https://www.facebook.com/391955364517474/posts/1473241739https://www.facebook.com/927454567464367/722159/?sfnsn=mo
So few years ago we were in Weatherford Texas hanging out with my brother-in-law and my husband was having a hard time assessing his emotions and his thoughts because obviously he’s got 37 people inside there trying to tell him which direction he should go when he feels like he knows which direction he wants to go.
I am watching Facebook videos and I see this video of this woman who is playing all the different emotions in her head the different phobias, anxieties, that she deals with everyday. They are actually sitting around her kitchen like they’re having a meeting. Discussing how the day is going to go. At one point procrastination walks in the door like late like oh okay so glad you were here to join us procrastination. Anxieties like sitting over there to the side letting her know that nobody loves likes her everybody hates her all the parents think she’s weird and crazy. And of course like self-doubt comes around the corner and is like well maybe I shouldn’t even take the kids to school maybe I’ll just stay home and you know they can just walk to school. She set up to were she is in a sense making fun of her situation. But in reality you know that this is something that she deals with every single day. Every day she wakes up and something is nagging in her head telling her what she’s trying to do and how she’s trying to go forward in life is not going to work out because something is going to get in the way anxiety procrastination her trying to start her diet and then some other anxiety or another phobia processing in her head gets in there and derails everything she’s doing.
So let me explain a little bit about Tiffany Jenkins. She’s a mother,she’s a wife, she has to deal with every day things that go on in all of our lives. She wakes up in the morning and starts her day already knowing that she feels like something is going to go wrong yet she pulls herself out of bed and does it anyway. She reminds us that being a mom being a wife being a human being takes a lot of work. Put a little spin on all of this that Tiffany Jenkins goes through she’s also a recovering drug addict. So a lot of times when she gets on her page or she goes live she advocates for people who are fighting addiction. I’ve seen her do a live show and explain to a family what they are not understanding about their loved one who is a drug addict. She tries to explain to them that they are coming from a whole different spectrum then their loved one is. She lets them know that they don’t have to enable the person that they love all they have to do is love them. Not try to be raid them make them feel small make them feel like they’re uprooting an entire family with an illness that they have brought forth into their family or into their friendship friend Dom whatever you want to call it. She tries to explain to people and that drug addicts alcoholics anybody who has a dependency on something that they can’t kick they don’t think the same as people who have no chemical imbalances in their head. She reminds people that not only is she a recovering drug addict but she is also dealing with mental health issues. Things that hundreds of people in this country go through and some of them don’t have anyone to turn to some people don’t have the the voice that it takes to ask for help or to even look to where to begin to find help. She lets people know that they can hit rock bottom but they don’t have to stay there. She helps people to understand that every day is a challenge and she puts her entire life out there for the entire world to see the name of her channel is keeping up with the Jenkins and I thought that was really funny because my husband when he goes on social media like Facebook his username is f****** you Jenkins and I just thought it was funny because I was like oh look at that they’re related even though my husband’s last name is Ray. She actually inspired us to come up with an idea for a Facebook page that my husband and I set up I started the ground work for it and he pretty much took off with it he has no sponsorship at the moment he doesn’t pay for commercials nothing like that or any ads and he has a really good following it’s on Facebook it’s called ravinsanely. We set this page up in order for people who have issues with anxiety and don’t know where else to go they can go on to this page rant and rave get upset say what they want to say they can turn the comments off so nobody can comment on anything that they’re saying, they’re able to vent out anything that they want to say and not worry about us blocking them from the page it’s a place to get everything off your chest if you want to you want to put a little memes on there and express things that you won’t want to say you want to get in there and get into a heated conversation with somebody if they let you comment their post you’re completely allowed to. It’s a place to be able to just lay it all out there and let people see who you are let them see what mental illness looks like what it looks like on it’s good days what it looks like on its bad days. What people don’t see when you walk into a room with a smile on your face and everyone thinks that you have it all together but you really don’t. It’s just a place to feel safe. A couple of times we’ve been watching the videos when my husband puts them on there and with his DID he sometimes switches from one personality to the other and you can completely see the switch the difference in his face the way he carries himself his demeanor sometimes he’ll say something like where am I or who are these people around me because sometimes he doesn’t know who these people are. There’s a few times when one of his alters will take over and hasn’t been out in a very long time and they have no idea what’s going on and where they are and you got to kind of explain to them what’s happened and what’s going on in the world because they’ve been gone so long and then there’s a couple of his alters that pretty much they pick up the slack of whatever his emotions are and how they affect him if they know that he’s going to get very angry one of the other alters will take over that can smooth it over or try to calm it down a little bit sometimes that one is not the one that takes over one of the ones who’s very aggressive will take over and it takes forever to calm down or try to get Wesley to come back. That’s part of the reason why I started trying to do this blog because when I tell people that my husband has the DID they oh he’s got another personality. Nope he has 37 other personalities that they have documented so far. When you explain that to somebody the first thing that they say is how do you do that how do you stay married to somebody like that. My answer to them is I don’t know how all of them can handle being with me.
