Hi, I'm a DID System.

The body age is 42 years, short in stature, super morbidly obese due to chronic dissocation, overeating, binge eating to numb/ground ourselves, and chronic stress from childhood through today keeping us in a state of fight or flight.

We grew up in a household that was essentially run by a single parent (mom) with dad working obsessively to provide for us and to ensure we have a future. His autism and extreme social anxiety and perhaps personality disorder created a workaholic and rarely-present father. Mom on the other hand is and was the one who ensured we didn't die, had food available to us, had a roof over our head, but was completely unavailable emotionally, and certainly didn't have a gentle consistent style of parenting. Volatile emotional outbursts and gaslighting fueled our relationship, or lack thereof. Early on I found myself extremely depressed, anxious, unable to keep up with school demands, increasingly withdrawn and alone, always made to feel like I was in the wrong, no matter what I did or tried to do I was bad according to her. I never dressed the way she wanted me to dress, never acted the way she wanted me to act. I embarrassed her at every turn with the way I fidgited, the way I spoke or avoided speaking, interrupted her, or didn't answer her the way she wanted to hear. I soon figured out that I could ignore her and do the opposite and it had the same effect as me trying to do what she wanted. So that's what I did. I coped by trying to be me outside of the bounds of what she expected or perceived.

I soon moved out into my boyfriend's apartment when I was 18 but he turned into an abuser very quickly. I was abused in every way by him, and I finally found the courage to gtfo. I called my first ex-boyfriend for help since I wasn't going to reach out to my asshole mom. He jumped to my rescue and took me to stay at his mom's house briefly. I don't know if I stayed their a few days or a few weeks but either way I was not in a good place mentally. I finally contacted mom to tell her what had happened. And of course she blamed me for staying with him so long, then decided to come get me and take me home. I was being kicked out anyway by my ex's mom, so, I had no choice.

The next months and years are extremely blurry, though to be fair my entire life is blurry and I have minimal if any recollection of it except for huge events like ethis. This was mid-2003. I think I went to community college because my parents made me either get a job or college. At this point in my life I was never able to keep a job beyond a month or two anyway. I would either get fired or quit due to burning out or disagreement with how I was being treated. I don't remember going to these classes but I do remember knowing that I had been there and seeing my transcripts later. I think I quit college a few times in the next few years, and then got kicked out again.

Getting kicked out and having to find employment and an apartment was easier back then than it is today in the 2020s. I quickly found an apartment with free first month rent (just provide like $100 security deposit I think) and within 2 weeks found a job, and then managed to get rent paid from that first paycheck. I stayed with that company until 2006 when they moved me to a new position and different role in the compnay when it was bought out by another one and my department was eliminated. The stress got to be too much and this is when I started having what we've always called my "psychotic break". I was suicidal. I couldn't think straight or at all. I was hearing voices so loudly in my head, chaos in there. I started hearing my name being called like it was being shouted from across the room, but it wasn't coming from outside my head apparently. I was also then hearing music playing loudly but I couldn't figure out where it was coming from. I assumed it was coming from the cubical next door's boombox but every time I'd go around and stick my head next to it the music wasn't coming from outside my head but I couldn't fathom how that was happening in my head so I assumed (like my name being called) that it was outside my head. I was not okay. This lasted weeks, or perhaps months, as it got worse and worse, and finally I went to see a psychiatrist and he put me on Abilify. He assumed I had schizophrenia. Well that drug made me so much worse. It was causing life-threatening reactions. I was on it a week or so but couldn't sit still, couldn't sleep but was absolutely exhausted, falling asleep but never able to sleep, it was like I was on crack but also on a heavy sedative. It was horrific. I finally called the doc and told them that I think something's wrong - and told them what I was experiencing and they chided me on not calling sooner and told me to stop taking it immediately! Soon after that they put me on risperdol to stop the voices and the music. The music seemed to stop but the voices never did, they were just dulled and easier to ignore.

