Coming Out of the Storage Facility
March 26, 2014
This is not about being bold or flashy. It's not about wanting to compete with the indelible icons of Eve or Sybil. We don't want or need anyone's sympathy for whatever we may have gone through, nor people's anxiety or fear for what may or may not be going through our mind on the 8-track player.
This is about identity. It's about confidence. It's about setting a precedent, setting an example for others. It's about what is possible. Can we even do it? Or will we be vilified and shunned? We decided that we're willing to take a fall for the possibility of blazing a trail for the next guy. We don't need (or want!) our name up in neon lights, perhaps just a quiet thank you every now and then, just so we have some evidence of an impact.
We wrote our first book, and came out of the closet (i.e. the storage facility) as a multiple. It wasn't a splash. It was more like a teardrop. We didn't get calls to come onto talk shows, and we didn't publish through some major publisher who would demand that we make our message more sensational. We self-published, sold about 100 copies of our book so far, maybe more, and we're ecstatic we have changed some lives and removed the hood from our collective head.
And that's how it should be. Oh, it would be nice to sell thousands of books to myriad multiples & their families across the world...but not for fame. Nor really for the money although we could definitely use some of that too. It's for the change. For the new ideas and thoughts that would spring out of it. It's to be a catalyst.
Ah, to be a catalyst.
Collectively, we decided we are, and are OK with being, a catalyst. Not the big-bang type of catalyst. More like a little cell structure that went ignored until someone realized that it was the key to cellular metabolism and energy; I want to be a mitochondria when I grow up. I want to chew up inert molecules and spit out bursts of energy and a force for powerful change. But I want to operate quietly, out of the scrutiny of the microscope.
But if coming out of the storage facility were to cast us into the spotlight, well so be it. There's so much work to be done -- so much ground to recover after over a century of people with mental health issues being vilified, shunned, locked away, turned out, turned in, scapegoated and hated.
The thought police are watching, and they're judging us. They want to tell us how to think, that there's a range of "acceptable thoughts" and everything and anything outside of that is not acceptable. They want us to think, feel, believe, express, imagine inside certain prescribed boundaries and to never step into other, less understandable and more chaotic, dimensions of thinking.
But they're wrong. And if you can come out of the storage facility and join us, we're going to show them a thing or two, aren't we? It's all about freedom and choices. It's also about proving that we can be responsible and do no harm in spite of being different. We do have something to prove, because they've been telling us for a whole century that we're sick and disordered, that we are wrong and that we need to change, to conform, to go through a long protracted period of dis-ability and mental illness and come out of the other side someONE -- and that's something the WE in each of our individual bodies are definitely NOT.
But let's take it slowly, because we know everyone listens to the thought police. Everyone believes what psychiatry, the youngest science and sometimes regarded as a pseudo-science, tells them. Remember, always, that psychiatry and the definitions of mental health and illness are guardians of a status-quo of what is considered normal thought and behavior versus what is considered unacceptable, sick, debilitating, or abnormal thought and behavior.
The reality is, a therapist is a tool in YOUR toolkit, not an instrument for imposing change on you. If you happen to have one, use them as an instrument you can choose whether or not to employ to suit your personal goals and desires for your own future. If you are not the one making the choices, fully informed and with total consent, then you may need to read this manifesto. It may apply to you no matter what so-called mental illness you may be told you have -- but I am most specifically writing to those with DID -- dissociative identity disorder, or DDNOS or MPD, whatever you want to call the range of thought-patterns that involve having more than one mind, psyche, id, ego, spirit, soul, residing in one body.
Come out of the storage facility, or come "out of the box" if you will. It's always hard to come out with something deeply personal and emotional, but there are people like us out here waiting to help you.
For tips on coming out see Crisses' Coming Out Tips New
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This is a fantastic post. We're currently in the process of learning to reject what people are willing to accept or see as normal in favour of celebrating that we're many in a body (though we don't believe in our case that our multiplicity was caused by trauma). It's not an easy path at times, and this post gave us a lot of strength, thanks.