rose tints my world

The clock reads 7:45. My eyes snap open and I jump out of bed with a sharp gasp. Sometimes it can be difficult to remember that the monsters in my dreams cannot follow me into the waking world. Panic. I try to take deep, calming  breaths. I blink. The clock now says it is past noon. I think, that can't be right. I blink. The clock still says it is past noon. I think, which is broken, me or the clock?

I have lost my morning to the autonomonster. She refuses to distinguish herself from me; ask her to tell you her name, and you will be berated for inquiring at all, before she spits out an irate "Anna". She lives by a set of self-governed rules, independent of societal norms and morals. She conducts herself with the air of a defiant teen, and has no regard for consequences. With a proclivity for visceral experiences, the autonomonster is a spectacular liability, and her excursions into my mind almost always have calamitous results.

Today the autonomonster spent my morning destroying possessions of mine. Journals dating from years back, letters from old friends, various paintings and sketches lay scattered across the floor, torn and destroyed. As I stare at the detritus at my feet, the sad remains of my deepest secrets and thoughts and emotions, I wonder why. At first I curse her for this roguery, as tears of dejection well up in my eyes and my throat constricts. As I begin to sift through the relics with a slouching resignation, however, I have to wonder about the value I hold in these items, these raw glimpses of particular moments in my history. How much does my identity depend on them? And with an epiphanic jolt I realize that she has freed me from the erroneous belief that I am not anyone except who I am in this moment.


I pop on my rose tinted glasses and accept that spring cleaning has, apparently, begun.

We are not the same I am a martian

O Mary, open your eyelides.
I am in the domain of silence,
the kingdom of the crazy and the sleeper.
There is blood here
and I have eaten it.
O mother of the womb,
did I come for blood alone?
O little mother,
I am in my own mind.
I am locked in the wrong house.

To belong, fit in, have a person, place, or thing you can point to and say "that's me". That's what we all want, is it not? I feel I will never belong anywhere, a definitive emotion i've had since I can remember. One of the very few childhood memories I actually have is of walking outside my house at dusk, picking the flowers, they were dying. I would get so upset over these withering petals I would sob uncontrollably, so sad over the plants leaving this world. They didn't deserve it, so precious, so fragile.
       Now, an odd fifteen years later this memory makes so much more sense. Of course the death of the innocent flowers made me so despairing. I saw myself in them. Powerless against the all-powerful man, the sun. The thing the whole world revolved around.Nothing was safe.
        Today is Easter, I spend time with my family, I go to church, even though church sometimes can induce extreme nausea in me. I look at these people, and I see the things that tie me to them. When you remove the monster, the castle is a much more welcoming place. Feelings of helplessness, anger, resentments, they rise up, mostly out of habit, however I am learning to recognize those feelings for what they are, and when they are from. Now, things are different. Now, the house that I come home to is not a decrepit, termite eaten piece of shit with dogshit and old bathtubs in the backyard. It is a warm place, that always smell of something freshly baked. Now my mother is not the police, she is what she is supposed to be, my mama. Now my siblings look my way and see ME, how i perceive things greatly impacts the way the world around me looks. Familys are such complicated units, everyones is, mine especially. But family is essential, they share your blood, they've been in your life the whole time you've had one, and that means alot. How many people did you know ten years ago that still call you? My nephews give me hope. Small glimmers of  a life not riddled with despair, they have a chance. They are not doomed. Maybe, just maybe, i'm not either.

On a lighter Note

It's days like today which salvage my life entirely. Days where I'm not plagued with overwhelming sadness, days i can remember what I had for breakfast and lunch, days where the hallucinations are only mild, and there's no other voice in my head than the one on the radio. If I did not have these days, I don't think I could keep it together. There is no reason to. The funny thing about this "personality business" is that sometimes, if i can just completely ignore it, there's the illusion that it's not a problem. I carry on this way until such an obvious catastrophe takes place it's instantly visible, and the involvement (or lack thereof) in my life becomes clear. However, it's all I have. Illusions of grandeur. I can never quite get to the center of my tootsie pop.
           Today, the child within me grabbed a leaf from a tree, tore it up in little pieces, felt the sticky texture in her fingers, she held a hand, unromantically, palm to palm, and felt safe. I try to give her as many indulgences in these simple pleasures as I can. She is the only one I have nothing but love and compassion for. She causes no problems, such a small child for childhood to be ended that way. Often when I cry, I cry for her.
           Even in these times of "well being" there's still the forboding sensation that it will all end soon. Just like Anna said, constantly terrorized, the breaks in between switches almost being more exruciating than being gone itself. ....... I grow old. I grow old. I shall wear the bottom of my trousers rolled....

