The Mind Field: Our Dissociative Identity Story

How I Blossomed into a Field of Flowers

So, you want to hear a story, huh?

Storytelling keeps us connected. Art harnessed by marrying the ground to the imagination. Our story? Well, it’s more akin to a fever dream and crash landing rather than anything as magical as equilibrium and wonder. And yet here I am, somehow still alive to tell it to you.

Before we get started, I should warn you, this body is a work in progress. A living mini memoir, if you will. Due to my disorder, my headmates have a will of their own which makes digging into their memories difficult at times. I also have no intention of writing down every single bad thing we experienced in our life. As we are comfortable and they allow us, we will update this document with more stories, more experiences, to build out the roadmap that led us to the mind meadow we tend today.

Okay, okay, okay, two paragraphs of introduction is enough (although we haven’t even properly introduced ourselves yet!). Wrap yourself up in your coziest blanket with your most comforting drink because this is going to be a long one.

CW: sexual abuse, violence, self harm.

Buttercup Fields — photo by Claudia Jean/Alya

The sun is wet. By which I mean, the air is a sponge, wicking away all the moisture and cradling it to her breast, making everything she touches moist with her heat. My tousle-tied ponytail tickles the top of my spine as I watch a flurry of human bodies create a birthday party. A handful near a table dressed in a rainbow curtain and balloons reaching for the clouds; a hot tub, humming louder than the laughter inside it, sloshing water and liquor on concrete; a bladder too small for three orange juices sending bio-pains through the hips and chest of our small self.

“Do you need to go potty?”

His voice wraps around my lungs, squeezing with each word like the fate of the fruit that led to my discomfort. Towering with privacy fence shoulders, soft skin to disguise his armor-thick muscles, and the jester tone of a man with too much time on his hands, I fight the tingling in my legs encouraging me to run away. You know him, you don’t have to be scared, my parents’ voices nudge from the back of my head. Against my ankles better judgement, I nod.

The voice becomes a hand which turns down a hallway until we reach a porcelain bathroom. Bright light bounces against the reflective counters and sunset mirror, turning my almond eyes into a horizon. The pain in my stomach reaches its peak as I quickly pull down my overalls and sit on the toilet. Relief embraces me as I release, a fleeting moment of comfort before a different wave of emotion overtakes me.

Eyes reach into the back of my skull, slowly turning my neck until I see him still standing at the threshold, watching. My denim overalls dangle on my toes. The purple shirt clinging to my tummy feels invisible as a subtle draft passes over my bare thighs. Sensations of being perceived morph into adrenaline-fueled fear, but when I try to push myself up from the seat, nothing moves. My arms are sandbags, hanging from their sockets like fingertips on the edge of a cliff. White noise burns my body, sending scorching tingles to every crevice, every tip, begging any part of me to answer my mind’s call.

But nothing moves.

The events that came after are memories no one should have. In fact, the Me writing this can’t articulate it at this time even if she wanted to because the Me who experienced it won’t let her. A blessing and a curse. A savior and a scapegoat.

This is what it means to be both.

Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) starts with a split. A moment when the mind’s eye decides to close while, unknowingly, a new eye opens. DID is often associated with sexual abuse in children, but it can develop in anyone experiencing an abusive situation and whose mind uses dissociation as a tool to escape and cope with their harmful surroundings. Some people can’t identify the source of their original split, and some can depending on their amnesia wall’s height. Dissociation isn’t inherently harmful, the art of daydreaming is an example of dissociating in a healthy way. However, danger looms when the mind morphs this into a survival tactic.

Before being abused by a family friend, I’m told I was a joyful child. According to my mother, she would keep a close eye on me because I’d wander off to talk to strangers. Irony lives in the place where fear of the unknown intersects with the ignorance of dangers in your own home. According to her, I never stopped talking. She loves to end that story with “I don’t know what happened to her.”

To be fair, she doesn’t.

I went from an extroverted burst of life to a quiet homebody. I was taught early on that being too friendly can invite the wrong kind of friends. Luckily for me, we didn’t stay in the city much longer because my father got a new assignment. Being part of a military family meant living out of a duffle bag, and before my eighth birthday, we moved to Guam, a small American territory to the east of Asia.

Palm Tree Hurricane — photo by Claudia Jean/Alya

It was beautiful. Living a short distance from the beach and surrounded by tropical forestry, stepping outside was a daily adventure. Wildlife roamed the streets alongside us as my mother walked me to school every day. The local arbor all smelled like flowers even when they weren’t fruiting. I learned to climb coconut trees using only my calves and ankles. I broke their shells on the curb, suckling the milk and flesh straight from the source. The world was beautiful. But people still weren’t.

