OSDD and We: thoughts, experiences and snippets from our life.

Wow, 28th Jan sucked.

Yesterday was...Hard. with the capital H well deserved.
The day started out pretty standard - get up, put on the usual morning cartoons for Little S and get a coffee and porridge on the go. And that was probably the highlight of the first half of the day, at least.

Managed to get about halfway through the porridge before Rosa suddenly rocked up at front. Not usually a big deal, she's the most commonly-fronting/co-fronting alter. Except..she hates porridge. With a passion. As soon as she was present and aware of what we were eating it set off our gag reflex so badly we had to bin the last third of the porridge to stop us bringing the rest back up.

We calm down, get through our coffee and I noticed I'm feeling...off. not quite right. Knowing we have an early meeting at the job centre (hah yay) we get dressed and I go to brush our teeth. Fun fact, Little M was present and he has an even stronger reaction to teeth brushing that'll Rosa does to porridge. And so of course this is when I realised he had replaced Rosa and was coming through strong.

Managing (only just) to not be sick, we finish getting sorted and head out to the appointment all the while hoping Little m is going to ease off. By the time we got to the meeting, he was not only not leaving but coming through fronting so strong we were struggling to function, let alone pass as a "normal" adult. He really does not handle being in public situations, especially where he will have to interact with adults he doesn't know.
When we actually say down with our work coach we were already in full swing with an anxiety attack. Luckily it's a work coach we've had before and I ended up just blurting it all about our condition etc. He seemed to at least get the basics which helped and suggested I could probably get a fit note to take a break from job searching (that's one for later that we're still considering).

Meeting finished, small comfort plushie in one hand and fidget spinner in the other I took us to the nearest place we can normally feel safe and relax: the library. We grabbed a seat in the quiet section (is it weird a library has a quiet section?) and grabbed out our journal and the cheap crayons, pen and pencils I try to ensure we always have in case of emergencies. Having never experienced this level of upset and anxiety with Little M before I tried a playlist we've made that helps calm.and ground Little S - it didn't work very well for him but one track made him think of Final Fantasy 7 and that seemed calming.

So by now it's nearly 11am and we're sat in a library with headphones on, drawing in our journal and listening to FF7 OST and realising what he really wants is to eat a ham, cheese and tomato toastie. Sadly there is a lack of these in the library.

"Thank gods, we're finally grounding and calming down." I make the stupid mistake of thinking. And then the flashbacks start. I say flashbacks but it's something we're still working through with therapy. The denial demons still make it so even as I write this I'm not sure if these are flashbacks of things that really happened because "I'd remember major shit like this happening, right!?" Even though we KNOW that's literally how this disorder works, to help you survive and cope. Just..urgh.

I don't want to go into too many details here in case it triggers Little M again, or possibly any readers who may one day ever exist, but..huh. how to explain this. I remember going to visit this kid who lived up the road from us growing up. His mum always liked me going to visit him, and...that's about as far as my side of the memories normally let me go. What Little M experienced in yesterday's flashbacks was not so fun. And...as much as its still going to be a lot of therapy we imagine, it did maybe answer some things.

This whole shitty situation led to another two hours of journalling about 6 pages of thoughts, feelings, memories, emotions etc from Little M, myself and one or two others once the flashbacks ended and then when he calmed enough, Rosa and Martin managed to lead him away from the front.

We made it back to our place and crashed in bed for a couple hours just letting our brain reset as we all processed and then 4pm rolled around, which is always Gilmore Girls time. And because of course nothing can be easy and simple it was an episode with Taylor being a complete ass-hat that triggered two of our pretty emotional and combative/aggressively protective  alters (one being Rosa) into so much anger at him we nearly launched our phone at the TV screen.

To finish this on a slightly happier note - woke up this morning (29/1/25) to Little S speaking/thinking in Spanish and attempting to teach Rosa a few more bits as she really struggles with it. Now that threw us for a loop, waking up to something along the lines of
"Little S habla español e inglés, pero Rosa solo habla inglés. queremos aprender español."