Since the voices were now considered psychosis/schizophrenia I was told I needed to ignore them, that they weren't real, and that they were only harmful to me. That led me down an even darker path of more and more psych meds to dull/avoid the voices and that led to more and more psychosis. The doctors were causing me to have psuchosis that I never had before. Their medications weren't right for me because I didn't have a need for those meds, I had a need to listen to my PARTS not ignore them. They weren't psychosis. They are parts of my consciousness that didn't get fused into one consciousness growing up - due to complex PTSD from being an already neurodivergent (autistic & adhd) person raised in an unstable, volatile, emotionally abusive and neglectful home. I continued gaining weight due eto excessive eating trying to ground myself (apparently) and finally found myself near 400 lb on my short sub-5'4" frame. I was sleep-eating, eating constantly, eating giant portions, and drinking as much soda as my body could hold (diet and/or full-sugar). Finally in 2012 dad had retired early (for his health and sanity) and he was home all the time. He and I became close. We became "smoking buddies". I was a long-time 2-pack a day smoker, and he was a cigar smoker. They chose to find a place to move to across the country to get out of the terrible weather contributing to mom's bad health. They sold the house, moved us into an apartment for about a year while they prepared to move across country. 2013 we made the cross-country road trip to move out west. About a year later after we seemed to be settled well I starting having severe health complications (allergies I think) and I first cut out all soda (that was helpful but then it wasn't) and within a month I quit wheat & gluten in general and that seemed to help. But then come December 2014 I had started having what could have been Guillen Barre except the blood labs proved it wasn't. I became paralized, started having terrible systemic allergic reactions to even plain water. It was awful. I lost significant weight in the year or so since quitting soda, and at my lowest weight due to the starvation that was occuring I was down to 156 lb (according to medical logs I barely have access to online). I went from near 400 lb to 156 in probably 2 years. Insanity. Thankfully we finally found an allergist that did testing and proved I at least have allergies to wheat, lettuce, cocoa bean, and a few pollens/weeds, but nothing else showed in scratch/prick tests. Nothing at all showed in blood panels. Fuck those blood panels they're shit. I've known I'm allergic to apples and milk my whole life, yet nothing showed? Yeah fuckin' right.

So he prescribed months worth of um, idk the med but it was antifungal to stop candidiasis, and also then cromolyn sodium vials to mix with water and drink 30 mins before I eat any meals. THAT WORKED!!!! It stopped the severe allergic reactions in their tracks. THANK YOUUUUU! I finaly started to be able to eat more than like 300 cal daily. I slowly made my way back into eating normally (calorie amounts, not variety of foods due to the new allergies). I had gone off all my meds during the allergy testing and elimination diet stuff. Funny enough during all that my brain cleared up. I no longer had the severe voices, no longer had the extreme brain fog, and all my ailments seemed to get better. It was incredible! I did have to re-learn to walk and balance and use my hands and learn to type and drive and all that again, through physical therapy and at-home self-therapy, but my head was finally clear and I could hold conversations and even get and keep a job (kind of). I went through a variety of jobs since my first job in 10 yrs, starting early in 2016. I've been off all psych meds since 2015 and am thankful for it.

Since then I had many jobs, none lasting longer than about 9 months. I have no idea how I managed to keep that job (newspaper delivery driver). It exhausted me, 7 days per week without a day off. I suspect one of my alters loved it, and that was the only reason we kept going back night after night. And we were making money enough to keep ourselves happy and cared for without having to rely on mom and dad for things. But as with everything it didn't last. I was too burnt out.

