I asked Mommy what happened that made her multiple.
Mom looked kinda confused for a few minutes, and she looked like she was thinking a lot, but her eyes kept shifting from side to side. She said they were thinking about it to each other, about what to tell me. Or how to put it. I thought it was funny that she was having a conversation in her head about me.
"When I was a child, I was really confused. People were hurting me and doing strange things to me, and other people were ignoring me. I wasn't getting everything I needed, and I was getting hurt at the same time. I don't remember everything. My mind hid things away to protect me. Those parts only came back when people did more bad things to me.
"Jimmy, one of the children in my head, is a good example," she continued. "Jimmy remembers things I don't remember happening. Jimmy says our father used to become very very angry sometimes, so angry he hit us. Jimmy says he was there -- in Front -- when our father was yelling at us, and someone else was in Front when he was hitting us. Jimmy remembers being very angry, too -- angry that our father was hitting us. He would try to stand up to our father, but someone else, someone young and frightened, would be out when we were getting hit."
I didn't know my mother's father very well -- I hadn't seen him in years. My mom looked very upset while talking about him, and she fidgeted while talking. I got a strange feeling for a moment that I was older than my mother!
"My father used to yell at my mother a lot, I remember some of it from when I was older, from 5 or 6 years old til when he left when I was 13. People tell me that my father was even yelling at my mother when I was in my mom's belly. I think the yelling may have scared me before I was born," she continued. "I think I was born ready to be multiple, but it took more stuff to make it happen. It's not like that for all multiples. But I think I was like that.
"Some people think that babies don't have an identity yet -- they don't have a sense of self that is stable, consistent. An identity and personality is formed slowly, over time. But I had to always be ready for danger, ready to change and adapt. My body and brain knew that."
"How could they know?" I asked.
"Scared people have chemicals that go into their blood and make them ready for taking care of themselves. The feelings people have with those chemicals are called anxiety -- that's a feeling in the pit of your stomach that something terrible is about to happen. I think my mother had a lot of anxiety before I was born, and she probably shared some of those chemicals with me. Now I think I have those chemicals most of the time."
I just had to ask: "You're scared all the time?"
"Not scared, really -- I just always have this sinking feeling that something terrible is about to happen. Sometimes the feeling is so small I don't notice it unless I pay very close attention. Sometimes the feeling gets so big it feels like my whole body is burning up with it.
"A lot of people who are multiple have anxiety problems. Most people who are multiple had something called trauma -- that means something scared them and maybe hurt them really really badly when they were young. But to become multiple, usually the scary things had to happen again and again. Some trauma is brief -- a lot of people suffered trauma when the World Trade Center fell down, and that all happened in one morning."
"Will they become multiple?" I asked.
"Probably not. That was one definite event, and the government is having people help them with that trauma. But events like that which take place all the time, like things that happen around or to children in a country at war, could cause multiplicity. But it doesn't always have to be so big and scary that everyone knows how bad it is. It just has to be big and scary to the child, or at the very least something that really bothers and confuses the child a whole lot. Some multiples don't remember any trauma at all. I'm not sure whether or not that means they didn't have any trauma, though. Maybe they just don't remember it."
I knew I was going to have to think about this a lot. The world is supposed to be a safe place for children. My mother always warned me about strangers who might try to kidnap me, but there was obviously a lot more going on.
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