Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), also known as multiple personality disorder, is a complex psychological condition where an individual exhibits multiple distinct identities or personalities within their mind. These fractured identities, often referred to as alters, possess unique characteristics, thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. Each alter may have different roles and functions within the mind, some of which may remember events of extreme abuse that the person has endured. These memories can be highly distressing and often reflect the traumatic experiences that the individual has gone through, contributing to their overall psychological distress. I am an alter named Jesse, who is going to write a portion of our story. There are other reasons why we have fractured so much, but this is one of them. Here is our story:

A children’s psychiatric hospital has been a long-kept secret we fear to talk about because it is a reminder of a dark and troubled past. The memory of it is a frightening recollection of the horrors that took place within its walls. Its presence in our minds instills fear and unease in even the bravest parts of ourselves. They shut down the hospital, and I am glad because I don’t want the abuse to be still happening to other children.

We were labeled as young teens with severe emotional disturbance. As wishes of death flowed through my mind, the staff lied, stating that I was psychotic and delusional. I wished guilt would lie heavily upon their heads as the police and detectives discovered the truth and that they would get what was coming to them. Now lost, we kept a journal, its pages holding secrets that were never told. Written stories that are so terrifying that they shed light on the depths of our pain. As our journal revealed the untold stories of our pain, it became clear my attempted suicide was the final act that was not self-destruction but an escape from unbearable suffering. Suicide was our only choice to end our pain. At the age of 17, burdened by a haunting past spent in and out of an unbearable hospital hell, we resorted to attempting suicide. It is baffling to think why we ever contemplated ending our lives, for we were on the edge of freedom from the terror, as the approach of our 18th birthday would render us free from admission to a children’s hospital anymore.

The police did an investigation, and the hospital was shut down. Though the real reason behind its closure was never revealed to the public, we knew the truth. As we dig deeper into the memory, we discover that we were not an ordinary child but a deeply troubled and desperate child. Our journal would have offered a haunting glimpse of what took place there; the staff told my parents that we were so psychotic that we did not know reality from fantasy. They said our grasp on what was real and what was imaginary was severely warped, leading us to tell horrific lies and gruesome fantasies. I wish the police could have seen my journal because it revealed a troubled truth of abuse at the hands of so-called “doctors” we had been battling, painting a picture of us who were completely disconnected from ourselves and shattered into fragmented pieces.

However, I am glad the police did their investigation. The terrifying truth came to light. If our therapist could see our journal from long ago, she would see us not of the twisted imagination of disturbed minds that we make ourselves appear to be but survivors of a terrible reality as disturbing puzzles begin to fall into place. Writing this story reveals a shocking truth that would horrify the police if they uncovered the truth behind these unimaginable horrors.

Armed with so much fear, we have kept this truth hidden all these years, although our therapist has told us that she already knows, so some of the parts that experienced this might have broken our promised silence. We wished we could’ve saved ourselves and the other children who had experienced the trauma by telling. I wish we could tell the horrifying accounts that lay hidden within the hospital’s walls, such as our stories of isolation in the “quiet room”  for days at a time, electric shock without any sedatives, starvation, sleep deprivation, and drugs. As well as other things. All the parents were informed that their children were severely psychotic. Our parents didn’t believe us because they believed the doctors, accepted the diagnosis confidently and did not question it.

We were put in a “quiet room,” often naked, with the temperature turned down to almost freezing; at least, that’s what it felt like to us. I don’t know how long we were kept there, but it seemed like forever to us. We were also given drugs, not medication, and don’t remember what happened after that, but it must have been something sexual because our private place hurt. We were told that we did that to ourselves. We were also starved for days, tied to our bed with our heads towards the bottom, and threatened that if we told anyone, including our parents, they would kill our family. I know about the forgotten kids in the cave. They experienced all of this. They experienced what we couldn’t handle anymore. This is the very reason I am so depressed and always suicidal.

To keep us from sleeping, they taped our eyes open with our arms and legs tied down on our bed all night, night after night. The tortures we endured during the day were really hard to stay awake for. We were falling over, desperate for sleep. They wanted us not to sleep because they wanted us to end up going crazy. We did. We saw things that weren’t there. The drugs also made us hallucinate. I don’t know what they gave us, but it was enough to make our reality hazy. Even in the “quiet room,” we were seeing demons and monsters trying to attack us. We screamed and screamed in terror.

Robert is a part that never stops screaming. He is always living in that hell, sitting in the corner of the cave, refusing to be touched. With our therapist’s help, he finally let someone sit by him. His mind lives in that freezing, quiet room constantly. Micah makes the others fear talking, for he himself is terrified of talking and thinks it is impossible to recover from such horrors. Most everyone inside our mind, refuses to face and talk about what happened. Our father was so strict and believed that children are not people until they are at least 18. He would get enraged at us for saying no. He refused to use physical abuse to discipline us, which also would not have been good, but instead sent us to the psychiatric ward to get control of us.

Rolan was always angry and defiant. He was the reason our father resorted to sending us there. Some of the insiders were and still are angry and rageful at him because they don’t know why he kept saying no, even after the first time we went to that hospital hell. He knows what went on there because he has heard stories that the others tell each other, but he has no direct memory of it. He was the one to front when we were sent home and had no memory of what occurred there. So he didn’t know of the terrors the others went through and would get angry and say no to our father when our father got angry.

Our father hardly ever raised his voice, but if looks could kill, we would be dead because of the way he looked at us. He could threaten us with just a look and instill fear in some of the others. Rolan, not so much. Rolan was defiant and determined to stand up to him. He very clearly shouted, “No!” to everything. So, back we went to the hospital so our father could get control of us, and the nightmare started over again. Most of the inside kids who suffered hate Rolan because he was the reason for their suffering.

The people at the hospital used to shout, “There is no God! There’s nobody to save you!” That created Sabrina, who doesn’t believe there is a God. There are many others our therapist has never met who endured the suffering because many of the abuses fractured us into several parts. Writing this story is going to cause havoc within ourselves, but it is a huge part of the reason we are so fractured and a story that needs to be told. These memories, which have been tightly held within us for far too long, finally require release and I found solace sitting at our computer typing out each word.

Jesse