#1 - When and how did you find out you have DID? (2026):
Didn’t know definitively until 2013, but was seriously suspicious by 2006 or 2007. The potentiality was mentioned in passing a few times in the six-ish years prior, and there was plenty of “What, do you have multiple personalities or something?” throughout my life.
By 2010 or 2011 it was clear that whatever I was dealing with wasn’t what I’d been diagnosed with (read: everything except DID), but it took me until 2013 to seek a local specialist to find out for sure.
That specialist was Lighthouse, I was thirty-one years old, and the rest is history.
#1.5 - Describe your system. What kind of system, how big, anything you feel is a good introduction. (2015):
We are different now than when we first began, yet we are still the same.
We were polyfragmented into the thousands — with strong individual alters, and layers upon layers of fragments — but the numbers never mattered.
We used to work in teams we called clusters. Or bubbles. Or strings. Inside-facing and outside-facing. Hierarchies and relationships. Responsibilities and reactions. Specialized parts for specific tasks. Memories from different viewpoints.
Currently, our center has expanded, and we have consolidated and coalesced. We communicate easily, cooperate seamlessly, are collectively co-conscious, and can stay present with our most traumatized parts.
We present as one (“T.W.”) while embracing our multiplicity (“the Motley”) in all the various ways we’ve experienced it. We are distinct but not separate. We are a choir, a rain cloud, a flock of Gallimimus.
