Shadow Monsters and Fairy Gifts

The difference between stories and history may sometimes be narrow, but the chasm can be inpenetrably deep.

My earliest career goal, once I had one that was my own, and not an answer to fob off on adults who asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, was to be a writer. I had other goals too, sometimes because I lacked confidence in my ability to support myself by telling stories, and sometimes because I was terrified of what I might write, were I to tell the stories I found inside.

I kept finding myself unable to face the truth that is inherent in good fiction. The stories deep within me were overwhelming. I could not tell them and feel safe. So instead, I wrote shallow stories, stories designed to do nothing more than quiet the people and worlds that swelled within me. And then, frustrated by my shallow, meaningless stories, I decided instead to focus on my other goals.

If I were not a writer, I would be a teacher. If I could not tell my own stories, perhaps I could give other people the power to discover their own. And, as is true with most people whether or not they have DID, I have more than one passion. So I turned, in my professional mind, from stories to histories.

My past would not let me go, so I chose to evade it by embracing a broader past. How better to separate myself from the pain and fear than to brace up my walls with intellect? Occasionally, I noticed the irony. I studied the history of childhood, and had no memory of my own.

History is a discipline that requires concrete evidence. The focus on proof allowed me to deny my own past, because I had no documents, I heard no oral histories; if the flashes of memory were unverifiable, I could behave as though they did not exist in fact. What is more, by reading about the problems other children have faced, I could minimize the terrors of my own experience. There is always something worse than what happened to one person. There is always something worse that might have happened.

I channeled the remainder of my past into activism. If I could not face my own childhood, at least I could honor the children inside me by doing what I could to protect other people and help them to heal. I taught mothers at a domestic violence shelter better ways to cope with their children. I taught their children ways to find safety in threatening situations. And I helped women to heal and keep themselves safe in self-defense classes.

But no matter how much I wanted to avoid it, I could not escape my past. Dissociation is a separation of parts, but that separation is (only) internal. No matter how stark the boundaries I had created, the different parts remained inside the body I use. And every so often, they would rear their heads, desperate, terrified, furious.

A little more than a year ago, I had to make a choice. I could hope that my self-protective parts would continue to pull me back from the brink of death, or I could stop denying the existence of my other parts. I had come far too close, once again, to not surviving the emergence of some of my parts. I was terrified, and I finally allowed myself to face the divisions I had shied away from acknowledging, time and time again. Whatever my doubts, and however difficult it has been, it probably was the right choice.

But I find myself once again at a point of decision. My training as a historian blocks me from telling my own story. I hedge myself about with demands for evidence, and dismiss my truths as speculation. But my parts will not allow me to write history, and have not allowed me to do so for the last year.

So if I cannot write my dissertation, perhaps instead I will write the other books that are inside me. I will embrace my fears, and write stories that are less factual but far more true.

To that end, I am starting yet another blog, where I will post the elements of what may or may not eventually become my books. A writer has to start somewhere, and that is where I will begin.