We Are A Rose Garden [Me]

On a forum about kinky multiples, I came across this bit of writing:

"Many people view DID as a vase that is shattered by trauma, one personality is broken into many shards and should be put back together to make a "whole person" again. Yet, it is far more like a rose bush that is hacked apart and each part starts growing independently of the others, developing their own root systems and preferences, being cut from the same bush, but ultimately not able to be just unified again as singular pieces. They are all parts of the original, but they have grown to be more."

The concept came from the book Set This House In Order by Matt Ruff. And I love this. Yes, at some unknown point in the past, 'we' were simply 'I', but then I got split into a number of pieces. Some of those pieces, like 'Mommy of a new baby' and 'wife' died off when they stopped being fed. Some of them, like 'Silent One' and its catatonia, went dormant for several years. Others took root and began growing on their own.

By the time I recognized my multiple nature a couple of years ago, we had several distinct rose bushes. Some planted close together, like Sam and Rubi, others that took root a bit further away, like Jarett or Kiara. Since that time, Jarett has gone dormant, but other bushes have been grown from a cutting of an old one - like Paul coming out of Cherish. And Grace and Lynn's bushes were so close together that they became indistinguishable from one another.

Although each of my alters came from the original 'I', and thus share some similarity in their 'bush', each one is different, pruned by their own experiences and thoughts into a different shape, just as a rose bush can be pruned by a gardener to be different, or be shaped by the quality of the soil it is in or the amount of nutrients and water it receives.