Who Am We?

Ha! I crack myself up. It just occurred to me as I logged out of one of my computer profiles and into another to write this that if I suddenly croaked, someone managed to defeat my password barriers and went through my computer they would be left with more way more questions than answers. 

My computer knows the map to all my secrets, well my computer, my iPhone and any secret government agencies that may be spying on me. I have different real life friends, music playlists and computer profiles based on ‘who’ I am on a given day or hour and never the twain shall meet. It almost feels like it’s some kind of really mild form of dissociative identity disorder without the history of known abuse or the severe dissociation. 

I know I shouldn’t compare myself to someone with DID like this really and I worry it comes across as ignorant, I have not suffered major childhood trauma, I only rarely lose time and my dissociations are mild not black outs. It just feels like sometimes it’s the most accurate description for the way I am, at one point years ago I even started naming my ‘selves’ to help me deal.

I have always had my personality described as eclectic by others and in private I have set up named Facebook pages, blogs and Twitter accounts for each of the far corners of my personality and each corner seems to have its own attitudes, taste in art, music, strengths, weaknesses, manners of speech and film preferences. Yet they are all just parts of me, whoever it is that I actually am, and I mostly do have control over them.

If all my friends from all walks of life came to my funeral it would be hilarious to see how different they are and imagine the different stories they would tell, something almost worth faking my own death for just to see!

Like living in a kind of fantasy world I do indulge the different parts of myself in different ways. I don’t do it deliberately but it’s as though those parts of my personality that I require for a situation will usually just ‘click’ into place when I need them. 

I can be swearing loudly in a parking lot with one person bitching about meds and how long it takes to get through to the unemployment line in the morning and then I suddenly find myself in the presence of someone from one of my other worlds and switch to the Queens English while discussing the finer points of the education system and which diamond would look better with that dress over an expresso, coming off as a highly educated stepford-wife type without a care in the world. 

Common across all my selves is the mania and depression of my bipolar but it manifests differently across all my personalities, some are prone to isolation and hiding in bed when depressed, with productive hypomania focused on organisation and bettering of self, some of me is more prone to gambling, spending, sexual innuendo, drugs, psychosis and self-harm. 

There are also parts of me with different tastes in foods and movies, I have always had trouble understanding how I can sometimes enjoy mushrooms and Jim Carey movies and other times I utterly despise both. 

There seem to be six more distinct variants of my personality:

There is the me that looks 32 but is basically an approximately 65yr old semi-retired women with a positive outlook on all aspects of life, she suits the name Linda and has a love of gardening and cats. She is the part of me that attends garden club each month, bakes cakes to share, speaks knowingly about growing watermelons and kiwi fruit in this climate, she dresses smart/casual, never swears and writes the clubs articles for the local paper in what can only be described as an English accent. 

Depression causes her not to attend garden club and make up socially acceptable excuses as to the reason, when hypomanic incessantly chatters, takes and shows hundreds of photographs and finally updates the blog & Facebook page she created for them during a past mania. 

“Bel” Bel is always the victim. Chronically depressed and self-loathing, she is basically incapable of looking positively at anything she does. She is bitter and resentful towards people from her past that bullied her, she flies into psychotic rages at herself and can’t accept her imperfections. She is the only part of me that likes horror movies, I haven’t dealt with full on Bel for quite a while, she is the nagging voice of my eating disorder when it’s at its worst, a big part of my deepest depressions and my most dangerous mixed manias. 

She only leaves the house in perfect make-up and fancy clothes, she is the self-harmer, a firm believer in punishment for wrongdoings she despises her reflection and even when she hasn’t completely taken over my thoughts, she tends to hang around subconsciously hissing negative commentary in my ear telling me how useless I am and that I need to kill myself continuously. 

I was in an angry “Bel” phase once during an interview by a shrink when I was in the hospital and he said my diagnosis was clearly wrong and I had Borderline Personality Disorder. The shrink the next day when I was no longer “Bel” had no idea what he was talking about and said it was definitely Bipolar... 

Although I have never described myself as a ‘voice hearer’ Curiously, anti-psychotics seemed to get rid of and keep Bel away. I have been off the meds since December and some days I feel her on my shoulder, breathing in my ear, just reminding me that she could come back at any time.

‘Shyla’ is both very similar to and the total opposite of Bel, like a weak angel to the devil. She is big part of my eating disorder and mixed manias, gets confused and paranoid, hallucinates and experiences delusions and is fearful and very anxious and prone to panic attacks. 

She is naïve, forgetful, lonely and is terrified of most of the things that Bel stands for, Bel tends to communicate through her. She is childlike and very impulsive and often actively suicidal and has a lot of trouble regulating racing intrusive thoughts as they quickly overwhelm her. She has been the present force during all of my suicide attempts. 

A big part of me is still Katie, she hasn’t changed much from that 14yr old girl from high school, she is the insecure one, the people pleaser. An animal lover whose heart will always work in a pet store, she eats very little meat except chicken. She can sell things she believes in but hates to pressure people. She can’t make decisions to save herself, tends to forget to wear make-up, always has her hair in a ponytail and dresses mostly in jeans and black tops. 

