It began gradually over time, something I didn’t recognize right away. IT was a presence of someone from within me, someone trying to find his voice. Yes, he was male, that I knew for sure, because his presence made me feel that way. Then came the search for a name and a face. HE was simply called Leo at first, and his face was that of an adventurous, intelligent fourteen-year-old’s. His green eyes showed me his curiosity for the world around him, and that smirk he often wore I learned didn’t meant he was a kind of joker. Leo became who I’d come to know myself as, because the me I’d known before Leo’s arrival inside my mind had been hurt. Hurt badly by the fear, shock and uncertainty of my abusive situation I was trapped in. Leo protected me from that helped what fragile part of me that was left to remain whole. I came to love Leo, and later learned of his history as a person.
Leo Steelex—his last name that is—had a brother, who would later become our protector… Leo would send vivid, mental images, as all my people would, of their homes and such. Memories of their own. I learned that Leo had interests I found I began exploring—his biggest one being skateboarding.
I knew Leo was real when I began to realize he had his own thoughts, and even a voice separate from my own. IT was a small whisper at first, but then it grew clearer the more I paid attention to it. I was open to him, my nineteen-year-old mind fascinated by this idea that I actually had this forming person within myself. I grew curious about what was going on with me and realized, with some anxiety, that I was developing a multiple personality. I looked into it online-where I discovered Astraea’s Web.
Astraea’s Web was an amazing site, a place and perspective I’d never known before on multiplicity. It shed a positive light on the concept, reality of it. In fact, Astraea’s Web is run by a person who lives as a healthy, functioning, good life. That site opened my mind to not fearing the strange, indescribable experience I was having in my mind during the autumn after Leo’s arrival that summer in 2004.
I became addicted to Astraea’s Web, visiting it each day from there on out for the following weeks, and finding what I read there about one finding if they’re multiple or not all added up to me. I had been realizing that slowly my awareness of just feeling one inside myself, alongside of Leo, was merging into undefined parts. I began to feel crowded inside, like entities as Leo’s beginning was were forming, only much quicker than Leo had. He’d taken most of the summer to reveal himself to me but within a week or so I realized I had more company in my head. Sections of who I was took on new faces, voices and names.
Leo was open to meeting these new people and I welcomed them, because they somehow seemed like my only real comfort as my abuse worsened by Thanksgiving and Christmas. IT was Ally who showed up next.
IT wasn’t long before in my journal entries my references to “I” shifted to “we” and other plurals as “us” , “our” and so on, and signing whoever had written the entry at the bottom of the page. I found Ally was the writer in me. Now, for most of my childhood and teen years up to that point, I, too, had been a passionate writer of poetry and creative prose writing, but my vivid imagination had been blocked up since my abuse began a year before Ally’s arrival. She was the one who held the key to unlocking that door and she created fantastic short fiction I to this day can’t believe was written by her, also a part of me.
Anyway, Ally was what’s called an age-slider, moving from maybe being twenty-years-old to twenty-five-years-old as she struggled to know who she really was. Her persona was upbeat, optimistic and energizing. I learned to love her and I found her voice, one that I can’t produce with my vocal chords to this day, because it was so unique.
I need to explain to you here that as a multiple, I was never the classical kind, where I got headaches or blackouts between switching between Leo or Ally and the rest. Always I was partially conscious with them, but they had most control. I learned, through Astraea’s Web, that I didn’t have to be unorganized in my memories and thoughts. My inner people were good with one another, had become a family, and transferred messages well to each other so I never—except very rarely—was left not knowing what was going on around me, better then known as “us”.
Shay came, infrequently at first, but then became more curious about who Ally and Leo were. She was red-headed, Irish as a penny whistle, and was the one who enjoyed washing dishes, dusting the furniture and anything pertaining to cleaning in general. AT first we thought she was some kind of house maid or servant. Even she didn’t know for sure. Worst yet she had a strong Scottish accent that I’d become aware of, and feared if anyone in my family or friends heard it, it’d give us away. We weren’t ready to tell anyone about this new transformation going on in us by the day.
By Christmas I didn’t recognize the true me anymore. I became accepting to this new idea that I was now a multiple. It seemed the more I trusted in it, the more powerful it grew and the more rapidly the people formed. Leo’s brother, Isaac, Zack Chandlor, the thirty-three missionary, and shortly after eleven-year-old boy, Taylor, joined my mindscape.
I knew these people were real inside me. I didn’t want to believe they were fake. They had voices, all different within my mind, memories and emotions attached to them that I couldn’t ignore and wants. All had some kind of a desire and need to fulfill within me.
