anna is a sentimental little girl today

I sit outside and gaze at a spectacular tree in the front yard of my oldest friend's former house. It is a grand sight, an enormous old thing with great, expansive branches. I sit and I watch cascading beams of sunlight fall through its many leaves. I sit and I think back to when I would climb the long branches, sometimes spending an entire day held in its arms. There I would pass the time with my friend, feeling like I belonged, feeling happy.

I sit and I think back to when my imagination was not used for the sinister purpose of blocking memories from my mind, but to make everything magical. And when magical thinking meant innocent fantasies and dreams instead of desperate scenes of do-overs that I wantwantwant! with all my heart. I sit and I remember when everything I felt was genuine and nothing I did needed a purpose and the only thing that mattered was having fun. And it was so easy to be me because there was only me.

I sit and remember, and also I realize that I will never climb that tree again. I will never sit, supported by the aged branches, talking or not talking to my friend and feeling so complete. While I am not strictly okay with that, I accept it for what it is. Probably I have forgotten how to, anyway. Things will never be as easy as they were.

will you level with me? lovelovelove, anna

"Tra la! It's May!

The lusty month of May

That lovely month when ev'ryone goes

blissfully astray."

It happens. I live my life everyday going through the motions, doing the things I normally do, and then suddenly I realize how dysfunctional I have become. Sometimes I will have thought I was doing so well;  I do not notice when this happens until things reach a desperate level, usually. Like, say, when the entire month of May is lost to me. Maybe I just need a little more attention to detail.

Sometimes it is funny. I will find that "I've" done or said things that, while wildly uncharacteristic of the self I identify with, are simply fantastic. Other times I will find evidence recounting horrific or embarrassing occurrences. I suppose that as long as I don't wind up in a 5150 things are okay.   

Multiples aside, I am just like the average absent-minded schmuck. Or maybe a blackout drunk. But really though, we all lose things, and everyone dissociates to some degree sometimes (day dreaming, for instance, is a mild form). The truth is that anyone can relate to my symptoms. I, along with anyone else with DID, just take things to an alarming extreme. 

Really, the problem lies in the time loss. It isn't exactly safe to dissociate while behind the wheel, now, is it? Although, does anyone honestly remember every moment of his or her morning commute? Things that are so routinely familiar, so simplistic and trivial are often faded out of our minds, replaced by more pleasant thoughts, or maybe anxieties about approaching events, or maybe just blankness. This is normal. Losing an afternoon to an alternate with self-harm tendencies is not.

I will bypass the heavier issues for now. The thing is, each time I dissociate, I lose a little bit of my life. And if I am not living my life, what is the point? Every day I get a little stronger, I learn something.

Anna: where was i, again?

This past week I have heard dissociative identity disorder (referred to, of course, as 'multiple personalities') being explained as everything from symptoms of schizophrenia to demon possession to a flat out make-believe condition. Apart from providing me with a much needed laugh, these misconceptions of the disorder I struggle with on an everyday basis reminded me of how important it is for the people who are affected by this condition to share our stories, to show our perspectives. The stigma of mental illness only grows stronger as these blindly misinformed, ignorant speculations circulate without correction. At least hear my side.

I was not born like this. No one is born with DID. I was, however, born with a propensity to dissociate, being both an avoider and a highly creative individual. DID, unlike conditions such as schizophrenia or depression, which can be linked to genetics or chemical imbalances and treated with various medications, is most often trauma-induced, a direct reaction to an incident or incidents, and is primarily a method of coping with unwanted memories. No, I was not born like this, but from as early as I can remember dissociation has been the answer to many issues in my life.

I do not believe that anyone who personally knows someone with DID can endorse the idea that it is a fake condition. Alters, apart from leaving their mark via journaling, purchases, speeding tickets, scars, and a slew of tangible evidence, also have somatic proof of existence. From varying gaits, facial expressions, hand gestures, voice intonation, even blood pressures, scientific research has proven that it is indeed possible to share one's body. I personally have an alter with better eyesight than I possess, as far-fetched (and unfair) as it seems. When I call Linda I can tell in approximately four seconds if I am talking to her or an alter based solely on her voice inflection. Once it is properly addressed, dissociative identity disorder is much easier to pick up on.