Imagine it this way let’s not go into the dirty p*** frame of mind but imagine 38 people are standing in a room and they are all trying to get to the front of a line when they get to the front of the line the only thing that’s waiting for them is one single person that maybe they’re not attracted to or that they just do not get along with or that they think that that person is trying to hurt the person who is hosting them. So if their host is damaged or hurt in any way so are they. They’re fighting to get to the front of the line but sometimes when they get there it is not what they expect. That’s why I say I don’t know how they put up with me. Because quite clearly I’m not the person they want to be with. But in retrospect I don’t want to be with them either I married my husband, I made my matrimony vows to my husband my husband and I have two children together of course unconventionally. But our family is mine Wesley our daughter Skyller and her baby Neva. The other alters do their best to make sure that Wesley’s family is taken care of. Not one of them would ever go out of their way to hurt my children and they try their best to make sure that they don’t disrupt our marriage.
Tiffany Jenkins has helped me to understand sometimes things I didn’t understand about my husband’s condition. He’s not crazy he has mental illness that some psychiatrists don’t even believe exist. But I’ve been married to him for almost 20 years now and I can tell you that the first few years I would get very frustrated with some other things that were happening in our marriage when I would talk to him and he didn’t remember that I said something to him or I’d ask him to do something and it didn’t get done and it just happened to be something really important. When he was diagnosed with the DID it all started to make sense. It starts with little things like when he’s describing his childhood I know his parents, I know that his mother sometimes was not as nurturing as she should have been with him and his father bordering on the line of abuse, but some of the memories that he has are of two completely different people being his parents. When he’s going through the story he calls them his mom and dad, pops and Moms but if you actually knew pops and Moms, you would know that the people he’s talking about are not his biological parents but they are one of the alters parents he’ll tell people that he has a bunch of brothers and sisters when biologically Wesley only has two brothers that are twins. A lot of the things that he would tell people actually made sense like they’re not just stories that somebody just tells just to tell them they’re actually memories of somebody that’s in his head. When his psychiatrist sat down with me and showed me the video of her trying to pinpoint the different personalities that were in his head it all started to make sense things he say suddenly started falling into place. I wasn’t going crazy I wasn’t just talking to my husband and he just wasn’t paying attention to me so now when the altars are switching around they try to leave each other like little notes and stuff to let each other know what is going on that way they’re trying to at least have some kind of chain of direction you know.
Now this woman she inspires me by showing the world her flaws. She tries to make jokes about it but when you listen to the words that are coming out of her mouth and their point that she’s trying to get across and how she’s trying to explain the way that people treat people with mental illness it gives you that point of view where you can stand back and look at it and realize when you’re yelling at somebody or when you’re telling them are you listening to what I’m saying why aren’t you listening to what I’m saying you know that sometimes it’s just something that’s inside of their head that is not functioning like your head does I have actually come to find out that over the years that I have mental illnesses of my own that I would have never even thought of to even look into had I not had to go through this with my husband. Our older daughter Skyler her mother is still alive she signed custody of Skyler over to us a few years ago because she has multiple sclerosis and she doesn’t want to be the one who decides that she’s not well enough to take care of her daughter. So if for some reason we feel like she is not able to take care of her daughter and it’s getting close to her passing away we are her plan b. Most people would consider their their child’s biological father or mother to be the next in line to take custody of them however Skyllar’s mother did not trust her father to be able to provide for her. She also has three biological children one was an adult by the time we signed the custody papers with family of her own.The other two are twins and have since become 18 and grown into adulthood Skyler is 14 years old now, and Her mother trusted us to be able to take care of her over all of these people that should have been next in line. Only a few months after we signed this paperwork to take custody of her father had a massive heart attack playing basketball. Skyler has known about this arrangement since she was about 8 years old. She has been told what is going to happen if her mother does become too ill to take care of her or passes away. However the three of us came to an agreement that we will not just take her from her mother as smooth transition. I want her to spend as quality time with her as possible. I want her mother to watch her cross the stage for graduation not only for high school but college as well. I want her mother to see her on her wedding day, I want her to see her grown daughter make decisions and make mistake and learn and grow from them. I don’t want her to miss out on all those things. I don’t want her mother to feel like she has to take a backseat to her child’s life. I am honored to be able to part of it. To be a safety net to catch her if she needs us. I could never imagine how a seven year old child should have to deal with losing a father and then knowing that one day she will lose her mother as well psychologically as an adult how would you handle that. Imagine being a child and knowing that it’s coming. I can’t even imagine the things that go through her head and how she processes her feelings and her emotions all I know is that if she needs us we’re here. I try to read things try to understand a little bit about what goes on in other people’s heads. Because I know that everyone does not process things the same way. I know that some people can handle a mentally butt load of stuff and some people just break. I know that people go through life and have no meaning in it and think that their existence is not important in any way. But I want people to understand that just because they feel these things and they think these things doesn’t make them so. We all have a purpose we are all here for a reason whether that reason is for one person to meet another person and you’re the person in between I don’t believe that God makes mistakes and I certainly do not believe in coincidence I think that when you think that’s something is a coincidence that it’s just lined up right like that because it’s supposed to be like that. We have an entire universe around us we are but a small little piece of Rock in a vast amount of universe. I don’t believe that everything that holds our existence together was only made by a coincidence.
