One of the greatest questions or problems we face as a multiple is Do we deserve Love?
As an outsider you may say "of course you do, everyone deserves love and you have been through so much, you especially deserve love." Good in theory, but in practice it is so much more complicated than that.
You learn to love and be loved as you are growing up in what is theoretically, a loving caring family environment. Or at the least, with one die hard parent, aunt or grandparent, who is determined to show you Love when no one else does.
But what happens when you grow up in an environment where you are taught shame, disgust, sex, abuse, rape and torture. Where love is portrayed as nothing like what love really is. What if as a 3 year old you are told that by a man having sex with you, that is love. Or by being beaten because you didn't listen, that was love. When you hurt yourself there were no hugs and kisses to make it better. but instead you were told you were never good enough.
It doesn't take long to understand that a child, or anyone really, in this environment would believe that they don't deserve love. That they were one of those people who are too bad or evil to ever be allowed to be loved. Yet their deepest ache and longing, is that maybe just maybe, someone could love them anyway.
As adults trying to heal, we must confront this awful thought. Are we truly loveable. As a singleton survivor of abuse that is a hard thing to overcome. When you add multiplicity it becomes even harder. Multiples are seen as freaks, and anomalies. That's if we are believed at all. If the Psychiatric community can't decide if we exist or not, and then if we do, how to treat us, how does the layman stand a chance. Strangely enough, better than most professionals. When by our very existence we feel broken and rejected people, it is hard to argue in favour of loving us, even though that may be our greatest desire.
We see love everywhere around us, from small children being loved by their parents, to old couples who have been together for 60 years. But can we do that, can we have that.
We have been watching so many multiples around us and the lives they have. It appears to me that people can know who we are and still love us. It is not about how many of us there are, but more about how we present as people. Do we generally come off as caring loving individuals or strange moody people. Can others see in us a strength and love, or do they see the chaos. Chaos is part of multiplicity I find in many ways, but we don't need to take it out on others.
Our system is what most would refer to as high functioning. We have survived in society pretty well unnoticed, raising two children as a single parent for many years. We are financially capable, friendly, organised, tidy and generally show little external signs of what lies beneath. When we look at our day to day lives , we see that we are really not that horrible.
I guess what I am trying to get to is that maybe, just maybe, we can be known AND loved, it's not within the realms of science fiction, but a very real possibility. It's going to take a very special person themselves to be able to love us. But I have seen enough of people out there to know that there are people like that out there. Maybe just maybe we can find someone who can love us how we so desperately need to be loved. A glimmer of hope in what seems a hopeless situation.
We are trying to stop seeing ourselves as broken hopeless people, but instead as amazingly strong people who survived so much and are still fighting today. We shouldn't hide, we should be proud of the strength we have together and the wonderful things that can be achieved. We have fought longer and harder to survive than most, and we shouldn't be ashamed. We have value! And so do you!
