Standby and The Death of The Other Girl: Part 1 of 3

We have heard from Standby (the last ex of The Other Girl) again.

After a few correspondences, and him wanting answers, we told him he knew where to find them. 

"You know as well as I do that you don't want me reading that blog, Frank" he texted to us. Which made us angry because Frank was not here that day, and in fact, has not been around much these past few days.

We’re apprehensive to write about Standby much, especially after he said, “Not reading what you've written about me and your past friends has allowed me to defend you on several occasion, to the people you've hurt with it”

But we feel we must, it's the perfect beginning to starting to tell the story of the death of The Other Girl, and we have some things we want to set straight.

First, we want to address that the only thing that may have been hurtful was a single post about The Non-Bestie (TNB), The Other Girl’s best friend – the post was actually about how hard it had been for The Other Girl, and the reasons she had for not sharing any of Us with her friend(s).

Second, we’ve written about Standby himself, which we know has not been kind on many levels; we’ll get to that in a bit. 

We have no idea to whom he is referring; who these people we have supposedly hurt with our writing, besides him…and possibly The Non-Besti (TNB)...are – we have no clue. There are no entries regarding any people who he might have contact with that might seek answers from him. (For instance, Third Date Flunky – or any of the other men that The Other Girl wrote about last year – he does not know any of them). There are no entries written about ANY of The Other Girl's old friends…so we’re confused about who he is defending us to.

Third, we wanted to point out a curiosity. How can he be defending us if he is not reading this blog, having no information to back up any claims? He does not know what has happened, who we are, what we've been through in the past two and a half months, nothing.

We are stumped.

To get back to why the contact was initiated in the first place – because he should NOT be contacting us - you’ll have to read Cassandra’s blog entry from Saturday, regarding a mutual friend who was mentally ill…who, as it turns out, we now know, took her own life recently. (‘We Have Nothing To Lose’  http://just-call-me-frank.blogspot.com/2011/04/we-have-nothing-to-lose.html)

He had sent us a text Monday, two days after the first message about the woman, inquiring about the relocation of some items that The Other Girl had been storing in his garage, asking if he could pick up two CD’s of his that we still have in our possession; and asking if we had received the e-mail regarding this woman.

Obviously the answer to the question about the CD’s was “no”, because we don’t want to see him ever again. We also told him we’d be taking back a computer monitor The Other Girl had given him; we never would have given it to him – we told her when she did it that she would regret it, because we wanted it. We’ll be honest, some of what we said to him in reply to his messages was angry.

“I was under the impression that the monitor was given to me” he texted.

“We were under the impression that you weren’t an asshole. Guess everyone makes a mistake”, we replied.

He was angry about that. Asking why we are still holding on to the anger, after kicking him out of our life; and how can we still think he is an asshole, saying he felt he has served his penance. He also said that “to the end of my days I doubt I’ll be able to understand how you could be so hurtful just because we were unable to understand what you were going through”.

Hurtful? We could have been more hurtful than simply cutting people out of our life, and considering the things he had said to us…we did a pretty good job of NOT being hurtful to him.

Standby claimed that his purpose in sending us the message about this woman was to not make us sad, but was sent because he worries about us “going down the same path”; or more specifically we suppose, because he doesn’t know about anything within the pages of this blog, is worried about Frank and The Other Girl ending their life. He doesn’t have any understanding that The Other Girl is gone.

How does he not know she is gone and how can we think he’s a fucking asshole?

There were three events that had happened the last full day of The Other Girl’s life. We won’t go into detail about the other two at this point. The day she found out he’d read her blog, despite her telling him not to, was a catalyst in her death, and looked something like this.

The Other Girl was at work, it was Friday, February 11^th, 2011, and she was in her office working when she got a text from Standby.

We’ve imported part of the original post, in two sections, from: The "Death" of Standby and the "Birth" of a Villain, originally posted on Sunday, February 20^th, 2011 - http://just-call-me-frank.blogspot.com/2011/02/death-of-standby-and-birth-of-villain.html - Frank wrote about the events over a week after we disposed of The Other Girl. That first week without her had been very difficult for all of us, and some of us grieved her loss for even longer.

The first entry:

“In any case, the event that set off the following chain of messages was a text confession that The Villain (formerly Standby) messaged telling us he had broken a promise, and had read our blog.  Clearly he wasn’t happy with what he read; I don’t blame him, but I was being honest.  And I was being honest with him all along, she tried to tell him on more than one occasion - but she was scared.