Up until now, all my grievances were against men, larger than me (and life) men with adult bodies and full-grown intentions. I learned what needles to look for in haystack eyes. I didn’t understand at the time those men all started as little boys.

We lived in a cul-de-sac, a popular design choice for military bases, with eight other houses, filled with families with children. None of the houses had fences. It was common to see someone walking through your yard to shortcut another street. At the end of our cul-de-sac and down a dirt path forged through a small brush, you’d find a playground. This is where the kids of the neighborhood gathered.

Two girls and five boys lived in our neighborhood. Even in third grade, I was different from others somehow. Boys picked on me often for having a bouncy chest, brushing up against my body during recess or in the hallway. Some left gifts at my desk in class or followed me home. Like their adult counterparts, I learned to ignore their advances and be faster than everyone else.

On a day where the heat hummed louder than a cicada stridulating, three brothers from my neighborhood arrive at the park airing an unusual amount of testosterone and bad intentions. Chatters cease as they walk toward the swing set, circling our group menacingly until they are close enough to taunt me with pinches and pokes. The angled jabs of their tipped knuckles prod my sunburnt flesh eagerly as my knees demand to get away.

They want me to run. It’s palpable in the air, amplified by their musky vigor. But by this time in my life, my body was accustomed to freezing, staying steadfast through abuse. A girl one year older than me pushes the eldest boy away enough to create an opening. Grabbing my hand, she leads us in a sprint to the slide at the center of the playground, climbing the stairs until we reached the top of the tallest one.

The boys chase us, ambition raging through their soles, propelling them forward. Our short steps carry us to the top before they make it to the bottom of the stairs. Panting, I look over the side to see them stalking around the slide, laughing. Watching us.

“Don’t be such a baby! We’ll be nice, just come back down.” Their harmonic voices sing song apologies like a Sunday choir, but she urges me not to believe them. She offers instead to distract them for me, so I can get away. As the words twist out of her mouth, one of the boys starts climbing the stairs. He stomps, sending vibrations through the metal. Another blocks the bottom of the slide, ready to catch whichever one of us comes down first. The third is waiting at the bottom of the stairs.

We’re trapped.

With no escape, helplessness overwhelms me. The footsteps get closer.

One of them is going to catch us.

Her fingers coil around mine, scraping my knuckles against one another. Tugging my arm, she crab walks us a few feet and around a corner to a ledge with a fireman’s pole.

“Once your feet touch the ground, don’t stop running until you are INSIDE your house, understand?”

Her blue eyes are full of needles. But for once, they aren’t directed at me. I nod silently with my breath caught in my chest. She tips her head seriously back to me. In a blink, she is on her feet. Cawing like a bird, she jumps around the top of the slide, and the feet running up the stairs sound faster.

“GO.”

I don’t see my hands wrap around the metal pole, I only yelp at the heat. I don’t stop. Setting my body on fire, I twist around the fireman pole until my heels hit the pebbled gravel. I don’t stop. No looking back, my toes kick off toward home. I don’t stop. The boy at the bottom of the slide notices and chases after me. I don’t stop. His voice echoes with bass for his brothers, corralling into a singular sound of stampeding soles intensifying behind me. I don’t stop until I hear them laughing outside the locked door of my house.

For the first time, I felt what I would equate to empowered.

I got away.

There was no such thing as escape before relief, only endurance. Resilience. In my elementary genius, I decided this feat meant I was finally strong enough to get revenge on those who hurt me. But (also due to my elementary genius), I didn’t know what revenge meant.

So, I baked a cake.

Not just any cake. I forged the earth for dirt and worms, grass and seeds, crickets and stones. Placing them all in a cake mix batter, stuffing it in the oven while my parents were at work, believing my feelings would certainly come across with the deliverance of this vengeance. It didn’t get fully hard, probably because of all the dirt. A watery half sold mess of dark, I delivered my concoction to their doorstep. Arrogantly, proudly, I left it there unashamed, confident this gesture marked the beginning of a new chapter in my life. The sin of seeking revenge and feeling bigger because of it was simply a small price to pay for all the terror those boys (and men) had caused me.

This small crime did not go unpunished. Somehow their parents found out who left the “horrible thing” at their door and demanded an apology from my parents for “such a ridiculous act.” In their adulthood, my parents stood by their peers, and I gave an apology to the aggressors. No matter. I’ve been conditioned to do as I’m told. In any case, I achieved my goal.

Or so I thought.

