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!
Ritual Abuse 