This Changes Everything, Lol

This morning we had another appointment with our psychiatrist. It was a good appointment and we discussed quite a bit about our system and its workings. we still have alters who are not happy with living the gay lifestyle and want the heterosexual lifestyle back. We are having to work out a compromise so that as many alters can be happy as possible and no one feels they are not important. All this really deepened our understanding of being multiple. On the drive home someone inside said.."wow, so we are multiple, that changes everything!" With a slight chuckle I replied "we have been multiple for years you have only just found out about it." It really does take time for it to filters down to everyone in the system.

Our World

We forget sometimes about the outside world. Our closest friends are multiple, our girlfriend is multiple, we seem to live in a multiple world. We face Trauma and abuse every day. Everyday we help each other thru, we help those who just can't seem to make it through another day. We rejoice with those who have had a good and happy day. We readily adjust our lives and activities to accommodate the needs of traumatised people. Everyday we are multiple and everyday we are surrounded by multiples. It is easy to forget that most of the population of this city, or any city, doesn't live like we do. There are people out there who go about their lives with no idea of what DID is let alone how to live it. We forget that most of these people haven't had severe trauma to make them DID, and we are but a few who have found each other for support.there is a whole world of people out there who live healthy happy lives. We walk past then every day and we never even notice.

System box

Some one in our system came up with what I think is a pretty awesome idea to keep track of who is in our system. We have done system maps before on a large piece of paper, but they always become messy and confusing. There really isn't much room to write about each individual alter and what they like. Some one in the system suggested using index or note cards for each alter and keeping them in a box for easy reference.

We went to the cheap store and bought a small cardboard box and some stickers. Our littles picked them out and helped put them on the box. From the newsagent we bought the packet of what are officially called 'system cards' (thought that was kind of funny). The cards are lined and have enough room on them to write personal information about each alter. If one of us needs more than one card we can just staple them together. 
Today we went through our journal to find the names of all the alters we have written in there. Some of them we had totally forgotten about. We wrote about what they like or don't like, who they are friends with, there role if they have one. We also included anything we have heard them saying about what they have been through. By the time we were finished today we had counted over 30 alters, (some with no more information than a name). It all seems a lot clearer now and a lot less confusing. I know there are some we haven't written about yet but at least now we have an easy and clear system for us all. We store the cards in the box in alphabetical name order to make it easier to find them later if we need to add information.