I often read horror stories about people who haven’t told their family out of fear. They say “you can never UNtell” and things like that, and live in a half-cast existence where they have to hide their multiplicity from everyone around them. I couldn’t live that. I was reading some things on The Ability to Trust and a few other articles on Emily First Girl about relationships with spouses and significant others I thought I would share my own experience.

To be clear I’m not decrying anyone’s decision to tell or not tell. I just wanted to put out there why we told our spouse. I’m still not sure how I will tell my son when he’s old enough to understand; but I imagine because we’re very open in our household and among our close friends, room mate and with my mother about these things that we will also tell and I’m sure there are other multiples out there who have told their families and hopefully have shared their experiences.

To talk about why I told I have to start with when I first started to find out that I wasn’t…normal…which is when I was in college.

When I was with my “psycho” ex our entire relationship was about the various fragments we both had. To this day I honestly don’t know if she was also a multiple, at the time I didn’t know I was. In our relationship we spent a good deal of time channeling our personas from past lives, and while this did help my fragments to find a stronger personality base to live through it, it also meant that our relationship wasn’t very grounded in the real world, and I was afraid for a long time to talk about my experiences and the fact that even though the relationship ended I felt that I was still fluxing from past life aspect to past life aspect.

I rebounded into a relationship with a guy I had dated in high school, because Max thought he was a wonderful and randomly kissed him at a stop light while we were driving somewhere. Unfortunately for us he preferred some of my other aspects to Max, which made things very awkward, especially because we were completely scared about talking to him about our fluxing because I didn’t want the potential for our relationship to turn out like my “psycho” ex’s; but it meant there was a lot of gaps in our relationship which I felt was unfair because while he understood that I had “crazy” days. I was also very skittish and hesitant about talking about a lot of things. So, there were gaps of distrust, and in the end my wounded and scared self ran away from the relationship when he asked me to move in with him, and I hid at my parents house. Those were not the only issues with our relationship but it was a big part of it, the longer I didn’t talk about it the harder it became.

Several years later I discovered that I really did have feelings for the man who would become my spouse. I didn’t want to have the lingering mess that I’d had with my rebound guy, but I also knew that this man was different than both the rebound guy and the psycho ex. He actually had drive and ambition, he had a grounding in faith and also a respect for other peoples beliefs, and to me it was a disservice to both of us if I didn’t explain to him about my faith and things that went on with my head. At that time I still thought that my fluxing and changing was purely due to the past life personas I had who were very strong. So, before we’d been in the relationship three months I took him with me to a get together some friends of similar beliefs and I had so he could see us talk about our past lives and alternate lives, and reading tarot together, and doing regressions and he was fine with that.

Over the next few years we talked at length about anything and everything. I feel very happy that we have a relationship that’s actually grounded in communication, despite what my step-father would say about it, we really do. My step-father would try to lie to one or both of us about other things going on figuring that he would get away with it because he would tell whoever he was talking to that they shouldn’t tell the other of us, but my husband and I would discuss things and then he would come back and say, “You guys don’t talk at ALL do you?” and it was more of a, “No, we DO talk you’re just a lying manipulative jerk.”

Anyway…back to my point. I came to realize especially when I became pregnant in 2005 that I was still very fluxy that it really wasn’t just channeling that there was something else going on. I was terrified that my fluxiness would have a detrimental affect on my unborn son, so I tried to clamp things down and function using just one of my personas. That didn’t work at all. I went from being able to function to being a walking shell. So, I decided I should have a new tactic. I talked at length about these things with my husband, and he agreed that it was better for me to be functional and flip periodically than not functional, and pointed out to me that logically it would be better for our son to have a mother who was functional and whose voice and mannerisms changed every once in a while than for his mother to be a shell of a person.

After our son was born there were some very rough times. It was a very traumatic time for our family, not just because of adjusting to a newborn but because my husband’s job switched him from nights to days, and because my husband’s mother was very sick. There was a lot of stress. Add to that a few months later that we moved from one apartment to another, and that my mother and step-father started divorce proceedings because he was cheating on her, and everything went extremely loopy. I was put on a new medication by my GP and that messed up the system equilibrium further. I started having missing time again, and my husband and I had a long discussion about why that was bad for me, and looked into getting me into therapy. That proved problematic because of insurance issues and time issues, we were trying to move again and my mother was living with us for a time, and then tried to go back with my step-father, who was abusive towards me, and I freaked out, more than a little.

