by Kim Noble
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.
But at least I wasn’t drunk. I didn’t black out. The simple reason why I had no memory of the tribunal is because I didn’t attend.
Hayley sounded a very dynamic person. Not like me at all, really. I think I would have been intimidated to meet her. Unfortunately, as far as Dr Laine could establish, the pressure of the acid and fire had taken its toll. Hayley stopped ‘coming out’ as often.
At that point Bonny stepped up. She’d always been around, apparently, just like me. The only difference between us, Dr Laine said, was Bonny’s temper. She would only put up with things for so long and then she’d explode.
‘Have you ever blacked out when you were getting cross or agitated about something?’ Dr Laine asked.
It did sound familiar. I remembered times just being penned in in Warlingham, feeling so claustrophobic about the locked doors, and wishing I could force them open. I never would, I was too timid. The next thing I remember, though, is being told off by the staff for trying to break out when I knew I hadn’t left my bed. I’d thought, What tablet
s have they put me on? Can they actually read my thoughts?
Now I knew: Bonny had taken it further. She had shaken those doors. She’d kicked them until the hinges rattled. And then she’d been manhandled back to bed.
Which is where I took over again!
It’s a slow process opening your perception to something so massive. First I needed to appreciate that I wasn’t always in 100 per cent control of my body or its actions. As much as I wanted to accept that blindly, it takes a while to come to terms with. Then I needed to be aware that other people inhabited the same physical space as me. This was the tricky one. I just felt dirty. I couldn’t shake the suspicion that other people had been spying on me. Understanding that this isn’t how it works wasn’t easy. Dr Laine kept saying, ‘But you can’t see what the others are doing when they come out, can you?’ and the answer was no, I just seemed to vanish. Even so …
On paper I’d accepted what the therapists were saying: I suffered from Dissociative Identity Disorder. That was a big leap to take. The epiphany really came, however, when I started to look back and apply my new knowledge to my life.
That was my eureka moment.
Forget the blackouts. I’d learnt to live with those years earlier. To a certain extent it didn’t make much difference whether I’d passed out from overindulging on wine, or been parked because a different personality had taken over.
The bombshell realisation for me was all those other things during my life that I had been accused of doing. What was it I used to say as a child?
‘It wasn’t me.’
And now I knew I was right. Such a huge weight lifted off me. I always knew I hadn’t done those things. How many innocent men are imprisoned on the strength of overwhelming evidence? How long had I lasted before I stopped denying everything? Looking back, that annoyed me. Why didn’t anyone work it out? Why did they all just assume I was a liar and move on?
As I said, coming to terms with an epiphany of this magnitude is not something you do overnight. It took months of sifting over my past to get a little perspective on everything. Even then I’d barely scratched the surface. Every day new memories flooded in and I tried to work out what had really happened. Sometimes I was left wondering. Sometimes Dr Laine had the answers.
The black paint episode at school – my earliest memory. That had happened. That was Bonny. She’d spilt it.
It wasn’t me.
Trying to climb out of the Orange Room and being caught? Bonny again.
It wasn’t me.
God, it felt good to know I hadn’t been crazy, to actually feel vindicated after all these years.
Playing detective, having to work out where I was and what I was up to, had always been part of my daily routine. Now, though, I felt like an investigator working on a cold case. I was surrounded by unsolved mysteries from ten, twenty, thirty-odd years ago – and I was determined to solve every single one of them.
Every spare minute available, I raked over my past, trying to piece together exactly what had happened. The only problem was: spare minutes were thin on the ground. I’m still learning now. Watching Oprah taught me things I didn’t know about my body. Writing this book has been a revelation as well.
Knowing about DID, even accepting I had it, didn’t change anything. It wasn’t as though I’d been handed a ‘cure’. The blackouts remained as frequent as ever. I was still disappearing for hours or days at a time. I still found myself wondering, Where the hell am I now? And I was doing the usual process of trying to piece the evidence together. The only difference now was it didn’t scare me any more. In fact, I even fantasised about the next ‘switch’. That took time but, yes, I really found myself thinking, I wonder what I’ll get up to today without knowing it. I wonder who’s coming to take my place.
Among all the crimes I was wrongly accused of were a few where I had to plead guilty. All those occasions at school where I’d been accused of talking had happened. Sometimes it was Kim or Bonny or someone else doing the yapping. But if I suddenly found myself in a room with one of my friends I’d naturally start talking to her – before I realised I was in assembly or class.
The more I delved, the more trouble these ‘alters’ seemed to have caused me. It never occurred to me to wonder what predicaments I ever put them in. I wasn’t ready for that yet.
