I continued to lose time during my time in college and beyond. Most of time I had no idea it had happened until I would look back and discover these blank spots of varying times and not knowing what happened during these “blank spots.”
I had this inclination something wasn’t right but had no idea as to what that was. That started an almost endless array of seeing therapists to help me figure out what was going on with me (though losing time never came up). I counted up once and it was somewhere around 15 or so therapists I had sought out to try to help me. But none of them helped me until the last one. I’ll write about some of the previous therapists, but for now I will concentrate on the last one.
It had been several years in-between therapists before this nagging sense of something being wrong came back to haunt me, So I asked a former counselor I knew for some recommendations, and she gave me a list the names of 3 therapists, one being some sort of therapy company., At any rate, the first number I called was a single therapist and I got an answering machine which I detested at the time. I didn’t want a company therapy clinic so I called the last number on my list. It too was a single therapist and when I called she actually answered the phone! I was impressed to say the least. We talked for a couple of minutes and set up an appointment.
I don’t remember how long it took for this therapist (I’ll call her B), to finally tell me an answer to my question, but at some point she suggested an answer. I had multiple personality disorder (today known as dissociative identity disorder.) I was not prepared for that answer. In fact, it never was even on my radar, something that never occurred to me in any sense.
After that session, I stopped by a friend’s house named Fran. She was older than me at the time, but that didn’t matter. We were friends. She lived near me so I would stop by at times and talk to her about stuff. But this time was different. We sat at her kitchen table and I told her what my therapist suggested was an answer to the question I never knew: I was a multiple. I remember to this day what she said, “Why am I not surprised?” On some level she knew that was true, even though I struggled with it.
More on my journey of discovery and to my beginning to accept this answer.