{"id":1124,"date":"2021-09-25T18:21:35","date_gmt":"2021-09-25T18:21:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/catherine.klatzker.com\/?p=1124"},"modified":"2021-09-25T18:26:15","modified_gmt":"2021-09-25T18:26:15","slug":"excerpt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/catherine.klatzker.com\/?p=1124","title":{"rendered":"EXCERPT"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n
\n

House of Honesty<\/strong> \u00a9<\/p>\n

2009<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a beautiful day today. Is everyone here? Cathie, Katie, Baby, Tina, Cat? Where\u2019s Cat?\u201d Everyone but Cat spoke up and I felt a tug of worry. I wondered where she was. I\u00a0searched inside myself, breezed through the multi-level dwelling in my mind looking for her. I propped open a disused cellar door, peered into the stairwell, scanned for her presence. \u201cWhat\u2019s up, Cat?\u201d I asked. Without finding her, I merged onto the third Los Angeles freeway of my five-freeway drive to work.<\/p>\n

\u201cGood morning,\u201d I continued out loud, and I called our meeting to order in my empty car. Leonard Cohen\u2019s rumbling words reverberated as I switched off my iPod mix: In the House of Honesty, her father was on trial. In the House of Mystery, there was no one at all. . .<\/em><\/p>\n

Curious onlookers in 2009 might assume the middle-aged brunette with the lopsided streak of gray hair chattering to no one in her PT Cruiser at 6 a.m. was on speakerphone\u2014not chatting with her multiple identities, locating them in the carefully constructed house of her mind, setting them up for the day.<\/p>\n

I cruised along the Santa Monica Freeway, worried about why I couldn\u2019t find Cat this morning. She was adventurous, headstrong, and often angry. My other alternate identities, or \u201cParts,\u201d seemed a little intimidated by her, she was so strong-willed. When she finally answered me, she said she wanted to stay in her own room by herself today, with the door latched from the inside, under her own supervision. Okay, I consented. It was monumental that Cat trusted me and could say what she needed at this stage of our relationship. We all agreed that safety was our first rule before anything else.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n

 <\/p>\n

I glided upstairs in my inner house and noted the changes since my Parts had opened up to me finally, after over six years of psychotherapy. I used to creep around in the gloom, the walls felt cold and I could barely see my way. All the years of darkness, of not knowing where my voices came from, the loss of bodily control\u2014I shuddered when I recalled how much I\u2019d wanted to just get rid of my intrusive Parts in the nightmare days before this friendly truce.<\/p>\n

Now, vibrant murals adorned the long corridor, a mixture of Impressionism and Joe Sorren whimsy, Giverny and Goth. Doors that were previously locked up, blocked off to my mind, were now flung open. Even the nooks beneath the eaves seemed airy and unobstructed. I strolled freely anywhere I wanted in the house in my mind.<\/p>\n

My dominant self knew how imaginative this seemed\u2014maybe I was making it all up\u2014but maybe my brain was messed up, a more likely situation. I couldn\u2019t allow my Parts free reign, to interfere or take over my life indiscriminately. I didn\u2019t know where this was all headed, but I hoped we\u2019d find peace. There had been so much fear until now.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone? I\u2019m going to work now, and we have an agreement; while I\u2019m at work you\u2019ll be safe in the playroom until eight o\u2019clock tonight. I\u2019ll get you no later than eight.\u201d<\/p>\n

When I\u2019m off work, you won\u2019t be sequestered, and we can say everything we feel, all together.<\/em> I didn\u2019t know how they occupied themselves when I was at work, but I knew that Cathie could calm Baby and even get a giggle, that Cat was like a junk-yard dog when she wasn\u2019t recharging, that Tina practiced painting, trying to portray an uncommon landscape, and Katie endlessly pestered the others to try out the games she invented.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n

 <\/p>\n

I sailed through downtown, joined the 110 Freeway and positioned myself in the lane I needed before it split in four directions.<\/p>\n

Prior to fully blending with my dominant adult self, I couldn\u2019t risk having my Parts accompany me into work at the hospital. Now that I knew my Parts, I readily detected them, and identity switches were jarring, especially when they were rapid. They could easily re-enact my terror and panic\u2014it had happened before\u2014so I took command. I cared for real children in perilous conditions and I would not allow my inner terror to start screaming at me in the pediatric ICU, distracting me at work.<\/p>\n

\u201cOkay, cool,\u201d I said out loud. \u201cCat is taking a time-out and everyone else will be in the playroom\u2014you\u2019ll all have a really good day today.\u201d<\/p>\n

I took my freeway exit, passed the homeless veteran at the bottom of the off-ramp, and turned left, then right. Heading north, the Hollywood sign was directly ahead. I sipped the black coffee in my\u00a0to-go cup, inhaled its aroma, and welcomed its warmth.<\/p>\n

I hoped I wouldn\u2019t be assigned as Charge Nurse today. When one of the docs asked me why I didn\u2019t like being Charge, I could only think about growing up in my father\u2019s oligarchy. I confessed, \u201cIt\u2019s\u00a0the responsibility without any real authority.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019d had enough of that. I wanted to take it easy, to help save some\u00a0lives today, nothing more complicated than life and death.<\/p>\n

I pulled into the parking structure and I did a final search of my interior house. It was like running my tongue over my teeth. I knew\u00a0what I expected to find, where everything was, how it should be.<\/p>\n

Everyone was there.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

House of Honesty \u00a9 2009 \u201cIt\u2019s a beautiful day today. Is everyone here? Cathie, Katie, Baby, Tina, Cat? Where\u2019s Cat?\u201d Everyone but Cat spoke up and I felt a tug of worry. I wondered where she was. I\u00a0searched inside myself, …<\/p>\n

EXCERPT<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[74,75],"class_list":["post-1124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-book-excerpt","tag-chapter"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/catherine.klatzker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/catherine.klatzker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/catherine.klatzker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catherine.klatzker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catherine.klatzker.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1124"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/catherine.klatzker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1124\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1127,"href":"https:\/\/catherine.klatzker.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1124\/revisions\/1127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/catherine.klatzker.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catherine.klatzker.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catherine.klatzker.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}