My mother is 12 people
My oldest kid wrote this five years ago for the college application essay. It didn’t work for a college essay. But I was so glad to read it. If you haven’t read my first post on multiple personality disorder, you can read it here. I will answer any questions you have on this topic on Monday, Nov. 24 at 5pm Eastern. Zoom link forthcoming.
On my sixteenth birthday, my mother told me she has dissociative identity disorder. It means that she has multiple identities – alters – that’s what people with DID call them. She’s had it my whole life. DID only occurs when a person experiences such terrible trauma as a child that they create another person in order to hide from what is happening to them.
As a child, my mother was sexually abused by her parents. Now my mother has 12 alters. Or is 12 alters. It’s still so confusing.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve known my mom stays up at night. She doesn’t want to have nightmares. Now I know that staying up suppresses one of the alters. A young boy. Jeffrey. He is the one who remembers all the abuse. But Mom can’t stay awake forever. She falls asleep in the middle of the day. Sometimes, she whimpers or cries out in her sleep, and when I heard that I used to wake her up to help. But now I know that is Jeffrey crying, and waking Mom up is pushing Jeffrey down.
My mother can’t just switch who she is on a whim. Her alters can’t talk to each other in her head, silently. Whoever she is needs to talk out loud to get another altar’s attention. My mom is embarrassed to talk to an alter in front of me, so sometimes she leaves the room and comes back a few minutes later, and I can tell she changed who she is because she’s in a better mood.
I don’t remember who first told me how this works. I think her name was Jennifer. She said that each alter did certain things. I asked if she could show me a switch. Robin is the one who does most of the parenting, and acts as the doting, loving mother. I asked if I could speak to Robin.
Jennifer closed her eyes, and asked softly if Robin could come out. A few seconds later, I was talking to a bubbly, sweet mother who wanted nothing more than for me to feel loved and secure.
It was shocking. I asked if I should call her Mom. She replied “You can call me whatever you’d like”.
I spent the rest of the day trying to process what had happened. My reality was shattered, but once I started to put it back together, everything made so much sense. The nightmares. The mood swings. The insane forgiveness of her abusive parents.
I don’t generally think of my mother as 12 different people. They’re really all the same person, just split into pieces. Our interactions are rarely different than before I knew about DID.
Sometimes when Mom is extremely sad, or says she can’t keep going, I say softly, “Mom, do you need to switch?” She stops, and thinks. And if she goes away she can always make the situation better by bringing out the right alter for the situation. I envy that a little — being able to hand off a task to someone better suited for it.
One day, after she was done talking to her mother over the phone, I asked how she could possibly forgive her for what had happened.
My mom said it was pointless to hold grudges, and people need to forgive family in order to be happy.
I asked her if Jeffery forgave her mother.
She didn’t know.
I asked the alter I was talking to if she was in a position to forgive her mother when Jeffery was the one saddled with the horrible memories of abuse.
The alter wasn’t sure.
I don’t know what they decided. I love them. All of the alters. They’re all my mom. I know one, a teenage boy named Johnny, who doesn’t want to be a parent. He fought back when my grandmother hit them. People with DID call these types of alters Protectors. He hates that he had to do those things. He is tired, and doesn’t deal with me or my brother because he can’t handle also being a parent.
I wrote a letter to Johnny and Jeffery a few days after I learned about DID. I said that even if they aren’t interested in parenting me, by protecting the others, they had helped me too. I told them that I understood if they couldn’t care for me, and that I loved them anyway.
Now it’s connecting with me that you’ve known this for a long time, but are now coming out about it. What do you hope will happen with all of us knowing it now?
I don’t see myself very well when I hide. I don’t know if this is true for everyone or just me. Also, I learn the most about myself when I’m trying to make sense of my world in my writing, and then people respond with what makes sense to them, from their world. I like doing that together.
I had to wait so long to publish this because I needed to know that an onslaught of naysayers would’t be emotionally crushing
Really hoping I can make this Zoom meeting to better understand the people in my life with DID. What a great essay! I’m assuming you helped edit, because it sounds so similar to your voice. Or maybe your son is just that much like you.
I hope you can make it to the Zoom meeting too!
What a brilliant and generous share! Though I wish to brush my teeth, OtherMe does not. We fight it out all day. Not sure if that qualifies. But splintering on abuse, definitely (link at end). I empathised much with Sally Field, and her purple crayon, in Sybil. Maybe the more lights we put on this, the brighter it gets. With gratitude to you both, P. https://buymeacoffee.com/paulhassing/haz-bean
Regarding the unsuccessful college essay part, I have read that university admissions people are not in the same ball park as the professors: as if they were NCOs, not officers.
As a student, I once conversed with a business faculty advisor who demonstrated a lack of curiosity, and lack of knowledge, about the business courses which staggered me: I ended up back at my department head muttering about “sack of hammers.”
My guess is that the people judging the essay were expecting a school-child essay model, complete with thesis opening sentence, because, being NCOs, they did not care to read published essays in the real world. (Such as yours)
This kid deserves everything.
Thank you for saying that; I think so, too :)