How I got here

There are entire years of my life erased from my memory, much like an etch a sketch that's been shaken I can only see traces of what life was like for me as a child.

It's natural for people to forget things as they grow up, retaining only memories that has some significance to them. So for me, not remembering where I was or what I had done in my childhood seemed normal. The difference was, though unknown to me at the time, that most people are able to access memories from childhood if they attempt to. A car driving by will remind them of their first driving lesson from their dad. The aroma filling the air as they pass a coffee shop might trigger the memory of an early morning rushing out the door headed toward the bus stop while the air was still cool and heavy. Even seeing a sappy movie may evoke an emotion from a girl remembering her first boyfriend and missing the excitement of a first kiss...and a second kiss...

In my case, my alters decide what I'm able to remember, they are the ones who know everything about me and my past. They decide what information is shared with me, and like I've said before, I don't get a vote. Triggers are controlled by their reaction/response. If I smell, touch, taste, see, or feel something familiar, I won't know what it reminds me of unless one of them has decided it's "safe". More often than not, I quickly recall what that sense is connected to, the memory it is rooted in, but not always.

And while most of you may want to forget painful things, heart ache, a bad day, what your parent's said was going wrong in your life. But those experiences shape the person you're meant to be and provide you with life experience to make you wiser for the next time or at least give you something to talk about with your friends. Count your blessings...I fall into the background losing time, minutes, hours, days...not actually dealing with the trauma or getting the chance to sort through the emotions attached to it in order to process and move forward.

And this isn't always the case, sometimes, the wrong alter will take over and I'll relive the trauma over and over again like a movie stuck on replay.

It's draining, and I've spent plenty of time getting the "truth" out of them between me and those close to me who know of their existence. If nothing else is clear it's that their rules are the ones that matter, not ours. No matter how much I want to remember or for that matter, forget...I'm left at the mercy of my divided mind.

Alot of people have methods of coping that can add to their list of issues. People cut, drink, do drugs, withdraw from social interaction, fall into a deeper depression...but none of them are healthy and none of them will solve the problem, instead it causes more issues with less resolve.

I still do not know what happened to me to make my mind divide, I know it was sexual trauma, but that's as much as I know. Think about that for a moment, you having to run multiple lives and deal with the fall out, the pain, the expense, the people affected by it, and you don't even know what happened to make you "this way".

After whatever happened happened...I was continually abused emotionally, physically, and verbally by my mother. My father, an alcoholic, spent most of his time at work and time off at a bar with total strangers.

I envied my friends who complained about their parent's wanting them home by curfew or to do their homework, while I would go home to yelling, screaming, and being slapped around.

I have been raped and molested throughout my life, as a preteen and a teenager, and those memories I do have, in fact, they're the ones I thought caused my alters existence in the first place as I had no memory of sexual trauma earlier than that...

Mac, spoke candidly with my friend and my therapist (two different people at the same session with me) about what happened that caused them to "protect" me...

She drew a picture of a house...no sore emotions came from her, just a peaceful girl drawing a picture and talking as if she were discussing the weather. To her, that experience was too painful for me to deal with so she kept the memory to herself. Most would cry or hurt describing a situation like that, but for Mac it doesn't feel as if it happened to her. She feels that she is an individual not someone sharing my body, it doesn't hurt her or phase her in any way to discuss it. Millie is the one who experienced the situation, but Mac is the one who kept the memory...so that neither me nor Millie (a 5-6 year old girl) would have to remember it.

During the session after the therapist stopped asking questions about what happened, Mac went on to telling them that she was going to become a rapper and needed to invest in a "grille" so that she could look legit and gain "street cred". Since then she's wanted to become a talk show host, a trucker (because they apparently have access to the best food and the coolest hats, her words not mine), and a knight. She went to a Renaissance festival and believed she'd built a time machine to travel back in time to visit the royals and become a knight. No one had the heart to tell her it was a local attraction and she'd not built a time machine nor would she be a knight of the round table anytime soon.

She's extremely impressionable always changing her mind to do or become something else. Nothing is off limits or an impossible ambition for her to reach.

Must be an amazing feeling to truly believe you can be anything you want at any age, not held down by the feeling of intellectual limitations, physical incapabilities, or be held back by life's every day stresses. The more I hear about her the more I wish I could spend time with her like everyone else does, learn from her, grow with her, be a little dangerous...

Sigh. I need some air, wondering if this post is going to worth reading. Ha.