Wherefore Dissociation?

the reasons for being

We've been asked time and time again why we choose to be this way. Singletons can't understand why someone would choose to be multiple. Other multiples see integration as the goal of healing. Members of the psychiatric community see us as abnormal, in need of fixing. Not only are we multiple, but we're homosexual *gasp!* and openly sexually kinky *bigger gasp!*.

Fortunately for us, we've developed an understanding with the world. We are not wrong. We are not broken. We are not in need of fixing. We have been injured, abused, stepped on, and otherwise abraded by others and the senseless, sick society we live in. But that does not make us and how we cope with the world wrong.

Are we insane? That depends. If what is meant by insane is that we have developed ways of coping with our past and present that may seem extreme or even self-harming, then we are insane. If insane means that we have a reality that doesn't quite match the normal, mundane, physical reality that so many people value so highly, we are insane. If insane is our freedom, our wings, our beautiful inner landscapes and the dreams in which we both soar and fall endlessly, we are insane.

But if sanity is defined by able to get along in the world, if sanity is measured by how far you can get on your own, how much you can learn, and how aware you are of the good hard rind that is your own life, then we are several states' worth of sane. There are sane people crazier than we, only they don't admit it.

The first step for us was admitting that we're not normal, giving up our conceptions of the way normal people acted, thought, tasted, and experienced life. We're us, and trying to fit us into a mold of "I-ness" is never going to work.

So what then? Where does this lead us? After you've admitted you're crazy, what next?

The admitting is where the work begins. As far as we can tell, it never ends. The process of healing is a constant process of adjusting, of opening old infections and cleaning them out, of listening to the people who love us and mean us well, and learning to trust again, and again.

But this doesn't get to the heart of why we've chosen to be the way we are. We could integrate fully, if we chose; we all have the ability, and, indeed, some of us have integrated with others, when it was needful.

Dissociation, even today, is a valuable coping mechanism for us. I-as-Stavia am fairly good at living and doing the things that we need to do, but there are things that I simply cannot do--work for twelve hours straight, deal with scary movies or things that involve blood, and other stuff. And, frankly, i don't want to learn how to deal with them. there's also the matter of the internal landscape, the only stable part of our lives since we were very small. Integration would mean giving up that landscape, and fully accepting the Madness as a "mere chemical dysfunction". It would mean entering totally into mundane reality. It would mean giving up our dreams and special perceptions.

It would mean, basically, the death of our creative drive. And we're never going to want to give that up.

There's an additional complication, as well. Most of what we're read of integration involves collapsing facets, fragments, and alters back into the "host", the person who was originally born into the body. As far as we've been able to tell, we don't have a host; the first child died when the first of us came into being. The Madness might be the person/thing that has caused us all to come into being, but there's no way that any of us will ever willingly merge with the Madness (and add schizophrenia and extreme sociopathic and psychopathic tendencies to our list of problems?). So we'd have to choose which one of us was strong enough both to deal with the outside world forever and to take the shock of merging, and then integrate into that person. It simply isn't going to happen.

Being the way were are is difficult, hard, and not really all that pleasant a lot of the time. But neither is anyone's life. We're simply happy because we are as we wish to be—and there is nothing that can take that away from us.

Written in 1997 - 2000 by Magdalen, a high-functioning multiple.
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