The Magic Daughter - The Urge to Tell [Me]

More reading of The Magic Daughter. The author opens the book by telling of a time she was on an academic review committee, and was faced with disciplining a student who was also multiple. She feels attacked by the reactions of the other committee members, calling the student psycho and crazy. She didn't out herself, but managed to argue successfully on behalf of the student. But she felt like she should have done more. After the crisis passes, she had some rough personality switches, in reaction to the event.

"And I find myself struggling still with the urge to tell about my life as a dissociator and a multiple - and with the equally powerful urge to remain silent. The reasons for silence and secrecy are many and obvious. The first is pathology, plain and simple. A child creates multiple selves in order to keep her deadly secrets out of the way of her conscious mind so that she can continue to function and to survive. My secret selves protected me from the demands and expectations of a family focused in desperate ways... My selves contained my fierce desire to live, a  desire too dangerous to display... My selves hid the secrets of incest and of other cruelties that, all these years later, still take my breath away. My selves wept and sorrowed; they plotted wild, improbably scenarios of revenge. But they also kept safe my dreams, formed a tight protective circle around my soul, and acquired talents and traits that I would later smuggle, unbeknownst to my family and indeed to myself, out of the family circle."

 I faced my own committee situation just today. I read a letter in an advice column; a young man wrote in that his girlfriend had lied to him about having other relationships. He confronted her, and she said she wasn't doing any such thing. She freely offered to let him look at her email history. And the proof was there. She swore she didn't remember writing any of the incriminating emails. But there they were. She's been diagnosed with BPD; she's on medications. But she completely doesn't remember things that there is ample proof of.

To most readers, it sounded like she was simply lying to him. And that may be true. But any decent liar would have made some attempt to delete the emails before offering to let him see her email account. It sounded like she was as surprised to see those emails as he was. And yet they indicated an ongoing back-and-forth conversation. How could you not remember such a thing? What if it wasn't you that wrote them? Being multiple would explain it, and many multiples are treated for BPD (borderline personality disorder) first, as well as other personality and mental balance issues.

So I wrote in on the comments for the advice column. And then looked at the signature block. Do I sign my name? Do I explain that I'm multiple? I could see the previous comments above, vilifying the girl and telling him to get away from her. In the end, I did not identify myself, but urged the young man to point her to a therapist of some sort, with DID as simply one possible explanation. And though I had the option to sign my post anonymously, I went ahead and put an identifier - MultiMe, my handle on this blog site. If someone else reads that, and thinks they or someone they care about is DID, maybe they will look for me. Or at least take the negligible legitimacy lent by signing my post and listen, and see a professional about it. Instead of just dumping the person and leaving them still broken and confused.