My Cat Thomas

November 16, 2020

This poem was written in 1994 as a part of my MFA I process. The poem was integrated into my MFA thesis.

For my thesis I was asked to state my thesis. I did, in an installation that took 3 days to installed, and on a scrabble board, I wrote my intention.

I intend to heal.

Rather than share the poem in written form, I share it in its performance, acted by Rainbow Underhill.

At this time period, I felt I had a choice, to succumb to the Complex-PTSD, give up, and allow myself to become a victim of the system, or, to fight back and keep my arse out of mental institutions and plug into an MFA program and let this be my healing elixir.

Seeing the pathway of two of my siblings, this was a really wise choice.

At this time, I did not want to forget the felt sense of what it was like to have what was then known as a multiple personality disorder, which I presently coin a Multifaceted Wonder Order.

I knew, somehow, I would recover, and in the present moment, while still in therapy bi-weekly using the Comprehensive Resource Model, I feel this has largely resolved and I now flow through life gender fluid, identity fluid, and ability fluid. I spend more time out of fight/flight and being triggered and coping with flashbacks, terror, and insomnia than in this deep suffering.

All humans, I believe, have this multiplicity, and this is something that is conveyed in the Internal Family Systems therapeutic process. It is a spectrum. Those who had functional parenting and relatively easeful and privileged lives would never have cause to experience dissociation outside of a normal range of expression.

While working with the actress, my main front part had some control over switching personality states and would allow different aspects of her psyche to come forward so that the actress could study the speech and movement and attempt to embody these different states of being.

These selves never wanted to be forgotten in the integration process.

They did not want their stories to be forgotten, and their stories became chronicled in visual art, dances, and poetry going beyond the personal, into the universal, using alchemy and intention to bring healing to the personal body within the collective body thereby bringing healing to the world.