Were you close to being split? I dunno. Sorry... not a concrete answer there, huh. Really though, I cannot even pretend to be able to answer that one. I have been dx'd with DID. My understanding of DID is limited, to be sure. But the best I do understand is that for whatever reason, (typically accepted by mental health professionals and all that jazz) young children/toddlers develop this disorder as a coping/survival technique to deal with stress/trauma. Stress sounds like an understatement, but I mean I think that's ultimately what it boils down to. You could be a victim of abuse, a natural disaster survivor, a child traumatized by chemo at the age of two or three... I dunno. It's all based on how that particular child deals and I have no idea why some of us develop DID while others do not. Siblings that grow up in a house could share the same childhood and one gets it, the other does not. So you? I got no clue. Maybe you were, maybe you were close, maybe not.

Does your story sound familiar? Yep. I am a person who lives a lot of life in my own head and I always have. I am prone to daydreaming, making up a fake life/reality, and I have always done this. For me, I think it came down to giving myself a sense of security, or acceptance, or nurturing...whatever I might have been needing at the time. When I was a kid anyway... it was also a great escape from my undesirable reality. Life may have been (bleep) but my own version of reality was a nice place. Now as an adult I still fall back into holing up in my head when shtf. It's part escapism (and when it's that I gotta watch it) and part processing and/or nurturing my own inner child...giving myself now what I never got as a kid. Point being, for me it is less about the DID stuff and more about self soothing and getting what I need or some perspective or some weird way to work through an issue. But hey, so long as it has productive or helpful ends to me, I am at point in life where I do not mind it... unless it starts to interfere with my day to day life living.

But yeah, I will often play out the parts in my head as both adult and child. I have my own imaginary dad. He's a hoot. I like him. The daydream I have now, he adopts me and gets me out of my mom's house after I... I have no idea how to hide things in trigger boxes so I will leave out that detail. But the story is pretty consistently the same with slight variations. But the baseline is always the same... he steps up and does right by me and gets me out of a crap situation. A thing I used to wish my own father would have done but never did. I've been busy giving myself the paternal parenting I never got as a child.

As a kid, I would often develop crushes on my imaginary people. Sometimes I would find someone who reminded me of one of them and my imaginary people would take on their characteristics. I never did go after those kinds of crushes because it felt weird and embarrassing to me, but also because I knew that the reality of them would never add up to the idea of them. While I was a bit aggressive as a younger person, I never did really connect with others or care deeply about them. I would have times where I wondered if I was asexual and just hiding it under shallow relationships I would have to shut other people up when they got to wondering if I was a lesbian or some kind of sexually weird or whatever. *shrugs*

But for me, I think this has less to do with my vague and blurry sexuality, and more of a deep rooted 'knowing' that reality people will mess me up and leave me worse than they found me. I put up walls and keep people out. I know it's dysfunctional and hurts me, but I have this history of people being awful to me so yeah... hurts less to let no one in than it does to put yourself out there, try and then get kicked to the floor. If you start on the floor, no pain when you end up there, you know? I said it was dysfunctional. Heh. I think I am still the only person I trust and I'm not that reliable, so yeah...

And there I go again yammering on. Sorry. Short of it. I have no clue, but I relate the best I can from my own head.