I started realizing that there was a good chance I was actually a multiple. I would look at my notes to myself and how the handwriting changed, and I definitely knew that Max was strong enough that he could count as a separate personality. I had a conversation with one of the mods of an otherkin list, about my missing time and things and she shared some of her stories, she’s very open at being multiple, and some of her stories were so very similar to my own that I started to make peace with the fact that I was likely multiple. Hubbie and I had some more talks about things, there were certain things that I couldn’t do but that Max could, and I asked him if he would be averse to Max taking over certain things, and he said absolutely not he and Max got along very well.

So, this is why he knows, because to a point he already knew. He was along with us on our journey of selves discovery, and has been one of our greatest supporters. When I finally did get into therapy in February and was diagnosed in March it wasn’t so much of a revelation as a confirmation, and I told him as soon as I got home from the appointment that I had been diagnosed, and over the next few days we had several more discussions about things and elected to tell our close friends who are often over gaming with us and things, especially as half of them suspected anyway.

I know that telling isn’t for everyone. It’s taken me a long time to be able to trust people, and there’s still people in my social circle that I don’t trust enough to tell. If I do go back to work I doubt I’ll tell my bosses because that’s just too awkward a thing to do, and opens things up unnecessarily in the professional environment. However for my husband to know was important to me, because I knew that he needed to understand why certain things go on, and also because I don’t want there to be any secrets between us. It’s one thing to remain between one or two alters at a job but it would be a disservice to my husband and also to our recovery process for him to not know what was going on with his wife, as far as I’m concerned. Plus it prevents there from being issues with certain alters and certain acts. One of the big things between a husband and wife is sex. He wouldn’t want to be having sex with one of the littles, or with Jared, who is a male alter who is straight…that would just be awkward for everyone. So, with him knowing about the switching he knows now that if certain people are “out” there are certain things that he’s not going to do to me. He and Jared get along, they’re just not going to do that.

So, that’s why we told. I know it’s not for everyone. If I hadn’t been aware that I switched before I got married, it might be a different story.

I get some interesting comments about my mental situation since our friends have been told about my multiplicity. There’s one friend in particular who seems to think that hubbie is exceedingly lucky being married to ten people. We’ve explained to him that there are a couple of us who don’t consider ourselves married to him. Jared, for example, does not look on hubbie as “Honey” or anything of the sort, and generally hides in the back with the Littles if anything remotely romantic is going on.

Hubbie also points out that there’s one Little he’s sure is going to try and kill him, and thus he takes his life into his hands every morning. It’s not quite that bad from my point of view, Little is a bit unstable, but she doesn’t come out much.

Sure things are never boring, and hubbie says he wouldn’t change it for the world, because he loves me with all my quirks, even if he doesn’t think of Jared that way (and he’s not expected to) but there are many times that I find myself wondering if he wouldn’t be better off with a saner person, just because that’s the way my thoughts run from time to time, especially on days like yesterday where I’m feeling decidedly non-functional.

I remember the other day I was talking about a trip I took to France when I was about ten. We went up the Eiffel Tower, and for some reason on the walk down I was seized by a huge panic attack and couldn’t move for a bit. An American tourist actually volunteered to carry me down stairs, but my friend and I refused. I said, “I’m not sure who had the fear…by that point there were five of us, and my childhood is still kinda hazy and jumbled because of that.”

The friend who had been commenting on hubbie’s good fortune being married to me said, “Wait, hold on. You were…ten?” I said, “Yes.” “And there were FIVE of you already by then?”

My room mate said, “Well, her grandmother is such a GREAT person.”

I said, “Well, two of them came about from some thing which happened with my ‘best friend’ so I *think* only three can be put down to my grandmother…”

I get mad periodically and want to go hunt down my step-father and punish him for things, or plot my grandmother falling down a hole and never coming out, and that causes arguments, because the parts that have those feelings most strongly are tempered by others who will defend the abusers in my life and put all the blame on ourself rather than the perpetrators. It’s a complex situation, to be sure, but on days where I’m feeling less fragmented I try to find the humor in the situation. It’s like I was telling another friend even if I’m driving by myself and get lost I’m not really stuck alone I have people to keep me company ALL the time, just so long as we don’t start talking to each other out loud so I don’t get Baker Acted.

