Copyright © 2009 by Labyrinth and Survivorship. All rights reserved.
You may print out one copy for use in your own healing.
For additional reprints, write Survivorship, Family Justice Center, 470 27th Street, Oakland, CA.
Credibility
Labyrinth
I have come to the sad and bitter conclusion that no matter how credible s/he is, a multiple’s credibility will always be less than that of most non-multiples. Case in point: my husband and I go to marriage counseling. We have an excellent counselor who has helped us stay married through the worst of times. She also happens to be my therapist, and has proven herself to be extraordinarily objective, much to my husband’s relief. He sees the progress we’ve made and is very happy with our choice of who we see.
One day we had an argument about something. No duh. It happens. And my husband was relating it to my therapist. When he was done, I stated that what he’d said wasn’t accurate, that instead of saying that I’d said this. That wasn’t the way he remembered it. We had to deal with the whole crappy, “Well, maybe it was someone else inside who was talking to me then.”
Nope. I was there. I remembered the conversation. It was I who’d been talking with him. And I knew I was right.
But you know what? Since I’m multiple, there’s always that question. Always the doubt. And although we resolved the issue, I left with this: That if there were a courtroom, and a multiple and a non-multiple were witnesses to the crime, the multiple’s account would be less credible.
It’s not fair.
And when stuff like this happens I always end up feeling less-than. The very nature of being multiple means I switch and am not co-conscious all the time and, as a consequence, many times people have a question as to the accuracy of my memories. I usually end up in a sad place because of this. I do a lot of writing about it. It is a huge deal to me. My therapist understands. She gets it. She is tender when I rant and rave about how unfair it is. And she agrees that it’s not fair.
Evil people did evil things to me. And because of that I sometimes feel like a second-class citizen. Even though I have the papers to prove I’m a first-class one.