The thing to remember is that the condition really changes nothing. I am still me, and chances are, as long as you have known me, I have been affected. I choose now to come forward and confront this in the hope that others will do the same, and together we can help to efface the much outdated view of what it means to live with DID. We can all be of tremendous support for one another; no longer should we have to feel isolated by our struggles. I do, indeed, get by with a little help from my friends.

'anna' spelled backwards is still 'anna'

look.

It isn't really my memory, but it is mostly reminiscent of deja vu. It's just something I know, somehow. The feeling is completely foreign and at the same time so very eerily familiar. It is an ephemeral glimpse, a chance to see into the life and mind of someone else, rather than myself. And for that moment we have a connection stronger than the obvious, purely physical tie. 

This altered deja vu can be very disconcerting. When it happens it becomes hard for me to tell the difference between myself and them, or to remember who I am, even. Sometimes it is necessary for me to say my name aloud until it makes sense.

closer.

Jamais vu is referred to as the opposite of deja vu. Essentially, past occurrences and present perceptions have no connection and things become unfamiliar or unrecognizable. Common in seizure disorders as well as dissociative disorders, jamais vu can give the feeling of living in a dream where reality is utterly nonexistent. Most embarrassingly it will occur for me mid-conversation, and I cannot recognize whomever I have been talking to. Often in these circumstances I have to fight the urge to simply walk away.

This happens to me quite frequently, and every time it feels literally as if I am stepping out of my mind and am on my way into someone else's. There is no recovery from it; when I cannot relate to anything around me it is a sure sign that I am about to dissociate.

this. is. not. me.

I'm not gonna do it.
     That's what I told myself, when I woke up this morning. I'm not taking that medicine again, i'm just not. Day after day, take all these pills, and along with being a drug addict, i feel it's all i ever see. Pills pills pills pills pills pills. I gave in and took my lithium when i was scratching the carpet frantically, sure I was going to find the nest of the sparkly fairies I had been seeing fly around all morning. It doesn't matter what day it is, I wouldn't be able to put it into context anyway. The last week being a mess of fifteen minutes at work here, a movie at home, an argument, a sandwich. Tiny little tidbits of the life someone else is living for me. Trying to piece them together like a puzzle that's so old the pieces don't conjoin anymore, even if they were meant to.
        If it was at will, I would have the best mental illness in the entire world, anything i didn't want to go through i could just switch, and come back when all is well. Like Adam Sandler in click. Even Mr. Deeds gets in over his head, it is not at will, I get very little choice in it at all. I find pictures I didn't draw, I give instructions I never gave, poems I never wrote. There's all these things around me but where am I in them? With all this loss of time, it's hard to tell who's the alternate personality? Me or them?

anna, on integration

It is a sad thing, to lose a friend.

I am the kind of person who just absolutely hates when things come to an end. Finishing a book can throw me into a depression. The finale of a television series I've enjoyed for its duration can destroy my world. Even the last drag of a cigarette incites an almost unbearable discomfort (ok, this one probably has more to do with my addiction than the loss). The end of something can provoke in me indignation to rival a two year old's tantrum. 

If I am to be honest with myself, I fear integration- the point in which all of the multiples join together with the host to form one whole, fully decompartmentalized person. This, in part, is due to an apprehension to say goodbye to the people who have been more closely involved in my life than anyone else ever could. Such a concept, additionally, implies a level of stability I have never known. 

The more I learn about my personalities, and about myself, I can see that at some point we will have nothing further to say to each other. Survival is becoming less difficult for me now than it was in the past, and it will, eventually, be time to fully accept and embrace the different aspects of myself. Dissociation is for me, in many ways, very convenient. I am by nature an avoider, and a spectacular one at that. Integration includes changing deeply ingrained behaviors and cognitions. It means feeling things I perhaps have never fully felt, accepting a higher level of responsibility and control of my life, being accountable for every single thing I do and say. This is scary stuff.

The ultimate goal of integration is, truthfully, still far off; after all, I am still discovering fragments of myself. One day everything will be different. My relationship to myself, to the world, to people around me, these things will be more real, more fulfilling when I am no longer just half-formed people having half-formed thoughts.