I was so happy to find this out today. I’ve been writing my congressmen several times over the past few weeks, and I was grateful to find out that both the Democratic AND Republican senators for my state were supportive of the parity act, and apparently it was passed as a rider to the bail-out bill! I’m so relieved. Perhaps in the next year this means I’ll actually be able to go to therapy more than 20 times a year!

Speaker Nancy Pelosi released the following statement today on the Mental Health Parity legislation that was approved by the House and signed into law today: “Today, the House acted in a bipartisan way to pass the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act with the aim of addressing the challenges felt by Americans on Main Street. “Among those many challenges is the fact that almost every American family has to grapple with mental illness at some point. “By including the Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act in this essential legislation, we are requiring that illness in the brain be treated just like illness anywhere else in the body for insurance purposes. This is helping to end discrimination against those who seek treatment for mental illness. Simply put, it will save lives. “We owe a great deal of thanks to the champions of this bipartisan legislation, Congressman Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island and Congressman Jim Ramstad of Minnesota. Through their outstanding work, the Congress has given hope and help to the millions of American families dealing with mental illness and addiction.”
SOURCE Office of the Speaker of the House

From Pelosi Statement.

We’ll see how this goes now, but for right now I’m going to write my senators and thank them for their support of this bill.

I’ve been doing this over on my livejournal, and thought I would bring some of the Q&A over here, and if there’s anyone else who wants to ask me questions just ask away in the comments here.

Here’s what I said over there:

Okay, so I know this has to be weirding people out in many ways shapes and forms. I appreciate hearing from those of you who have questions, ask me any questions you want about this, no matter how stupid you think they are.

This is weird for me so it has to be weird for some of you on my F-List as well, and I know from things my Mum has asked me that there are tons of questions, and it takes her a bit to ask them some times.

So, take this as the opportunity ask your questions. I will answer, or one of us will answer. For example, some of my Mum’s questions.

1. So, um…which one of you is [my daughter]?
Answer: We all are. Most of the time I (Abby) am the one that’s “out” so I guess I’m “default” and so mostly likely to be who you’ve talked to and consider to be [your daughter], but we’re all her.

2. But…there are guys right…how does that work?
Answer: Um…awkwardly?
It’s weird to me too, because for a long time I thought even going with “past lives” that if you were a girl you were always a girl, and for some people that’s true, but in getting to know other multiples there’s often a predominance of the birth-gender but at least one or two of opposing genders, even with guys. There’s one guy on AO who has one female alter (that I’ve met), and the more I get to know the “girls” the more I find there are male alters among them too.
I guess it’s just because it was necessary. We fractured because it was the only way to survive what happened, and for some reason it was needed for their to be guys in here.

Well, not quite, I just couldn’t resist the title.
The last therapy appointment I had, Kiddy went to. I never put her in the list of “active alters” because she wasn’t. She has been out a grand total of once, as far as I can tell, since we found out that we were going to have a baby, and that was…three years ago August.

Strangely enough she seems to be a bit…integral to system functioning as a whole, despite what she thought. I (and this is Abby talking for clarification) wasn’t sure. When we found out we were pregnant it’s safe to say that there was a Mini-Crisis. I mean, aside from the fact that at the time we really didn’t fully know what was going on with us mentally. We just thought we had a real easy time channeling facets and other lives, and we kinda went, okay, if all of these are other lives than everyone who has a hard time with children, doesn’t like children, or is really, really angry it’s probably best if you go back behind your little doors now and don’t bother us again, and Kiddy went, well, hey I hate kids, I can’t deal with kids, and I have a hideous temper so yeah, I’m gone. Or as she put it in therapy, “Well, shit. Bye!”

But apparently she’s actually been around since I was about seven…eight…some thing else that we as a whole didn’t know.

So, this is now the third alter who has been to therapy or who has spoken in therapy, the second being Sarah (one of the Littles) and the first being me, who is mainly Front and therefore goes most of the time by default, because I AM DEFAULT. Woot!