Two weeks went by, and I barely saw our neighbors. Assuming they were disgusted by the dirt cake, I decided they must have conceded to never approach me again.

I was wrong.

Days come like the flip of a coin, one way or the other. On my way home from school during a unseasonably chilly day, I was plucked off my feet and swept away. With a hand over my mouth and no body strength, the world around me whipped by as I was carried to an unfamiliar backyard. Finally, my back was pressed against something hard and brittle. Bark nibbled at my shoulders as rope wrapped around my arms and belly. When I looked up, I noticed the binding was being fastened around the circumference of the tree by the same three boys who haunted me. They stood there, brimming with adrenaline and malice. Their grimed hands impatient in front of the spoils of their hunt.

The sun is the only part I can remember—the way it blazed behind the three-headed demon, blinding me from what was happening without an ounce of warmth. Does the sun believe I deserve to be punished, too? I did not know about Icarus or his hubris for fervor yet, but from what I recall of that day, I know we both understand what it means to burn.

If none of the other experiences leading up to this had influenced my disorder, this one definitely did. The power and resilience I felt when I escaped was shattered by their greedy fingers in a matter of minutes. If there is no such thing as physical escape, then at least I’m safe inside my mind.

Fast forward, we’ve left Guam. Nestled back in my hometown in Texas, my father swears this time we won't leave. He was not in the market of making promises like currency, so I trusted the idea of security and stability. I made friends in a way I never had before: I was invited to birthday parties, played my first and last game of spin the bottle; I had hobbies like swimming, volleyball, band, and gymnastics; there were soft romances and boring field trips, and once again, I was feeling something for the first time. This time, I felt safe.

Forced — photo by Alya, graffiti found under a bridge in Austin, Texas

Recalling my middle grade years now feels like a dream because before they ended, my father was assigned to Virginia. When he broke the news to us, my world burst. My grandparents were getting older, and my dad was nearing retirement; so moving one last time to be closer to family was the “right decision.” In my anger, I stowed away in our car, thinking no one would even notice I was gone.

And they didn’t.

Not right away. My presence was easy to lose track of after years of “being seen and not heard” coupled with my quiet attempts to not stand out. For countless hours, I laid in the back seat of our van, idling. Dissociating against the scratchy cloth and mothy scent, no one found me until after the sun had set and the garage was painted pitch black.

The sliding van door opened at its usual slow, automated pace, but my father’s energy on the other side was anything but gentle. When he saw me sleeping in the back of the car, he dug his hands into my skin in seconds, dragging me from the vehicle, up the garage stairs, and into the house. Throwing me onto the linoleum floor, he screamed. I couldn’t make out the words. They were all sharp, leaving his lips like pieces of shredded shrapnel propelling at my half-conscious body. I stood up, and he smacked me. Then he hit my head with his palm. My feet moved of their own accord, half-heartedly and unsteady. Stumbling over my ankles, I grabbed the carpeted steps leading to my bedroom on the second floor, scrambling to put distance between my father’s anger and myself. He chased me up the stairs.

On the last step, I tripped.

Turning on to my back, I shield my head as my father’s hands rain down on me. Hitting me over and over, screaming into my face: “never do that again.”

I cried.

I endured.

Up until now, my father had never laid a hand on me before. He is the most gentle man, choosing conversation over confrontation in every situation. While I have a few infantile memories of him smacking my elbows for putting them on the table as we ate, nothing sticks with me like the experience at the top of the stairs. This was the first time I realized my father was not just my dad, he is also a man.

He sent me to bed with no dinner. My mother surreptitiously lingered at my bedside, telling me to forgive him. He just got scared and mad when we couldn’t find you. In my short life, I found fear and anger in so many places, but I had never leaned into violence to express myself.

Why do scared, mad men choose violence?

After we moved to Virginia, I met my first long-term boyfriend. We got pregnant at fifteen, but I had a miscarriage. We dated for some time after, but I eventually broke things off with him during my freshman year in college after he slept with my roommate. I floated for a year before dropping out of university. Attempts at friendships and relationships were made, but I was still not good at either of those things. Of the three friends I made in college, one slept with my ex, one passed away from brain cancer before we graduated, and one I lost over a housing dispute with my sister.

In my adulthood I came to the conclusion that I am built to endure, not to enjoy.

Working three jobs to make ends meet, I decided to go back to college and met a man I ended up marrying. A Bachelor’s degree, two houses, and a dog later, I believed I had found someone with whom I could experience true joy. Except, four days after he asked for my hand in marriage, he proposed an additional offer: opening up our relationship to other sexual partners. I was perturbed at the thought, but our lack of physical intimacy over the last five years led me to acquiesce. In hindsight, we were disguising the truth of our romance: we were glorified friends hiding behind the idea that he simply “didn’t want me to miss out on anything.” Eventually this dynamic led to our divorce, but not before I met the most devastating love of my life.