There were funny things, too. I discovered that at the time I had my own flat – so did Hayley. Bonny, meanwhile, lived with Mum. That explains why she never noticed when I left home and why she was always so grateful for the help I was giving her when I hadn’t even been there – it was Bonny putting her to bed, looking after her.
Can you believe that our body was living at three separate addresses at the same time? Imagine how much more money we would have had if we’d all shared!
While we had different addresses for that period, we also signed up with different doctors. It probably couldn’t happen now, but my body was registered on the NHS at three different clinics. Bearing in mind the amount of time I’d spent in the profession’s care, you’d think someone would have noticed.
Learning about DID was life changing, of course, but the full scope of its effects didn’t hit home overnight. No fairy godmother waved a magic wand and sorted everything out. Coming to terms with the disorder was such a gradual transformation that for a while I wondered if much had changed at all. In fact, I soon realised that nothing would ever be the same again.
It wasn’t as simple as saying that DID suddenly answered all my questions. If I’m honest, I wasn’t aware I had any questions. All those odd incidents and inexplicable events had all been explained away at the time. I never felt I was seeking answers.
That was just as well. Knowing about DID actually created more questions than it answered. It wasn’t an instant thing: I didn’t wake up with a head chock full of problems. But like an avalanche, it built, slowly, from the occasional thought until before I knew it every preconception I held had been destroyed – starting with some very fundamental things, like my age.
For as long as I’d been seeing her, Dr Laine had always tried to get me to look in the mirror. I always refused.
‘I don’t need to. I know what I look like.’
‘What do you think you look like?’
Stupid question. I pointed to my face.
‘Like this.’
‘How old do you think you are, Patricia?’
‘I’m twenty-one.’
‘And when were you born?’
‘Twenty-one years ago.’
‘What if I told you that you were born in 1960?’
‘Then I would say that must be twenty-one years ago.’
Honestly, Dr Laine must have had the patience of a saint to deal with me!
It’s not Dr Laine’s nature to keep pushing the same buttons so it was a while before the subject came up again. By then I had been aware of the DID for a couple of months.
‘Would you like to look in the mirror, Patricia, and tell me what you see?’
For the first time I didn’t say no. It was only a mirror, for God’s sake.
So why was I so nervous?
I went over to the mirror, took a glance, then spun round. There was no one behind me. I looked again and couldn’t help checking over my shoulder for the second time. There was still no one there. Was it a funfair mirror – is that why Dr Laine had been so desperate for me to look in?
I couldn’t understand it.
If there is no one else behind me, then who is that old woman staring back?
As far as I was concerned, my name was Patricia and I was twenty-one. Now, though, I realised I’d been stuck at that age for more than twenty years. It was like looking with fresh eyes. When I stared in that mirror I wasn’t seeing the reflection of a young adult – I’d literally doubled in age. And why did my skin look so thin?
This was going to take some time to work through.
The avalanche continued its slow descent. My age and appearance were just two of its early victims. M
ore discomfort was to come when I began to think about those times at the Cassel when Dad would turn up to collect me and insist I’d called when I hadn’t. How many times did that happen? I’d lost track. Or sometimes I’d ask to go home and then he’d be angry because he said I’d asked to be taken back. I can see what happened now. A different alter ego asked to be picked up. I don’t know who. And then of course I’d know nothing about it and be unprepared.
On the other occasions I was the one who wanted to go home – and then one of the others demanded to go back. Dad used to say I’d get hysterical about it, screaming and shouting the house down. I hadn’t believed him – until now. Looking at it from the other personality’s point of view, they – whoever it was – would have been as stunned as me to find themselves somewhere else. They’d be doing the ‘where am I now?’ jigsaw puzzle. It was numbing to think I wasn’t alone playing that particular game.
The real victim in all this was my father. Poor Dad – no wonder he always seemed so angry. And why he called me a liar.
It was a happy day when I solved that particular mystery. However, as one door marked ‘Question’ was closed, others just kept opening. It was a few weeks later and I suddenly woke up with a single question on my mind:
Why were the other personalities so determined not to stay at home? Was there something there or nearby that they didn’t like? Very strange.
Thinking of the Cassel reminded me of why I was there and all the other places that had held me captive for so much of my life. Analysing these was a lot harder than mulling over a bit of spilt black paint or the odd ‘I didn’t do that’ argument. Did I really want to know?
Dr Laine was a great help. She’d spoken to another personality. Like me for so long, this personality, Judy, refused to believe she suffered from DID. To this day she still denies it. Hearing about her, it’s like listening to the old me: she’s got an excuse for everything. If not an excuse, a reason. Judy, I was told, was fifteen.
That sounds familiar, I thought. I was twenty-one for long enough.