Recently, I have been thinking about where my weight goes when I lose it. Now of course I know that fat weighs something, and that fat gets metabolized when I need extra energy, and therefore my weight drops. Quite scientific.
But that’s not what I mean. I think the little fat cells leave my body and go someplace else. Right now I think they have gone on vacation, probably to Palm Springs. I have never been to Palm Springs, and would like to. Would I run into them on the street? Would we recognize each other?
I don’t often mention this to people, but if anybody would understand and not think I was bananas, it would be you guys. So now you know. Please don’t reject me, at least not for this fantasy.
I lose other things, too, in mysterious ways. What happens to the fingerprints on the doors when I look right at them? The door I see looks freshly painted; the real door has accumulated months and months of fingerprints.
This vision problem explains why I can look right at my glasses five or six times and not see them. Or lose a chair in my not-so-big apartment.
My current theory is that the fingerprints haven’t moved. There is something wrong with my eyes, something which comes and goes and which doesn’t show up during the few minutes each year I am at the ophthalmologist. I have Googled for intermittent problems with vision and found nothing to explain this. I should give it a name and write an article about it so that the next person searching for this condition won’t be as frustrated as I am.
There’s an opposite phenomenon, too. Things arrive from some unknown place and land in my apartment. Sometimes they stay, sometimes they leave. The more I care about them, the more apt they are to take off. A tape of Cory Hammond’s Greenbaum speech, bought right after the conference before it was made unavailable, comes and goes quite regularly. I always put it in a safe place, and it never stays there.
Recently two identical black long-sleeved t-shirts arrived in my bureau drawer. I don’t remember ever seeing them. Shoulder pads which had been cut out, so they were definitely vintage. I like them, but I would not cry if they disappeared, which means they will be around for a long time. Not complaining!
I used to be careful to ask everybody who had visited if they had left a sweater or socks or a hat. Nobody ever said yes, so I figured I could enjoy them. They would know they were appreciated and feel that their journey had been worthwhile.
Now I am sure that some of you are giggling and thinking that multiples often put something away or hide it and then switch and have no idea where it is. Or one alter buys clothes and nobody else knows where they came from. To the best of my knowledge that doesn’t happen to me because I believe that my system is organized differently. Could be. Nothing ever shows up on my charge card, but I frequent thrift shops a lot.
I don’t rule out anything in this crazy life, especially with dissociation. So far, all the evidence I have suggests that I have a poor memory, as do many people who aren’t dissociated. But I am ready to accept any new external facts that I find or internal insights that offers a different explanation. Keeps life interesting, doesn’t it?
Ritual Abuse 