CONSTELLATION

I was 20 years old when a clinician told me I had Dissociative Identity Disorder. I left his office and never went back.
When I was 38 years old, a clinician helped me to see that I had Dissociative Identity Disorder. I now understand myself to be an interconnected, but distributed System.


The Child

The Child, born in
December '77 was a
frail, winter baby,
hips twisted and
something not
quite
right.

So, they stretched
and pulled and
pushed and braced and
snipped and clipped and
cleaned me up and sent me
home a girl who
could not use
their legs.

She made wishes on the
little snippets of the
world she could see,
she made words to reach
for her, for the
uncrawling,
the unwobbling, the
unwalking of her.
She sang her strange
songs to strangers,
and how they would stare.

Sensation created me -
the weft of weave under
seeking fingertips,
the way the
scrape and sweep of
pens and pencils
carried my heartbeat,
the feeling of life
lifting all around.

Stars exploded into
matrices of being
one month in 1980,
not long
after the brace
came off.
Molecules breaking,
cracking to atoms and
an electric smell in the air.

The Child went silent under
the onslaught: Pain like
lightning in the deepest
core of the body and something
unknown and unsuspected,
discovered in the horror
of the moment that it tore.

The bathwater was tepid the
hands were hard and
callously efficient and
it broke like electricity
into her center.

I was undone,
unwelcome here,
in this world that
spears children.

Better to withdraw,
to wither inward,
wait for safety.

The Child fell silent and
nevermore has she
ever been heard here.