Hi, this is Spencer from Spencer Reads on Unpretending’s Substack, and I'm reading Freeing Finch, Chapter 7, and it's by Ginny Rorby.
Buy the book here and read along.
The transcript of Chapter 7 is omitted.
And that’s the end of Chapter 7.
“Mm, that’s an interesting chapter. She deals with the bully, Amanda. But it looks like that new kid might be bigger and stronger than Amanda, which is good.
I like-I like it when people can stand up to bullies. This one here (in our System), the teacher, they’ve been doing teaching. And they've been doing relief teaching, in America it's called substitute teaching. But they've been doing it full-time because the school really likes them.
And they’ve been getting some of the trickier classes because they’re pretty clever because you know what? We’ve got a superpower, and our superpower is dissociation, and multiple people because we’ve got so many talents because each person in us has talents.
Anyway. There are some mean kids there too, other kids at that school, although, it's a pretty good school. The teacher, she-she tells them, she says,
“Do you know why mean kids are mean?”
They go, “Why?”
She says, “Because sometimes mean kids have it really bad at home, and they feel so bad about themselves that they’ve got to be mean to somebody else, to make them feel better.”
And these people (the students) are going (replying) “Ohh really?”
The mean kids says, “Nah, that's not what it is.”
But we all know it's something like that, or they’re getting beat up by the older brother or something. You know? Mean kids aren't mean for no reason. Anyway, we’re glad that there’s someone who can stick up for-from the mean kid there (in Freeing Finch).
Then she (Finch) goes to the hospital. Hospitals are pretty interesting places, aren't they? We had a mum and she had cancer twice too, the same, same as Finch's mum. The first time, them ones here (our System) they looked after her when she was doing chemo and radiation that were making sure she was alright, cause she was real sick with all that chemo and radiation.
They said after five years, guess what? 75% of the people who had her cancer, they were dead! She said, she-she asked God, she asked God for some more years. She reckoned she was going get three more years. Guess what? Three years after that, that cancer came back into her head, in her brain. And it… anyway, it was-it was…, I don’t know much about it but she-she went and stayed at these people here (System) their sister, and their sister looked after their mum until she died. And we weren’t there when she died, thank goodness for that, although some people here were real sad that they weren’t there. It was a bit of a tricky, tricky situation you know, some people on our inside were always trying to get approval and love from the mum. The mum, just-just…, she-she-she just found it a bit hard. She tried hard I reckon, but it's really hard to know cause you know. It's a bit tricky, tricky to explain.
But for-for a long time hospitals were real hard for us here to go to after our mum died. But then we had to go all the all the hospitals for a bit because, there was like these children who were born here to these people (System) and-and all sorts of stuff. But hospitals aren’t too bad these days, we don’t have bad memories about them. But I’ll tell you what, they totally suck away our energy and our thinking, that's for sure. Then, oh that's why we went to hospitals a lot because, they have this, their oldest daughter here, she-she has some chronic pain issues and stuff, so she would have to go to hospital a fair bit. And so the mum here in this system, she'd have to be like real looking after that, the oldest one and go to hospitals and stuff like that. So she, you know, you gotta if you’re a mum, you just gotta suck it up and just do it, even if you're afraid so.
That's the best thing about having lots of people living in one body because you can..., other people can come when it's too hard for somebody else and all sorts of things like that.
So we haven't done Freeing Finch for a while because these people here, they’ve been working hard, and then guess what? Guess what? MultiMes is visiting us in just a couple of weeks. We are going to show her all over the place and take her to all sorts of cool things. It's gonna be really cool. She's the best person in the world, did you know that? She's really cool.
And-ah, oh those people they’re home (Sharon’s kids). Anyway, so, this has been Spencer for Spencer Reads, and uh-thank you very much for coming, and-uh please like and comment and subscribe and take it easy. Hopefully, it won’t take too long before I get another one out. See ya later, bye.
Unpretending Spontaneous is the name used by a Multiple System from Australia, the technical term is currently called DID - Dissociative Identity Disorder. This blogcast is our journey as we attempt to function well in society as a multiple while healing from our traumatic past.
To find out more go to Unpretending’s Substack at unpretending.substack.com or email us at unpretendingspontaneous@gmail.com
Disclaimer: All views expressed by anyone on Unpretending’s Substack reflect the perspectives of the person speaking at the time of publishing. These perspectives may change without notice.
Such great reflections. See you in a couple weeks! So exciting!