more humbling than a bummed cigarette

Sometimes I feel as if I'm forever waiting until the next time I won't be myself. Projections of fear, anxiety, frustration litter my head, the way my matchsticks litter the ground around me. I'm waiting for my cigarette to end so I can light up another one. Another drag, what a drag. With the cigarette on my lips, I think: this is the most action I'll get all day.

But also...

Right now I can feel Her thoughts, I can hear Her voice, softer than mine, more apprehensive. My vision changes; I see the surrounding environment the way She sees it. It's happening in flashes. Right now gently, almost lovingly, she is sidling into my mind. She is helping me forget, She is pushing me away, and I'm ok with that. Right now I feel the tensing of my muscles, the quickening of my heart beat, secretions from the sudoriferous glands on my hands.  These are Her preparations for the distress She will endure for me. 

I try to formulate the last complete thoughts I will have as myself, as Anna, but it might be too late. At this point it's just a matter of time before I disengage entirely. Right now She has a strong hold on me.

She doesn't know much about anything really real. She looks through a snow globe, through plastic. And god, She hates plastic. But it's everywhere, and She's enclosed in it. I'm engrossed in Her little world because we share it, and I've grown somewhat fond of the little thing.

Two different clocks tick at two different seconds- ticktick ticktick titick titick ttick

what it all is

Whenever I tell someone that I have multiple personalities, the response is usually, "Am I talking to Anna?"

Yes. You are.

It was the apparent memory loss. The time lapses. Evidence of mysterious self harm. The overly-friendly encounters with 'strangers' (wait, you say we've met how many times?).The eerie sensation of leaving myself, the feeling of a different consciousness telling me to just let go, that everything will be ok.  It was the panic of suddenly finding myself somewhere, with no idea how I came to be there- in the passenger seat of a maroon SUV driven by a girl  I've never met... on the sunken green couch in the living room of a house I've no memory of entering... or perhaps on the plastic covered mattress in a dimly lit hospital room, with those little blue grip socks and a cotton ball taped over a venipuncture site.

It was dozens of encounters of being called a strange name. Hundreds of scars covering my body. Thousands of varying journal entries. It was a lifetime of trying desperately to explain myself in vain before I was diagnosed with DID.

"The Bad One"

Allow me to introduce myselves,
      There are six of us, including me, the birthed one. Inconvenient as it is to have these "multiples", It would be far less of a challenge if it wasn't for the one who causes the most problems, the most disagreeable, vampire. ( A name she christened herself, by the way) Rightly suited, as well, she thrives off violence. Blood, and gore, all those things that make me cringe when watching a horror movie on t.v. Most of all, she craves my blood, spilt all the way down to the floor, spilled as far as it would go. That is her mission. When I feel her presence like I have since I woke up, rage envelops my body so powerfully it is a physical feeling. My blood boils, the same way it did whenever I would get angry at my mother for finding out whatever mischief I had gotten myself into. A cup of coffee later, and she's really started going at it. I can hear her voice, picture her face, while she berates me for being weak, stupid, willfully powerless. A voice so loud I clamp my hands over my ears but it does nothing to stop the namecalling, mixed with the peer-pressure like convincing me to do it. Just get up and do it. Stop being a coward.
      By this time my arms hurt so badly I feel like if I don't, if I don't just let some of it out, I will explode. So i do, I give her her wish. Just a test drive. It does not do the trick. She's less vocal now that it's the afternoon, David, the one who "manages" us, controls who goes in and who stays out, decided to give me a break I suppose. Still there is a lingering feeling of dissatisfaction, and an undeniable rage. Towards my abuser? No. Towards myself. Unbridled anger at the five year old girl for not doing more to ease her own suffering. It is ludicrous, and it is an opinion of myself that as long as I have her, I know I will not be able to escape from.
             