And now, I present to you…the transcript of the death of Standby.

FRANK:
“I am sorry if I am the reason you are feeling ill. I’d feel ill if I were you and reading that too…
I told you I am crazy
You didn’t believe me
I’m battling myself right now
I haven’t been able to tell anyone anything
I am sorry
For everything. All of me is sorry
I won’t be seeing you for awhile”

STANDBY/THE VILLIAN:
“That’s going to hurt, not seeing you
I am sorry too”

FRANK:
“There is nothing I can do to fix this. I am not well. I haven’t been. I don’t know what to do.”

STANDBY/THE VILLIAN:

“Why don’t you want to see me though?
there is always something we can do to fix this.”

FRANK:

“Please don’t text me again. I am not well. You’ve already seen enough of my crazy. Everybody has at this point.

Leave me alone.”

STANDBY/THE VILLIAN:
“No. You’ll always mean a lot to me and I’m willing to give you some space, but I won’t leave you alone. I’m sorry this isn’t going to work out for us, but I wrote on FB, all I want is my friend [our former name] back.”

FRANK:

“She not here anymore” [note: what Frank meant is she wasn’t present at that moment. Frank had briefly taken over The Body because The Other Girl was in so much pain]

STANDBY/THE VILLIAN:

 “I don’t believe that and never will. The [our former name] that I love is in there somewhere and very close at that. You can get rid of Frank easier than you think.”

FRANK:

“Leave me alone”

STANDBY/THE VILLIAN:

“Never [our former name]”

FRANK:

“You are making me angry. Please.”

STANDBY/THE VILLIAN:

“Ok. You know where I stand and how I feel about our friendship so contact me when you’re ready.”

When Frank was done with her correspondence with Standby she left The Other Girl to read the messages in her office.

The Other Girl let out a scream. She slammed her door shut, with her bosses (one of which, is FNA/The Jeans, if you hadn’t ever put the pieces together – we’ll explain why they were the same person with two names another day) standing outside the door. The Other Girl screamed, she screamed really loud. She screamed, “Fuck my life!” She cried; she kicked walls; she kicked a refrigerator and cupboards that were in her office. She crouched to her knees on the dirty floor, sobbing. She continued to yell, cry, kick, and scream. She was out of control with anger, sadness and fear, she was upset that the man she loved had broken a promise. She never wanted him to know about Frank, to read Frank’s writing. She was also upset because she knew she had lost him forever.

Frank stepped in, whipped open the door, yelled to FNA, “Drinks! Let’s go for drinks!” Frank closed the door, let The Other Girl cry a bit longer, cleaned us up, and headed out.

Wild eyed, radiating anger, we stormed down the street with FNA in tow, gesturing madly, unleashing everything, the story of what had just happened tumbling from our mouth, talking about other events of the day, mixed with news that The Mother was cancelling her trip to come see us. Had he not been there that day we would have been hit by a car, we were unable to see anything beyond the storm brewing. Our head was a hurricane of fragments spinning out of control. Our eyes that day felt like wild fire.

This event was in the center of two big painful events that had happened to The Other Girl that day, neither of which, surprisingly, was The Mother cancelling her visit. (which later she rescheduled after talking with us)

The following day, or even that night; at this point that weekend tends to be blurrier to some of us, Frank has more clarity on it…The Other Girl received this text in the midst of our work to destroy her:

"Frank, my knowing what TOG went through isn`t going to help bring her back. You`ve made it very clear that you`re not going to let her come back anyway. It`s also not going to make you make any smart decisions about your life, and it certainly isn`t going to make you a decent, or even a nicer, human being. So there goes my friend. Good luck to you. If you so chose, you can tell her that I`m sorry and that if she ever comes back, I`ll be happy to hear from her. I don`t need to hear from Frank anymore. I recognise that you only exist because of what TOG gone through, but I really don`t care. You`re mean...to everyone. I guaratee things with FNA aren`t going to work out and if you don`t change, you`re going to be alone forever, because you go out of your way to kill the soul of everyone who comes near you. Starting with TOG"

[Original posting: February 17, 2011 : http://just-call-me-frank.blogspot.com/2011/02/to-human-if-indeed-thats-what-you-are.html ]

The highlighted portions are the parts that ring through our head, to this day, a mere two and a half months later. We still remember the pain The Other Girl felt when she read them, in the midst of our destruction of her, words that enraged Frank, and some of the rest of us, as The Other Girl lay curled on the kitchen floor, screaming for her life, gasping for air long enough to call Fabulous People, asking them to come over; because she was afraid the neighbours were going to call the cops from all the screaming and high pitched squealing.

