"Was She Ever Different?"

Lothorien wrote a post today that I want to base my post on.

Whenever my T or one of my doctors or someone else who is aware of my DID asks my mom, "Was Bee ever different when she was younger?", my mom always answers, "She was just my little Bee."

My mom is not very observant. She has her set view of how the world should be and that is how the world appears to her. She is so set on me being "normal" that she tends to view me as "normal" until something goes wrong - which in turn makes her upset because she doesn't understand why. Then there is my dad, who was hardly ever around when I was younger but when he was, he would physically and verbally abuse me. My mom either never noticed this was going on, or made herself believe that it was not going on - because her world had to remain the way she saw it.

I remember sitting on the floor in my kindergarten classroom with my classmates turned towards me. They were laughing at me. I had no memory of what had happened before and I was very confused...

I was holding a piece of chalk, standing in front of the blackboard. My first grade teacher kept saying over and over "what is the answer, Bee?" I had no idea why I was even up there...

I am standing in front of an auditorium full of people. I am clothed in a long dress and bonnet, singing a song I didn't know the words to. My second grade class was performing the play we had practiced all year, but I had no memory of these practices...

My third grade class is sitting in a circle on the floor in the front of our classroom. The teacher is calling on random students to answer multiplication facts. It is my turn and I don't know what "times" means...

I am sitting quietly at my desk doing an assignment when another one of my fourth grade classmates accuses me of stealing her "lucky pen". The teacher searches my desk and finds a pen that I have never seen before...

I could go on but I think I am getting my point across. I do not remember much of my childhood.

When I was four or five years old, I was so scared that I would never know what it was like to be another person. I would only be "me". I would only see out of my body.

One time I was sitting in my family room playing with the FisherPrice Little People. My mom was sitting on the couch next to me. I felt my lips move and someone else's voice leaked out and said a bad word. My mom grabbed my arm and told me to never say it again. But the voice came out a second time and said the bad word. My mom threatened to put soap in my mouth. I tried to tell her that it wasn't me. I wasn't saying the bad word! But the voice came out again to say the bad word. My mom got up to get the soap. I ran to my room and hid under my bed where she couldn't reach me. I stayed there until it got dark. My dad came home. He moved my bed and grabbed me before I could get away. My legs hurt so bad. My mom put soap in my mouth. I didn't understand why I got in trouble for something I didn't do. It wasn't my voice. I didn't even know what the word was. It sounded like a different language.

I learned to pick up on my surroundings within seconds of "waking up" in a place. I didn't know why I couldn't remember things. I didn't know I could walk to get to different places. I was just always there.

I have a twin sister and I used to think we could really "switch places". Now I realize that I would switch with an alter and I would be in my "dome" or "beehive" until we switched back.

I used to think everyone could switch places with the twin inside their head. I used to tell my sisters who they would switch with. They would go along with me but they never understood what I meant. They just thought it was a game I liked to play. Now they realize I really did switch with someone.

I always felt I was very different from everyone else - even Brooke (my twin sister). I learned to read minds - in a sense - very early on so I knew how to be and act around people. I was very numb - I didn't feel anything. I was never happy. I wanted to die at a very young age. I could never cry, even if I got hurt really bad. I would never tell anyone when I was sick because I didn't want anyone to think that I couldn't fight back. I would be gone for days or weeks or months and it would feel like I was only gone for a few minutes. I would find new toys or furniture in the house and not remember when we got them. In school I would either know the answers and not know how I knew them, or I wouldn't know the answers at all and feel like I should know them.

There was always this "buzzing" noise going on inside of my head. Sometimes it would be quieter, like a gentle hum. Sometimes it would be so loud that I would get a migraine and start throwing up.

I was so afraid that I was going to go blind when I was younger that I practiced being blind. I would close my eyes and find my way through the house or outside. I would turn out all the lights and wander around the house until I knew where everything was.

I have never slept very much, even when I was younger. I would lie in bed at night and watch the shadows dancing on my bedroom walls. Sometimes I would lean over the bunk bed I shared with my sister and watch her breathing - just to make sure she was still alive.

Every time I would be in trouble (for something I didn't remember doing) I always knew that timeout wouldn't be very long because I could go inside my dome and play with my friends until one of my parents came to get me.

Every time I looked in the mirror, I didn't recognize who was looking back at me.

I didn't feel like I was real. I felt like I was just floating through this world on my way to another one. I didn't see how everyone else could live just by themselves with no friends around them or inside of them.

Whenever I was scared, I had a place to hide in the dome. Someone was always there to help me out.

The first person I ever met who could switch places with someone inside them was Caly. I had met her when I was 8, but we didn't become friends until I was 15. One night, I told her I could switch with other people and they would be me. She told me she could do it too and she showed me. (At the time, neither of us had any idea that we both had DID. We both just thought we had a bunch of friends that could only talk to us through each others bodies.) It was the first time in my life that I felt understood. We were best friends for 4 years after that.

When I was five or six years old, I remember trying to figure out what "real" was. I didn't feel real, so I wondered if anyone else was real. Since I couldn't feel any emotion or anyone else's emotions, I began to think that no one was real. For a long time I thought that God controlled all these bodies around me with a remote control. I thought I was the only one who could think and move and do things on my own, except that I didn't feel like I always had control. Sometimes I could see and hear things but I wasn't controlling my movements or my thoughts or my actions or my speech.

I could go on and on but this post needs to end at some point. I'm curious to see if other people with DID experience some of the same things?

-Bee