Shattered

The lines have finally blurred completely. I... think I was just at a party but I can't be sure. One minute I was drinking a martini and then the next I'm draped like an old coat on a chair. I don't remember getting here. I'm in a blue dress now... I vividly remember wearing a red dress at the party. It’s all still fresh in my mind. I was there, sipping a martini, gin not vodka, and debating this insufferable woman that maki was a very valid way to consume sushi. I don't eat sushi. It makes my stomach turn knots just thinking of it. I don't know why I know that maki is a form of sushi where it is basically seaweed wrapped. It was happening again.

All of this started a short while ago. Maybe two months? Couldn't be more than three. According to my therapist, this had been going on my whole life, I just didn't know it. Of course, my legal drug peddler (you can read that as psychiatrist) said that it could have been caused by my cocktail of pharmaceuticals. That one of them, Seroquel, might have suppressed it for a while. So, I could have either been crazy my whole life or since I started medicating myself.

I'm not just some drug addict, I need them. I know what you are thinking, I sound like a drug addict. What would you have done? The meds were there because I couldn't deal. My son, Danny, at the tender age of twenty-two, eats a bullet because he's gay and his father hates him for it. Of course, he doesn't blame his father in his suicide note. It is my fault for not being stronger. Then his father leaves me and his daughter because he sees no point in continuing a relationship with a potted out zombie loser like me. He was only there to make a "stable" home for Danny. Last but not least, my daughter, Kate, hates me. Not because of her father leaving, she blames him for that. Nope, I was screwing up her life. (To be fair to her, I was. At that point, I wasn't medicated. I was just drinking heavily and blunting reality in some very illegal ways.)

I got help.

Cue in my legal drug peddler. He ran me through my paces. I've been a medicated zombie. The binge eater. The chemically asexual. Of course, none of this brought Danny back or patched things up with my ex. It did change my relationship with Kate. She went from hating me to merely condemning me. Through the haze of narcotics, I, luckily, didn't give a fuck.

Then it happened, finally, we hit the chemical sweet spot. It took almost two years. At last, I could give the appearance of being functional. I could, with great effort, return to a semblance of normality. At that point, Kate was sixteen. I had missed two years of my daughter's life in a medicated fog. It hit me hard. I cried. Then realizing I was crying, I cried some more. It was amazing, I actually gave a fuck!

I'm not going to tell you that it was all roses and daisies from then on, you'd know I’d be bullshitting. It was hard. Kate didn't trust me. Can’t blame her, I wouldn't have trusted me, either. There were moments though. They felt like I was finally getting back to me. Then there were other moments. Moments where I fell apart. I would remember something about Danny and just completely lose my shit. I couldn't help it. My emotions were no longer behind a wall made of my fractured psyche and mortared with antidepressants. Overall, I began to believe I would survive.

Almost a year later, this started happening. I was losing time and finding myself in odd places. Not only that, I had memories of things that just didn't make sense. Like glimpses of someone else's life. My life started a downward spiral. Again. But worse. I couldn't trust my senses or myself, for that matter. Something had broke.

At first, I tried to ignore it, even though I knew I shouldn't. I was afraid. Life hadn't been perfect but it was much better than it had been. I didn't want to go back, I couldn't go back. Life like that was wasted. I didn't want to miss another two years of my daughter's life. In the beginning, it was very easy to ignore the signs. It came infrequently and the durations were short. Also, I was quite proficient at ignoring things. Important things. After a month, it became harder, the frequency was the same but the durations were longer.

There was the time I cold-cocked Susan Deely with a frozen turkey in the supermarket. The bitch had it coming. She was the type of fake, smile-in-your-face, gossip-about-you-to-everyone cunt that deserved a frozen turkey to the face. I don't remember doing it. Last thing I remember was eating a grape to test the sweetness and then I was being handcuffed. But there was video evidence. Cameras caught everything. I went from taste testing to beating a bitch with a turkey in about ten seconds. I just stopped what I was doing, got a frozen turkey, and, without preface or preamble, smacked the ho then left. I don't know where I disappeared to but cops found me in the park later that night. I have a sneaking suspicion that I got laid. Which was weird because my libido hadn't returned since being medicated.

Susan dropped the charges. She learned that my assault charge was being classified as a misdemeanor and as such would only carry a one-year sentence. That wasn’t long enough for her. Apparently, I really fucking scared her. I guess she decided that it was better if she didn't give me any reason for reprisal. I was relieved. I didn't think I would do well in jail.

About a week after the Susan incident, it happened again. This time, I didn't have any video recording to help me piece together what I did. Only random clues and supposition. I was gardening, then I'm in a seedy flophouse motel. I woke up with an array of sexual paraphernalia strewn about. I could have opened up a sex shop with what I was surrounded with. All manner of dildos, strap-ons, butt plugs, lubes, restraints, paddles, etc... I never directly found out what had taken place but several people in town no longer met my gaze and one man seemed to reflexively grab his butt in pain whenever I was around.

