Ugh -trigger warning inside-

- trigger warning - contains labels, ANP talk, book talk, maybe some memories-


Okay, I'm halfway done with my first book (the sourcebook one and yes I read very fast!), and I was struck again with the feeling of not being the host (for those that hadn't read it, this goes back to my thread 'Real?'.). Obviously, I'm the host now for whatever reason and had been for a few years.
This book has me thinking...I went and tried to make a 'timeline.' I can remember some things from childhood, but (as expected too) a lot is generally gone. I don't remember big trips, like Disney for example, that my mom has told me I'd gone to. I remember some things, but as if another person experienced them, and the memories are little more than fragments (like a snapshot instead of an emotion, a smell, a feel...I hope that makes sense.). This also goes for the birth of my daughter; I don't remember holding her for the first time or the first day after she was born...and that saddens more than me.

Anyway, back on track; I also have never liked the name Susan. It just never felt....right. I also seem to know when things went downhill for us. Back when I was eighteen and we voluntarily lost our virginity; we went more than a little nuts. That was when a very sexual, and very confused side came out, and I'm starting to wonder if the real Susan decided to disappear. I know we wanted to disappear; it was one of our bad suicide moments, but I know I didn want to die just then.

Could this be possible? I know it was an extremely traumatic experience and the two years to follow were exceptionally terrible (infidelity, intense attachment, confusion that went beyond normal, alcohol abuse, rape -dissociative rape, not forced...just not wanted either.). It was also when I joined the Navy, which made things much worse since bootcamp mimicked bad home life....I barely remember bootcamp at all.

Don't worry, I know I ask some pretty odd questions, but I don't believe everything that runs through my mind. Heck, it could even be Bad giving me these thoughts because he doesn't like reading the book (made that pretty clear earlier). But, who knows, it might help someone who does believe Dow. The line....and maybe it is true with me.

How this has to do with labels and ANP: would I, as Susan2, be an ANP who would be a protector type? Would the real Susan, stuck at eighteen I would think, be another ANP? I do have moments where I see a 'twin' in my mind; she smiles sadly a lot, that's all. I've mentioned her in other threads, which seems to have started the thought process of me being an alter myself.

I know, in a sense that we are all alters, to a degree.

Okay I'll stop my thought rambling here lol, and continue reading. Already I have some neat ideas to help talk to other alters and on keeping journals.

PS, Tylas...er...I was going to thank you for something specific, but my mind sort of whisked it away at the last second....so thank you! Whatever it was helped, lol, but apparently someone isnt ready to fully thank you yet.

We have had the same issue in regards to sex. It is insanely intense how the backlash seems to pound at the brain. I don't really have any answers for you, but I do want you to know that I hear you and hope the whole alienating feeling that comes with the whole "host" "not host" issue is relieved or eased soon. Maybe I can find some better words of wisdom later on down the road. If so, I'll come find this post again and try to help.
~Banna~

The "What am I?" question was very disturbing for me, for a few weeks. Then I realized it does not matter, because it does not change anything. Whatever I believed about myself, and however that belief has changed in the wake of discovering my DID, the fact remains I am what I am, what I have always been.

I am part of a personality system of someone who has had DID since her infancy. I accept without reservation that, in terms of the concept of structural dissociation, I am an apparently normal part (ANP) and my Alter 1 is an emotional part (EP). I now know that Alter 1 holds memories I lack.

For what it's worth, every one of the DID patient memoirs I have read describes how the host, the one who enters therapy, is just another part, an alter, one among others.

LinaeveWorkman wrote:-PS, Tylas...er...I was going to thank you for something specific, but my mind sort of whisked it away at the last second....so thank you! Whatever it was helped, lol, but apparently someone isnt ready to fully thank you yet.

Probably those book suggestions.

Which book exactly are you reading and YES you do read very, very fast! Its hard to put these kinds of books down when they are filled with so much fascinating information that answers many of our questions, or gives us more to think about and figure stuff out.