Three Sides of Me

I was wondering how a polyfragmented multiple (I know that’s me, for sure, I think) comes across to other people. In the process, I found I could organize myself into three parts, all formed in early childhood.

The first part I became aware of was the broken self. By the time I was a toddler, I was broken, and I have been ever since. I am not mended, I am not healed, and I never will be. I have, though, learned to live with my brokenness in a different way. 

For many years, I had no idea what had been done to me. The amnesia was a thick, dark blanket covering the most formative events of my childhood. I was carefully trained not to know, like the three little monkeys: See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Do No Evil. Nothing happened. Nothing had ever happened, nothing was happening, and nothing was ever going to happen. 

How could I grasp that I was broken? Nobody told me, and all I knew I learned from adults. I had no idea that people could be broken like a water glass. And yet, by the age of six, I knew I wasn’t like other children and that something was the matter with me. 

I stayed in this condition until I was 52. So many years of wondering if it could be this or that that was wrong with me. Never finding out what “it” was. So many years of fruitless therapy. 

Finally, the amnesia lifted, and I remembered some things that had happened to me in a generational Satanic cult. Finally, I had the answer; I knew how I had been broken. First came a wave of relief, then began the hard work of learning how not to suicide, how not to die from terror. I started to forge a new life, living each day with the knowledge of what is the matter with me. 

I have known for 34 years, and I shall live with this knowledge for the rest of my life.

Next, I realized that I had a parallel life that did not include Satanism. I was raised to be a nice, polite little girl. I was given pretty clothes and sent to good schools. No raising my voice, no running, no getting dirty. No anger, no complaining, no lying, and, of course, no violence. Little girls are made of “sugar and spice and everything nice,” you see. Such a nice little girl would never in a million years give a hint of what’s involved with growing up in a Satanic cult nor what it is like to be used in child pornography. 

This nice little girl became a pastel version of a real child. She is the second part of me, as real as the broken part. She got good marks in school and learned to behave appropriately in all sorts of situations. She not only kept me alive, but also kept me out of an institution for insane children. All this with no idea of what was happening to her at night. 

The amnesia kept her from knowing herself for 52 years. She did not know how heroic she was, how brave she was to summon the strength to learn long division, cursive writing, perfect manners, knitting, and sewing.

She has never gone away. After all these years, she still remembers most of what she was taught. She cannot fix the brokenness, but she can accept that part and do no further harm to this battered other side of herself. (A nice girl would never show anger, even to a dirty, broken little girl.) She has learned to live with her pastel past in a different way.

These two sides of me are fairly easy to describe. There is a third side, though, that is harder for me to recognize. I am calling it the “authentic” part. 

By this, I don’t mean that it is the “real” me or the “core” me. I don’t want to imply that the other two sides of me are, in some way, less than this third part of me. What I want to convey is that the authentic part has characteristics that are innate, like eye color or lack of musical talent. I was not taught to be authentic; I would have been like that no matter what environment I grew up in. 

Those traits, however, grew and matured in an environment that included the pastel part, the broken part, the family I was born into, and the particular place we all lived in. That part was exposed to the same school, the same cult, and the same pornographers.

I’m not sure how long I have been aware of the authentic part – I would say only five or ten years. I have gotten glimpses of it before but have not been able to connect the dots. 

At a certain point, I realized that other people had consistently described me as being a certain way. I did not believe them because I did not see myself that way. I soon forgot what they had said. (Hearing something that does not fit your worldview causes “cognitive dissonance.” One way to resolve the conflict is to forget the viewpoint that contradicts your worldview.) Looking back, I understand what they were saying – I have consistently shown a somewhat twisted sense of humor, for example. I can’t explain where it came from, but it’s been there since childhood.

About five years ago, I started to ask my therapist what I had been like when we first started working together. She told me I was less present, more depressed, and more anxious. No surprises there!

She also told me that I had been loyal, kind, and caring, that I had been connected to other survivors, that I wrote well, and that I had a good sense of humor. These were all things I was hearing from others.

Now things are starting to make more sense. I had been puzzled when people told me how much I meant to them because I had only noticed situations where I felt I had failed. It seemed that I was allowed to think negatively about myself, but not positively. Slowly, I am letting go of what I was trained to think about myself and letting myself consider the possibility that I am, in fact, kind and caring. I can love and am loveable.

As little as five years ago, I felt there was no continuity to my life, to my self. It was as if the fragments that compose me were moved around by a breeze. I drifted through life, adapting to whatever environment the breeze dumped me in. I felt I had no choice or control. How could a vast number of fragments, at random times forming groups from a random selection of fragments, blown about by the wind, possibly have a coherent identity?

I have some ideas about how a bunch of fragments might coalesce into a group that would remain stable over time. That will be a whole other blog post.