Maybe this will help, despite its fragmentary nature.
Born in 1971
Abused by our grandfather, in case you were wondering.
Did we ever really forget/not know we were abused?
It depends on who you ask.
Home was a bit chaotic in some ways; the emotional mood shifted constantly.
Mid-80s: For myself my earliest memories are of camp at 14, in the Laurentians.
High school: Confusion. I couldn’t figure out who was talking to me on the phone half the time, but it never seemed to matter. It took me a long time in my 20s to learn how conversation actually works.
I frequently forgot the names of my teachers. Friends. We had lots; it was a school for nerds. Got lost a lot; where was the music school we’d been attending for two years? I remember taking tests and watching my hand moved, awed that answers were coming out of the pen.
It was like living with a cloud of darkness around me.
I have a test from a class where there’s an answer, and next to it, a long comment on the answer. Written by us. After that, a comment by the teacher on how good the comment was.
University wasn’t busy enough.
Early 90s: Then, the Internet. I logged conversations I had online (on a game called PernMUSH) and read the logs obsessively. For the first time I could see the parts I hadn’t remembered before. Over time I learned to hold my own — in a completely different way — in a conversation. I started doing that in real life; technically I think you would say I stopped dissociating quite so much, or at least became aware that my sense of “not normal” was really not normal.
I noticed I had bad dreams about sex all the time. I stopped going to class so much so I could keep playing this game. I felt more me playing the game than I ever did before. I was addicted to a world where I wasn’t confused all the time, where morning didn’t turn into a day later unexpectedly. Meanwhile, flashbacks.
1992 – This looked like depression. I went home for the summer & got on Prozac. On Prozac I could hear all these voices! It was crazy! I was in Italy on a scholarship, trying to sort out these voices! when my sister attempted suicide. On the plane coming home I felt a huge struggle. I was arguing in my head but no idea with whom: Someone wanted to say something.
Got home and heard myself talking about being abused by my grandfather. My parents believed that right away. There was family drama.
I got a counsellor. She thought I was remarkably well-adjusted despite the MASSIVE PTSD and told me I needed long-term counselling at university. I only kept one appointment.
Failed out in my fourth year (still ’92).
Came home and found myself dating Carl. Found myself married to him in ’94. Things were confused again. Nothing really counted for me still but PernMUSH, and my work. I got a job I really cared about at a non-profit agency.
On the game things were going wrong. I had “accidentally” resigned as Weyrwoman which made me feel the confusion and fighting again. In ’98 my character was killed off.
2000 – Next thing I knew it was 2000 and I was having an argument with a therapist. Then I was reading a letter written by someone named Teresa apologizing for killing me.
I’d lost my job. Half my stuff was gone, like my tape/CD collection. I had voices in my head — always had but now they had names. Wardrobes. A different job. I could sit and watch myself do these things without doing them.
I was furious with Carl and everyone.
We had some very good friends from PernMUSH who also were on this discovery of multiplicity journey, Jeanne and her system.
I was part of an email list discussing these things, which was stupid, so I joined a better one called Dark Personalities. It was wild. I got a good therapist. I sat down to figure this out.
I came to believe we are multiple. As in the controversial multiple personality disorder, now called dissociative identity disorder.
I think it is an incomplete understanding of the complexity of our psyche, but it is the best explanation going. This definition, as crazy at is it, saved my life, all of it, the whole biological life. Rather than fighting myself, fighting the world, fighting against confusion I could talk to it: Lynn, Lyria, JJ, Channah, Epiphany. They could too.
Cause and effect actually started to make sense. I could behave in particular ways and see what happened. I had a lot of growing up to do. I made my first apologies. I learned who is in my head. I worked with our therapist not just to understand all that but to figure out how to build a life – an ethical, joyful life – out of that.
I came to love Carl. He was so good with all of us sorting this out.
Lynn (Magdalynn) fell in love. First with Morningstar (multiple), who disappeared. Then Asta (singlet), who wanted a real-life partner. Then in 2003 with San (multiple), who lived in Colorado at the time. We all had to decide how to handle our love life. We made an agreement amongst ourselves and with Carl: Respect the marriage in physical monogamy. No sex with others in our body. On the flip side: Emotionally and in words we can express whatever the reality is.
San’s system, Idaho (renamed to Ell later) agreed (grudgingly) to the parameters. Other relationships developed amongst us all. We lost touch with Jeanne’s system during this time, sort of not really kind of yes.
Our marriage with Carl wobbled during this time, but came to a new, good place. We got pregnant with Emily in 2004 and spent months in therapy working to be sure we could cooperate to raise a child, to trust the world enough to do it normally, and so on.
She died.
We coped. We. coped. All the self-injury and suicidal stuff, while some of it flitted by briefly, didn’t kick in. We supported each other in grieving. Internally, we were a family, not a system continually at war with itself. We made it okay.
We had Noah in 2005.
Life got as normal as I think it will ever get: Raising our son, going back to work full-time, surburban life, friends. Underneath: People who grew up being abused, believing in a religious experience that is sex and death and cult starting to work on new perspectives. Those of us who don’t believe in that (show me the bodies!) working on new perspectives.
And also this online relationship with Ell, where individuals build – on a game but emotionally, mentally, in that still place inside – new lives, starting from where they were. The cult queen had children and took them to her temple. The fairy had kids with wings.
These are the astral children: Children that (we believe) existed in the…mental and spiritual space between Ell and us. System kids are kids that grew up in our body. Astral kids did not.
In 2010 we got pregnant with Liam.
Ell dumped us at the very end of 2010.
Jeanne’s system retook their place at our side. (Mikael: This is a joke for you. :-))
…no I don’t know why all that went down as it did, but it should help some confusion?
The astral children came to live with us (there is some debate about that). I’ve been on maternity leave, and we’ve been sorting out new, crazy areas of being multiple since.
Here’s a cast list.
