Integration Issues

There are two theories about what a multiple personality really is. One sees us as a puzzle that got shaken up. Once you put all the pieces back together, tadaaa, you have the original person, one and healthy.
The other is what I prefer (and I'll borrow the picture from Matt Ruff: Set this House in Order, good book by the way, describes the inner worlds very well, even though I don't really like the end). Past events tore the original rose bush to pieces and the fragments got scattered all over the garden. Some fall on a nice fertile, sunny spot and grow well again, others waste away in the shade, on harsh ground and just can't do much more than cling to sheer life. Many die. No matter what you do, you can't ever bring all those pieces together and re-unite them into the first rose bush. The parts grew and changed and are now more than the original personality. Each new individual might not be as big and strong as the original would have been had it not been torn apart, but individuals they are.

People who follow the first idea think that trauma therapy is only successful once the multiple system became one single person again.
Sounds absolutely horrible to us. We feel sorry for uno people already, isn't it totally lonely up there in the head? All alone? No one to talk with or cuddle with whenever you need it? No one to cheer you up or on in hard times? Sure, yes, sometimes life in here can be hell, it's not easy to be many and fit all our needs and wishes into one life. The unprocessed memories can leave me gagging and choking in a corner, barely able to hold on to the here and now.  But our life is also colorful and interesting.

I can't imagine that we all would fit into one personality. What would happen to all the things that don't fit in? Right now people contain lively, as-if-it-happened-yesterday memories, would they fade? Disappear? Become something we remember but can't tap into anymore and relive them as vividly?
What happens with all the various interests and hobbies? Would we have to decide if we want to be able to draw or to knit but not able to do both? I don't know any uno with as varied interests as we bring them along.
What about skills? Some of us are way better at one thing than others... would we lose some skills completely? Or end up with an overall average of them all? Mediocre at everything.

Who would be this new all-of-us "me"? Someone from the inside who already exists soaking up all the others? Or someone all new? Would some parts not want to be part of the meld and die? Would some not be allowed to come along and be condemned to die?

No, we don't want to integrate.
Our goal is to live a happy, stable, fulfilling life, as a team. We're growing together, we're already a LOT better than we were a few years ago. I hope we can invite more people from the darker sides to come and help with this, so the inside world can finally, at some point in time be peaceful and good for all.
But integrate? Nope!

Gaming and Dance

What gaming and dance have in common? They're expressive without consequences.

We love computer games because they can offer something to do for everyone in here. We have way more time at our hands than energy to actually do something. Even on a good day, when it's possible to get two or three hours of work in, that still leaves a lot of the day empty. The whole family loves to read and many games are like books to interact with.
There are friendly, simple and colorful games for the little kids. There are complex, demanding ones for the brainy people. There are outright violent ones for the guardians to let off some steam. And many games actually offer niches for a whole bunch of the family, so it can become something we do together. Family picnic in Tamriel? Some will pick flowers, some chase rabbits, others whack a few monsters and some extra patient kids like to decorate homes. Sure, means we never really get anywhere with quests or anything, but as long as everyone has fun, who cares?

MMOs offer the additional possibility of interacting with other people behind the safe facade of the character. In real life we fight very hard to keep up a congruent, reliable and inconspicuous outer personality. Even in a game we don't dare to fully let go of this control, but various groups inside can create characters together that express more of who they really are than they would ever dare to show in real life.
The other people playing the game stay strangers most of the time. That makes it possible to carefully experiment how much variance in the personality behind the character is still widely acceptable. If we mess it up and come across as a freak, oh well, let's start over again and try something else.
The most beautiful thing is when we "meet" someone in game who doesn't run away screaming at the first hint of our manifold nature. The internet, and for us, online games have opened possibilities to find understanding, friendly, safe to be with people that normal every day life just can't offer.And sometimes real life friendships grow from these virtual encounters.

Dancing offers the physical counterpart to this.
There's not much music we don't dance to and we dance almost every day. It's not a full switch, the body still stays in control of the speaker, but the others' emotions pour in more freely. Our dancing styles vary greatly. As different music calls for different moves it's a socially pretty well accepted moment to be varied.
While it's not quite as "safe" as playing games, after all we can be seen, might be judged by people who are right there in that moment, most often we don't care too much. The lure of dance is just too strong, the joy of moving to rhythms and melting into the music is fantastic.

