#complex multiplicity

Who I was changed regularly, faces coming and going without warning; I was so many, too many, thus I wound up being nobody. Nothing stayed static — I never stayed static — there was no starting point. We were a jumbled, erratic galaxy, a constantly-shifting kaleidoscope of constellations, incapable of being neatly filed into a list.

Not long ago, Lighthouse asked if we knew why we became so fragmented. Sometimes it was because “I can’t do this, I can’t be here,” and sometimes it was “I need to be someone who can,” but most often, our answer is, “Because we weren’t meant to be alone.”

Polyfragmentation isn’t an official diagnostic term. It’s not separate from DID, nor does it need to be; it’s merely a specified presentation of it, and treatment is the same. I’d suggest too, based on personal experience, that this degree of initial splintering has made re-integration and fusion easier.

I can look back over the years and know which Me’s (or which Not-Me’s) were running the show, in the same way I can reflect on the day or observe conversations to know which input was whose, record it, and remember it. I can see our collective timestamp, a living mosaic of glittering multicolored shards.

You cling desperately to what made you You, or you grab hold of what makes them Them. You fade into the fog, into the vacuum, into the smeared oil painting of memory, and back out again.