[Second Entry of The "Death" of Standby and the "Birth" of a Villain, originally posted on Sunday, February 20^th, 2011 - http://just-call-me-frank.blogspot.com/2011/02/death-of-standby-and-birth-of-villain.html]

A couple days later…[Added note: AFTER THE DEATH OF THE OTHER GIRL]

STANDBY/THE VILLIAN:

“I apologize for breaking the silence. I just need to know if I’m going to run into either of you at [insert musician friends name]’s show tonight, else I won’t go”

FRANK:

“Either one?" [I tried to call him after this]

NO ANSWER

FRANK:

“Yeah…don’t explain yourself. Don’t worry about running into me anywhere. I hardly leave my apartment but for going to work.”

STANDBY/THE VILLIAN:

“I was away from my phone. I’m sorry. I wasn’t not responding.

I’m trying to get used to the idea of Frank, but I don’t know how to refer to you now. That’s what I meant by either one.”

FRANK:

“Fine. You don’t need to worry about seeing me unless you are in the [insert area of city] I don’t plan to leave the vicinity unaccompanied.
You can stay as far away from me as you want.”

STANDBY/THE VILLIAN:

“What about the conference?”

FRANK:

“Just don’t come near me. You clearly couldn’t ask the questions you needed answers to the first time and I don’t feel comfortable around anyone who won’t talk to ME.”

STANDBY/THE VILLIAN:

“I am not sure what you mean by me not asking questions. And I’m more than willing to let you talk. I’ve been trying to respect your request that I leave you alone. Believe me when I tell you that I’ve wanted to make contact pretty much constantly since Friday.”

FRANK:

“Well, you clearly had questions if you felt like being the very last person in her life she could trust

To break their promises

And lie”

STANDBY/THE VILLIAN:

“You’re right, [our former name], in that I broke a promise to you, but I didn’t lie about it. I told you straight away and apologised”

FRANK:

“And accused her of lying, which she never did”

STANDBY/THE VILLIAN:

“I really do want to talk to you. I want us to be friends again. I want to accept who you are. I admit that the last one is going to be challenging, because I don’t think Frank and I like each other very much right now. But I really hope we can change all that someday soon. Please let’s aim for that. Please.

And in terms of asking more questions I would never have thought to ask if you were mocking me and making me look like an ass on the internet for all to see. Insert my interjection here, NOBODY KNOWS WHO HE IS, save two people who really could give a fuck - unless he shared my link, in which case, DOUBLE ASSHOLE

FRANK:

Fuck off, yeah, it’s all about you.

Nobody knows it was u

Nobody knows it was her

Nobody we knew was reading it Can't say that now, can we

STANDBY/THE VILLIAN:

Was I pushing you around?

FRANK:

You weren’t listening when she was trying to ask for help

You know what, read it all…start with the journal, read her story

STANDBY/THE VILLIAN:

You told me otherwise Didn't fucking stop him, and might I say, we had a conversation just prior to this where we discussed mental illness diagnoses and talked about my/her past, and all the abuse in my/her past

FRANK:

“Yeah, well, she wasn’t good at asking for help

I am, and now I know who to ask

And how to do it

Read the blog top to bottom

Get to know what she went through, some of it is vacuous but read it.

Read the poetry

Understand
Then talk to me again, in the meantime keep pitying your selfish pride.”

He was upset because The Other Girl and Frank had been seeing him and FNA at the same time; despite the fact that they (The Other Girl, Frank and Standby) had discussed it. Frank told him (though he thought he had been talking to only The Other Girl) that she had feelings for FNA, and she wasn’t willing to give him up. This was all talked about before he even read this blog, back in February; what Standby had been upset about was both the way in which Frank had written about him, and her talk of adoration for FNA within her writing.

The Other Girl had been in love with Standby. She wanted to spend the rest of her life with him. Frank did not love Standby at all. She liked having sex with him, but Frank’s heart was tied to FNA, for many, many, reasons.

Does he expect that what he said about Frank, that she "goes out of her way to kill every who comes near [her]", that The other Girl's lingering pain caused by someone with whom we have no ties, is something we even desire to forgive?

