enough of a combo to mimic the symptoms of all of the above. I knew that there was something wrong with her before the real fur started to fly-I saw an episode of 6o minutes on bipolar disorder and tried to tell my Mother. I thought she just didn't believe me, so I pushed the issue. I figured out later that no amount of pushing would get her to help, because she just didn't want to believe me. The sad truth is that my Mother is a stupid person. She thinks that things really disappear if you just don't look at them.
I got to be the target because in my sister's eyes my life was "normal". Parts of her, hateful, spiteful, child parts of her wanted to kill me out of pure jealousy. I owe some inner bitch named Savannah a doorknob to the gut and some shredded toes. It was a wild era. She was institutionalized not long after I called my Mother at work (as I had done to fruitlessly beg for help many times before) and informed her in a voice dripping with purest hate that my sister had just strangled my until I passed out, and that I knew that she wasn't a parent but that she was all I had, so she was GOING to come home and act like one even if she had to fake it. I was fourteen. My sister moved out, left town, and came back to live next door. I avoided her. She hugged me and I remember thinking that her hair smelled rank to me. My mother had to force me to invite her to my 15th birthday party. I ended up babysitting her kids to buy necessities, like a coat, because it was the only way to survive my Mother's less than benign neglect. The weird thing was, my sister didn't remember. Not any of it. And eventually I didn't want to tell her, because in spite of myself I liked this new patched up version of my sister and I didn't want to set back her recovery. It caused me more pain to try to NOT forgive her than it did to love her, so I went with what was easiest. Sometimes forgiveness is the natural state of things and you just have to go with it.