I also don’t believe that me coming across this video of Tiffany Jenkins was a coincidence. I follow her to this day and Someday I feel like I’m unraveling that no matter what I never going to get to the end of what I’m trying to accomplish and then Tiffany will go live and just start randomly talking about something. She one day just decided to address something that one of her viewers happened to see in her home because she does her page from her house. A person was discussing how she had clutter in her house or something behind her was filthy or didn’t look right or something and then while she was talking she was yelling at her children telling them to be quiet and sit down on the couch and she was in the middle of doing something and these people just felt like because they watch her videos and they listen to her going on her rant that it was okay for them to put their two bits in no Tiffany shut that down real fast and told them you know you going to live your life you take care of your family take care of what you’re going to do don’t tell me how to do my stuff and she said I have enough going on in my head without other people trying to tell me what to do. Right on you are the only person that knows how to navigate your family. Nobody else should ever have an opinion about how you process things in your house. I’ve seen her do a little skit where she’s getting her kids out of the van to go to school and she’s like looking around trying not to run into that Mom that knows everything the mom whose children are perfect they do no wrong they’re going to be going to the summer camp that’s going to elevate them into becoming better. Of course both women are played by her.
But these are real issues that parents go through they are constantly questioning every single thing that they’re doing wondering if they’re doing it correctly or if they’re just really messing their kids up. One of my friends once asked me how do you know if you’re a good parent. I told her you know you’re a good parent starting with asking that question. First you had to ask yourself the question and then you turn around and ask another person that same question so right there that’s telling you that you’re concerned with whether you’re doing it right or doing it wrong and truth is every child is different just because you were raised by the same parents doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to come out exactly the same. Every child responds to things in a different way I noticed right off the bat that things that worked for our older daughter do not work for a younger daughter. Our older daughter is more nurturing, honestly I think that she is afraid to let go of things because she’s lost so much already in her life. That she’s just afraid that if she turns around that everything’s going to be gone and everything’s going to be different so she cherishes every moment that she has. I think it’s beautiful I think that she’s going to grow up to be an amazing woman because she’s an amazing teenager and she was an amazing child. I think the influence of having all three of us there to support her has showed her that she’s going to be okay she wants to make sure we’re going to be okay.
Our younger daughter in Pre-K first day of school she started talking to a transgender child name Jesse and after that she didn’t need us anymore. She’s got on the bus went to school everyday waving to us bye well we’re sitting here waiting for the bus to go around the corner so that we can get in the car and go chase it down to make sure they get to school all right. She’s ready to let us go already at the moment she’s going to be 7 years old in July and she already commands our whole entire neighborhood and all of these kids in this neighborhood are older than her. She tells everyone what they’re going to do how they’re going to play it what they’re going to do who’s going to do what. I know I’m proud of both of them I don’t think this world’s going to knock either one of them down.
So one more shot out to Tiffany Jenkins from keeping up with the Jenkins you can find it on Facebook and I’m pretty sure on YouTube as well. Also ya’ll ever get the need to get something off your chest gone over to Facebook pages ravinSainly I’m going to see what I can do about getting a link and dropping it on this page alrighty.
https://www.facebook.com/927454567464367/