A bigger obstacle than psychiatric ward staff to the treatment of a D.I.D patient is that of a psychiatric doctor. Why? Because there is still a divide between the people who believe/assert/think/etc that D.I.D exists and people who think it’s humbug and that we’re all faking it. The person supposed to treat you may not even believe you are telling the truth!

So you may now understand my relatively high level of anxiety and paranoia when entering a doctor’s office. Either I’ll be respected and treated as an equal, or I’ll be patronized and treated as though I’m just a vivid actress faking a bunch of crazy $#%^. Third option is that the doc wants to believe me, but actually has no ######6 clue about what Dissociative Disorders are, and, evidently, has no clue how to treat me.

My experience yesterday was something like this: if you put the three options within equal distances of each other and drew lines to find the smack middle, my doc would have been sitting on top of the bulge of the three coalescing lines. She had quite a carefree outlook, vivid vocabulary, mild hand gestures. Naturally she wanted to hear everything explained, again, in detail. Fortunately my care worker was with me.

I stared at my thighs, and at my Adventure Time leggings, as the doc said in a chirpy voice: ”You’re not exactly normal, are you? You’re like a splash of color.” I giggled at this – my leggings and my unicorn hoodie were both so colorful I reckon the eyes of passersby would sting. ”No, I wouldn’t say I’m exactly normal.”

The doc decided I’ll stay till Friday, then try being home for the weekend and then come back for the beginning of the week, during which we’d have my second treatment plan meeting. My Abilify will also go up from 7.5mg to 10mg (bring on the muscle spasms!) and my Mirtazapine might go all the way up to 30mg (it’s 7.5mg now – whoa).

I have been given permission to take outings during the day. Physical exercise is very important for me in order to keep dissociation at bay, so I went to the gym today, as well as a walk. It is the time of year I wish I lived somewhere else, somewhere where it didn’t start getting dark after 3pm.

So here I am sitting on my hospital bed with my small turquoise HP Chromebook purring in my lap, waiting for my designated nurse to come knock on the door again.

Looking back on my/our times inpatient, I see an array of different experiences. Whilst at first I felt locked up, caged and incapacitated, later on I felt safer and more in agency of myself. My first inpatient experience was in 2010.

I was in psychiatric hospital from April to June 2010. The rooms were cold, with white walls and loud air conditioning. I always fell asleep watching the wall, the shadows portrayed on it by the blinds.
(…)
The worst of all was when the visits went from once a week to none. When my phone was taken away from me. When I wasn’t allowed to see my parents.
(…)
Being caged in a room with no lock, no security, no privacy, without any contact into the world — and no hugs, that was what hospital was like.
I can’t believe I went there by choice.
The hospital rooms I’ve been in still aren’t all that comfortable. The one I’m in right now is a mix-match of blues and purples (with a blue ceiling, of all things!) and the clock on the front wall is loud and crooked.

Here we fall asleep with not just our teddybear but also with our unicorn, bundled up in surprisingly comfortable hospital sheets. Here there is much less need for the sort of musical escapism I did as a teenage patient. Here I am a subject, an agent in my own treatment, and my folks no longer dictate my medical ways. On the contrary, I/we decide how and when and why I am treated.

I was visited by a friend last night, and would most likely be visited by my family and other friends if I were/am to stay longer. My friend gave me the biggest of hugs and played with my hair and kissed my forehead while we lay on my hospital bed talking at ease.

This time round, I have my phone, my laptop, my tablet – all connection to the outer world is intact. We are not trapped or suffocated, though staying within these four walls does get a tad bit boring in the end when I’ve finished all imaginable tasks on my computer.

And I do not regret coming here by choice, or having come here the last few times this past February and the year before. In between we have been treated in an open Daytime Ward, a six-hours-per-day sort of thing, like a part-time job except your job is, well, your own health and wellbeing.

Unfortunately, it is still a struggle for the staff to understand our condition and our way of being. The phrase ”so I hear you have these personalities?” is still a frequent visitor, and if I don’t remind them they’ll forget I’m not L (unfortunately, L is still up in her Limbo Room).

I’m seeing the doc today. Going to determine whether I leave or stay. Wish me luck!

I’m sitting in an ambulance. The blonde-haired paramedic gazes at me in the blue light, asking me if it is alright that the proper lights are off. I suppose something in my face alarms her enough to gasp: “Is it too dark?”. I reassure her with a shake of my head that no, it isn’t too dark.

I feel childlike in my Adventure Time leggings and sweatshirt-tunic. I never noticed the white lines on ambulance windows were full of glitter. One of the littles hops up to front in a gush of joy. Glitter, of all things, glitter! I swallow a glomp of air and push her back in the garden with the rest. L peeks through the slit below the door of the Limbo Room somewhere deep inside.

Emergency Rooms, ambulances and psychiatric ward workers have always looked at us weirdly. The paramedic tap-taps on a Panasonic Toughbook. “Your care worker said you have these personalities?” she says, the question mark imminent in the air around her. Yes, I think to myself before even considering saying it out loud, my head moving in what could be called a nod. “I have Dissociative Identity Disorder,” I say out of habit. I should have used a plural pronoun.

It is the first time being admitted since this past February when my dissociation had me walking into busy roads without looking. This time is different, though. This time it is even more confusing to the paramedics and the psychiatric nurses. The paramedic waits patiently as I try to remember which day of the week it is. L would know. L was here on Wednesday, that’s several days ago – Saturday, I blurt out slowly. What month, what year? Holy fricking shitballs. I find the right answer somewhere in L’s frontal lobe. November, 2015.

The waiting room is full, as per usual. Nosebleeds, broken ankles. Normal problems. The psychiatric nurse sees me after 45 minutes. A young fellow, agitated and somehow a bit amused. I try to tell everything but it is difficult. “Do you remember [this]?” No, no I don’t remember doing that, that was another alter. “Why do you think L is gone for good this time?” I just have the feeling. I tell the guy that I’m the replacement. That I’m the one to take charge in case L is gone for good. His face is full of confusion.

In the waiting room again. The nurse called the doc. A foreigner, for a change. Not that I mind. I like the little lisp in their voice as they utter their sentences. The doc wants to hear the same story. I look at the nurse by the computer, apparently with enough agony on my face to make him state my dilemma instead. I add in a few details and listen to the doctor’s remarks with a tight pull in my stomach each time he sounds less and less convinced. Finally we get to it: suicidality. I explain the monsters that are Dawn and Claudia, the cuts that have been made, the writing in blood in my journal, the knife brought to work with us. This peaks the doctor’s interest. “Oh yes, if that is the case then we should take you in for a few days, as a crisis admission.”

The ward I know well. I’ve been here several times. I wouldn’t call it a second home, but I would call it safe grounds. We hand in our tweezers and nail clippers. Make sure nothing else sharp is left on us. Our psychiatric nurse at the ward is a young lady with a pretty braid in the front of her hair, dangling around as she speaks with a multitude of head gestures. She wants to hear the same story but I tell her I’m too tired. After prying some things out of me she retreats to the nurses’ station. It is only hours after that we get our precious hospital bracelet and BDIs and other forms to fill. What she doesn’t know is I would need ten BDIs, one for everyone. Maybe eight since the littles would just be confuzzled at the idea of a weird form to fill and even weirder questions to answer. I tick in some boxes that make me look severely depressed. Lydia must be close to front.

I unpack Bunny’s teddybear and unicorn and feel her refreshing presence. The little five-year-old treats things with such openness and curi...

[ Continued ]