Zack, tall, with large, brown kind eyes, was something of a
Flower child. With honey brown hair to the middle of his back and who enjoyed sixties music
And other oldies, he also had a painful past Ally and the rest grieved
Over.
His wife, Tracy, and four-year-old daughter, Trinity, with beautiful blue eyes and the same blond hair as her mother, were shot. They’d been traveling in another country when the shooting had taken place, and this I dreamt of one night, and Zack was always haunted by the idea he could find Trinity in another child. Something like reincarnation, actually, though strangely Zack claimed to be Christian, but somehow he still kept searching for Trinity in little girls.
Taylor and Isaac had the longest period of development. Taylor was an orphan, but who quickly attached himself to Ally and Zack as adopted parents. Often Ally and Taylor would watch movies together, but mostly Ally would make Taylor Taylor lunch—tuna fish being his favorite. IN my head he’d say in his high voice, “Ally, I’m hungry,” and Ally would respond, “Hold on, it’s coming.”
Taylor had a thing for Spungebob Squarepants, and Easter of 2005 ate so many black jelly beans it made me sick. When he was “out”, or presently in control control of my body, he gave off a child’s endless energy, talking silly and finding the most simplest things the most amusing. Just rubbing a balloon onto his head—my hair that is—to give it static was the coolest thing to him.
I’d read that multiples can have two of their people—sometimes three but it’s rare—to interact in the real world and be in control of the body at once. This was what often happened when Taylor and Ally were “up front” in my mind. IT was like two people in the front seat in a car, talking and sitting beside each other. They’d have to take turns, of course, while doing things physically, like Ally setting the sandwich on a plate and Taylor, using my physical hands, to grab it and lift it to his mouth. It was strange at times and confusing at first, but I, or at that time, we, got used to it.
Isaac was the strangest and most confusing one of us all, though. He was the protector, and was often not heard or realized. HE was suspicious, blond hair past his shoulders and with intense, dark eyes. Often his mouth was set in a hard frown, and when he spoke inside our head, his voice was low, often above a whisper. He was Leo’s older brother, we found. AT fifteen or sixteen-years-old—(we never quite knew for sure)—he had a bizarre history. His father, also Leo’s dad, was a heavy drinker who physically abused Isaac to the point Isaac ran away from home to some mysterious and questionable underground group of people who fought imaginary monsters. Most likely these so-called monsters Isaac claimed existed in the real world but weren’t seen were actually symbols of the subconscious. Pain, anger, fear…
Isaac shoed little emotion, and rarely came up front to control the body. When he did, it was very brief, possibly only two minutes or so at most. Always he was guarded inwardly, prepared for a physical confrontation if one arose. He barely ever spoke with my physical voice, but whenever he did, it was low, as low as my vocal range could take me, which was pretty far. Isaac was there to keep unwanted newcomers who formed out of nowhere out of us. Often these newcomers, one called Tracey, (a different one not associated with Zack) who was promiscuous. She was unwelcome, staying for a few days with intense control over our body and who blocked the rest of us out from communicating with her. She only encouraged the abuse further, which was why she was so bad. Yes, she was beautiful, clear-eyed and with a voluptuous figure. My abuser told me that when Tracy emerged, my face “glowed”. What he meant by that I’ll never know, except that at the last moment as she was giving pleasure to my abuser, my people with the force of Isaac interrupted her.
Isaac had a power none of the others did, and that was to push out the unwanted newcomer. IT was all psychological willpower, forcing them out, pushing them out of my body that made this force work.
My inner family, my household, as I called it, eventually wrote our own code of conduct, a kind of constitution of rules we had to follow. Simply summed up, no one was allowed to get away with anything. Everyone was responsible on the whole for my sake if, say, Leo said something mean in his anger at my mom. Then we’d all have to gather in the imaginary living room within my mind—yes, it was a mental mindscape, a central meeting place—to talk things out. Now, my actual family in real life didn’t know anything about my people except for my father, the abuser. So, though Leo would be sorry for what he’d done, I couldn’t say to my mom that Leo was the one who yelled at her and was sorry. Instead, I’d have to tell her that “I” was sorry about what I did. It got complicated at times.
There was so much to learn about myself and my people throughout the following months. I think the only way to explain more fully and clearly about my experience on these amazing people is to really talk about them in a post on their own. There is so much more I want to share with you, and this post alone does no justice. IT barely scratches beneath the skin. I want to look deeper into who these people were. This blog isn’t just about my personal experience as a multiple and the intergration that followed, but also a tribute to them. They are the ones who made me stronger and the great, complex person I’ve become.
