i have read a lot of different things specific to DID not necessarily about an original/birth personality (though what i have read on it depends on the person/system, etc. as to if one does exist).

i have read a few different things about the age in which a child is more prone to develop DID, the first was under age 9, then under age 7 and then some say it is even younger.

for myself, i believe my trauma started around five years old but was on and off until i was 11 years old. in saying that though, my trauma could have first started at birth because i was born very early and had a lot of medical stuff in my first few months of life that could have contributed.

again though, i think it all depends on the person. for a while, i did not know who i was, if i was the original...and i have come to the conclusion that it must be me. i spent a lot of my childhood and adult life until just a few years ago being severely dissociated. it took the last few for me to be more present and start to piece things together more where it used to be very fragmented and confusing.

what also confuses me about the age limit they set on children who develop DID is the imagination aspect and at what age that ability lessens. i can remember at 11 playing with an alter (as i did when i was younger but maybe thought some were just imaginary friends or something). i thought by 11, the imagination aspect is gone in a lot of children.

i have been doing a lot of i guess natural internal integration and work without knowing it the last few years. some things just kind of came together. sometimes, i do still get lost in it all and forget 'who' i am among it. so, sometimes it confuses me all over again.

even in a person without trauma though, things evolve and change to such a degree that no one probably would be able to identify as being that baby.

i can only assume i am because that is what i identify with as name, birth date, etc. and early life memories...but i know i'm not the same as i was at younger ages either since it doesn't generally work that way, so it's hard to know that too since other parts of me have always existed too and i don't know which ones might have been more present than me as a child.