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.

The things I find it prudent to remind myself of is that it’s not always necessary or important to actually place yourself in an era because you might not need to learn anything from it, it is actually possible to have a happy and well adjusted life who has no issues. I like to think of them as ‘true vacation lives’ or ‘yay, I win!’, and other times it’s also important to note that while you might remember something one way, another person might not, and that does not make either of you incorrect. Everyone remembers things differently from day to day, why? because that’s a part of life, each of us has a different take on things, perhaps because we have different information or because we don’t want to remember exactly what went on, or we weren’t properly paying attention. These things happen. Ask any police officer who has interviewed several different witnesses about a crime scene (which I have, because I know one) and wow, the different stories you’ll get about something that happened…sometimes witnesses won’t even agree on the race or gender of an assailant, that’s got to be fun; and, that’s something which is going on in the HERE AND NOW, imagine you’re talking another life time where things are hazy recollections across time and space to begin with, and you’re expecting to see things exactly the same? I’ve got news for you. You’re NOT going to. Stop trying.

In many ways it’s better, I believe, if memories do not agree, it feels to me that then there is a more accurate interpretation of the era and life going on, rather than something someone is reading off parrot-fed. Especially when you’re dealing with otherkin, because with otherkin lives it’s a lot harder to draw upon a memory and back it up by going to a historical archive somewhere. If you reincarnate to Vietnam as a soldier, there’s a good chance you can give a name, a rank, a serial number and have it found, and then look at what you feel happened to you and look at what the historical archives say happened to you and validate your memories. That is a lot harder with otherkin, because there is no archival information beyond legend, or in some cases perhaps a book or series that you might feel the author channeled from the same life time you’re tuning into, but chances are in those cases, what you remember and what the author wrote so that he/she could gain commercial acclaim and financial success NOT similar in the slightest.

Anyway, moving on towards soul mates, if you’re still with me by this point, go you, or I’m sorry, whichever you prefer.

Soul mates are a different kettle of fish, because that involves a slightly different situation. When I speak of soul mates here, I don’t speak of a group of people varying roles all and around. I speak of the more commonly conceived notion of two people who are destined to pair off romantically because they have done it over and over and over and over ad naueseum.

Why ‘ad nauseum’? This goes into the realm of my personal opinion, so it might antagonize a few people, but bear with me, okay? I can see the benefit to soul mates, but just barely, and granted this is highly subjective because I know it’s colored by own very personal and very negative experience with squishing yourself into the ’soul mate’ category to your own detriment, why? Because I did.

If you believe you’ve met your soul mate and it’s working for you. Good for you. So long as you’re not limiting and squashing yourself because of it.

To me, reincarnating is about having a variety of experiences, and I do not believe you can appropriately have a variety of experiences and learn to your full potential if you constantly do the same thing. On a much smaller scale, it would be like wanting to learn about all the foods in the world but only going to “Burger King” to eat, and maybe once in a while branching out and going to “MacDonalds”. If you want to learn about all the foods in the world, you’re going to have to travel, because even if you go to all the different restaurants in the United States, you’re still only getting a very narrow perspective. That’s the way I see the over publicized ideal of soul mates.

Now, do I have a soul mate? I do believe I have incarnated with my spouse before. I do believe I have known several friends before, but have I always hooked up with the same soul? No. I’ve had series of time, stretches of life times even, where I have hooked up with the same soul, but there are other life times where that soul might be my sibling, my co-worker, my mother, my son. Variance of experience.

I was with someone for quite some time, and we believed ourselves to be soul mates. I think sometimes that the soul mate thing, for many, is a fanciful phase we go through while we’re still young and romantic and first uncovering the possibility of reincarnation. This is not to say that if someone tells me they’ve met their soul mate I’m going to tell them that they’re wrong. If they believe that, it’s great, I’m more inclined to think they may have met the soul mate of theirs they elected for this life time as their partner, and in another life time they might hook up with a different person from their ka-tet, depending on what they need to learn.

My point, as rambling as it is, is that while we may have life times where we get to sit around and just relax after assessing our various experiences and sort of process everything we’ve learned and been through is that while it is nice to mesh with people and have a connection that shouldn’t be the be all and end all of your reason for reincarnating. Learn to live on your own terms first, learn to be yourself, expand as much as you can, experience as much as you can. Try to be complete on your own rather than focusing all your attention on either fixing or completing someone else, and as you learn and find connections don’t discount those connections or try to force your memories on others, revel in the differences, because those are what make us special. I’m not saying that we’re all special and unique snowflakes, but we are all different, and it’s those differences which make us.

