Getting Started

I’ve always loved poppies. Their ability to produce such a fragile and beautiful flower whilst living on inhospitable waste land helps me to hope. For anyone who’s known trauma in childhood life can feel like a fight against the odds. Dissociative identity disorder can feel like part of the problem rather than the ingenious solution that it is to horrors too extreme for a child to bear.  In the last 3 to 4 years I have crept towards accepting that I have DID.  Previously I have been  far more comfortable with saying I had complex PTSD. But that was only part of the story. In reality it is one body, a plethora of others, or parts as I mostly call them, rising and retreating within me.

     I love to write and have reams and reams of journals stuffed in my cupboard crammed with my thoughts, feelings and memories. They document my life as a survivor of what I would call extreme sexual abuse (sometimes I use the term Ritual abuse too but it seems to make what was basically depraved men ruining my life sound posh) and when I prefer to forget the journals remind me that it did happen to me and that one of the consequences of that is that I am a person with a dissociative identity.

    It’s impossible to have the experiences I have had and be unaffected (believe me I’ve tried!). At the darkest times of my life I could probably not have countenanced writing a blog. Healing of the worst injuries is best done in a quiet protected space, but life is a little different now. I’m beginning to look outwards again and make sense of why my life feels so often to be a life interrupted. For me that one phrase describes how my life as a survivor with DID feels. I set off in one direction confident that I am doing what I want to do only to find hours or days later that someone else comes up to join me and the world changes colour and shape and I set off in another direction. Obviously direction is a metaphor for just about anything, going to the gym, starting a hobby, changing my job, having my hair cut, reading a newspaper. I set out sure that this time exercise will become a habit, that I definitely want my hair short, that my weekend subscription to the newspaper is not a waste of money only to find a week later I can’t remember the feelings or the drive that accompanied any of those actions or decisions. I don’t want to go to the gym (I hate exercise), I wish my hair was longer (it makes my face look fat when it’s short) and I don’t want to read the paper (who can escape into a newspaper?!). Hence, a life interrupted as someone else comes up from the dark and needs time, attention and space to breathe, who knows what is needed to feel better and it’s not the same as everyone else.

    That’s mostly what DID is like for me – I’m usually around- hardly anyone would know, or does know that I have it, and one or more others come and share life with me taking over to varying degrees but never to the degree that I lose time. Each wants to direct, enjoy or hate life on their own terms with their own pain and hurt, with me trying to remember the views and feelings of the parts that were there the day before and who I know will be back again. Like a complicated maths equation I try to make decisions that benefit everybody but so rarely make anybody that happy.

    Will writing this blog be like that? A good idea today but not so good next week. The truth is I don’t know. So this was written a month ago to test the idea out, let any objections be registered. The desire to write is one constant in my life. Most of us  like doing it but a few don’t and when they are uppermost I am likely to withdraw. Best to be honest about that I think!  But I’m also pretty sure I (or someone) will come back ready to talk again. Already I can feel the pull between those who want to talk about DID and those who want to talk about sexual abuse. Both matter, because both are my reality and I hope to make room for both.

    Anyway that’s a start I think. I haven’t said much concrete about myself have I? Well a few facts then to finish off:

-         I’m in my very late 30’s and live with my partner J (who is female, like me)

-         I work for a charity as a social worker. (More part time than I would like but more about that another time.)

-         I have pets, two adorable dogs, Little L and Big L and a lovely cat who wishes she didn’t live with 2 dogs!

-         I’ve been seeing my current psychotherapist for about 2 ½ years now after my previous therapist, who I saw for 14 years, died of cancer.