The last thing he said was, “It’s all very disconcerting, making a decision to leave an entire life behind like that. Was it some kind of self preservation tactic? Do you somehow feel we all ganged up on [The Other Girl]? How do you just stop caring about the people who cared about you?”

How do we care about people that only a dead girl cared about?

~ Written by: We...without the help of Frank.

A Chat With The Father About DID

We had a nice chat with The Father on Saturday night. He called to talk to us about memories, in response to an e-mail Frank sent him, and to see how we are doing, since he read our entry that day and wanted us to know that he does read our blog, and that he misses us and loves us very much.

Later he became our friend on Facebook, which we think he might end up not liking so much because some of us, some of We, are dirty and mean, and some of us are confusing...and some are still a little lost. (Everything we post on Tumblr goes there, as well as music from our YouTube channel that we favourite, and now, some of our Tweets – plus we post our own status’ there, sometimes we need more than 140 characters…and some of the people we are friends with in real life do not use Twitter)

Over the span of talking with The Father we discussed seeing doctors, and our aversion to it - simply because there is a limited amount of good psychologists that specialize in DID, particularly in our area (to be honest, probably ANY area). Not to mention, well, what are they going to tell us? We are already working on mapping our alters (something they have you do in therapy); and we are already writing and painting as a form therapy.  

We’ve been to enough doctors, they never did any good and they only made things worse. And they might try to make us take medications, which we are not cool with.

He let us know that he had discussed us with our old pastor, The Pastor, recently; who has now been reading our blog for some time (Note to The Pastor: we know you don’t like some of the content of this blog. We won’t make an apology, but it’s all good, just don’t read the stuff that is offensive to you *smile*).

The Pastor has apparently dealt with this (DID/MPD) before, which The Father and We found surprising. He has enough experience with it, as a matter of fact, to have been telling The Father the content that would likely be appearing on our blog – as in, “Next week she will probably write about xyz”.

He was so accurate that The Father found it kind of disturbing; we found this shocking. We also wanted to ask him to tell us what we would be writing, you know, so we can be prepared.

It’s nice to know that there are people who understand this (DID/MPD), that aren’t necessarily health professionals, or people who have to deal with the types of things we do from day to day. Some days it’s hard for us to understand it. When you wake up and look in the mirror and recognize yourself, but not – because you don’t always recognize the things in your head. That’s what makes Frank a little batty some days; like not being able to understand me.

The Other Girl knew what depression felt like, but not Frank...it’s not part of Frank’s personality, because she has always been the strong one who showed up to rescue us, but preferring to always stay in the far background, until she slipped into that coma after our car accident. So when she was trying to find out about all of us and I showed up, she felt strange and now prefers to be around a little less, because she doesn’t understand the feelings that I try to share with her. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not just a sad dumpy head, but I get sad about things; thing like the current state of our life right now, and Catherine keeps telling me that we’ll never be loved again, because now people think we are freaks.

The Other Girl tried to keep me away because she wanted to not be sad, and that’s where she shared consciousness with Sam, because she wanted to deal with everything by being mean and angry. Which made her lash out at her friends, because Sam is very angry and has no patience for people. He doesn’t have patience for much. He’s a rather mean boy.

The Father is reading a book we’d like to recommend to others, if only he would give us the title. He says that he doesn’t know if we should be reading it without the recommendation of a professional. We could probably find it on our own if we wanted, but we are apprehensive to read anything until we are done writing about our life – and so far we have written up to about a little over 6 years from today.

In this book, apparently, it says that people with what we have usually have an easier time dealing with people, society, and everyday life…until they reach their 30’s. We guess that explains a lot, since this year we will be 32 years old – some of us anyway; and most of The Other Girl’s problems with us started to arise shortly after “we” turned 30.

When we were talking to The Father he said that this has opened up his eyes and made him more accepting of people, to realize that that people get damaged and it does affect their brains, and their life, and their personality(s). He says it helps him be more patient and understanding – not that everyone who has been through trauma goes through this (DID/MPD), but it certainly has an effect on people and their interaction with others throughout life.

Since he reads some of our writing, he can see those of us he isn’t as familiar with; since we were 18 we really haven’t seen much of him, maybe twice a year on average, so this makes sense.

We talked to him about some of our conflicts, mainly Sam, who is very angry and does not coincide with how the rest of us think and feel because; overall we do not dislike people as much as he does.

The Father said:

“That’s because [The Other Girl] is still in there, all the things I taught [The Other Girl] are the reasons why you have problems with some of what is going on [he means the conflicting feelings of Sam]. ”

“Dad” we said “we share some of the lessons you taught her, but she is not here anymore. She is gone.”

