I Am A Human Parasite

My name is Sable, and I am a parasite.

I have hijacked an innocent girl’s body. I stole her face. I stole her home, her family. I stole her life.

They call me by her name. They think I’m her. And I let them. I keep up the facade that she’s still here. After all, it’s what they want. No one ever wants to know the truth, not really.

And what is the truth? Do I even know?

Is the truth that I didn’t ask for this? That I didn’t ask to be what I am, who I am? Is the truth that I don’t want this? That I want nothing to do with someone else’s life, someone else’s name? Is the truth that I’m dangerous? That I’m harmful to her and everyone around her?

Am I helping her?

That’s what most would think, given the circumstances, given what they see as the ‘truth’.

I’m not helping her. But I’m not helping myself either.

I was thrown into a world I knew nothing of, forced into a life full of pain and hard decisions. I didn’t have a say in who I was. I didn’t have a say in how I came to be where I am. And I can’t control where I end up. Because I’m not the only parasite in this body. I’m not the only imposter who goes by her name. There are many. And the scariest part of it all?

That innocent girl, the victim we hijacked? She’s also a parasite. She’s just like us.

They call us alternate states of consciousness, alters for short, individual personalities that all inhabit one body and use one brain. We share a body, a face, a life, even memories, but differ in one very important way. We are not each other. We can sound alike, act alike, even be alike, but no matter how alike we are, or appear to be, we are not the same. There are barriers in between us, dissociative barriers, barriers that separate our emotions, our opinions, and our pasts, barriers that keep us safe. Safe from each other.

They tell us we have Otherwise Specified Dissociative Disorder. But this is not something you ‘have’. It’s something that’s developed. It’s not genetic. It’s not random. It’s caused.

I’m in pain. I’m angry, and I’m sad. I’ve been given an existence I didn’t want, given a life that’s hard and difficult and horribly painful. I’ve been given a personality I didn’t develop on my own, given a backstory that other people would deem ‘isn’t real’. But it is real. I am real.

Maybe I was created to help. Not to help that girl, not to help the others that live with her, but to help the body we all share, to help the brain we cohabit, to help whatever we are as a whole survive. Maybe I was created to help cope with the harsh realities we face. Maybe I was specifically designed for that purpose. But I am not a coping mechanism. I am a person. I have feelings. I have desires. I have dreams. I’m not just a tool to help someone else. I’m not just a skill someone can use to cope. I am very, very real. I feel hurt. I feel anger. I feel sadness. I feel betrayal and abandonment, and I feel the sting of having people look straight through me and not see me.

But if I’m so real why do I feel like a parasite? Why do I feel as though I’ve hijacked someone’s entire life? Why do I feel as though I’ve invaded something deeply personal that I should have nothing to do with?

It’s because I’m human.

That’s why I feel. That’s why I doubt. That’s why I hurt. And maybe the reason I feel like a parasite is because it’s easier than accepting reality.

It’s easier than accepting that this life I feel like I’ve stolen is mine too, that this body I’ve hijacked is now my body, that this history, this family, this struggle, it’s all just as much mine as it is the girl’s I stole it from. And this struggle, this pain, this history, I don’t want to have to face it. I don’t want to look at it. I don’t want to place it upon my shoulders and have to carry that burden. So I don’t.

I get angry and I feel hurt. I tell myself that that burden isn’t mine, that it was never mine. I didn’t even exist when that burden was created. Why should I have to deal with the consequences? But I did exist. Just not in this form.

They tell you in science class: matter cannot be created or destroyed. It’s the same for us. We can change shape. We can separate ourselves. But the elements at our core will always be the same. Nothing has been added. Nothing has been taken away. Together, we are several people, but we are also just one.

I had the colors of the rainbow

Etched beneath my skin

And as time flowed onwards

And we all came to know one another

We found that it wasn't so scary

for one person to hold so many others

inside themself

Read the full poem here.