So, about me

The whole purpose of this blog is to come to terms with being DID. I commented in my journal the other day that if one of my big issues is denial of having been abused as a kid, then this diagnosis is like a very meta dialogue.

I say, "It didn't happen."
My brain says (by having parts, in big letters): DID
And I then added that this makes my partner's line: DID-SO. Which is funny, because she is often the one who has to face the parts of me who really, really don't want to believe that anything really happened, not something bad enough for there to be parts inside of me.

Over the past day or two, I've been following the advice in the books I've been reading about coping with DID, and getting to know my parts. A lot of them I already knew, because even though I wasn't willing to admit they were parts, I'm often co-conscious (meaning, I often am at least somewhat aware while they're active, although I often can't change what they're doing).

And for a few weeks, I'd go and ask parts that kept pushing to come out, "What's your name?" or "How old are you?" The part would invariably respond with "I'm not allowed to have any name but Julia; I'm not allowed to be any age but yours."

After therapy this week, I decided that one of the things I need to do in order to stop being quite so stuck at a stage of being crazy (in the sense of fragmented, fragile, cracked, which is the first definition in our big dictionary), I needed to create a sense of safety. And to create a sense of safety, I had to get to know my parts. And this requires breaking one of the big rules: not allowing the parts to admit they exist.

So I've been getting to know the parts. I'd think I was making it all up, except... well, one part of me is saying that I definitely AM making it up, and another is explaining why the diagnosis makes sense, and there are several kids in the background jumping and skipping and shouting with joy, "I have a NAME!! Of my OWN!!! Hello, what's your name? MY name, all my very OWN name is...." I think it's the kids who are convincing me. (The kids are good at convincing me of things, which is probably why I own as many toys as I do.)

In theory, I'll let this be a place where my various parts can write for themselves. I don't know if that will happen, but right now we're getting at least some things past the internal censors, so there's a chance it could work.