Who Art Thou, Imposter?

My new T and I have been working through some things that my old T had really upset me about in the past. I have been sending my new T some of my old emails to her - (conversations between me and my old T). I came across one particular email that really hit me hard...at first I tried to put it aside and forget it but it kept nagging me in the back of my mind.

At the time, I had been pretty much on bed rest because of my severely high pain levels. I was about 19 years old, on morphine, and basically stuck in bed all day except for when I had my college classes. My old T was convinced that my alters were sabotaging my life and I kept defending them, telling my old T that they weren't making me sick. This is what I wrote to my old T late one night...

“You don’t know what it’s like. There are theories from people who know nothing about having voices in their head. There are things I just know. I can’t prove them, but I know them. I know they are true. I know I have alters who lie and do things I hate, but this is me talking. I live with this disorder every moment of every day. I know things about it that nobody else would know - unless they have alters. There are things I can never tell. Never explain. Never be able to prove. But I know. I know...
 

I know it sounds weird when I say that I know when I can eat or drink certain things, or when certain things make me feel better or worse. It probably sounds like I’m crazy or that I’m making it up, but I swear I’m not. There is something going on and I can’t figure out what it is. It is frustrating and tiresome and ridiculous but I’m willing to fight for it. 

You don’t know what it’s like to live like this. To be afraid of things most people cannot see. To talk to people who are only talking to you. To never sleep; instead, you see things and call them dreams because you don’t know what else to call them. Supposed memories that come to you, and people telling you it’s from your life but you don’t ever remember living it. You go weeks without eating anything and yet you look the exact same – as if no matter how much pain you have to suffer through from starving to death it never shows the effects on the outside. 

I can’t explain to someone what it is like to look in a mirror and not recognize the face inside it. How there are some days I wake up and it takes everything inside me to put on a mask and walk through my life like someone else. I am the person that you pretend does not exist, except that is all I am, all of the time. 

I feel like I’m always trying to give people what they want or expect, but I’m always falling short. Somehow I end up being the disappointment. 

People I thought I knew, I really don’t know at all. Just like they don’t really know me, either."

I know I have come a long way from that point in my life, but there are still times when I feel like that person. I often wonder if I will ever stop feeling like an imposter in my own body?