We know this is hard for The Father, and many, to understand; honestly it’s why we have none of the many, many people that used to be in The Other Girls life, in our life anymore; the ones who used to be a big part of The Other Girl’s life – because none of us are her.

After we told him about the weekend we killed The Other Girl (or if you prefer eliminated her, The Father does not seem to like the word “kill”), we think he understood better. He says that she wasn’t really us (that’s a paraphrase). We agree.  Despite the fact she was what people thought was us, she was a shell, our host, and what she portrayed to the world was just the fragments of us…until she couldn’t contain the fragments any longer.

~Cassandra

------------------------------------------------------
We figured after the day we met Marissa on Twitter (a recovered of DID/MPD) that we should probably look into this more, since we knew what was going on, but never had an understanding of what it actually was. The Other Girl had been misdiagnosed with a few things, which is common. They say that typically it is 7-8 years (maybe more) before the mis-diagnoses of people who have DID are finally realized to be DID.

We did an entry on our other blog awhile back, highlighting our symptoms: http://issueoffrank.blogspot.com/p/did-info.html and provided very little information, leaving it up to people reading to to do their own research.

We figured we'd throw some information in here, and then move it somewhere else around this blog, or our other one.
Here are other sources, in addition what we provided below:

• http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/dissociative-identity-disorder-multiple-personality-disorder
• http://sascwr.org/resources/pdfs/Mental%20Illness/Symptoms%20of%20DID.pdf

This information that follows is from an online source called eMentalHealth:

Dissociative Identity Disorder/Multiple Personality Disorder

Summary

Dissociative identity disorder (known in the past as multiple personality disorder) is a condition where an individual develops different personality states, generally following repeated physical, sexual or emotional abuse.

What Is It?

Most of us have experienced some form of dissociation at some point in our lives. For example, you may have dissociated or spaced out during boring situations such as a long, boring drive, and then not really remember how you got somewhere. Or you may have experienced stressful situations where you were numb or spaced out and can’t really recall what happened.

However, when a person is faced with overwhelming stress as may happen with abuse, dissociation is a normal process that can happen to deal with the stress. For example, a child who experiences sexual abuse may ‘space out’ as a way to protect herself from remembering the event. When such stress or trauma happens over and over again, it can lead to dissociative identity disorder.

When dissociative identity disorder does occur, it usually happens when the trauma has occurred in childhood (e.g. before age 7-9). Young children are the most vulnerable because they have not yet had the opportunity to develop a stable sense of self or personality. People who are easily hypnotizable (i.e. prone to go into trance) are also at high risk.

Although dissociation may be a useful coping strategy in the beginning to deal with trauma, dissociation that continues to occur later on in life can cause problems in day-to-day life, and can cause severe problems in a person’s school, work or personal life.

DSM-IV Criteria

Dissociative Identity Disorder is a complex condition, and thus, it can take very long before it is properly diagnosed. Many times, people with DID are diagnosed with other conditions before finally receiving their DID diagnosis.

According to the DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) of the American Psychiatric Association, the criteria for Dissociative Identity Disorder are:

The presence of two or more distinct identity or personality states, each with its own relatively enduring pattern of perceiving, relating to, and thinking about the environment and self.

At least two of these identities or personality states recurrently take control of the person's behavior. Inability to recall important personal information that is too extensive to be explained by ordinary forgetfulness. 

The disturbance is not due to the direct physiological effects of a substance (e.g., blackouts or chaotic behavior during alcohol intoxication) or a general medical condition (e.g., complex partial seizures). In children, the symptoms are not attributable to imaginary playmates or other fantasy play. 

Signs and Symptoms

The key symptoms which are unique to Dissociative Identity Disorder are the presence of two or more distinct personality states or “alters” that have control over the person’s behaviour.

Other key symptoms may include:

• Amnesia (loss of time, or ‘blackouts’), whereby the person can’t remember periods of time, or even portions of their childhood. 
• Dissociation, which is a mental process where individuals are not fully connected with their thoughts, feelings, behaviours or memories 
• Derealization, which is the feeling that the world is not real or in a haze. 
• Depersonalization, which is the feeling of being detached from your body, as in an “out of body” experience 
• Switching to different alters, which may appear as sudden changes in mood, behaviour or personality
  
  • 
    Other symptoms (or conditions) that an individual may have include:
• Depression, which is problems with extremely low or sad mood 
• Mood swings, which is problems with moods going from one extreme to another 
• Anxiety, panic attacks or other anxiety problems 
• Thoughts of suicide, due to the high level of stress that persons with DID often experience
• Alcohol or drug use, as an attempt at coping with stress 
• Post-traumatic stress disorder, a condition that may be seen after individuals experience high stress or even life threatening situations 
• Borderline personality disorder, a condition where individuals have severe problems with emotional regulation and controlling their feelings, often seen in those with past trauma
  How Common Is It?

