All of Me (31 page)

Looking back, it was obvious. Something in my own mind was preventing me from making the link. The brain’s a funny thing. It’s also very clever and mine was protecting me. Because if I ever accepted that Aimee was my baby, then I had to accept other things – things you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy.

And obviously it didn’t think I was ready. Yet.

My initial response to being told I suffered Dissociative Identity Disorder all those years earlier had been denial. I’d denied it to Rob Hale, I’d denied it to Valerie Sinason, to Evelyn Laine and John Morton. You could have lined up everyone from Lady Gaga to the Queen of Sheba and I’d have denied it to them as well. There was absolutely no way I shared my body with other personalities.

It was nothing personal. As far as I’d been concerned this new diagnosis was no different from doctors telling me I’d taken overdoses, or I had bulimia or I was schizophrenic – I’d denied all of those too, and I’d been proved right. To me, DID was just the latest in a long, long line of lies that the medical profession wanted to make me believe.

So what changed? It was a gradual process. It couldn’t have been the volume of people talking to me or the length of time they spent doing so, because I’d had a lifetime of ignoring doctors’ opinions. Instead, every so often, I looked at the things troubling me on a daily basis – my blackouts, being mistaken for someone else by strangers, losing things around the house – and just wondered if there was another explanation. Rob Hale had diagnosed me with Dissociative Identity Disorder soon after meeting me. Valerie had agreed and together they’d launched a campaign to help me understand. Two years later they might just as well have been speaking another language because I certainly wasn’t listening. Even if I wanted to believe them, it was too much to process. It sounded like the plot from a science fiction film, not something that happened to real people. I was as likely to accept I had alien DNA or super powers as I would that I had multiple personalities.

Then slowly, very slowly, in fact, over a period of another two or three years of sessions with Dr Laine, I entertained the idea. Tentatively at first, by researching the subject at home – although I never admitted this to them! Then I started asking the question ‘What if …?’, but every time I’d quickly dismiss it as a childish fantasy. A few months later I would wonder again, then again, and slowly I realised that my denial had turned to something else.

Fear.

Fear that they might be right.

It’s a short trip from being scared to being disgusted at the idea of sharing your most personal moments with unknown personalities. I’d been confused on and off for most of my life. Now I was running the gamut from fear to loathing and back to disbelief every time I had a spare moment.

The funny thing is, the more I dwelled on the possibilities of having DID, the more time I seemed to have to do it. For what seemed like forever, and certainly for the last few years since the acid and fire incidents, days had rushed by in a blur. It was strange to admit but I suddenly seemed to have more time to myself.

It’s incredible to me now, looking back, that Dr Laine and Professor Morton showed such patience with me. By the time I finally admitted to them that, yes, I accept your diagnosis of DID, I was expecting anger and shouts of ‘About bloody time!’ That couldn’t have been further from the truth. They were both genuinely delighted. I could see that professionally they were happy but they also seemed relieved for my sake.

‘Your life is going to be so much easier from now on,’ Dr Laine promised.

I don’t see how. I’ve just admitted I’ve got God knows how many people living inside my head!

It had been such a long journey, from originally meeting Dr Hale to finally admitting his diagnosis, and Dr Laine didn’t feel any need to rush this stage. But now I was desperate for information. I was like the kid who can’t wait for Christmas.

In hindsight, Dr Laine was right to take things slowly. Eager as I was emotionally to learn everything, mentally there is only so much that your brain can take in. It didn’t take me long to find my head spinning – again.

‘I’m sorry it’s taken so long,’ I admitted one day to Dr Laine. ‘You’ve been trying to tell me this for years.’

She laughed. ‘Don’t worry, you’re not the last one to come to terms with it.’

That sounds weird.

‘The last what?’ I asked.

‘The last of your other personalities, or alter egos, “alters” or self-states – whatever you want to call them. There are only a couple who understand the DID.’

I’d heard all the jargon dozens of times – the ‘alters’, the ‘personalities’ – and dismissed them. Now they all took on new significance. They were no longer just words or ideas or theories.

They were people.

Dr Laine told me about a woman called Hayley and another called Bonny.

I recognised both names instantly. I’d seen letters addressed to both at the house. I’d always just assumed poor postal service as usual, or that Mum or Nan had kept them for some reason. Then the shutters had come down and they were filtered from my thoughts.

Self-defence again.

‘And they both live inside this body?’ I asked, already knowing the answer.

‘They do – they all do.’

‘All? You mean there are more?’

‘With all the names Kim, Hayley and the others have given me it adds up to over a hundred. Maybe even double that.’

You can be as open-minded as possible and still be nonplussed. I didn’t know a hundred different people. Even though some of them were only ‘fragments’ of a personality, how could that many exist in my tiny body? My faith in this business was beginning to slip.

‘That’s impossible. It must be a trick.’

‘They’re as real as you are.’

There were so many questions I didn’t know which to ask first. Fortunately Dr Laine took her time, explaining everything in as much detail as I could bear. In the back of my mind, of course, was this new realisation that I might ‘disappear’ before she’d finished speaking.

‘Will I know when I’m going to switch?’ I asked Dr Laine.

‘You don’t appear to.’

‘So I could go any moment?’

‘That’s right.’

‘And will you be able to tell who’s replaced me?’

‘If I’ve seen them before then yes. But every so often I meet new personalities and I have to introduce myself and start again from the beginning.’

Incredible.

‘So you really have the same conversations with two or three people who look exactly like me?’

She nodded.

‘Don’t you feel embarrassed repeating yourself like that?’

‘Not at all,’ Dr Laine said. ‘Remember, I’m not saying the same thing three times to you. I’m saying it once to three different people.’

