About my "disability"

Learning to live with a mental disability (to me) seems more difficult because of the stigma and the "invisibility". With a physical disability, it's often rather apparent. With a mental disability, it's often invisible... and rather than people understanding you, they either fear you or accuse you of just being a "bad person".

I was first diagnosed in (I think it was) '94. As with most people with DID, it's difficult to diagnose and I was first diagnosed as having a number of other mental illnesses. It's pretty tricky... depending on which "alter" is in the front at the time of being assesed, a person can seem 100% ok, and then another day they have OCD, then the next they have major depression, then Borderline Personality disorder, and on and on.

I came to the realization that I might have MPD when I met someone else who was and spent some time talking with her. We had a mutual friend, and she introduced us, because she suspected that I had MPD as well. Once I went to a professional who knew what MPD was, it took all of a few minutes for me to receive the glorious label. Actually, once I realized what MPD was, it enabled me to actually make a lot more sense of my behaviors and problems. (Black outs, "forgetting" things, being accused of constantly contradicting myself, varying accents, changes in stature and appearance, vanishing health problems, varying blood types, getting lost, etc.)

I've spent the last 8 years or so attempting to figure out how to live with my "disability". It's not been easy. I spent some time hospitalized. I lost many family members to fear. It's been a bumpy road. It's still a bumpy road.

I don't know if I'll ever be able to "function", but I keep trying to. The stigma alone, however, has held me back quite a bit... and no one wants to be around a contradictory person who loves you one minute, and the next has no clue who you are. It's tough to ask for patience or understanding, or even help. I can't offer guarantees... but yet often I do. I'll seem just fine one minute, and the next I'm a shitting myself mess.

I've spent the last years attempting to seem more consistent... to get my "system" to function as more of a democracy... but still, the second I think things are going fine, everything falls apart. One of us wants school, the other wants drugs. One of us falls in love, the other uses people like most use paper towels. One of us has a disgustingly high IQ, the other can't spell IQ.

There are very few people who can stick around me long enough to be called a source of "support". It takes the patience of a saint and the understanding of a "soul mate". That's a lot to ask for in a person.

As for the genders/sexes of "us"... there are some men, some women, some neither/both/all. Some aren't even human. My democratic default... "I" am an Intersexed, Transsexual guy. We can all get by with that, even if we're not all accurately represented by it.

When I/we first came online, I/we tried to explain to people that the best thing to do would be to keep in mind that there were many of us using the same screen name... and that sometimes "I" meant "we"... but people seem to have trouble relating to me/us that way.

After 3 years or so, it's easier to just let people think "I'm" an asshole or that "I'm" sick. It's all most people will ever be able to understand. "Multiplicity" is just too broad a concept for most people to grasp.


Hope that explains a little... and that it didn't come off as being too bitter.