A little about me and dissociative identity disorder

My name is Wanda G. I am a person in long-term recovery. What that means for me is that I have not altered my awareness or how I feel using alcohol, drugs, or any other chemical means since April sixth, 2015. I had my first drink of alcohol in July of 1975 in Cuernavaca, Mexico. I was only 13 but had already been smoking marijuana since I was ten. As you will see, my early life was quite traumatic and filled with powerlessness, hopelessness, fear, and anger. I found at a young age that I could alter and manage my feelings associated with my life with drugs and alcohol. What I also found was that I could keep people and life in general at bay by being violent and angry. What this set up was a lifetime of burying my problems and feelings under an umbrella of substances, denial, lies, and violence. 

What I did not know was that during all this chaos, my mind was trying to protect me by fracturing into pieces and creating personalities that hid the worst memories from me. The net effect of fracturing is that I lived, experienced, and remembered my life in pieces, much like a computer network with multiple users. In some cases, the users can access each other’s files and resources. In other cases, the users are unaware they are even part of a network and do not have access to those files and sometimes resources. This created an extreme amount of confusion, paranoia, and defensiveness throughout most of my life. This process is known as DID, dissociative identity disorder, and was formerly called multiple personality disorder. To my family and friends, I would appear to be gaslighting them, yet all the while, I thought they were gaslighting me. In the end, my family and friends had written all of this off to me being damaged and sickened by the years of alcohol and drug abuse that had brought me to the brink of death. 

Those closest to me were waiting for the morning I did not wake up and thought that it would be sooner rather than later. But I fooled them all and got sober instead. What I had left though, without alcohol to bury it, was a bag of dissociated personalities and unprocessed trauma. What I also remembered along the journey is that I am Wanda and that although assigned male at birth, I identify as a woman and am, therefore, transgender as well. To say that all of this was a lot for a newly sober mind to handle is an understatement. An amazing sponsor, an amazing therapist, and a bucketful of willingness got me onto the road to self-discovery and healing. It has not been easy. At times, it has been downright terrifying and exhausting. I have many times wished I could go back and never know what I know today. But it has been worth every minute, and I can tell you that I would do it all again to be where I am today – here where they said I could not get.