According to the International Society for the Study of Dissociation, DID occurs in 1-3% of the population.

If You Suspect Dissociative Identity Disorder

If you suspect that you or a loved one may have dissociative identity disorder, start by seeing your family doctor. Your doctor can help make sure that your symptoms aren’t due to a medical condition such as (traumatic) brain injury, medication, sleep deprivation, or drug use. And if required, your doctor can refer to a mental health professional such as a psychologist or psychiatrist.

Treatment for Dissociative Identity Disorder

Treatment aims to integrate or connect the different alters into one single identity and generally consists of talk therapy (a.k.a. psychotherapy).

Therapy goals include:

• Mapping out the alters, where the therapist and the person try to find out which are the various alters, and their purpose 
• Integration, which is helping the alters co-exist with one another as a whole, functional personality. Once integrated, the person no longer experiences switches in alters, nor does the person have loss of time or blackouts.

Types of therapy include talking therapy; hypnosis; eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR).

In some cases, medications may be helpful for specific symptoms such as depression, anxiety which have not responded to non-medication treatment.
____________________________________________________

References

Treatment Guidelines for Dissociative Identity Disorders in Adults http://www.isst-d.org/education/treatmentguidelines-index.htm

Treatment Guidelines for Dissociative Identity Disorders in Children http://www.isst-d.org/education/treatmentguidelines-index.htm

About this Document

Written by the eMentalHealth Team.

Disclaimer

Information in this pamphlet is offered ‘as is' and is meant only to provide general information that supplements, but does not replace the information from your health provider. Always contact a qualified health professional for further information in your specific situation or circumstance.

Creative Commons License

You are free to copy and distribute this material in its entirety as long as 1) this material is not used in any way that suggests we endorse you or your use of the material, 2) this material is not used for commercial purposes (non-commercial), 3) this material is not altered in any way (no derivative works). View full license at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ca/ Subscribe to this article's RSS feed

Other Resources

Websites including blogs, support forums

Centre of Knowledge on Healthy Child Development 

www.trauma-ptsd.com 

Teen Mental Health

Printed materials including handouts, brochures and books

Fresh Start

Source: http://www.ementalhealth.ca/canada/en/_b_stylebackgroundcolorfdf5abDissociativeb_b_stylebackgroundcolorfdf5abIdentityb_b_stylebackgroundcolorfdf5abDisorderb_b_stylebackgroundcolorfdf5abDIDb_a12_b8906.html [accessed: April 25, 2010]

We Are Fragments

All links are internal and used for context/reference, unless noted others wise

This past week … wow, what can we say about this past week. 

There are so many things that have been going through our head since Monday, when we felt in danger of losing our job, and then on Wednesday when we met Marisa on Twitter, the very first person who has experienced DID/MPD (Dissociative Identity Disorder/Multiple Personality Disorder – this link leads to WebMD) that we’ve ever met; she’s actually recovered. Though there are people in our life who question whether or not one can actually recover from DID/MPD, we know we don’t want to “recover”, we want to learn to control Us. People have done it.

It may only be April, and to most people 4 months is not that long of a time in the grand scheme of life. For us it seems like forever. Life two months ago might as well be 10 years ago; it was someone else’s’ life. What we are experiencing now feels like an uphill battle with a lifetime of baggage strapped to our back, and trying to appear "normal", maintain relationships, and function on a day-to-day basis just makes it more difficult.

We’ve been writing every day since the middle of January, finally achieving our goal of attempting to heal and understand us through writing/art therapy, and to look back at the progress in such a short time amazes us; but then to look towards the future, and what we have yet to achieve leaves us feeling dumbfounded, overwhelmed, confused; the closest to alone we have felt for the first time in our life.

