There's a Place for Us

Our symphony is playing West Side Story.  I saw the movie as a teenager.  I thought it was sad.  When I was in counseling and my World as I knew it blew a part the lyrics often ran through my head,

There's a place for us
Somewhere a place for us....

Only I was the only one singing it.  I chose to integrate but before that I felt the sting of repeated rejections because of how I functioned.  I didn't go out and decide I would use multiple personalities to survive, I was a terrified little girl in a crazy World that the more I tried to make sense of it the weirder it got.  More than once I felt like I fell down Alice's rabbit hole but there was no friendly creatures, kind of a White Rabbit gets Axed murdered by Stephen King. 

Again I was reminded of my feeling of isolation on the PTSD group on Facebook when a post asked are there others that use MPD. I answered yes, but chose to integrate.  Strangely now I don't fit either place.  I am no longer a multiple personality but I don't have the same thinking patterns of a singleton either.  I feel there is no place for me.  I feel isolated and struggle feeling connected.  Then I remind myself that almost every person I ever encounter also feels like they are not accepted.  Fully accepting someone else that is totally different from your self takes a willingness to be vulnerable and feel that difference.  Humans are hard wired to be attracted to those similar to themselves and bond in communities, neighborhoods, and groups of friends.  Outsiders are ridiculed and shunned as not being part of a group.  Stories, movies, songs and the news all attest of tragic results of not feeling accepted.  Then I come across a story that shows how people do connect, people that are different from each other helping each other.  I cry reading these stories.

I am different.  I knew as a teenager that I responded differently.  I didn't know why.  Finding out how I functioned was a shocker for me and my family.  I was rejected by people that I thought were friends.  Disbelief and fear were two reactions I became familiar with.  However, I did not integrate to become accepted by others.  I became a multiple to be able to appease my different abusers.  I didn't have just one.  I know how some of my personalities were brought into service.  My counselor once, and I mean once, made the mistake of asking me which one of us real.  He wanted to get me angry to get me to open up.  What he didn't expect was my towering rage at his question and my total shut down.  Took a while for him to get me on a more stable place.  He realized that I harbored deep anger, slightly miscalculated how fierce I can be.

My friend asked me about depression and how long before worrying about someone else that showed signs of depression.  I jokingly commented, "Without depression, I would be a raging bitch."  In jest, I spoke a powerful truth.  I use depression as a means of controlling the feelings of hurt and pain for suffering unjustly at the hands of those that should have protected me.  Most of the time I keep my feelings in check but every so often a reminder comes out that I lived through some of the worse that humans do.  I chose to survive against unfair odds.  I used creative ways of doing this.  Now, society condemns my methods.  I'm not sorry I was a multiple.  I am thankful I integrated and no longer lose days and weeks of time.  I learned many things along the way.  I believe the most important for me is my faith in Jesus Christ the healer of the World and there is nothing I experience that He does not understand.  With Christ, I always have a place.