No. The lawyer does not believe I am faking. Some of the questions he wants me to prepare for are:

1. Work history;
2. Education;
3. Medical history;
4. Symptoms;
5. Your estimate of your work limitations; and
6. Your daily activities.


Pretending for a moment that I can actually remember the first four - that leaves me with numbers five and six. I can't answer number five - I have no idea how. In 2008, I had a massive heart attack. I looked at my watch...forty-five minutes left before my shift at work ended. I finished my shift and had a second heart attack during that time. I went to clock out and my supervisor informed me that 'Joe' was going to be about a half hour late and could I stay. I stayed. Then I drove myself seventy miles to the nearest hospital.

It may be that I'm not the best person to ask what my work limitations are.

As for number six, back before you integrated, how well do you remember your daily routine? Did you have a routine? I certainly don't - or at least I don't think I do. Perhaps every time I dissociate I do the same things that I do when I don't...but I'm not a good one to ask. Basically, I wake up and try to survive the day the best I can. My health dictates what I do that day and because it fluctuates, there is no such thing as normal. Some days I don't have the strength to eat, let alone make something. However, once this month I actually cooked dinner for my wife and I. Three times this month, my wife put pills in my mouth and helped me swallow them because I had gotten too weak to breath on my own and the pills help. So once in thirty days I cook - three times I took meds to breath. Both of those examples are not common but every day there are uncommon things and normal is no longer in my vocabulary or experience.


I have to cram for questions about me.


Look, I honestly have no idea how you interpreted my post to mean that I'm trying to fake this but if I was unclear, I apologize. I'm not faking it and frankly, your post is a wonderful example of what has got me terrified. I've never said anything about reading about DID in books, movies and the internet and yet you've gone ahead and made that leap. If YOU can make that leap - so can the judge.


How this alter adversely affects my life? Do you remember your life prior to integration? Because this is a problem for me - if not for you. Imagine you've got your six year old in the room with you and the judge asks you to tell him all the ways she makes your life miserable (adversely affects every aspect of your life). Are you fearlessly going to spout off all the reasons you resent your six year old daughter? And what do you think your life with your daughter is going to look like after you do? No - she's not my daughter - but we're closer than I am with my daughter.

Too, for whatever reason, and my T and I are exploring the subject now, for all my analyzing about every thing under the sun - I don't analyze my relationship with my alter. It's good, and that's good enough for me...and her. Are there hardships? Sure, I suppose so, but we don't frame our challenges as hardships. We frame them as positives and that has allowed us to live in relative harmony for many years.


I'm not faking it and am angry and resentful that you made that assumption. My relationship with her is sacred - it isn't up for show and tell. I hired this law firm and they accepted my case based on my physical disabilities over three years before I was diagnosed with DID. I never planned on talking about it with disability, a judge, a lawyer or anyone. Suddenly, the physical disabilities that were more than enough when they agreed to take my case are insufficient??? This isn't about faking it - this is about having to share the most intimate and private parts of me with strangers when I did not sign up for this and wouldn't have agreed to hire the law firm if I knew it was going to come to this.


Be myself...odd advice for someone who probably won't be fronting for the duration of the hearing. Here's some advice I'd love to have: What do I do when the judge asks me to say more about that and I have no idea what he is talking about because I just disappeared for forty-five minutes? Or when I contradict 'myself' because it wasn't me answering the questions the last time he asked? Or any one of a million things that'll make this hearing turn into a disaster?

Or how about this: My alter cannot and will not stand by idly if she feels that I am being attacked. What you would call her 'sense of agency' is to protect me at all costs and if she thinks that biting the judge will serve that purpose, he's probably going to lose some toes. That'll get us locked up and we will not survive being locked up - been there, done that and it will not happen again.

How can you not see that this is terrifying to me and likely to be traumatic...in spite of not faking it.