035. I forgot who I am because of my past

In the past, if anyone had ever asked about my childhood, I would have simply said that I had a pretty nice life. Aside from a few hardships at times, I was a lucky girl. My parents had been divorced in the past and I may have been poor, but I had a family who loved me and that was all that mattered. Like any other kids my age, I had a hard time adjusting and relating to others, but I always thought it would be something that would pass over time. As the days went on, something started to feel different... I found myself always feeling unhappy, as if drowning in my own emotions... It didn't feel like a regular sadness. It didn't even feel like depression. I felt...off. My grades started to drop, I began to stop going to school, and I slowly isolated myself from everyone else. Something was wrong and I had no idea what. 

As time went on, everything started to get worse and worse. My friends and family began to reach out to me, asking why I had been lashing out at everyone so much, they accused me of having been in a sour mood or pushing everyone away. The problem was... I couldn't remember ever doing all the things they spoke of. I tried to tell them that I was fine, but everything continued to spiral out of control. I found myself in strange places and couldn't remember how I got there, I would go to school and people would call out "hey Beatrice!" Even though it wasn't my name. People I had never met before were suddenly my "friend". But I couldn't remember anything. I thought I was losing my mind! Months were passing by and I couldn't even recall a single thing that happened during that time. Then, finally, my brother decided to confront me one night. He was devastated, and I didn't know why. When I asked what was wrong, he told me that he was realizing I had a serious problem. He told me that the night before, I had introduced myself to him as someone entirely different, behaving completely different. And I couldn't remember any of it... I remember my stay at the residential facility a few months after this incident with my brother, and it was here that I finally found out through my therapist of what was happening to me. I was sent to the residential facility after having been diagnosed with PTSD. But I was confused, when had I been diagnosed? And for what trauma? Nothing that happened in my life until that point was traumatic? At least not that I could remember. But my brother told a different story than what I knew. In the times that I couldn't remember anything, I wasn't acting like myself. 

Sometimes I would act like a small child and call myself a different name, other times I was a cold and bitter young man who didn't even know my brother. But with help from my therapist, my brother, and father, they were able to gather information to make a diagnosis. I was diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder or MPD as it used to be called. The reason that I acted as if I was someone else was because of the alternate personalities (or alters) that come with having the disorder. Dissociative Identity Disorder is something that forms in childhood and is thought to be caused by severe, repeated, trauma before the age of nine. Not only does this disorder cause the alternate personalities that my family would see, it also causes barriers in consciousness and memories between the personalities. Even though I couldn't remember it, and still can't all these years later, I found out that I was abused throughout my childhood. When I was 3 years old, I went through tortuous [] abuse for months. I was starved and neglected throughout my childhood. My [] stepfather groomed me, made me do drugs, and led to me miscarrying at a mere age of 11. My mother used to physically abuse me. I also watched my stepdad almost kill my mom after beating her too. Not only this... when I was admitted to a mental hospital years earlier to escape the abuse at home, I was taken advantage of and assaulted there too. It made my head spin to learn everything that had happened. It made me sick... my whole world had just erupted. The hardest part was that I didn't remember any of it. 

Time and time again after my diagnosis, I would search my memory to remember these things, but I couldn't. I couldn't remember anything, no matter how hard I tried. No matter how disturbing, I wanted to remember it. I wanted to know if it was all just fantasy or if it really happened. I struggled immensely to find happiness after learning what was wrong with me. Instead of helping, I felt like going to that facility had made everything worse. Not only did I have to deal with knowing of this abuse, I had to live with this disorder too. It made me feel like an outcast to know I had Dissociative Identity Disorder. Anytime I saw it in the media, we were portrayed as being violent, bad, unpredictable, abusers. The mental agony from everything that had happened left me feeling drained and wondering why I even lived anymore. Everything I had known had changed so fast... my whole life had been turned upside down. But one thing had remained; a family that unconditionally loved me. 

Some of them rejected me after finding out what had happened to me. But my father and brother, the people I cherish most, loved me the same. They educated themselves on the disorder and made me feel less ashamed to have it. My brother made sure to be there for me through the hard times and my dad made sure I was loved no matter what. And as the years went on with them continuously supporting me, I started to pick myself back up and I learned to live with my disorder as well as find healthy ways to cope with all the pain. My brother helped make me, and the many "alters" who lives within me, feel like we could be ourselves. Each and every one of us, no matter how different. I can honestly say that I am now happier, living a peaceful life where I've learned to cope with my disorder as well as find the good in it. I've come to terms with my memory issues and that I'll never remember all those things that happened in the past. I believe that it's for the better, so now I can live my life without remembering all the pain... I can now move on from the past and create a new chapter in my life.