For those reading this blog for the first time--I'm an alter in a DID system. I'm not using the royal "we." ; ) Not a lot to say this time--I just felt like talking about how things for us have changed since we were very physically and mentally sick for several months. For the first time in what seems like ages, we aren't miserable. It's suddenly very easy to enjoy little things--watching cottonwood fluff blow in the breeze, the taste of coffee, listening to old ABBA hits. This is exactly what our treaters told us to do when we were so severely depressed, only it was impossible to enjoy anything at the time.

For those who haven't dealt with excruciating depression, it feels a little like the cessation of a migraine when it passes. You're left just a little high with relief, and everything is somehow beautiful. The wonder wears off, of course, and the world starts to seem ordinary and boring again, but it's lovely while it lasts.

PUSH

Suddenly it occurs to me that I sound like someone helping a woman through labor by signing off with "push. " : p (Our outside sister is a midwife.) What I'm actually saying is an English translation of the Japanese "osh," which is a command to push forward, to strive, to be the best version of yourself you can be. Or that's the way our Iaido sensei used to use the word. In that form, it's only properly used from sensei to student, so it's obnoxious of me to use it to the entire internet, but whatever. I'm arrogant enough to feel like I've learned some important things in life, and I want to share them.

**Trigger Warning** mention of child sexual abuse





I've mentioned elsewhere on the site that I'm starting to suspect that the actual split in our Dissociative Identity Disorder system occurred around age 3-4, the time when we became aware that in theory, we were supposed to be a little girl, but in our mental reality, we were a little boy. That caused a lot of anguish, and a retreating into a disturbed and disturbing headspace.

We were first sexually abused around this time as well, which was a "mild" thing, compared to what came later. I think that had things been slightly different, we would not have split over it. However, as things were, I think the thing that caused the initial shattering was the conviction that only little girls can be sexually abused by men, and I wasn't one of those, so it couldn't have happened to me. I didn't know any homosexual anything existed, and if a man was using me in a sexual fashion, it must have been because he was responding to me as a female. Which we weren't.

If we'd been biologically male, we might not have ended up with DID, but we might have had a paranoid and homophobic fear that we were somehow gay and abnormal. Better for other people that I'm not a raging homophobe, but sort of unfortunate for me that I ended up rather significantly mentally ill. (And yes, I do consider DID a mental illness and not just a cognitive variation, at least for me. I would not have chosen to be this way if I'd ordered a life from a catalog back before I was born.)

My lady who drives the bus downloaded a book for me called "Victims No Longer: The Classic Guide for Men Recovering from Sexual Child Abuse." (Sometimes she's very sweet. There's a reason we let her drive the bus.) Back in the day when we were spending all our time healing from sexual abuse, we had this book called "Courage to Heal," which is expressly for women and girls. It was great, and most of what's in it isn't really for one gender only, but it doesn't address certain other issues that male survivors face. We never had an equivalent book for guys. From what I've seen, "Victims No Longer" isn't as good as "Courage to Heal," which is extremely user-friendly, but it's better than nothing. Also, I may be under-rating it, since I can only stand to read a few pages at a time. Maybe it gets better later.

Lots to think about. I'm still trying out the idea that it can happen to boys too. It's a terribly, terribly sad thing. Just as well I'm one of the alters who can cry.

PUSH

** Possible Trigger Warning, mention of child sexual abuse **





Wow. I just read this amazing article about a pianist in the UK who had to fight in court to get his memoir published. At issue were descriptions of how he'd been sexually abused as a child, which his ex-wife thought his son shouldn't see. (Evidently just telling the kid not to read the book until he was an adult wasn't an option.) This situation is obviously so bizarre that it's not likely to happen again, but the basic idea behind the lawsuit is depressingly common. The implication is that child sexual abuse is so shameful and so "toxic" (an actual word from the plaintiff's lawyers) to everyone involved, that survivors ought to just shut up about their own pasts in order to make everybody else comfortable.

Does that sound familiar to anybody? *cough* Abusing parent? *cough* Non-protecting parent? *cough, cough* Entire schools and churches?

So even though this guy found himself in a legal position most of us will never be in, he was in an emotional position that is very familiar to many people. I could go on at length at what was so great and liberating to read about his article, but I think I'll just quote part from the end:

"I’m going to tell the world . . . because it is not something to be ashamed of."

That was where I wanted to insert the sound of a standing ovation. Not only is he a totally unapologetic survivor of sexual abuse, but he's a male unapologetic survivor, and that was beautiful to see. I think it's harder for some men to heal completely (well, as completely as anyone ever does) from sexual abuse, because there's this idea out there that it can't happen to boys. I don't exactly have statistics on the subject, but it seems to me that more male survivors talk about how ashamed they still are when they come out with their stories. Rhodes is plainly done with that feeling.

I'd like to say that I'm done with that feeling too, although I'd be lying if I didn't say it didn't sometimes still creep out of my anxiety closet and touch me sometimes. And did I mention that to this day, we still have nightmares in which monsters and the like chase us through houses, trying to touch us? And "touch" here is not a euphemism for "molest." Any physical contact, of any kind, feels like an unbearable threat.