Last night, Kiddy met our son for the first time. She’s seen him before, but he was sleeping and therefore “okay” but it seems like the meeting went pretty well. It happened last night because my husband was home and able to mediate, but things did go well. The only one who had a meltdown was the child, and that was really only a mini-meltdown, and Kiddy dealt with that okay. I think she was actually more scared than anything. She was less sure how to deal with his affection than she was his tantrum, but I think that might be because anger is something she can understand. He peed on his shirt, he was upset that the shirt was taken. He got a new shirt, he was happy. Hugs…that’s something else.

All in all these past few weeks have brought a lot of useful information and insight…and it seems like Kiddy is also becoming or re-becoming part of co-consciousness. She’s also answered a couple of emails in our support group, but this I would say is good, because it’s better to deal with the issues that cause her to have the anger, and let her process things herself than to just keep her buried under the rug (or locked in her “room) as the case may be.

As I was saying in a forum post earlier, short-term is okay…but long-term is better, and what happened when we were in crisis that was definitely a Short Term solution, and that term has run out now.

My therapist told me an interesting analogy about my body the other day that I thought I would share. She said that the body is like a car, and while I’m sure people have heard that analogy before. She said that for multiples it was like the body is the company car and singletons a car that they own.

The singleton takes care of their car, they make sure it gets the oil changes, they fill it with gas, take it for tune-ups, take out the trash, but a multiple it’s like the company car, where everyone borrows it to get to a meeting, but they don’t take out the trash, or fill it up because they figure the next person will get to that, and they figure it doesn’t matter about the oil changes because the company will sort that out.

We were talking about my problems with sticking to exercise and diet. I have these ideas that I’ll get with an exercise program, but then I just flake out, or they never get done because of that one day that so-n-so is out and doesn’t so the next day when some one else is out they’re all, “Well, they didn’t do it, why should I?”

So, here’s my update on disability, and tips and things to watch for.

When you apply there are actually TWO forms that you have to fill out and they have different confirmation numbers.

I had filled out the first one and sent it in and had been wondering why they were just asking me about financial things and not medical things, and figured perhaps that all came in the interview. Then I got a phone call from a nice lady at the disability office (they are SO much more together than Medicaid!) saying that she needed this other part of the form and I told her I wondered why they hadn’t wanted anything medical, and well, they did. Then I spent two days freaking out because apparently someone had thrown out the paper that had the confirmation number on so I couldn’t log back in, and of course, the disability office doesn’t have access to that, but then I found out that the second form, which is called the Adult Disability and Work History Report actually generates it’s own confirmation number and so I could actually fill it out, phew!

That took a while. I had to list all the various times I’ve been to the doctor, been to the hospital, even breathed near a doctor and for how long and when and if I still see them and put in all their contact information, and then also list every job I’ve ever had, and I realize now I forgot one (whoops) but it only lasted a week!, oh, damn it I forgot two…urgh, I forgot the summer I worked at my Mum’s office too. Go me. Anyway….yeah, any job I’ve ever had, not just like a resume where you put your most recent couple…and what the duties were at those jobs and how long I stood, sat, crouched, fetched, carried…that took forever, and some of them I don’t even remember so I kinda had to guess.

They do at least give you a text box where you can kinda plead your case, so I talked about the fact that I can keep up with things to a point but alters don’t always read the notebooks on how to do things, and how some times if I go into little mode I don’t even know how to drive, and that the fibro is aggravated by stress which causes issues, and then I had to print and sign NINE medical release forms, and mail them to the office.

The next day I got a call from the woman at the local office again and she reminded me (because I hadn’t written it down) that she needed copies of my birth certificate and my naturalization paperwork, now this is the tricky part, because they need originals and to make copies themselves, so in my case I had the option where I could mail those in with a return envelope and hope that they got back to me promptly OR take them to her in person and have her make the copies and give them right back, which is the option I went for.

So, now I’m just waiting to see. I had filled out paperwork for both SSI and SSDI because I wasn’t sure which one was which, as it turns out SSI is basically welfare, and we don’t qualify for that because my husband makes quite a bit of money monthly, about a grand over what qualifies you for SSI, but I can potentially get SSDI because I worked and am no longer working.

