My Dirty Little Secret

Have you ever noticed that your dirty little secrets, more often than not, are comprised of sins committed by others and not you?  That the things which shame you the most are the things you, just perhaps, should be proud of?  Things you did to survive when you didn’t know any better, or ways your body coped when all seemed lost.  Evil was perpetrated against you, and the evil was compounded when there was no protection for you, so you created your own protection—usually subconsciously.

And then society tells you that your protective measures are shameful.

I’m sick of the burden.  I’m tired of the exhaustive pain of wondering what type of situation might happen to “expose” me.  I’ve spent nearly a year after it was found that my therapist had been leaking private information about clients, wondering who knows what about me. 

I’ve been in fear of evil people doing evil things for far too long.  So I have chosen the day and the time to tell the secret which has been weighing on me and not allowing me to move forward.

My “inner circle” has long known this secret, and has accepted me and loved me for who I am.  Sometimes it has taken a few conversations for them to understand me, but their love for me and their desire to walk with me in my pain has always been their main concern.

But I had been told to keep this aspect of myself secret.  My therapist told me that people would misunderstand; I would be considered a freak or unstable.  Nobody would accept me as a viable employee or volunteer.  He told me to hide this information from potential employers.

I can’t do that.  I am not going to live in the shadows.  I want to live an open life; I want my experiences to be an invitation to others that pain can be overcome and healing is within reach.

So…without further ado…

Along with the host of other mental illnesses which I have discussed in previous posts, I also have been blessed with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)—otherwise known as Multiple Personality Disorder.

The diagnosis really was not much of a shock.  I have always been excellent at dissociating—that tendency to disconnect from reality, such as drifting off during a boring lecture—and particularly dissociating during stressful times.  My former college roommates certainly thought I was rude because I became perfectly stone-still, as if I was intentionally ignoring them during difficult conversations.  In truth, I wasn’t even there. 

So sometimes, I was just…gone.

But other times, when I left, someone else took the helm.  These people were specific adaptations of certain aspects of myself, designed to deal with issues which I couldn’t handle on my own and still function on a daily basis.  They are the reason I never recalled being abused as a child, because “I” never had to deal with it; someone else handled it, then she retreated so I could get up, go to school, and do my math and social studies unencumbered by PTSD.

It’s actually an amazing coping mechanism, which allowed me to have a relatively normal childhood, and I’m thankful for it.  But once the danger was gone, the “talent” became a liability instead of an asset.  My “alters” languished and ran amok.

I don’t even remember huge blocks of my college years, and it’s not because I was drunk—I went to a “dry” college, and my friends and I weren’t exactly the wild and crazy types.  But it just wasn’t “me” who went to college.  And that’s kind of sad.

I don’t recall certain things about my childhood, either, because it was a shared experience.  I can look at pictures and see the little girl who looks like me, but her expression is NOT me.

Chris survived on very little sleep for years,
while nurturing the child in me.

My husband has become adept at reading my face.  Slight alterations in expressions evince the presence of differing aspects of my personality.  It has been a difficult and confusing whirlwind for him; certainly nothing he signed up for when he married me.  Of course, I never signed up for it either.  But he could have walked away and I wouldn’t have blamed him.  Instead, he dug in his heels and he learned to love every single little bit of me. 

I think public perception of Dissociative Identity Disorder was severely damaged by the book and subsequent movie, Sybil, which—by the way—has now been discredited as highly sensationalized by the woman’s therapist, and much of the “story” has been proved to be untrue.  The real-life “Sybil”, Shirley Mason, eventually admitted that her therapist had emotionally manipulated her into a partnership from which she could not extricate herself.  Recent media hasn’t done much to help either, with shows like The United States of Tara and movies like Fight Club and Me, Myself, and Irene creating a comedic and altogether false perception of what DID looks like on a daily basis.

Multiples aren’t “crazy”.  And our “alters” don’t usually want to expose us.  They don’t run around doing abnormal things, because that’s not their job.  You may very well know someone with DID, and you may have even met one or more of their alters, but you might not have noticed because they don’t seem that different. Remember, the purpose of an alter is to “step in” for you when you are overwhelmed.  The last thing an alter wants to do is to create MORE problems…they are there to SOLVE problems.

So when an alter lets you know that they exist, they are being exceedingly vulnerable.  It’s a terribly frightening thing to show your innermost parts to someone. And an alter is an innermost part; full of pain and suffering, shame, remorse, guilt, confusion, and a deep desire for acceptance.

I am exceedingly grateful to those who have given unconditional love to all the parts of me.  My children, especially my daughter, who mothered the child within me.  My cousins, who spent many wee hours chatting online with the child they knew decades ago.  My friends, who have brushed off caustic and abrasive comments, followed quickly by childlike confusion.  But mostly my husband who spent countless midnight hours reading books, singing songs, and looking at snowflakes to assuage the fears of a child scared of the dark.  Who was willing to crawl into the darkness with me.  And with whom I can now enjoy the light.

I enjoy what I consider a more “integrated” self nowadays.  I’m not sure if I will ever be completely unified.  There are too many theories on the subject; and what matters is my own daily life anyway, not some esoteric philosophy.  What I know about myself, is that at times I still need a little dissociation to make it through the day.  But I need it less and less, so that’s progress.  I am grateful for the gift DID has given to me, to allow me to function and thrive as I have.

And I no longer want to feel ashamed of it.  This is me.  I am One, and I am Four.  And if God can be One and Three and proud of it, then there is no reason for me to hide behind some curtain of shame because someone I used to trust told me to keep things a secret.

And if whoever inside of me would please tell me where she put our car keys, that’d be fantastic.