But why be out in the open at all? After all, the inner world is vast and has room for everyone to create anything they want.
One point is that everyone in here was shaped to a purpose. Every single personality has some role in keeping the whole safe and sound, sometimes not in a really sustainable way, but they do the best they can (or could, at the time of creation). When you're all purpose to the very core of your soul, being useless is the worst that could happen. There needs to be some room to follow their purpose and do something. Even when it's just virtual.
The other thing is that so many of the inner people were locked away for so long. Yes, it held things stable for a while but it also produced immense pressure and resulted in a total break down. So the new possibility to try out is how life will be with small, not so tightly controlled ways to be many more openly.

The Cast

A little about the core members of the family. The total tally varies, I'm not fully aware yet of everyone who lives in here and during the course of therapy some members might agree to fuse together and become one more complex being. I assume that we're currently around 30 distinct parts.

The simplest "splinters" of personality are not really "people" at all, they're more special states of being or a function that somehow ended up being separate from the rest. The two most obvious ones are the Navigator and Master Timekeeper.
I don't get lost all too often, I can drive a car (unlike some of the kids) and so I can get us from A to B just fine. The Navigator though can find the way to ANY place we've ever been to, he doesn't get lost, he always knows how long we gonna need to get somewhere. It is somewhat scary when I am deep in thought, look outside and realize, I have no clue where I am, where I'm going and how I got here. Then it takes a little effort to shift back into the calm, reassuring backseat and let the Navigator do his job.
Master Timekeeper often works together with Navigator to get us where we need to be. He will wake us up even before the alarm rings in the morning, will give us a shove towards the appropriate clothes and hustles us out the door and into the car before anyone who knows it's therapy day even fully woke up. Navigator will deposit us right at the doorstep and from there I know what to do. (Now I just wish they'd make me a coffee in the morning too, but no such service to be had. Maybe I should start a vote on the creation of a "Master Coffeemaker".)

More complex beings are vessels for memories that are too distressing to let flow freely. They don't usually interact with any one of the core family unless it's necessary. It hurts them to be among the "living" and they prefer to stay half-asleep in the dark.

The family running everyday business it pretty small. We're the most active, lively and complex personalities.
Guardian is a hunk of a guy, he looks intimidating but is absolutely great with the little ones. In case of an emergency he will get us out, that's his main job, bodyguard. He will also chop wood for me or do other physically demanding things, he's stronger than I am.

Mia is a girl from the dark side. It's pretty common to separate internal parts into light and dark ones. The darks tend to be in line with former abusers and think/act/feel like those people did. Mia is dark not by her own choice. She is the manifestation of all the bad expectations thrown at the original little girl. She is as mean, petty, greedy, violent, evil as people claimed she was to justify the things they inflicted on her. She's fighting it, tooth and nails, she's one of the bravest people I know. Of course, every human being is sometimes greedy and sometimes selfish, that's normal. But for her those normal moments in life mean that everything anyone ever blamed her for is real and they were right. It's a constant painful fight to grow beyond her programming and not give in to the lure of just giving up and BEING what she was blamed to be. She can sway from rage to deep despair in moments and there's not much I can do at the moment but hug and reassure her.

There is a young teenage boy, currently called "Matt" (the names change at times, many of us haven't cared to pick one yet, I didn't either, maybe when I'm older). He used to be dark-ish, teasing the little girls mercilessly, having "fun" making them cry. A former Speaker had enough at some point and grounded him for an indefinite amount of time until he got to his senses. He liked his room with TV and as much pizza as he wanted enough to actually come over and try out what life with the family is like. He now plays with the girls a lot and is quite the nice, protective big brother for them.
He's also the one who most readily takes over when I am just too groggy to do anything anymore. He sometimes volunteers to make dinner so I can rest or he takes the others for a walk and distracts the girls by pointing out flowers and bugs so they leave me alone for a bit.

