Humpty Dumpty

*Lack of integration*
One way to deal with the bad feelings and confusion of abuse is to take
those memories and feelings and separating them, dividing yourself into
different parts. There's the part of you that gets abused, the part of you
that the abuser is nice to sometimes, the part of you that goes to school,
goes to work, has friends, has relationships. You push the bad stuff away,
but you know it's still there. You feel fragmented, and you feel like a
fraud because your friends and co-workers have no idea what you're really
feeling most of the time. I segmented myself into periods of my life, so who
I was when I was getting my MBA felt totally unconnected to myself in
between grad school and undergrad, as an undergrad, when I lived on the
streets, in high school, and as a child. I knew those memories and feelings
were still part of me, but I had pushed them as far away as I could. I kept
trying to start over, stomping down the past and telling myself that part of
my life was over. Doesn't work. The older I got, the more lost I felt. I got
more and more disconnected; I was so out of touch with my own feelings and
memories that I felt like a ghost floating around in a life that didn't mean
anything to me. I longed to get back the person that I was, but not the
painful memories and despair. This is when I psychologically hit bottom 4
years ago, and started this process of trying to put myself back together
again.