That would take a while to sink in. At least it explained my history of people looking exasperated at work or school or even in shops when I sometimes asked questions. They’d obviously just gone through it with someone else who looked exactly like me!

On those occasions, Dr Laine explained, I was most likely being confused with either Hayley or Bonny.

‘How can you be so sure?’ I wondered.

‘Because Hayley and Bonny are the ones who are most like you. If they left a room and you walked in, most people might not spot the change.’

‘Whereas the others?’

‘Oh I don’t think anyone would ever confuse some of the others with you!’

My similarities to Bonny and Hayley, she explained, had just increased. Those were the only other personalities who were aware of the DID diagnosis. At least, those were the only two who accepted it. I was glad to learn that I wasn’t the only one who’d rejected the idea – but shocked to imagine all those similar conversations going on between the therapists and the various personalities. When the Prof revealed he’d also been giving them the same memory tests as I’d been doing for the last couple of years – to see how much information leaked through from one to another, in spite of the fact that none of us was conscious of anything that happened to the others – I was blown away.

‘When did you test them?’ I asked, still in shock. ‘I only come here once a month.’

‘Remember that sometimes you didn’t always come to my sessions?’ he replied.

I nodded. There had been weeks when I hadn’t remembered attending.

‘But your body always made it. Bonny or you managed to find your way here and I tested whoever was out.’

The reliance on Bonny and Hayley was no coincidence, I learned. The body may play host to multiple personalities but, Dr Laine explained, if that body was to function normally in the wider world then there had to be one personality in control, what she called the ‘dominant personality’.

‘So I’m the dominant personality?’ I assumed, completely unprepared for the answer.

‘I’m afraid not,’ she said, adding it was her role to encourage me to reach my potential.

As if discovering you share your body with 100+ other personalities isn’t embarrassing enough for your ego, it’s nothing compared to the blow when you realise you’re not even the main one!

It took a while but eventually Dr Laine explained it in a way I could accept. When Kim Noble had faded into the background, as Dr Laine put it, Hayley had taken over. She was the one who took charge of getting us from A to B, of generally keeping our life on track. As an adult, she was the one who found us jobs, paid bills and handled the day-to-day bureaucracy. None of the rest of the personalities – myself included – had any input in this. I didn’t even realise it went on. At some point, which she said she would explain later, Hayley had grown tired and faded. At the same time, the personality most like her, a woman called Bonny, stepped forward. From just coming out for portions of the day, like I was told I had been doing, Bonny now appeared for the lion’s share of the time. And because she was similar in behaviour to Hayley it had been a fairly seamless transition as far as the outside world was concerned.

‘And now,’ Dr Laine said, ‘you might be needed more and more as there is so much pressure on Bonny.’

Bonny, she feared, was beginning to fade away as Kim and Hayley had, and the body was already looking for her replacement. It wasn’t just bills and admin that were in jeopardy once she went. Without a dominant personality at the helm, the body’s daughter was at serious risk of being taken away. For this reason, Dr Laine had identified me as a potential dominant personality years ago. Now, it seemed, the body was agreeing. The final piece of the jigsaw was getting me to realise it for myself.

‘How do you know I’m going to be the dominant personality?’ I asked Dr Laine.

‘Well, have you noticed yourself being more present recently?’

I considered it. Yes, it was true. I had seemed to spend longer and longer periods with Aimee and I’d even noticed that the time I dedicated to thinking about the DID hadn’t flown by like when I did so many other things.

‘I think you’re coming out more because you’re being selected,’ the doctor said. ‘The body thinks you’re its best bet for coping with the future.’

I don’t think I’ll ever understand the full workings of the human brain, body and consciousness. I was heartened, however, to realise that even old hands like Professor Morton were still capable of being surprised as well. The tests I’d been undergoing for the last few years had been designed to check how extreme a case I was. The results intrigued even a man who’d been interested in the disorder for decades.

‘This is really significant, Patricia,’ the professor said. ‘You might say you are the gold standard for DID!’ he smiled. ‘You are one hundred per cent not co-conscious.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It means there is absolutely no seepage between personalities. The majority of dominant personalities in people with DID have some level of awareness of the other alters. Some hear voices, some can see what’s going on when they’re not in control. Some can even talk to all the different personalities in their head.’

‘I can’t do that.’

‘No,’ he agreed. ‘It’s remarkable, isn’t it? I’ve never met anyone like you.’

On one level, accepting that I was one of several – possibly hundreds of – personalities turned my head inside out. It was like trying to catch your breath standing under a waterfall. There was too much information to take it all in at once. I needed time to process – but time was the thing I was always missing. On the other hand, it explained so much I felt a weight rise from my shoulders. It wasn’t like the diagnosis for schizophrenia, which I’d always instinctively known was wrong.

This feels right.

As hard to conceive as DID was, it was such a relief to learn that my blackouts weren’t caused by alcohol. I wasn’t some drunk struggling to get by in life. My apparent memory lapses were actually gaps in my knowledge and they had a medical reason: I genuinely wasn’t there at the time.

Even though I knew it made sense, coming to terms with being a bit-part player in my own body’s life took a while. No one likes to think they’re not important. Yet, when I looked back at some of the most dramatic moments of my life, I realised I hadn’t really been the one pulling the strings.

Hayley, for example, was the one who had fought the tribunal at the Maudsley. She was the one who had gotten us off the schizophrenia charge. She was the one who’d filed the application, done the research, then got up there and made such a powerful presentation that she became the first patient on Ward 3 to have ever beaten the system. She had done all that – and I’d taken the credit. Dad had told me how impressive I’d been and I didn’t even question it. At the time it seemed normal for me. All the while it was Hayley doing these things.