I HAVE DID and I HAVE autism, and I HAVE tourette’s and I HAVE OCD and I HAVE immune deficiencies and I HAVE agnosias, but I AM Donna.

I am diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder but also with autism, just like one can be blond AND short. The two are related in my case but of course one can have one or the other. But the autism side of it is where I couldn’t get the voice/body to be volitional, they kept directing inwards, not outwards, so parts of me could make it, but not integrated as a whole. I’m at that point now. I think I might ultimately make it. Otherwise it’ll be a dissociative life, one where different parts of me go offline, the body, the mind, the emotions, the voice whilst the rest continues to function and switch to maintain some sense of ‘life’.

It is as though parts of me broke out already; the mind, the voice, the body but none of them together. Together they remained on the ‘other side’. I existed in typing, the fingers talking. I existed in my feet and hands but when people tried to connect I disappeared, but the others were fragmented parts of me and continued, each trying to become a whole person, but unfortunately different whole people, and none of them able to be because the ‘glue’ was me, stuck back there, in the external world.

All my selves are ‘me’, they’re just parts of me – body without much mind, mind without much emotions, emotions without much mind, voice much without emotions, self protection without much attachment, attachment without much self protection etc and obviously there’s also the whole me but struggling with speech.

So integration for me is about getting all of my functions into one place, one direction, one broad identity instead of all these maverick parts of me heading out to make their own lives.