The little girls range from about 3 to 8 years old. They're pretty cute actually, fun in their innocence and an enrichment with their still lively sense of wonder for the world.
They also make life quite hard at times. Many things that would be "normal" to a grown up shock them. They are easily triggered, easily scared, startle at any noise, and quite a few come with eating problems.
It's dangerous when I get worn out, and Matt gets worn out, then these children will run the show. They will do their very best, but a little child can't keep up with a job, or even just with basic life at home. One reason why I have to pace myself so carefully. With the little ones in charge the body will not be taken care of decently and we really can't afford to get ill or have the kitchen burnt down.

I'll skip over the real dark ones, cause they don't come to the surface very often anyways and prefer to stay away from us. The technical term for them is introjects, the mirrored images of abusers that got a life of their own. Therapy aims at defusing them and slowly making them part of the team.

Wolf is a non-human family member. Better not call her a "pet". She is wild, strong, very much the alpha female and has totally NO understanding for human mind games. When I try to explain some of the human pack rules to her she will often look at me sideways, lips curled in a half-snarl "Are you serious? Humans are so crazy..." and walk off. She's the most sobering influence you could ever wish for when caught in one of those thought spirals consisting of "should"s and "could"s and "maybe"s. She's not exactly gentle, she will just tell me that I'm being stupid and to stop it already, but hey, it works.

Leaves me, current Speaker in charge. I'm10 months old now, which for a Speaker is actually pretty decent. I take care of everyday life. I am the surface personality you would be speaking with if we met, I keep things half-ways consistent. Usually some family members sit at a small podium right behind me and speak with me, which I then translate into something the outside world should understand. If I start laughing like an idiot and there's no outside reason, assume someone inside made a bad joke again.
When alone I speak loudly with the inside. Sometimes that happens in company too, oops. Luckily people tend to assume I just talk with myself...
Representing to the outside, keeping peace on the inside, hunting for lost fragments of important memories, going to therapy, making sure everyone is well taken care of... it's a hard job. I like it, well, I am made to do it so they made me in a shape that would like the job, but it's pretty draining in the long run. The first Speaker to run the show when the other parts woke up again even handled a full-time job on top of this, and she did a pretty good job at it. But all the stress means we don't live terribly long. If something big happens it can just shatter us. Then everyone pulls together and works to keep up a half-ways normal life until another Speaker can be made and trained for the job.

Life became much more simple by now, a little house to take care of, garden, pets, making food, going shopping, cleaning up. Being retired (early, for medical reasons) finally brings the slow pace we need to get along without hurting ourselves. Maybe I can last another year or two like this, would be nice. Speakers are pretty similar, but not exactly the same. The first Speaker was way more obsessive than I am, ok, she also had way more on her plate. Merat, the one after her was good with the kids and very, very gentle. I am the third now and a bit more, hmm, "spunky" maybe. The little ones trust me, even when I gently tease them, something Merat would have never dared and first Speaker wouldn't ever have thought of doing, too serious. Things are becoming more relaxed, really more family and team than a bunch of strangers who happen to share a body.

3 Year Olds and a Table Saw

Small kids and power tools? Sounds like a recipe for disaster. Luckily, most of us are used to potentially dangerous machinery and even the little ones are well aware of what is ok to do and what not.

Still, sawing garbage wood to small pieces can is quite the adventure. Everyone is severely noise sensitive, so ear muffs are a must. Some are allergic to molds, so respirator is a must, protective goggles are a good idea anyways when working with a table saw, and almost everyone is mortally afraid of spiders, so we need gloves and clothes that don't leave much room for anything to crawl in.

Dressed up as if we're getting ready to embark on a vacation trip to the moon we check out the work space. How much room is there between the garbage pile and the saw? How big is the body? How long are the boards? The kids' body perception is skewed, they still think they are way smaller than the body actually is. That's not so much a problem when we hit (again) our head on the bathroom vanity, but with cutting tools I prefer they know where all the important body parts are (and I'd appreciate it if they stayed where they are, thank you very much).