That episode lasted five days. I started to worry. I realized this was only one of the major episodes. There were probably hundreds of minor episodes that happened between the major ones. Things as simple as the toothpaste all of the sudden being on the other side of the sink. I was losing my mind. Then there were the messages. Bitch. Waste. I would find them in random places. Notes at the bottom of my purse. On my bathroom mirror. All inexplicably in my handwriting.

Three days before my next major episode, I walked into my therapist’s office. I made subtle inquiries about missing time, people finding themselves in places they don't remember going to, even notes written to yourself. In retrospect, I wasn't that subtle.

After rambling on, he finally piqued my interest when he said, "It could be DID."

I was a sucker for a good acronym. "What does that mean?" I said.

"Dissociative Identity Disorder," he replied.

If I could go back in time, I would unhear those words. They were like a death sentence for what remained of my sanity. I mean, once I found out what it was. I always called it Multiple Personality Disorder. I wish I never knew what it meant. I was betrayed by my love of acronyms.

They say knowledge is power and I now knew. It started simply enough. A few notes in places that I had noticed the most frequent lapses or changes. Places that I knew my other half frequented. Clothes that I knew she used. I would ask her things. Like where are you taking us? What have you been doing? Then more personal things.

I shouldn't have. I should have gotten back on an antipsychotic and called it a day. But through these notes, I became acquainted with her. Apparently, she used my middle name, Julia, as her own. I learned that she was free from the chains of anxiety and depression. She partied and enjoyed life. She did things that I would never even consider attempting, some due to fear and anxiety, others due to propriety. And I drew the conclusion that doomed me: she lived my life better than I ever would.

It wasn't a sudden realization. More of a sneaky ninja of suspicion that eventually became a full-on thought. The evidence was there. Most days I was afraid to leave my bed. Or I just couldn't muster enough fucks to get me out of bed. True, I was doing better but it still wasn't enough. Even when I did get out of the house, I was scared that the slightest thing would trigger me. And when that inkling became a full-blown, mind-fucking realization, it was like I had been gut-punched by a heavyweight boxer. I couldn't breathe. How would you feel if you came to the sudden and unerring realization that someone else was living your life better than you could ever live it?

The downward spiral came next. Depression took over. The episodes became more frequent. I welcomed them. I existed between the dark spots in my memory and that reality blew hard. Then came the idea that was the nail in my coffin. What if she was what I was meant to be but the trauma of events had actually stunted my growth into her? What if I would have evolved into her but instead I became this wreck and she was a nascent seed just waiting for the proper set of circumstances to finally grow?

That is when the memory flashes began in earnest. I’d had them before, but disconnected and disjointed. Not like this. I started reliving moments that were not mine but these memories were vivid. I mean, I’d been watching them on your mom’s grainy thirty-year-old TV and now I had upgraded to the 72” HD flat screen. I found it all horribly fascinating and voyeuristic. There was me, on all fours, being taken from behind with a naked woman spread lasciviously before me. I recognized the woman as Susan! Another where I was standing in front of a bar full of people and singing. Just remembering it almost brought on an anxiety attack. Then Kate and I having lunch. She was smiling at me. We were talking. This one broke me. Julia related to my daughter better than I ever could. I cried myself through the day until finally exhaustion took me and I slept.

That is when the idea took root. I had to remove myself from the equation. Julia was the rightful resident of this body. I was the squatter. I couldn't heal the rift that had formed between us. That would just infect Julia with my anxiety and depression. All the hang-ups and ticks that had become overblown and controlled my every waking moment. She had to be herself, fully in control of me. She wouldn't require the laundry list of medications just to get out of the house three out of every five days. She would be free to leave the house whenever she wanted! Kate would finally have the mom she deserved, someone she could smile at and not look at with disgust.

I stopped taking most of my medications, only taking enough to keep me functional when I was me. None of my antipsychotics. That is when it began. The lines between Julia and I began to blur. I wrote to her, told her what I was doing. Told her she had my blessing to take control. It was torturous. It was like slowly being dragged down into a quagmire. I slowly lost my grip on reality. Demons rose from the abyssal depths of my mind and drug me down inch by inch. I think that was a month ago.

My thoughts are murky. If it isn't happening... it will soon. I will be gone and Julia can take over where I left off. I should probably feel sad but all I can feel right now is relief. It was going to be over and no one would even know I was gone. Julia would be there. It was the perfect suicide.

I'm going to close my eyes now and go to sleep...

I opened my eyes. The world was different. She was gone. I felt a twinge of sadness but knew that she had been right, we both needed her to die. I was surprised that she had chosen to wear something so cute for her final moments, maybe I had rubbed off on her more than I had thought.

I wonder what Susan was doing today?

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