She calls conditioner “cream wash.” He is a master of cavitation, pulling on fingers until your joint becomes a vacuum, until your hands are popping.

Theirs is not a story I’ll tell here, though.

What I will say is over the course of three years, I was systematically broken down to my foundation, rebuilt to reflect my abusers, and cast aside when they no longer recognized me. I escaped within an edge of my life the only way I knew how: running and seeking revenge.

Today, in the apocalyptic twenty-fifth year of the second millennia, I am composed of so many pieces.

Without me realizing, my mind became a field of flowers. As I grew, any time something bad happened to me, my mind would plant another flower. Dissociation would dive in and steal me from this world, carrying me away to a place where the dark cannot reach me. When I could find no escape, my mind created one for me. She blossoms into whatever I need to survive abuse, manipulation, and isolation. The flowers my mind grew are beautiful, honestly. Each one sprouting petals suited for their environment, all unique in their individual personality and our integrated parts. But, sometimes the garden gets confused. My pieces don’t realize we aren’t in those scary places any more.

They forget we don’t need to grow thorns.

Living a “50-First Dates” style comedy with myself, I wake up every morning with affirmations reminding me who we are and that we are safe. Teaching yourself to live beyond survival mode is a daily challenge. I fight the tension in my muscles demanding I stay rooted in place for maximum safety; force the breath from my lungs when my body forgets to breathe; cling to conversation while simultaneously feeling repulsed by it. There is no reprieve from the onslaught of voices and opinions blowing in the breeze of my mind’s meadow, and when I come out of a dissociative episode XYZ hours later, it takes all my strength to choose self-love over penance and hellfire.

Even when the world isn’t burning the forest to the ground itself, there are gluttonous hands keen on plucking flowers, then tossing them when they droop and wilt. Since my last (and hopefully truly last) traumatic experience, I have been re-teaching myself patience, care, and integration. One key indicator of DID is a host’s ignorance to the alters or personalities that overtake them in crisis. I like to call mine Stellas (shout out to my Mugiwaras!). This allows the host to live blissfully despite experiencing trauma because the Stella who endured the pain can retreat outside of our conscious thought. However, through self-talk, therapy, and introspection, a host can become acquainted with their Stellas, or headmates.

So, who do we share our brain with?

A Trip to the City — photo by D. W.

We were diagnosed in 2024 and as of March 14, 2025, we are aware of eight Stellas. That said, only four of them have strong enough identities and personalities to be considered a headmate. Of those four, only two outside the host interact on social media: Claudia (The Poet) and Lyru (The Otaku). We are not sure how stable the other Stellas are or if they are simply extensions of the ones who have already revealed themselves. Only time will tell.

In the meantime, we are learning to find comfort in being alive. When every day is reduced down to how well you can survive it from the last, living feels more like a chore than a gift. Those of us suffering from extreme episodes of dissociation are often overlooked because our symptoms can show up in multiple forms: daydreaming, splitting focus, rapid intense mood swings, difficulty paying attention, depression, anxiety, panic attacks, impulsivity, and more.

When we received our diagnosis, in truth, we retreated. As much as I hate to admit it, I became a recluse. My whole life I wondered why I felt so different than everyone around me, but I always believed it was something I could overcome. Something I can fix.

The most difficult lesson I’ve learned from acknowledging my disorder is: I cannot fix it because nothing is broken.

Despite the difficulties of everyday life, living with dissociation saved me. Several attempts to unalive myself were made, sure. Regardless, I survived. I survived with enough of me left to use my experiences to raise awareness for dissociative disorders. Without my brain’s unique ability to “save me,” I may not have lived to share my story. Other ways I’ve come to appreciate my disorder unrelated to trauma: Claudia is an exceptional writer with the ability to utilize our dissociation to weave the most touching tales; Alya, our Host, is an introvert, but Lyru is an extrovert, so she is able to handle our social interactions; I always have a safe space, even if it’s in my mind.

When we were 20, Claudia had a comma tattoo added to our left wrist. There were countless times when our story should have ended, moments when the world swallowed us whole and there was no indication of regurgitation. But parts of me still want to keeping telling our story.

So we endure.

Since we’re still here, and so are you, we hope you sit around our campfire for a little while. Stay, rest. Let us tell you another story or two before the final wave comes to swallow us all.

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