Inspiration (I never knew)

[azurelunatic]

I never knew I could be an inspiration to someone just by being who I am and being my stubborn bitch self.

I'm walking wounded, walking weird. Some of you already know that there's more than one of me in my head. There's me. I'm the primary personality, the one that most of you see every day. Then there's garnetdagger, who kicks ass and takes names when we need it. Then there's Marah, who deals with life's bullshit, and isn't too fond of it either. Then ... well, there are four of us, and she doesn't come out much. I have good days and I have bad days. I have days where everything is dancing and singing and wonderful, and I have so much energy, and I have days when the world is shit and I am worse. I have days when the world would be great, but I can't manage to drag my ass out of bed. There are days when the world is just sucky, and I'm going frantic trying to fix it all, and I can't move fast enough and I'm still zooming past everyone around me. There are days when my allergies have me hammered to the floor. But the next day (or the day after that) I get back up again...

And I go to school. I try to go to school. When I can pull myself out of bed, out of the house, I go to school. I'm not giving up on it. I clean house. I spend some time with the Little Fayoumis and help him scramble towards adulthood by giving him insights into the adult world, and how it isn't so different from how he is after all.

I gave up on school before. I sank deep into a depression, and refused to get out of bed, go out of my room during the day, didn't want to talk to anyone, avoided work of any kind...

I'm dragging my ass to school. I'm trying to keep the house under control. Oddly enough, with mostly me taking care of it, it tends to do more of it itself than it does when there are three adults on top of it 24-7.

And me doing this is an inspiration. I never realized that managing to get my ass out of bed, managing to keep the wants and needs and dietary habits of three other people more or less in mind, managing to make a halfassed attempt at all this -- I never realized that was inspiring.

I likely have some form of depression. I know I am multiples. (Somewhat more functional than many, evidently. Leave a social Gemini alone, and she'll talk to herself.) I know I have self-esteem issues. And I keep on going. I just keep on.

That's all.

But evidently that's enough.

Comments

[hobbitblue.livejournal.com]

I think I'm correct in saying that MPD/DID is not a subset of schizophrenia, and there are many levels at which dissociative disorders occur - you are right in that "everyone" has the various parts of their persona that deal with things (the usual example is the way you can switch off during a long drive over a familiar route and not be aware of every step of the way, your "driver" part has taken over and dealt with it). However, being able to name and identify these parts is less common, equally, being aware of the named parts to a greater or lesser extent is not indicitive of it *not* being DID - people with several alters are co-conscious to a greater or lesser degree. When there is little co-consiousness and no communication, whoever controls the body can cause havoc for the others, who lose time, and often find they have been doing things that "they" would not normally do.
Therapy in past years focussed on uniting the various personalities into one whole, more recent approaches recognize that some people are perfectly happy to exist as an us and function very well like that.
Often each distinct persona has a whole set of mannerisms, speech patterns, even body language that makes it clear there is "someone else" in charge of the body - I don't know you well enough to know if thats the case, azure, but it makes it easier to spot the differences :)
I don't have DID, but am close friends with a couple of people who do, and have had the privelege to interact with some of their alters, even the children. I admire anyone who can run their brains and their systems that way, and who has survived whatever trauma caused the initial (and often later) splits... I also know from these friends that it can be very stressful and tiring "sharing" the body!

[azurelunatic]

The primary difference in knowing who's out is the handwriting. This gets lost on the computer, of course; the one who doesn't come out much [yes, she has a name, but we prefer not to give that out much] does not type well, nor speak; she hand-spells or uses the onscreen keyboard.

In my/our case, the first split was merely from having no one to talk to; we reintegrated in the spring of 2001. The second split was the September of 2002, from a known cause.

I don't have lost time; I occasionally will have said something that I don't think I said and don't have memory of; I will have some memories that are "password-locked", because I don't need to see them, and seeing them will upset me. I know what is contained within the memories; they are clearly labelled; inside are things that I just don't need to deal with.