"I Think Something Is Wrong..."

DISCLAIMER: I am not a psychologist and I am writing from personal experience. This is NOT to be used as a diagnostic tool but a stepping stone to better mental health habits and is a biography rather than a step by step process. Please do not neglect if you believe you have D.I.D, contact a psychologist and or go to GoodTherapy.org

If you feel that you are suicidal and or going to hurt yourself please contact the Suicide HelpLine at 1-800-273-8255

"Many abused children cling to the hope that growing up will bring escape and freedom. But the personality formed in the environment of coercive control is not well adapted to adult life. The survivor is left with fundamental problems in basic trust, autonomy, and initiative. She approaches the task of early adulthood—establishing independence and intimacy—burdened by major impairments in self-care, in cognition, and in memory, in identity, and in the capacity to form stable relationships. She is still a prisoner of her childhood; attempting to create a new life, she re-encounters the trauma."

- Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

So here is where my story begins...and with a simple statement.

The Truth Hurts...

No truer words were ever spoken.

Well, no other truer words than my own that echoed in my bathroom as I looked at myself in the mirror the fateful day. I knew something was dreadfully wrong with my mind. "Something is very, very wrong," I told myself.

Someone else was with me. Someone else was taking over in moments of abysmal panic. And I was no longer in control of my body and watching a movie of action without the ability to say what happened next.

And I feared I was going mad.

I was 16 years of age when I started to black out. Started losing time and was puzzled—I wrote it off though as being absent-minded. I just forgot that meeting that I was supposed to remember.

I just forgot that section of time I must have daydreamed.

I forgot a whole week...

I forgot a whole month...

An important note!

This is not meant to vilify people that have already been forgiven for the wrongdoings that were done to me—those people being very young and dumb in their 20s with a child. Sometimes with adult hindsight, we are able to talk to our parents and garner some form of comfort that they just had no idea and gain an apology or at least a modicum of understanding.

However, I'd be remiss if I did not tell my story.

The Start of It All...

This was a pivotal point in my life, whereas a budding teenager your personality as a child is going through another phase where you are "finding yourself." I put quotes around this because part of me feels it's total nonsense, part of me understands that finding yourself really means "I'm going through a wash or hormonal nonsense and drama and misunderstanding and I feel alone."

Sadly, most parents don't really take this seriously, it's a phase it's normal, it's "Enter Descriptive to Invalidate Because I Am An Adult and Don't Know What To Do," and in the end let's let it go because they are a teen and it should pass.

Given that early 2,000s budding interest in mental health and knowledge of what to do spectrum in parenting, I was partially screwed, but I do realize I had some benefits on my side (I'll go over those later).

So, you think you have DID. Or, you think a loved one has DID. Or you just plain have no clue.

That's okay because everyone who has thought, been diagnosed, suspected they had DID or discovered it—they all ended up doing what I did. Googling symptoms such as:

• Someone else in the head
• I hear myself talking to myself...
• Why do I talk to myself in my head...
• Multiple me...
• Multiple people in my head...

At the time it came up with MPD (multiple personality disorder). It was either that or Schizophrenia. With lack of info, I just ignored it and thought it would go away.

But how did you KNOW???

"How did you know?" This is a constant question so I'll set the record straight today. I knew because one day my step-mother decided to swat me for clinking dishes on the sink, and I was suddenly no longer in control. I was watching for a split second as I dropped the plate and spun like a viper, and the world went black as if a bag went over my head.

When I came to my step-mother was dragging me up the stairs screaming at me. I was then sitting in my chair in my room while she went on and on about how I changed, my eyes changed, I was demon possessed, I was angry, I had hurt her, I had twisted her arm and said: "If you EVER touch me again I'll kill you." I sat stunned not because of the fact that I had done all this, it was because I had no memory. At that moment, I felt the presence of someone else talking to me. The distinct impression of an angsty eye-rolling person staring at me in my mind's eye.

"She's seriously pissed at me isn't she?"

When my step-mother left, I was sitting there for several hours trying to look for this person in my brain. But she was gone.

A Brit, a goth, a wolf, and a child walk into an asylum...

Sounds like a strange startup to a joke right? I can assure you it isn't. I started to write a novel at a young age and the cover had a girl, and surrounding her was a wolf, a younger version of herself, a gothic girl and a very bright prim girl. The story was about how the girl was in a room. And in each corner of the room stood a girl. They all talked and had a conversation, and their names were:

Jade

Luna

Emmy

Jinx

Through this short 20k novel that never saw the light of day, I started to feel the creaking door open. And ever so slowly communication began.

The book, of course, was deleted. But my biggest fear was to end up in a mental ward. I was terrified that they'd lock me up. I shoved them all into a box and tried so hard to just be normal.

Well, we all know what ignoring mental health does.

It has a massive consequence for the holder of the disorder.