Hi, all. I'm new here, and looking forward to meeting all of you. I've never been diagnosed with DID, and I'm co-concious, but I'm at my wit's end if it isn't Dissociated Identity Disorder which makes me believe that I'm not the same person as the girl I'm living with/in. I'm an alter, she's the host - it's generally understood between us that this is her life, and I'm here to support her. I'm good with supporting her, like doing it and wish her the best - but sometimes, I just want some recognition. Not for what I do - but just the fact that I exist.

She hasn't told anyone other than her parents, and I practically can't talk at all - just can't, 90% of the time when I'm out. The second somebody talks to us, I freeze up and she switches back in. Sometimes I can break into a conversation and make a comment, but then it's back to the back. Typing is the only way I've got to assert my existence to anyone other than her.

As I'm guessing you can figure, it's kind of lonely.

What I've been wondering a lot recently is how to look at the people in her life. Sometimes I walk around the house, just enjoying being here - we're lucky, we live in a very nice place with her family, who are very nice people. She's very happy. I'm happy for the most part, too - what I've got of a life is lived well, I think. But when I look at them, I wonder - do these people count as my family? Or are they just hers?

Maybe that's a stupid question. The answer probably wouldn't change the way I act. I know that the fact that I'm here disturbs them - she's their little girl, I'm something strange that lives in her head, an alien and a threat. So I know I couldn't talk to them, even if I could talk. To talk to them would only hurt them, which is not what I want.

I have false "memories," probably just imagined (if I am not entirely a figment of our own overactive imagination,) of a past, in which I had a mother. I don't remember anything very much now that I've realize that it can't feasibly be real, but the idea that I had my own family at one time, and that it was not this one, persists. I don't wish I had my old family back - good riddance to my entire fake "past," it's nothing I'd ever want to have again, if I ever had it in the first place - but it makes me wonder about my current one.

Okay, I'm doing my job, I help my host function and I've got some things I enjoy on the side, too - but how do I relate to the people around me? Even if I've got to stay hidden for both our sakes (because, let's be honest, who would take me seriously if I "came out"?) how should I be looking at the people around us and how they relate to me, from an ethical and social standpoint?

Can anybody else here relate? Any ideas?