Then I adopted a dog for my own since I really needed a dog in my own home/RV to keep me company. I didn't realize that it was a form of grounding, having a pet dog. I had been experiencing such stress from having to quit work and go back on welfare for food stamps and medicaid. Within four months that dog attacked and nearly killed mom's little dog Charlie. My world was flipped upside down. I had to return the dog to the shelter the very next day. I was the worst person in teh world to my mom and still to this day she won't let me live it down. It was my actions that brought that "beast" as she calls it into our home/property. She didn't care that I needed a dog for myself. Well apparently the very next day I found a free puppy needing a home. I had been spiraling so badly I wasn't connected to this world anymore. I needed anything to keep me here, in teh here and now. At that point I had no idea what dissociation was. I didn't know I was experiencing Derealization and Depersonalization but looking back I was absolutely experiencing it. I am shocked I didn't have a fugue state. I think the only thing preventing it was me driving to pick up that free puppy. My boy Coal. Sadly, mom found out a few weeks later (because dad found out) and she panicked. Of course I was alway the bad guy here making terrible decisions by bringing another random dog into our lives during this time of intense stress with not knowing whether Charlie will live or not. It didn't matter that I needed a dog for myself. I wasn't allowed to have what I needed in this time, because I was the bad guy and I deserved what I got (which would have been my death had I not got him btw). It didnt' matter that I was suicidal and literally so close to ending myself. Mom would have happily watched I think. She would have paid money to watch if she was charged admission. That's how much she enjoyed seeing me suffer as a result of this incident. 5 years later she still enjoys talkinga bout it as if I am the worst person in teh world and deserve to die. She has such contempt for me deep in her mind that it makes me realize I do need to gtfo out of here. She acts like she ensures I have evertyhing I need (she doesn't actually provide all I need but she believes it anyway). She tells me that I've never gone more than a day without toilet paper (I have gone at least 9 days without toilet paper) all because she has a rodent infestation in the house and they didn't have money to buy new toilet paper so they were trying to get me to use toilet paper that had been used as nesting material and food for the mice living in her house. Yes each roll had bite marks all over the edges of teh rolls. And yes that means that feces are all over it even if it isn't visible eto the naked eye. Fuck you, mom. I'm not using mouse poop-contaminated toilet paper on my damn genitals! Fuck you!.

So, yes, I do go without sometmes, and yes it's often minimal, and yes many people around the world have far worse lives with far less ammentities and food than I do. I am privileged compared to the majority of people living on this eart. I understand that.

As I sit here now in 2026 with the realization that the events leading up to today have helped me see the dissocaitive nature of my whole life, the fact that I have alters (headmates, parts, self-states, whatever you want to call them) causing me severe and chronic blackout anmesia making decisions for me that may or may not be appropriate (like a multi-day fast without having prepared for it, saying or doing things I am unware I've done and then worrying later why I have the sun allergy hives all over my face/neck not remembering that I had been outside doing tasks like emptying the RV black tank, or hanging out with the chickens and ducks or dogs, etc.), causing or contributing to arguments with mom (I need to start recording on my phone whenever I go near to mom or into the house!), and more things I'm sure that I just can't pinpoint. My therapist who I've been with for the majority of time since 2018(minus a few years during/post-COVID due to my own dissociative issues I was unaware of) and she finally noticed or decided to tell me that she's noticed that I "have dissociative episides which aim to help one stressor but then often cause another". I didn't know what that meant until a few days later I remember she stated that and I looked it up. That unlocked my brain. That llowed me to start understanding taht the terrible memory I have is dissociative in nature, and it suddenly unlocked that the voices I hear aren't psychosis from schizophrenia, but instead my own self-states/headmates/alters that I've literally ignored and shoved down deep within me for decades. No wonder I'm as chronically ill as I am. This was the key to finding out that I have DID. Thank you, so very much, my wonderful therapist, you are my rock! I am finally free to start therapy to unlock my brain, re-wire it and integrate it. I may be less chronically ill in the future, with her help.

The majority of this site I want to turn into a public-facing record of my alters, dissociative issues, therapies that seem to help, therapies that don't, etc. I want this to be a journal and log that all of my alters use to keep track of what's happening. This will be a central repository for information for us, and also for our therapist to use to continue to help us move forward. I'm not sure if I will change the layout, or the website template, or whatever, but I aim to keep the information here in some form as time goes on.