"One day you'll learn how to grieve" part 1

According to my best friend and pretty much everyone else I know I'm incapable of allowing myself to grieve.
Why? The first answer that comes to mind is my mother, who I'm not entirely sure isn't a sociopath. From my earliest years she was very intolerant of me crying when I was sad or hurt, she often said that crying was just an easy way of telling everyone around you how selfish you are by feeling sorry for yourself. She told me all the time that I was a "drama" queen. Which is laughable to me because I never complained about anything nor did I ever "feel sorry" for myself. In fact, I normally tried to pretend as if everything was fine, that nothing was wrong or out of the ordinary at all. Surprisingly my alters assisted me in this process. They allowed me to escape from the pain, if only for a little while, or to escape the conflict my mother insisted on throwing me into.
She had alot of issues, she was always angry, abusive, and controlling. While I had friends in my teen years who hated their parents for grounding them after crashing their new car or partying all night or even getting pregnant, messed up on drugs and the like, I came home every night just as I was supposed to, on time, didn't bother lying about who I was with or where I was...and yet still I was constantly ridiculed for hours, beat up, and emotionally abused, extorted, and manipulated. My father wasn't really around to see it because his best friend came in bottles and was served cold at a bar downtown. He worked hard but didn't come home when he was done to see me and my mother. Though I understand him not wanting to see her, I was left alone with her to abuse me, rage at me, with no escape. There are years missing from my memory because Anya (my deaf alter) would come out to stop me from listening to her allowing me to just be free of it if only for a little while at a time. She protected me from the verbal and emotional abuse whenever she was "made aware of it" by the other alters. I'm thankful she intervened, perhaps if she hadn't I would have become a hateful person at least toward my mother. To so many people, on the surface she seemed like the model wife and perfect mother, behind closed doors it was far from a healthy and happy home. And though the abuse was daily, it wasn't the least of it, she didn't allow me to have friends, she didn't take me to the doctor when I was sick (which landed me in the hospital with life threatening illnesses a few times), didn't comfort me during a breakup, really the only impression I had of her was that I needed to fear her and that she didn't love me even though she at times would say she did.
As far as my parent's relationship was concerned...it wasn't any better. She hurt him physically and emotionally, enjoyed getting under his skin and upsetting him...never apologizing.
They fought all the time without resolution. Every holiday was filled with drinking and talk of divorce, anger, lies...not exactly the "Merry Christmas" everyone else I knew had been exposed to. Which might very well be part of the reason I struggle at times in my marriage unable to know what is and isn't allowed, what I should or shouldn't be, I sometimes feel as though everyone has been given a manual as to how to have a loving and happy marriage.
I find myself overwhelmed and fearful, that at some point my husband will leave me over something the alters have done that he cannot forgive and that I could not forget. It's a very real possibility in our lives and though I don't believe they would do anything intentionally to hurt us, it's the unintentional that has caught us off guard. At this point in the relationship we have a "don't ask" "don't tell" policy about their "shenanigans". He doesn't want to know what they're doing and the current extent of his involvement is dealing with them when they come out around him (which is no small contribution I might add).

As I grew older living with my parents (if that's what you call it) I realized that I needed to leave, to get away from her, away from them and their toxic life. I moved out at seventeen and never looked back. My mother called me constantly usually at least 6-7 calls a day and if I didn't answer it was more and the messages would turn into threats, screaming and crying about how I owed her, how I would be nothing without her, how no one would ever love me like she did, how I was stupid and I would fail, the list goes on...
Attaining independence with her as the monkey on my back was somewhat impossible and it took YEARS. She took money I earned, didn't allow me freedom to be happy without her to drag me down, would rip me apart emotionally by telling me that the people I loved wouldn't love me back and they'd leave me because I was a bitch and a loser and would never make a good wife.
At this point in my life I realize that though I love her because she's my mother, that control that she so easily wielded, was no longer hers. I was the only one who could control me, who could decide who or what I was. Mind you, these are recent revelations.
And even on my best day, my mother's words that lay ingrained in my heart find their way into my head, piercing my heart and leaving doubt and pain in it's destructive path. But each day through the struggle, I fight back, I fight hard in order to prove to myself her words are meaningless.
To most people, on the surface my life looks completely normal, much like that of my parents as I grew up. And to me, it is. The truth is that I've been living with alters almost as long as I've been alive though I didn't always know of their presence. And though coping with them and their "lives" or endeavors is not always the highlight of my week it has thus far not proved impossible. If anything, I hope that at some point I can help people like myself endure through pain, trauma, and suffering providing them with healthy coping skills.
My alters have friends, hopes, dreams, attitudes, good days and bad. They're as real to me and my friends as anyone you'd meet at school or work. In fact, there's a chance you've also met someone like me, someone with alters, perhaps the person you met WAS an alter and not the host personality. Makes you think doesn't it? People like me, we're careful, methodical in our way of life in order to survive and in some cases, to preserve our secret from those who will judge us for something we cannot control. But I'm not agoraphobic, I don't live in my house cut off from the rest of the world, I spend each and every day living my life. I am a business owner of a successful business, a loving wife, an animal lover, a good friend and an even better daughter. You may not think of it but everyone has different "modes" much like I do. Some of you go to work as an employee, come home as a father, go to bed as a husband. Some of you might go to school as a student and come home as a sister who takes care of her siblings. We aren't so different you and I.
-Divided Mind-