And that's all I think I need to imply about that.

I'd love to give you a link to the article, only it seems like we can't use BBCode in blog posts. Or at least my account currently has it disabled. I'll just give you the title of the article and the publication it's in, and you can search for it yourself if you're interested:

'I was raped as a child, and only now can I tell my story': How James Rhodes fought the law courts in a battle to be heard

www.independent.co.uk

PUSH

Well, it's been a few days now, and I'm really happy to see that several people have at least visited my earlier post. It makes me feel like I'm really talking to real people, which I badly need to do. For reasons that seemed cogent at the time, all those of us who couldn't pass for a middle-aged woman have been shut inside for many years. In retrospect, that might have made everything worse for everybody--it certainly made things worse for me.

Today I thought I'd talk for a minute about part of my job in our system. It's sort of an unusual job to have, and I'm actually pretty proud of it. I'm one of the alters who can cry. The best many of us can manage is a strangled tear or two, but I can put my face in my hands and really sob if I have to.

This is not a job commonly associated with masculinity, and it's sort of interesting that in our system, it's a male alter who got it. The reason is simply that we protector alters (who tend to be male) didn't suffer as much abuse as some of the others. We were spared in order to remain functional enough to fight if we had to. Therefore, we're strong enough to be broken, if that makes any sense.

It hurts like hell to cry the way I sometimes do, but it's usually a huge relief afterward. Besides, if I had to choose between unpleasant tasks, I'd pick crying over nearly getting my nose broken after biting an abuser. Also, I can do something lots of more fragile alters can't, and in a Jedi-Knight, "I live to serve" kind of way, it does somehow reaffirm my sense of being a man. And when you live in a woman's body, you need all the affirmations you can get.

That, and it's cool I'm not a stereotypical, one-dimensional macho man. If I were, I wouldn't quite feel like a real person, and I don't know how comfortable I'd be asking the lady who drives the bus to make concessions to me. As it is, I'm at least as real and psychologically complex as she is. Maybe more so.

PUSH

Hi. I am a man trapped in a woman's body. If you are male, you probably think that sounds completely awesome, and it would be, only I am seriously, actually, trapped in a woman's body. When I look in the mirror I see this girl. That is a serious blow to a persons' sense of masculinity. Just not enough of a blow to actually extinguish it. If something somewhere could possibly have snuffed out my internal conviction that I'm man, it would actually have been a species of kindness. I would have coped better with the boobs.

Interestingly, we are not trans. In another life, where we weren't already so incredibly different from other people due to having DID and the host of abuse issues that usually come with it, transitioning might have made sense for us, but as it is, it seemed best to leave well enough alone. Not that trans people don't have my full respect and support. I just don't happen to be one.

Part of the reason that I'm not a trans person is that I only timeshare in this body. If you're not sure what that means, dissociative identity disorder used to go by the name of multiple personality disorder, back in the day. Maybe you're now wondering whether DID/MPD is exactly like you've seen in the movies. Yes. Yes, exactly, because everything is just like it is in the movies. That is why cars explode when you shoot them and dogs know how to talk. NO IT IS NOT LIKE MPD IN THE MOVIES. For ****'s sake. (And I'm trying not to swear here. I know there are people with triggers on these boards, and I'm trying not to upset anyone. I'm a protector alter, after all. More on that later.)

So yes, dissociative identity disorder. No, not like in the movies. The personality system I live in is in good shape these days, so there's a lot of co-consciousness. That is, our waking personality ("the lady who drives the bus" to me) knows what the rest of us are up to, and she lets us know what's going on outside. That said, none of the alters (alternate personalities) are gone. We're not dead, we're not absorbed, we're not "cured." I don't think the kind of DID we have is curable, frankly. Bad things happened to us. Bad, very bad things. It's not like Dad was Ted Bundy. It wasn't that bad. In our case, Dad's best friend was Ted Bundy. (No, not literally.)

That's why I exist. I was the kid who wasn't scared to bite and scratch and kick at the sadists and the perverts, because somebody had to do it. I won't sit here and claim that I was able to do this because I was so incredibly brave. I only timeshare in this body, remember. We have another alter who takes care of the business of being tortured--which is what would happen if I bit and scratched and kicked. She, incidentally, is the hero of the non-movie we're starring in. Our torture-survival specialist is goddamn Rambo. She went through the equivalent of Navy SEAL training while we were in grade school, and it did not break her. She's not a terribly "functional" alter, no. She doesn't chat or have an outside job or strongarm the lady who drives the bus into giving her a blog. All she does is lie there, and still feel the pain, and continue to breathe. And that's far from nothing. If you've ever given birth to a child, imagine going through active labor for thirtysomething years. That's what this lady puts up with, and she's never once complained. She self-identifies as female, but she still wins the Giant Balls Contest for People Who Live in This Body. Not that any of us technically have balls at all. Dammit.

Among the many reasons why I wanted to have a blog is because I wanted to show other people with DID that not all male alters are bastards. It's different for people who live in male bodies, I'm sure, but most of us are biologically female. Also, the majority of us were abused by men, and that really colors a person's view of masculinity. (I'll write some other post about that later.) I've been looking over...

[ Continued ]