I am posting this entry later than I had originally intended, which really brings to light an important fact that I foolishly glossed over in my first post.
In part 1, I made sure to call out our need to establish "...structure, outlines, schedules, and expectations." relative to the next phase of my literary endeavour. While these elements are critical to the success of the writing process, it is just as important, if not moreso, to understand that they come with some HUGE caveats.
FIRST AND FOREMOST, ensure your physical, mental, and emotional needs are able to be met before you impose any type of timeline or expectation on yourself. Yup, you guessed it... that's where we (well, I 😔) dropped the ball in a big way, recently.
It should come as no surprise to anyone on this forum that living with DID is no walk in the park. We are constantly faced with incredible demands on our attention and time every day that "normies" (a term we use to describe those without multiple personalities) simply cannot fathom. If you really think about it, a normie's inability to view things from our perspective has nothing to do with unwillingness or intolerance, it goes much deeper than that.
Their daily structure and internal expectations are intrinsically tied to the core understanding that they have ONE executive decision maker (the self) and once something has been taken care of, not only does the individual understand the onus of that choice falls solely upon them, but so does society as a whole. As you all know, WE just don't exactly function by the same set of rules, even though society expects us to.
The reason I bring this up is that it is intimately tied to how WE define reasonable timelines vs how THEY do. We know what we are capable of within the constraints of our current mental and emotional state, but are constantly pressured to conform to outside expectations that may unknowingly push us beyond our threshold. This is exactly what happened to us.
I agreed to provide certain pieces of our second novel within a timeframe that didn't account for the challenges of therapy, recovery time, self-care, creative development, etc.. Ultimately I just pushed too hard to meet an expectation that I ALLOWED myself to agree to. Not advocating on my own behalf was not the fault of the folks around us, that responsiblity belonged to me. 🤷♂️ As a result, we spiraled and required inpatient care until we were able to stabalize and return home.
Soooo, that brings us here... Looking back, I can see all of the warning signs that I consciously and subconsciously neglected to consider as I pushed to conform to a standard that was unrealistic and unsafe. Seeing the situation much more clearly now, I must STRONGLY recommend that you establish healthy boundaries when initiating the planning phase of your writing adventure. Only then can you reasonably expect positive outcomes.
In the next update, I will share some of the tools, apps, and websites that we have found useful. But, for now, I think I am going to go ahead and finish this up so I can go out and enjoy the sunshine for a little bit. I hope yous are all happy, healthy, and whole. Take care friends, ciao!
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