I have $100 outstanding on my bill. They want me to pay off $50 before I can book an appointment. Then at the appointment I have to pay the $70 plus $25 off the remainder of the balance. Well, unfortunately for me we can’t do that. I’ve been paying the bill off at $15 a month and that’s been pushing it. I figured I might be able to swing the $70 fee for the appointment then and there, but apparently that’s not good enough for the office manager. They don’t want me to get in over my head. Well, gee, that would be nice…IF they’d thought of that before they let me book two appointments after my insurance had run out that I had to pay out of pocket for.

I’m so annoyed. Especially because my therapist had said that she would still see me despite the outstanding bill. I’m not wanting to schedule appointments EVERY week and rack up $280 a month worth of bills. I just want one or two appointments at the most; but no, not unless I admit myself to the hospital.

I really dislike our insurance. I think I’m also frustrated because I thought that the parity bill being passed would mean that this was over, but the parity legislation doesn’t activate until NEXT year.

In the mean time I’m waiting to hear on the disability appeal, and to see if we can get food stamps; and I feel like we’re just going around and around in circles.

For a long time I felt that around Halloween of 1998 I was possessed and didn’t overcome that possession until around January or February of 1999 with the help of my room mate, who later became my girlfriend, who is now “fondly” referred to as my psycho ex.

Now, I’m honestly not sure what to think about the possession. I’ve done a lot of spiritual work and so it wouldn’t be unheard of for it to have happened. However when I did work with entity attachment and release, rather than being taken to the time I thought I was taken to January of 2001 and found that my grandfather had attached to me to protect me from a spirit fragment of my “psycho ex”.

Perhaps I did get possessed, perhaps there was some kind of disassociation caused by something going on, where I had a stress-fracture and then it healed itself, after a fashion.

Hopefully when I’m able to go back with my therapist we’ll finally be able to get things sorted out. We were getting ready to look at these things when my insurance ran out…

I’m interested to see the second episode, which was on last night but I have taped.

I’ve heard that Showtime is making a show called “The United States of Tara” which is supposed to be about a woman living with multiplicity in the current times. I’ve heard many multiples decrying the show because they fear it will make light of the issues going on with multiples and how there are horrible traumatic reasonings behind the disorder so it shouldn’t be made light of.

I’m also eager to check out “My Own Worst Enemy” with Christian Slater, because while it’s non-standard multiplicity from what I’m hearing about it it’s going to cover many things that multiples go through when discovering their condition, so it’ll be interesting for sure.

However I, for one, don’t mind them depicting multiplicity with a modicum of humor. It’s generally how I get by. I make fun of myself quite often, because if you can’t joke about things I feel you’re in a bad way. Yes, there were some very traumatic things which happened to me over the years, but if it wasn’t for humor I don’t think I would get by. There are still times that I need to think about things and I do dwell on the bad things, and thankfully I have my friends or family to help me get by, given I don’t have access to my therapist at the minute, but at the same time I think that a television show would be able to do the same sort of thing. Other shows I’ve seen on Showtime balance the serious with the comedic the same way that real life is done, and I think if the shows are done well they might really help to alleviate some of the negative stereotypes that are considered for multiplicity that have been perpetrated longer by shows such as CSI where the multiple had actually made it all up figuring she would be able to get away with killing her parents then.

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.

Logically I know that I am functional to a degree, but perhaps it’s just a mark of the brain drain that certain people in my life put me through I don’t feel functional because I don’t have a job, because I’m not bringing in money, because we’re living paycheck to paycheck. I feel like this is my fault, because any job that I might possibly be able to get in this ridiculous excuse for an economy would not make it worth putting our son into daycare.

I look at the fact that our house isn’t spotless, and each out of place toy and speck of dirt becomes a badge of shame. I find it hard to focus on the fact that my son (while in that testing/NO/I HATE EVERYTHING two year old phase) is smart, is learning so much every day and is happy. I can’t see that the fact that he’s loving and will share affection, and babble on about his day is a good thing. I find that I’m hung up on the fact that he’s not potty trained yet, that he’s constantly back talking and re-doing bad things because he wants to see that consistency.

I get so pissed off because I remember what happened and there’s nothing I can do and nothing anyone else could do about it. I fear that my fluxing is going to screw up my son forever. I fear that I would be better off in an asylum somewhere away from society.

Family and friends say they don’t understand how I do it, and I think do what? All I did was get up this morning, give my son breakfast and take him to the park. You guys are holding down jobs.

I’m sure I’ll be back feeling more logical later, but today’s one of those bad days where I just see suckiness and doom.

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.