I mentioned my friend Leah in a recent post about my re-reading of
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. She battles dissociative identity disorder (DID), more commonly known as “multiple personality disorder.” It’s the brain’s way of dealing with trauma and abuse at an early age, which Leah was treated to an abundance of as a girl.
I will not go into specifics, but what I have to tell would keep you up at night. Society jokes about being scarred for life. Leah is. Due to the trauma, her mind has fragmented and has become compartmentalized. One might say it became modular.
As mentioned, Leah is not her real name. As a matter of fact, she hates that name. But it’s the one that I selected, and she is stuck with it. She’s absolutely thrilled.
At any rate, she is currently in a residential mental-health facility. It’s quite nice, located in a secluded and scenic area. They have goats and pigs. I have seen them on FaceTime, and I kept urging Leah to go pet one of the pigs, but they were too far. Leah is well accustomed to me acting like a four-year-old.
We bicker endlessly. Like children. “You’re weird” “No, you’re weird!” “You are!” We recently got into one of our bickering matches, and Leah said, “Is this all we do??” To which I replied, “It’s about 80 percent of it.”
She has had a rough few weeks. Leah bottoms out. Think of the trough of a sine curve. When the emotions get too intense, she is prone to “switching.” This is when one of the parts or alters (personalities) comes to the front. I have talked to a number of these. How many? Hard to say. I would say maybe six. There are fifteen in total.
A few nights ago we were talking, and Leah looked off. I asked her if she was okay. The eyes are always a dead give-away. They go dull and start darting to and fro. She had switched.
I ended up having a rather lovely half-hour conversation with Bailee (not the alter’s name). She now knows her codename is Bailee, and she doesn’t much care for it. “That’s a weird name.” But there it is.
During our conversation, she asked some interesting questions. She said, “She [Leah] loves you.” I replied that I loved Leah as well. Then Bailee said, “But we’re kinda the same person, so what does that mean for me? I replied, “I love you both, of course.” “You love me?” “Yes, Bailee, I love you.” She smiled and said no one had ever said that to her before.
She began painting during our chat. I’ve been nudging Leah in that direction for a while now. Not necessarily “pushing” it, just encouraging it. I think she loves it—hard to say. She definitely enjoys buying art supplies, that’s for sure.
At first she was apprehensive. She didn’t want to fail—something she fears in general. I said, “It’s art. You’re 100 percent going to fail. You’ll paint one crap painting, then another, then another. You might paint fifty crap paintings, but on painting 51, you might be like, ‘Huh, that’s interesting.’ Then it begins.” But Leah is already conducting interesting experiments.
Her last painting, however, was … um, not great. We laughed hysterically. “Okay, it’s not your best work,” I said, trying to be supportive. But then I said, you’ve done two interesting things here. After pointing them out, I said, “Let’s commit those two ideas to memory.”
So, back to Bailee. She begins painting, and she says “Do you think we [Leah and I] can have different abilities?” I said, “Of course you can. However, you do paint like her.” She replied, “I think we both like red.” “Yes, it would seem so,” I said laughing.
Near the end of our conversation—we both desperately needed to get some sleep—Bailee asked me, “How come you don’t write about us anymore?” (I was impressed she knew and remembered.) I pointed out that I had only done the one essay—and a half-essay at that. She said, “Can you write about us some more?” I said that I would, hence this piece.
Bailee, this essay is for you. And thanks, Leah, for letting me post it. I love you and I believe in you—and that goes for Bailee, too. Of course.
