stuff like that. i mean, looking at it and thinking about being multiple, it makes sense, but i know enough people who do those exact same things and think they’re not multiple that i really normalized that experience.

as for my abuse history… i struggle with it. i mean, rationally it makes sense, but that doesn’t mean all of the parts accept it emotionally. some stuff, sure, because it’s part of a common memory bank we all share. but other stuff, it’s just hard to believe. but at the same time, i’ve always kind of done this thing i call “triangulating.” you know, where you can figure out the distance to something by measuring angles and all of that… it’s a math thing, i can’t remember the details… anyhow, i take the information i have and use it to draw the most likely conclusions is what i mean by that. and it’s way more likely that particular abuse stuff happened than that it didn’t. so i just kind of leave it at that.

also, there have been times when someone in my family described an incident that matched some of a particular kind of “nightmare” pretty much perfectly… so i’ve learned to accept that those are probably clear flashbacks, even though i remember them from outside my body a lot of the time.

so, yeah. i can accept it, even if i can’t believe it.

it sounds all healthy and stuff, but sometimes, it’s that some part needs to throw a wrench in the works or something and make things STOP working for a while. and that pisses off parts who like everything smooth, but it’s probably for the best in the long run.

once parts get confident they aren’t going to be ignored, in my system they are more likely to be reasonable about stuff. but if they think no one is listening or they think there is a serious problem someone isn’t going to fix, they will make a fuss.

but at the same time, there are things my family did unintentionally that made it easier for me to be less isolated as a multiple now that i’m an adult. most of the stuff about multiplicity was so normalized for me that it didn’t occur to me to hide it happening, because i assumed it was just how people were. and for all the messed up things about my family, they have always been good about accepting weirdness, which means that even though i haven’t told them i’m multiple, they are accustomed to me doing things because of little kid parts.

for me, learning to break out of the isolation has been about learning to build trust with people. i’ve been lucky, in that there are about a dozen people, or more, that i know in person who know i’m multiple. it’s not the center of our relationship, and with a lot of them i haven’t even talked about it, but it’s not something i feel like i have to hide, which makes it easier for me to be less isolated.

but even after 17 years of working against isolation and learning to open up to people, i’m only just beginning to be able to do that.

as for other multiples… that’s one that’s frustrating for me. it’s why i made the did/mpd ribbon and awareness stuff, because i feel like there have got to be a ton of multiples out there who just think they’re the only one, and if there were a ribbon or something, maybe we’d notice it on someone else, and feel less alone.