Stable Groups Formed from Fragments

I don’t understand how my mind is organized. I assume it must be, somehow, or else I wouldn’t be able to think, move my hands or feet, or do anything at all. In an effort to help, people tell me to “look inside” and describe what I see.

Usually, I see images and snippets of memories. When I focus on something that isn’t a memory, I usually see a thick layer of darkness spreading as far as I can see, like a giant black rug. At times, I see little specks of something, tiny as grains of sand or dust motes, that feel like me, or as close to me as I can imagine. Specks like sand, specks like dust, specks like tiny drops of water in a cloud.

I can’t say for sure, but for a very long time, it has felt like those specks come together to form a working group that somehow manages to get something done. When that task is completed, the group of specks disperses, losing any shape, cohesion, or connectedness that it had a moment earlier. The specks are inert. They lie there, unorganized, until another group starts forming. Some may be reused, or a new group may be made from completely different specks.

I have no idea how the specks are chosen, how they are held together, or what releases them when the task is done. Is there an intelligence somewhere that directs this process? If so, how did that intelligence learn to manipulate those specks and make them do parlor tricks? “Oh look, the little dust bunny is washing the dishes! How cute!”

I just don’t get it.

For many years, I read about multiplicity. It made total sense as a survival mechanism to get through extreme abuse, and as a defense against the endless pain and suffering that the abuse engendered. It made sense, and so I tried to look for alters. But I never found any and quickly lost interest in those I had invented so that I could fit into the DMS category now called DID. I resigned myself to being weird, a multiple without alters.

Here is how I described myself thirty-plus years ago. “Multiples are like fruit jello. The pieces of fruit are the alters, and the jello is the mind. With me, somebody put the fruit through a blender and then made jello.”

Today, I’m not much further along in this self-understanding project. It’s frustrating but still very interesting.

I heard of another polyfragmented multiple composed of little specks and no discrete parts or alters or whatever you want to call them. Like me, some of her specks formed a group, did their thing, and dispersed over and over. One day, however, she noticed that a group had not collapsed into a pile of tiny specks. It was, somehow, stuck together. She had no idea what the glue was, what had made this possible, whose idea it was. She had no information apart from the fact that the group was indeed stuck together.

This was a useful change. It was less tiring, as the step of assembling a new group each time had been eliminated. More specks could be added to the groups, either temporarily or permanently, to tailor the group for differing circumstances. (It wouldn’t do, for example, to have a group formed to drive a car in the summer suddenly presented with a snowstorm. But if winter-driving specks were added, all would be fine.)

In thinking about the possibility that groups did not have to disperse, I realized these groups would have a history. Things would happen when they were “out,” and they might gain information from the outside world. A conversation could start between the people in the car. Or if the person in the car was alone, they could be talking out loud to themselves. Or perhaps the car radio or a podcast was playing.

At this point, I knew that people found that I showed consistency over time. If my personality was recognizable from year to year, I had an identity, even though I did not feel like I had one. Could I, too, have some groups that did not disperse? If so, could those groups function in the same way that alters function in people with multiplicity who have alters with a history, an identity, a name, talents and skills and desires, a taste in foods and clothes? And would those groups get to know me and let me know them? Would they like me?

There’s so much waiting to be discovered!

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.

Self-Absorbtion

Well, I sure am not in the swing of blogging yet! I didn’t think about it until this morning, and then found I was supposed to post an entry by 4 PM today! I have not thought about a topic, let alone written anything. But here goes!

I feel very self-absorbed these days. Much of that is due to an attack of sciatica, which is miserable. To have the widest and longest nerve in your body inflamed 24/7, and know that the only effective pain relievers are opioids, well. No wonder I am self-absorbed. But I know from experience that it resolves with time, and that is a comfort. This will not be forever!

I’m also absorbed in trying to understand my internal processes. I can’t say that I will get it all sorted out in time or that I can mask things with opioids. All I can say is that I will continue to puzzle over it until my curiosity is satisfied. That’s the best I can do, and that’s good enough.

My friends are very helpful because they can see things about me that I can’t. Survivors are like mirrors for each other – they see our talents when we feel stupid and our basic goodness when we feel evil to the core. We are forced to re-examine our assumptions about ourselves.

“Wait – I know for sure that it wasn’t their fault. They were only six. Six-year-olds are powerless when confronted by a pack of ten or twenty grown-ups determined to force them to do something against their will. No six-year-old is ever to blame. So how come I still think I was at fault?” (Answer – because I believed their lies, and parts of me still believe them.)

I’ve asked them to let me know when they see me switch. When my friends tell me they see me switching, I stop and look for differences in my behavior or how I am in my body. I am slowly becoming more aware of changes and can sometimes feel them even when I am alone.

One polyfragmented survivor feels, like me, that the little tiny pieces come together to form an entity that can do something – drive a car, say. Most time the fragments disperse when the task is done, but sometimes they stay together and are ready to drive the next time it is necessary. She does not know what the glue is that holds them together, nor what motivates them to stay together in a clump, but she does feel that it is the same group this time as last time. There is no need to assemble a whole new group each time.

I can imagine this, although I am not aware of it occurring in myself. I think that the aggregated group is closer to a three-faces-of-Eve type alter than a loose handful of sand scooped up from a random place in a sand dune. That’s enough to absorb for now. Who knows where thinking about that process will take me? Not me, but I would love to find out, and I will in time.

My mind just turned back to self-absorption. As a child, inward-turning received labels like selfish, lazy, and daydreaming. I am happy to say I am not using those words anymore!

Trying to understand ourselves is a worthwhile pursuit. It results in greater self-acceptance and greater kindness to ourselves and to others. It weakens the influence the perpetrators have over us so that we have more freedom. All of these things are healing. And the more we are healed, the fuller our lives are and the more we have to give to others.

I have two outward things going on now, even when I am turning inward: this blog and GrassRoots. I hope that the stuff I write about polyfragmentation will resonate with some of you, and that others will find some commonality here and there. As for GrassRoots, it’s fun to provide support and to offer parts of all ages an opportunity to have fun with others like themselves. Being in community, to me at least, is nourishing and growth-provoking. I feel starved for the company of my brothers and sisters, who understand me, cheer me on, console me, and tolerate my twisted sense of humor.