She is chronically guilty, cares deeply what people think of her and wants to help everyone. She is usually around when I’m depressed, it’s a state in which she feels familiar, her eating disorder is a big issue, she sometimes starves herself for months then binge eats and then hates herself for it, she has to force herself to suffer through her hour of daily exercise.

Her depression is passively suicidal in nature, although she does make plans she doesn’t act them out. She leaves the house untidy, garden neglected and emails and phone calls unanswered. She doesn’t drink or do drugs but curses her manias because she talks too much and regrets it straight after and has a problem with excessive gambling. 

She is prone to paranoia and also spends a lot of money she doesn’t have when manic, often on good causes though, for example she feels sorry for people and buys them things even though she can’t afford it, usually dropping $50 notes to homeless people or charities, she talks too quickly and often has to repeat herself. She is known to accidently joins organisations and makes promises to people that she intends to but often can’t keep. She also unintentionally lies a lot to cover up her gambling/spending.

Kate. Now Kate is a manic part of my personality. She seems stuck in the 20’s I never really had. Generally overconfident, learns easily, works hard and can sell ANYTHING to ANYONE, although at times she has the attention span of a flea. She loves to wear make-up, pretty clothes and accessorise no matter where she is going. She is the life of the party, loves to run and bushwalk, drives way too fast, sometimes to random places often hours from home spontaneously and just for the hell of it. 

She peruses car yards and chats to the salesperson about sports cars she fully intends to find a way of buying very soon, spends a fortune on un needed clothing and homewares and has AMAZING money making ideas that she is certain WILL revolutionise the world as we know it, but she tends to get distracted and so somehow they never do. 

She flirts with strangers, has a tendency towards promiscuity, builds websites, runs on very little sleep, caffeine and green smoothies, enjoys designing floor plans for outrageous houses and likes to drink. She does nothing by halves and desperately wants a tattoo and to dye her hair bright colours, but other parts of me keep stopping her. 

She is quite content to eat red meat and doesn’t tend to feel the guilt associated with the eating disorder, it’s more of an awareness that “I’ll regret this later”. She smokes pot to help her sleep at night, but oddly she has absolutely no interest in gambling whatsoever.

Kate also gets angry and irritable, but while quick to fly off the handle she doesn’t bare grudges and can be singing one minute, yelling the next and then dancing again moments later. She has trouble sitting still long enough to watch a movie and gets up and down constantly.

The personality I like the most I fondly call “Suzi” she is my most honest and adult self, she is a writer, a truth teller, a freedom fighter. She is more level headed and self-aware than the rest of me, with the ability to step back from things and evaluate them. She has the best memory and can relate to everyone except Bel. She is the one who appears at the right moment to take over when I’m secretly sinking, she listens on the phone to struggling friends and gives sound advice.

Cooks dinner and helps with homework, she is fairly self-confident and dresses appropriately for the social situation, likes to help others but only to her ability and is calm in a crisis. She has no hang ups about having a mental illness and will calmly discuss it with anyone who asks. Nothing shocks her. Experiences depression more mildly, avoids social situations and listens to sad music. Hypomania makes her a bit more careless with money at the supermarket, talk loudly and write excessively (*ahem, this post might be an example*).

So in the place where I decided to use my actual birth name of “Kate”, its more “Suzi” who does most of the actual writing, she views and merges all my personalities into one confused brain space and tells my stories. I don’t share them with many people that I know in my ‘real’ life and nobody from the real world knows my blog. I skate on the edge of anonymity somehow getting off on the thrill of knowing that if someone googled the right words I could most likely have my cover blown.

This blog is like my half way house, challenging myself to be open about my struggles before I finally take steps to publish my memoir that has been sitting on a dusty shelf deep within my computers filing system. Once that comes out, the branches of my life will be forced to rub together and I guess deep down I fear they will catch fire.

Something that helps me manage all my parts at home is that my husband sees all of me except perhaps Bel, Bel only becomes visible to others when I'm verging on psychosis.

My different ways of acting around different people irritated the living shit out of him when we first met but while he isn’t aware that I have named my separate selves, he now simply accepts my quirks. He always just calls me “hun” which is nicely all encompassing, in fact on the rare occasion he actually does calls me “Kate” it sounds downright weird and it feels like he is talking to someone else! I do confuse the kids though, they never seem sure if I will react as Jekyll or Hyde.

So, I don’t know if other people experience this separated self without being DID too, another extremely weird symptom is that 'Katie' needs reading glasses but 'Kate' and 'Suzi' don’t. 

WTF? How is that even physically possible? 

I haven’t dared ask my psychiatrist about my many ‘me’s’ for fear of what she might say. She keeps prompting me to discuss early childhood as though she still thinks I’m denying I was abused, but I really wasn’t and mentioning this weird way that I think might fuel that further.

So this was supposed to be a short post but now I realise that I have somehow accidentally written over 2100 words (serious points if you’ve made it all the way through!) I guess for now, I just am who we are and that’s that.

Please comment if you experience this yourself or have some thoughts on it though, I’m very interested to know!