i sat down once and tried to make up a timeline of all the abuse (well at least the major incidents) but there was so much...and it all sort of blurred together. it really frustrated me that i couldn't piece it all nicely into one smooth line..it's jagged, ugly and missing chunks and doesn't make alot of sense...but neither does all the abuse that took place.

sometimes people ask.."how much abuse was there exactly?" and at best the only answer i can come up with is to say.."well you know how at your house you ate dinner every night, well at mine there was abuse at night..." maybe thats not entirely accurate but thats the way it felt. i'm 50 now..and to try and go back and piece together the memories that are so severe that they caused me to develop DID and form some semblence of a timeline..well it ain't going to come up into a nice straight line.

it took me a long time to come to grips with that...and sometimes i have to remind myself to be gentle. i can't always give an exact age when something horrific happened..was it 4 or 5? i'm not exactly sure...the rings of hell kind of ran into each other. sometimes i can pit in down by which teacher i had in school, or what occurred on the way to college but other times there aren't enough clues to go by.

my therapist sometimes tries to get me to be specific to dates and ages but you know the mind does a good job at times when it works to protect itslef from harmful experiences by burying them deep inside.

if you can do a timeline and it helps, great, but if you can not then i would be gentle with yourself and take what memories you have and work with them.