Sorting it Out

One of my biggest dreams is to someday be a published writer. I have a couple of adolescent novels in the works. Parts of them are down on paper and parts of them are still trapped inside my head. The main reason the stories stay trapped is because the story of me keeps them there. I feel that if I don’t write my story – the one of all my parts – the fiction will stay inside. What keeps me from writing my story? A lot of things keep me silent.


I struggle with where to start my story because it begins before my birth. The story begins with decisions made by not only my mother and father but by my grandparents as well. The whole thing is so convoluted. The lives of my grandparents trapped my mother, my sisters, and myself into a web of lies and cult mindset that kept me tightly in place until I was twenty-one years old. Perhaps my life would be better told as a series of short stories because it is so many different lives. Since the story involves so many others, who really owns the story, or more importantly, who is willing to claim it?

Usually, an author is proud to claim their story. Unfortunately, society is not understanding of Dissociative Identity Disorder. I can’t claim my life story. Doing so would probably mean that I would never work in a school again even though I am a good teacher. Society views DID through the lens of Hollywood’s portrayals. Many people who have DID don’t even know they have it. I didn’t know for sure about my DID until I was 45 years old. I had suspected for several years, but until my alters felt safe enough to start communicating with me, even I was unaware. In hindsight, people in my trusted circle have said that some of my behaviors now make sense. The role of the system is to make the person with DID appear normal. If the system works well, even the subject can be kept in the dark. Hollywood’s portrayal of DID is often unfairly negative.

As you can see, my story will have to remain anonymous if I plan to live a relatively normal life. Do I put my story out there and risk being exposed as a multiple, or do I keep my story in my head and never write anything else either? If I put my story in a blog, I can publish it anonymously without fear of society judging me. Maybe someday you will read an adolescent novel and you will wonder – is it hers?