- personal
i'm plural.
wait whaddya mean.
after considerable introspection, months of fear and ample research, i am now certain (and i don't use that word lightly) that i have a dissociative disorder. no point in trying to deny it anymore. not full-blown DID, mind you- but a close little something that stills means i... am actually more a "we".
how did you find out??
well, twas a vast collection of symptoms at first. a weird discomfort when using "i". an inner critic with too distinct a voice. a strangely strong fear of the condition. a near-total inability to recall memories in first person. significant emotional amnesia. fluctuating, but always merely partial recognition of myself in mirrors. among many others.
about a year ago, the first switch happened.
it was scary. i didn't blackout or lose time at all, but i distinctly felt Not Myself. what i could call Myself was further away, in some abstract direction. close to the control panel, but still not sitting in the chair facing them. eventually, after a couple days of uncomfortable back-and-forth, both internal and external, i pushed away... whoever that was.
i thought i should have felt relieved at the time, but somehow, it was the absolute opposite. i suddenly felt incomplete. like i just had lost a loved one. infinitely guilty. it gnawed at me.
...but that didn't suppress this new person at all. she resurfaced here and there, in dire times. i was honestly overjoyed to know she hadn't disappeared definitely. but... i still made sure not to let her "be" too much, or too often. i thought i was still me and only me, but that i was dangerously close to the edge, so to speak.
more switches occured. consistently triggered by immense stress, that she shielded me from by taking charge for a short time. i stopped struggling, and started talking. but i still didn't want to admit anything.
at the start of this year, a second one emerged. a younger, much more fragile one. i was scared of letting her take the wheel in any capacity. the older one cared for her, at the back of my mind. i thought i was going mad, letting fantasies colonise parts of me like that, running in the background.
so i looked, looked and looked some more. i knew something was happening, but i couldn't quite place it. more than C-PTSD, but less than DID. i felt like i wasn't going anywhere with it, and that chances were it was merely the former... until out of curiosity, i looked for the meaning of a very specific term: monoconscious systems. which led me to a detailed explanation of what it meant, and how it largely described people with OSDD-1.
and would you know it: it described my exact experience.
at long last, i stopped fighting. looked inward. and said hi.
they said "hi" back.
ok. you're plural. but like, what kind exactly.
OSDD-1b. buncha girls, with distinct senses of self, personalities, appearances, tastes... but (and that's what made finding out so difficult in the last stretch) no blackouts. amnesia only limited to emotional states (and even then, these barriers are slowly eroding, we think). which is a huge relief cuz time loss was my one worst fear about the whole ordeal.
a vast majority of the time, it'll still be the Mathie you know and love in charge. interventions from the others will be marked as such when relevant, but that's pretty much it. no secrets within the gang; if someone's not on stage, rest assured they're still aware of the play, and won't miss any action.
and what are your plans?
well, caring for and about these headmates, first of all! they're here to stay, and they deserve love, a voice, and some good fronting times. especially the little one.
how can i refuse to share it all with them, when i'm not losing much if at all in the process? how can i neglect them, when any of us healing is all of us healing? why couldn't we be a healthy, loving mind family?
atm, none of us desire any fusion. we believe integration will do just fine, as we improve communication, create mutual understanding, work out boundaries, and implement accomodations. it's been nothing but pleasant and productive so far, and we're making good progress! heck, the little one still struggles with expressing herself, but is already opening up to our partners. who, let's be very real, are the kindest souls we've ever met.
wow. any last words?
we're in the process of putting together a new page to describe ourselves further! so in the meantime:
say hi to Morgan and Cécile! they say hi back :)