14. Ganou and The Cradle

 

NOTE: Each alter’s name has a number after it the first time

it is on the page to show which group s/he belongs to.

See the right of this page for the group.

There is something quite important that we have not yet told you. Often, in the literature on DID, there is talk about “integration”. We think that many multiples find that to be a four-letter word, as in “DEAD”. But it is more than just that. There is the question – why? Why do we need to integrate, or all blend into one personality? Is that so the rest of the world isn’t so confused or is there something more to it than that? Well, we don’t have the answer.

Back in 1992, we attended a wonderful 3-month education and support group on managing multiple personality. It was led by a woman who was also multiple. One of the things she said was that integration could happen spontaneously. We think she also said we had a choice whether to integrate or not. Well quite a few years ago we had decided we wouldn’t. But in October 2009 a whole big crew of us said ah what the hell let’s integrate. Very funny guys. That left about 1/3 of us in the dark as to what happened to the rest of them and why weren’t we told about their plans.

It started off one morning as we were working on a project we began to get this really bad feeling. It felt like something bad was going to happen that day. But it took us quite a while before we found out what it was. In hindsight it wasn’t a bad thing at all but it sure felt like it at that time. Well eventually we found out that a lot of us had decided to do some kind of integration or blending or fusing or melting into one. According to some therapists, such as Dr Kluft, it can be quite a complicated process which makes us wonder if we really did integrate. You see we still refer to everyone as separate individuals. We even had Epiphany (4), who had been involved in the so-called integration, come back out a few months later and not for any serious reason. She just wanted a stuffed rabbit she saw in a store. Doesn’t sound like integration to me-Shell (1, 2)

However, something happened that day in October. And just before it happened a new alter was created. Her name is Ganou (0) but she sometimes just goes by ‘nou (as in “what’s new?”). Those of us not involved in the integration were pretty pissed off to be left out of the whole event. Why didn’t you guys tell us you were doing this? Because you might have tried to stop it. Sure we might have. But then again, given what it looks like at this point, we probably would have said fine. No one died so everything’s fine. And is that “integration” that you really did or something else?

Again, in hindsight, most of us agree that it looks more like something else. The really interesting part is that we say that all of these alters now reside in something called “The Cradle”. So they are definitely in a separate place than this smaller group still here. But all in all, no one died, no one was injured in the process, our feelings were hurt but they apologized and said they wouldn’t do it again, so everything’s fine and dandy and we are still 184 alters.

Oh ... right ... we forgot. We told you we were 183, but we had not counted Ganou. So 184 to date.

So we still don’t have an answer about why integrate? The psychiatrist we worked with never pushed the issue. She figured we would do what we needed to do – which was – to be all of who we are. One doctor called it a “narcissistic investment in separateness”. Ha. Narcissistic eh. Well okay if that’s what you want to call it. But we think you are missing the point entirely. We had, and still have, a huge investment in our separateness. It’s how we survived. It’s our reality. And besides, we still think integration is a four-letter word. One we won’t print here.