So, now it’s just wait and see.

My spouse and I have been having a debate for several months now about whether or not I should file for disability. For a while I felt it was a moot point because I was not a U.S. citizen and would therefore be ineligible, given I wasn’t eligible for Medicaid any more once our child was born.

However I got my U.S. citizenship last month thanks to a generous helping hand from my mother who didn’t want to go through the citizenship process by herself. So, my husband once again suggested that I apply for disability. I’m a bit nervous about applying for some reasons which are probably silly, like being afraid that having DID or MPD on paper like that would mean that we’d get a visit from DCF and my son would be taken away, even though my therapist and psychiatrist have both assured me that given our son is in a loving home where he’s taken care of that wouldn’t be an issue.

My therapist told me that she would support my efforts to get disability, but warned me that it would be a long hard road before we saw any light. It’s not as though sending in the application magically gives us extra money. It means that the application is sent for review, and anyone applying for disability has a strong chance of being denied, and if it’s an application for disability based on mental issues there’s a much greater chance of being denied.

I started the application today, and it’s so confusing. I’m not sure how far in to the application I am at the moment, but it’s asking about self employment income and net self employment income and I had to save it because I’m not sure what’s it’s asking for exactly, so if I can’t find out from one of my friends what they mean I’ll see if my husband has any idea.

They want to know if my net income from self employment was over $400 last year but I’m not sure what they mean by net. The income reported for self employment on taxes was -1600 dollars, I made $200 and something from tarot, but about $1200 from paid blogging. So I’m not sure if they would consider that to be over $400 because I technically made $1500 (or thereabouts) but with all the expenses there was no profit.

I seriously think it’s worse than taxes.

I’m still not really sure what to call her. She gets called Little or Chibi or Crazy Girl, none of which are really good. Little and Chibi mean the same thing, just the second one is in Japanese, and Crazy Girl, well, who would want to be known as Crazy Girl? My husband and I do joke about “Crazy, Bitch” being my theme song, and he uses “Psycho by Puddle of Mudd” as my ring tone on his phone some times. However it’s in good fun and I know that he doesn’t mean it, I wonder if Little would know though? You know?

But the point is that she was out again, twice within a week, is unheard of. She wrote several pages worth of ramble in my journal and also drew a picture in there. I’m not sure what to make of it all really. It’s good that we have proof. It’s good that she mentions in there that she trusts and likes my husband, but it’s also unnerving to see the rambling, well, craziness, that’s in there. It makes me more than a little nervous.

I’m assured that a lot of her language is fairly common. I have a wonderful group of systems I can interact with on the yahoo list “Amongst_Ourselves” and apparently her way of writing and speaking is fairly common among systems, but I’ve never experienced it before, for the longest time I thought I was just an anomaly without a little, even though I knew of “Crazy Girl” I really didn’t connect her with being a little, despite the fact that I would carry around a plush toy and a blanket when she was around and talk in jumble sentences and sing songs about buttons. Not a little at all, right?

Ah, well, there’ll be fuel for therapy on Thursday if nothing else.

There are so many times I wonder why my husband stayed with me, agreed to marry me even though we really didn’t know what was going on with our mental health, put up with the times we would be doing something and I would just suddenly stop speaking and curl up on the bed and not say anything for hours at a time, deal with me yelling at him, randomly calling him and telling him to get lost, and all the rest of it.

We never really had a hospitalization style break down, but still I think this The Significant Other’s Guide to Dissociative Identity Disorder could be useful to him, and to other significant others of survivors; because that is what we are. We survived. We did it in a weird way, but we did it.

There are times I still feel like I shouldn’t be hear, but then sometimes I’m not, LOL. We’re getting used in our house to the fact that there are things which aren’t remembered, and I no longer, or at least I’m getting better at not freaking out about it. I write notes about everything and everyone else is pretty well trained to write notes too, so that things will get remembered, and we’re training ourselves to write therapy appointments on the calendar as SOON as we get home so we don’t show up early or late for them again.

Hubbie helps when he can. He leaves me notes if I do something strange and out of the ordinary and he’ll make sure that certain alters who are prone to not taking meds take meds, because even though there’s eight (or nine, or twelve) of me we’re still a partnership and that’s what you do.