A Beautiful Confusion

Chapter 29. Reconciliation

Woke up at 5 am (again) and took a shower, I started my day just as I always did buy on that day after I reconciled with everyone I felt a little lighter. I still had other problems that needed addressing but at least my highschool life was at peace, highschool was always the one place were I felt a little normal, especially after I managed to stabilize my condition, at the end of the year I realized that I like Iris because she made me feel happy and forget my worries, my friends did the same but I guess because she was a pretty girl I put her above them.

When I was 12 I was diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder or DID for short. Basically it's a mental process which produces a lack of connection in a person's thoughts, memories, feelings, actions, or sense of identity, they say it's caused by a person shutting off themselves from a situation or experience that's too violent, traumatic, or painful to process. It commonly starts during early childhood and apparently it's a coping mechanism to get through the trauma.

In layman's terms I see things that others don't.

Unlike other people I only see two "people", DID is different for everyone. In my case I see Mikel and Charlotte—one of my therapist said they are like the angel and devil on my shoulders which is funny coz Mikel is the name of an angel—, I'm not sure when I started seeing them but my mum says it was when I was around eight. At first they thought they were just imaginary friends, I thought they were crazy when they told me so because I had anosognosia, it's where your not aware of your mental illness. To me Mikel and Charlotte were real, they kinda still are, it's hard to explain.

Back to the point, my parents didn't bother me much until I was twelve when I was diagnosed and I found out I wasn't normal. My dad grew distant after that and when people at school found out I was seriously bullied and I was already being bullied before that. My last two years of primary school were horrible ( the 6th and 7th grade).
We tried family therapy as suggested—but it was pretty terrible—then I did cognitive behavioral therapy which was to address my negative emotions but now I just do talk therapy.

During those two years I saw myself as a failure and financial burden so I never complained whenever I had physical health problems.

When I reached highschool I used music to avoid conversation with Mikel and Charlotte, people still thought I was weird but since we relocated no one knew that I was "crazy". I thought I would spend my highschool in solitude but I somehow made friends, really good friends. I haven't told anyone about DID till this day, I guess a part of me feels like I might get ridiculed. It didn't matter much coz I barely saw Mike and Char ever since I made friends, sure they popped by occasionally but mainly on my low days.

My friends have been helping me even without knowing it, they are one off my strongest motivations but after a while I guess I kind of forgot that and just as I was falling into a rough state but then out of nowhere she came.

A beautiful ray of light whose personality is as radiant as her appearance, a true black beauty unlike anyone I had ever seen before. I fell for her instantly, and as we become closer the feeling just kept blossoming. I loved everything about her, to me she was an angel, for a while I never saw my DID buddies and thought she had cured me.
But after a while my insecurities started to build, what if she doesn't like me? what if she is just pretending to be nice? what if she is hanging out with me out of pity? And slowly Charlotte appeared to cheer me up more and more and then Mikel came to derail my thoughts and once all the mixed up emotions I was pilling up reached their full capacity everything just exploded and I ended up hurting someone who was close to me.

"Uhm, may I ask why exactly are you telling me all this?" asked Dr Turner.
"Huh?"

Isn't it his job to listen to my tale of woes and give me some pointless advice like "the answer is supposed to come from you."?

"Well you have been coming here for a while but you only speak for 30 minutes and it's usual baseless statements, a lot of nonsense like 'maths was hard', but today you go into a two hour monologue about your existent yet non-existent love life."
"So what's the matter?"
"It's a one hour session, if I had any other appointments today you would have inconvenienced other patients."
"Am I not supposed to talk during therapy?"
"No what I'm trying to say is why are you opening up now? Granted you haven't spoken about your family at all but that's a story for another time I suppose."
"Well I..."
I honestly didn't know why I was suddenly so talkative, last week I left after fifteen minutes and now I spent nearly two hours talking about what happened last year.
"I guess...I guess I'm ready to move on."
"I see."
That's more like it, vague and pointless sentences.

As I left therapy I felt a little lighter, sure I haven't fully confronted the issues I have at home, I mean my family still treat me like I'm a mad man but I feel like I'm starting a knew chapter in my life, where I play a more active role in dealing with my issues instead of running and ignoring them.

I don't know if I will be active when it comes to therapy though.

"Yeah therapy sucks." says Mikel.
"It's a little refreshing though." Charlotte says.
"I honestly still think it's weird." I add.
"But we have add some pretty funny experiences."
"You mean like when Dr Van de Wit tried talking to us." Mikel grins.
"Yeah and you told me to say that you guys are sitting by the window when you were actually next to me."
"Yhoo, we laughed for the whole week." Charlotte laughs, we carried on with this pointless banter all the way home, it got me more than a few weird glances but hey what the heck.

This is my life, I'm not your average highschool kid. I still have a lot of issues to over come but I will get there eventually.
 
I finally got over Iris but my crush on Iris made me experience a lot of things, most of my life was a confusing mess but I learnt the beauty of friendship and now I can fully accept that my life is a beautiful confusion.