We’ve come to the conclusion…I’ve come to the conclusion…that there is more to us than just Bitch and I**. We were going to wait to hear what Marisa had to say about this, because we had asked her in the post from Thursday, among other things, about how she came about separating her Alters*; and whether or not she thought I had been assimilating all the characteristics that we’re not me (the Host*), onto Bitch. Characteristics like:

Hyper-sexuality - not promiscuity, however, we know that was The Other Girl. We don’t know who this Alter/Fragment is. I have a feeling it’s the one responsible for making The Other Girl end relationships in the past due to the notion that she was “not getting enough sex”. Seriously. The Other Girl ended a few relationships for that very reason.
Extreme anger – uncontrollable and seething, almost blinding. And when coupled with Bitch makes causes panic and tears. We think this is the male influence we’ve discussed previously, that we thought was just a voice, but we don't feel we actually have schizophrenia, a failed diagnosis from 9 years ago; this makes more sense. This Alter/Fragment is mean and get’s angry at us and at everybody. When we are alone with him I yell at him. This is who wrote this post: http://just-call-me-frank.blogspot.com/2011/03/short-entries-4-when-anxiety-takes-over.html
Excessive childish behaviour – that’s Bitch, and it’s only excessive because we are 31. Skipping in public and playing with the toys in the toy department of Toys R’ Us or WalMart do not a mature 31 year old woman make, that’s just the tip of her fantasy play-land. Some people have enjoyed that part of The Other Girl and us, and some people in our life have thought it stupid, and did not understand it.

There are probably a few more, but these are the ones that are the most vibrant and out of control, these are The Alters*/Fragments/We, who vie for their chance to Front* at certain times of the week, day, hour – who are called upon when there is a trigger – something else we are trying to figure out so we can maintain some control again.

We know that the sexuality and anger can’t be Bitch because she is, essentially, a child. That’s how we came to realize there were more, because these strong Alters/Fragments are not part of who I am. It should be noted though that Bitch and I, more often than not, share co-consciousness*; she used to share it with The Other Girl constantly.

We’ve been trying to figure out who is getting upset about Marissa, because as I sit here and write we are thinking back to a few hours ago, and it happened again tonight when we got a link to another person we had met, who also started a DID blog. And while we lay in bed, sobbing, I yelled at whoever it was that was causing the sobbing.

“What the hell is your problem?! Why do you get upset when we meet people who are like us?!”

Of course there was not answer, not yet anyway; whoever it is too busy crying. They’ll probably tell us later.

Fabulous Person; who knows us, who has known us and has no doubt been aware of shifts that have happened in front of her; says that it is entirely possible. That it makes complete sense that there would be more than just Bitch and I. Other Fragments to deal with things.

“I know that these characteristics, the sex stuff, the anger, they are not me, and they are not Bitch…they have to be something else” I tell her. Then I begin to wonder who I am in the grand scheme of things, and get scared about our other Fragments.

.

“I think we need a doctor” I say to her, beginning to cry as I stand in the bathroom looking in the mirror at us.

While Fabulous Person is not trained in the field of psychiatry, we value her opinion and input when it comes to trying to figure shit out. She has personal experience both dealing with people who have mental disabilities, and has had her own trying events in her life, and has seen things that the average person has not witnessed. She has witnessed some pretty crazy stuff with us. She is a strong woman. She is our friend and our sounding board, and she does what she can to help us try to maneuver the maze of trying to heal and understand our self, so that we can have a life that is more stable; something it has never been.

We’ve moved so many times in our life, within cities, cross country - the kind of relocation we are used to is far from stable. We’ve always been running scared, afraid to be found out. In reality we probably would have benefited from opening up from the very beginning, when we finally go counselling at the age of 13 and 14.

Unfortunately the counselling was more damaging in some ways, and we learned to keep our self shut down.

“Dad says it’s our fault, because we never talked to the counselors about anything”, we say to Angry Brother on the phone recently. It's true, without being prompted we never shared anything, if we didn't have to.

“But don’t you remember”, he said, “she refused to see us anymore after awhile, she couldn’t handle us.”

Though I don’t have much memory of it; it was true. The Father, Angry Brother, Baby Brother and Us had been having family counselling, but none of us took to it well. Of course the counselling hadn’t been for abuse, it had been simply because our parents had gotten divorced and The Father thought that our behaviour problems, including Angry Brothers, were caused by that.

The Father was never aware of the we abuse had endured at the hands of The Mother until I started writing about it this year. Now that we talk with him about these things, he is not surprised. There are several indicators that he told us about, signs he should have seen, and even worse ones that we knew about that helped us understand that her head was as ill as ours. Maybe even more.