The work itself needs to go slowly and with full concentration. That is astonishingly hard when doing something that doesn't need to be neat or needs terribly much attention to detail. When building furniture it's so much easier to stay fully awake. But cutting up garbage? So tempting to drift away and just let everything run on autopilot.
That is pretty dangerous though. If someone suddenly saw a spider and tried to jerk away that could easily end with our hand in the saw. Every moment needs to be fully controlled. That's exceedingly exhausting. It's not one adult doing some dirty, uncomfortable work, it's an adult doing this while watching half a kindergarten class prone to hysteric fits.
The slight extra force needed to breathe through the respirator is triggering, the smells, the heat, the creepy crawlies... it all adds to the stress and needs to be suppressed to even be able to do the job.

In total it means an hour of this is demanding enough that for the rest of the day I'm groggy and not up to anything anymore. This is one job, one small point on the list of all the things that need to get done, most others aren't quite this intense, but very few ever go without any such complications.
We do get stuff done, slowly. It's hard though when we get compared to "normal" people. And yes, I am jealous at times, I want to be able to do something quickly and effortlessly too. Like "normal" people. But then I'd also be alone in my head, like "normal" people, and no, I'd miss the crazy family in here far too much.

Dissociative Amnesia in the Kitchen

I already mentioned how our memories are fragmented. That's not just true for distressing past events, but for recent memories too. To top it off many memories need a physical "anchor", something that reminds us of it, or the memory is just another piece of clutter in the messy mental attic, only accessible by sheer chance.

That's why the kitchen looks like it does. The cupboards have no doors, pots and cutlery are stored in wire drawers, the fridge is tiny and the dry good shelves vast and well organized. If the fridge gets full to where I can't easily recognize what all is in there at first glance I will plain forget what we have (with the usual disgusting discoveries at fridge-cleanup-time, mold sadly does not have mercy with the quirks of a multiple personality).
It also means we're a bit on the obsessive side. Things need to go back to where they came from or it's all too easy to totally forget about them. Writing shopping lists is essential or we have ten packages of butter but not a single piece of bread in the house. After a shopping trip everything needs to be sorted neatly onto the shelves, so everyone can see them and pick what they want to eat. Usually the person to take the last of something writes it back on the list, or even a bit before we really run out or it's perfectly possible that we stand in the pantry, stare at an empty spot and can't remember at all what belonged there.
Less is better here. With just six plates in the cupboard it's easier to realize that one is missing so I can go hunting for it (the last one had wandered to the neighbors with some muffins, the one before that had disappeared into the painting supplies, sometimes it takes a while to find them, sometimes it takes a while to remember that I should be searching).

At times we can pull cute little tricks with the help of this amnesia. Around Christmas I noticed how much the little ones enjoyed a special kind of chocolate. It was really just a tiny thing, but I wanted to do something especially nice for them too. So I went shopping and didn't let them see what exactly I got. Hiding it was easy as the kids rarely go get their own food but ask one of the older ones to please fetch it for them and the older ones knew about the little surprise. The kids were so happy when I pulled out the extra treats for the celebrations.
One of the good things about being many, you get the joy of making a child glad and feel this child's sense of wonder and giddy happiness at the same time. Makes you wanna make up for all the times they didn't get this love.

House Rules

Like every other family life doesn't work out too well without some basic rules. Unlike most other families though, everyone has a say when it comes to those rules, babies, little children, yes, even the "pets".
Most things are consent-based. If any one person inside has an objection it will be heard and we'll try to find a way that works for everyone.

That sure has potential to make life "interesting". If you ever had to feed breakfast to a bunch of kids of various ages you get an idea what it's like. One wants milk, another tea, another juice, another is beyond such "childish" things and wants a strong coffee (and possibly a cigarette, I overrule that one, we don't smoke). But we all just have one stomach.
The solution for what to drink is easy... plain a bit of everything. Food can be equally varied, but usually people settle on something, or have a rotating schedule who gets to have the say on breakfast decisions what day. I don't really regulate that in any way, as long as the main rule "The body needs to be decently fed" is met. I just need to know what people want so I can go shopping for them.