They Call me 'Ms. Creativity' Or, An Introduction to Anna

My name is Anna. I am twenty one years old, and I share my body, my life, with other people.  Some people talk to hear their own voice; I talk to find out whose voice I hear. I have dissociative identity disorder, one of the most misunderstood conditions in the field of mental health. In the hopes of raising awareness, of lessening the sense of isolation, I will share my experience with anyone willing to know more.

My life is full of confusion, uncertainty. Time lapses and contradictions and the occasional fit. Very few people are willing to understand and accept all facets of ME, and those who do are inexpressibly special to me. While not everyone will or should be subjected to the nastier parts of my selves, I think it's time to come forward with the basics.

DID is portrayed as a very black-and-white condition, a Jekyll and Hyde (or Tyler Durden and Jack, for that matter) case of good versus evil fighting in one body. In reality, dissociation is complex, a truly remarkable means of coping, or perhaps more accurately, avoidance. They call me 'Ms. Creativity', presumably to credit the highly imaginative degree of elusion I have crafted. My alters are each unique and voluminous, and have comprehensive personalities complete with a full range of emotions and individual needs and desires.

I am still struggling to better understand all the aspects of living with dissociative identity disorder, and refuse to do so in solitude. DID is very real, and it's more common than one would assume. I hope that this collaborative endeavor will help to bring truth to what it really means to be affected by DID.

Let's Get this straight.

      Allow me to introduce my selves
One of the most disagreeable symptoms to the sufferer of disasociative identity disorder is keeping things in a clear, chronological order. An obvious example of this being my stack of journals i've kept since i was an angsty teenager. The current one being a blue clothbound journal with beautiful black beadwork on the side. ( Irrelevant  I know but I try to really focus on life's simple pleasures) The entries themselves will vary in size, handwriting, even diction style. While at first glance they might not seem so inconsistent, read through a few pages, soon it will be more than apparent. I hate my life, i love my life, i'm so sad, i'm gonna kill that bitch, all sorts of nonsense skirts the once pristine white paper. However, I am lucky enough to by now  know each of the individuals that dwell within me to know who's saying what. It boggles my mind to think about how i acquired this inconvenience and also the complexity, and development of it! Such unique individuals they are! Fascinating, gruesome, one of them scares the shit out of me for crying out loud. Sometimes I can feel their overwhelming desire, like a rabbit in a cage, scratching, scratching, let me out. out.out.out. I want to tell my secrets.

and so it begins

allow me to introduce my selves.
   Yes, selves, there are six of us, including me, Linda, sharing this  5'1 122 lb body. Not much room for six people to live, no? Perhaps that's why there's clashes. Maybe if i gained a hundred pounds it would be simpler. We've all heard of sybil, or trudi chase on oprah. Dramatic, Hollywood renditions of what a person with mpd should and could look like. This is not the case. Yes, I have mutliple personalities, but they are highly intelligent, even "classy" and they don't take much joy in acting outlandishly. I seldom inform my friends and acquaintances of my condition. Fear that i'll be judged, Fear that i'll be treated differently, as one who is different, "leprous". The fact of the matter is, I am not the only one suffering from this strange malady. We are everywhere. ( are you scared yet?)  we're on the bus, serving you coffee, our nametag might say one thing while we introduce ourselves by a different name altogether. Why is the concept of a split person so taboo? Maybe because of the peculiaraty, the strangeness of it.
        Imagine if you will, going to work, and finishing your shift in what seems to be only an hour. Not that I don't remember working, I am aware of what went on, I just didn't necessarily complete any of it myself. And now, imagine if you can, on the busride home a man gets on who has a peculiar smell, I don't find it all that disagreeable, but since one of my alters do, my heart starts beating a million miles a minute, my throat closes up, the man gets off, and I am fine. Am I stepping across the weirdo boundaries yet? Imagine going through everyday, knowing that you yourself did not go through everyday. Imagine not remembering high school, or junior high, and the only memory of elementary being your first grade teacher, Mrs. Klink.

Now I am growing a bit weary of keeping quiet, of not having anyone to relate to with ( except my dearest best friend) when i know that we are all over this country. There is the feminist movement, the gay rights movement, the save the whales movement, my question is when will I be recognized? When will we be recognized as the result of a problem much bigger than ourselves. We only want to live peacefully, all of us, together.