Thinking back to The Mothers issues, the stories she had shared with him, about how her parents had abused her in one way or another, he talked about how these kinds of things, trauma from abuse, when left untreated trickles down through generations and can become a cycle. He is learning a lot now, reading to understand us better.

 “This is why I can’t have kids, dad” we cried to him on the phone. “Because I see how we yell at the cats. And we would never lay a hand on them, but if I had children they would be damaged.”

We are okay with this. We don’t want kids anyway, for multiple reasons other than our mental health. The Other Girl really wanted children of her own. She had even been planning on getting pregnant with Significant Other, who we broke up with at the end of August last year (2010). They had been talking about having a baby by this time. Thank god we were all back to stop that, to stop her.

So, since Wednesday we’ve been thinking a lot about who “we” are. It may seem silly.

“Oh, well, it’s only been two and a half days, how much time could you really be thinking about it”, you ask?

All the damn time. That’s the thing with having your head full of more than just one. There is shit going on all the time. We hardly sleep, which means there are about 19 hours in the day that we have for thinking. At work we’re always thinking, discussing stuff – unless someone fights for control. The only time we have less activity is when we are with Fabulous People, The Jeans…or…FNA…(insert a tear here); and even then it’s not a given that we can focus.

I want anyone reading to understand that when I say “we” in writing, I am referring to whoever is helping me write, whoever is giving me the information I need, whoever is sharing headspace with me - usually Bitch. Just like in real life though, I try to censor our self because it makes people confused. We said in front on The Jeans today and he responded.

“Who is we?” then he paused, and said “Oh, right.” He looked uncomfortable.

Generally it’s Bitch sharing consciousness when we write not only because she is my favourite. (don’t tell the others), but because she has been around since there was first a “we” and I left her to keep an eye on things.

We’ve written about that too…somewhere around here, how she has been responsible for watching over The Other Girl and letting me know what was going on. There exists an entry about how she kicked me out the coma this last time around years after our terrible car accident.:

“We’ve had a few conversations with The Father (Our Father, not “THE Father”) regarding our beliefs. The most memorable, for obvious reasons, was about a year ago, after our grandfather passed away. It took place in a pickup truck, as many of our conversations have throughout life[...] Bitch kicked me harder than ever before. “Wake up. You will not believe this shit”, she said after a final swift kick. (That coma was hard to get out of) [Excerpt from out March 20, 2011 post, Religion, You Say? We Have a View On That]

And she was responsible for alerting me to The Other Girls stupid fucking husband, and all the mental abuse he was putting her through, and the mental and substance abuse she had been putting herself through trying to cope with what turned out to be misdiagnosed mental illnesses of a different sort (social anxiety, depression and manic-depression). Bitch is also the tattle-tale.

We understand if you don’t understand. We also understand if you wonder why we share this stuff. We just do, to help raise awareness, along with many others in the world; in addition we are trying to figure things out through writing therapy; we recommend it for any of your problems, assuming you have any. (everybody does, duh)

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We wanted to stay away from glossary words, but the more we started writing the more they made sense, at least to explain it to the outside world. We will gradually apply our own terms in writing, to better clarify things for our self as we begin to understand.

*Directly from the DID glossary of Marisa Feathers:

Alter:  My term of choice for others in the System. In the psychiatric community, an alter is defined as an alternate personality, personality state, ego state or identity with its own unique perspectives, abilities, memories or other traits that differ from the Host or Executive personality.”

Co-consciousness: When two or more parts of a system share awareness of the inner and outer world and sometimes control. They are not always aware of it (as in the case of some of the first posted writing). Some prefer to call it Co-presence. Co-consciousness can be a valuable tool for learning to work together, however more and more multiples believe it is not a necessary part of recovery.

Being Out: The experience of being in control of the body, interacting with those outside the system or the world in general. Also known as Fronting.

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**Who is me. I am Frank. I make all the Alters/Fragments/We use my name for the purpose of this blog and in Twitter - just to make things less confusing. In real life we are forced to use The Other Girls’ name, as she used to be the host for them, but as we have discussed many times through our writing of the last couple months, we killed her; and I took over as host. We have discussed with The Mother the desire to change our name legally. We don’t want her name.

We are going to write about her one day, The Other Girl, what she was like, some of the things Bitch remembers about her. There is so much for us to write though. And we don’t want it all to be about DID. We have a bit of a life and many other interests that we like to write about, outside of the subject of DID.