The biggest problem is that consent takes time, a lot of time. With standard everyday stuff you know very soon what is ok and what not and there won't be a huge discussion every time this comes up. But anything with impact? Anything sudden and meaningful? It can take hours, or days until everything falls into place and we can move forward with a decision. That's why you'll never hear me agree to go to a party right away, it's always "I'll call you and let you know". As it's impossible to leave some of the family at home, everyone has to want to come along. It's just no fun when half the people would rather be elsewhere or have a real bad day.

Another important rule is that we're all responsible for the body. By the very nature of our existence we're all very good at pushing uncomfortable sensations and experiences so far out of our awareness that it just disappears. Mia might have felt the rumbling stomach first, but she doesn't want to stop coloring pictures, so she pushes the feeling out. Matt might feel it next, but he doesn't want to go and cook something, so he pushes it out. After a few rounds of this someone starts panicking because everything is suddenly so woozy and the body feels so weak and the belly hurts so much. Sigh. It's usually my job then to find something to eat to tide us over till a decent meal is ready.

You might have guessed it by now, the annoying jobs tend to be mine. But ok, that's what I'm made for. Yes, made. I am a construct. Unlike most of the people in here I did not grow from some terrible experience, I am a "helper", a idealistic imagination shaped for a certain job. As my job is to represent the family to the outer world and be the main mediator in the inner world, I have a few extra freedoms, along with the extra work load.
In emergencies I can overrule house rules and decide something without the input of others. I'm the only one who is allowed on the outside, to make it less confusing for the people we interact with (on occasion someone will wiggle past me, but that's usually a nono). And I have access to most memories.

I should probably explain that. We don't have one flowing memory from early childhood to now. Like the personality the memories are fragmented. Otherwise some of them would be unbearable. But that means that just because Ash knows how to weld, it doesn't automatically mean Mia does too. I never touched welding equipment in my life, but I can tap into Ash's memories and she will share what she learned, what it feels like and will give a running commentary while I try it out. That doesn't make me as good as Ash, it's still just second hand knowledge, but at least it's better than not knowing anything at all.
There is no rule that all memories have to be shared. Some things are very personal. Some people on the inside don't like each other or don't trust each other enough to share everything. But they know they can come to me and I will listen.
That's also the reason why I am the one who goes to therapy. I'm the only one who can find all the pieces of a past experience and bring them together so they can finally heal.

Some rules a "normal" family might have we don't. Feet on the table? Oh well, as long as you don't do it somewhere else or in company, who cares. Gummi bears and half a slice of cold pizza for breakfast? Is alright as long as there will be at least one more meal in the day (that IS a rule, at least two meals a day, at least one of them warm). There is no set bed time. No one gets forced to brush teeth (someone usually volunteers though). Getting dirty or leaving craft supplies all over the place is highly encouraged.
Makes for quite the wild troupe in here... well, and out there too, it tends to spill. And that's perfectly ok as long as we're gentle and respectful with each other.

Intro

It's been five years now, that the first of us woke up.

It was a hard time. Speaker struggled to keep doing a good job on the outside, struggled to keep in check what she thought was herself going crazy on the inside. But no, it was just us, waking up. And as waking people tend to be we were clumsy, not fully aware of our surroundings. Considering the circumstances, she did very well, and I can't blame her for handing the burden of this household to someone else when the worst was over.
She now lives in a willow by the stream back behind the village, enjoying the calm. We try not to bother her, unless absolutely necessary, she deserves her retirement.

That leaves the job of telling this story to me.

So let's start with the basics. We are many who share one body. The technical term is Ego-State Disorder, or a milder form of what used to be called a "multiple personality". It is not insanity, Speaker's worries in that direction were unfounded. We're pretty sane in here, for what happened in the past, but that shall not be part of this story.
Not everyone is the same age, actually most people in here are much younger than the body, some aren't even exactly "people". My job is to keep the outside life half-ways orderly and to speak for the others. Some don't speak your language, some don't speak any recognizable language, some don't speak at all. I listen and translate what they like to say.

Life is pretty interesting when you're not alone in your body.
Maybe you'll think so too.