“How many masks do you wear every day?”

“How many masks do you swipe every day?”

 “How many layers of those are you going to wear every day?”

A few questions have always left me wondering. It took me a while to realize that drastically different types of behavior amongst different social/professional groups could also be considered as something really unconventional.

It has never crossed my mind that I can be a dynamically different person, or rather a person with a dynamically different thinking process and behavior.  This wonder of swapping masks is something I had considered to be a part of my versatility. Going from clueless to realizing something was out of Convention with me has been a very confusing, fatal and to sum it up exhausting journey.

“Art is supposed to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.” Is correctly said because being creative has been my solace, and still is.

I am someone who has always been more inclined towards the creative side, someone who has found comfort in chaos. But that chaos in my conscience has often been something that has sent me spiraling down!

The series of problems that emerged with the bad emotional trait of bottling up my anger is that I used to expect the opposite person to possess the quid pro quo of understanding my emotional quotient or rather accepting my anger, which is a complete opposite trait to my jolly-and-go-gal personality.

There has always been a fear of being vulnerable in front of anyone. The fear of leaving my home without a metaphorical mask is something that has haunted me in the past.

Twice or thrice it has happened after being intoxicated by substances I behaved as a rather violent person. Not someone who’s just drunk and violent; it was as if an entirely different person has emerged and is acting drastically violent about more than just screaming and abuse. The thing even stranger than this kind of behavior was that I possessed almost negligible recollection about the same.

I do remember having such a kind of rage and aggression that I felt like ending the matter with the opposite person on a lethal note.

One moment there were these urges and the next moment they would suddenly disappear. Snap and they’re gone! Snap and I’m back to being the happy-go-lucky girl! There was a lot of blaming others, sometimes blaming the situation, and sometimes it ended with me being a lot harsher on myself.

“क्षणे रुष्टा: क्षणे तुष्टा: रुष्टा तुष्टा क्षणे-क्षणे।”

I justified the emotional turmoil with if I can love someone in extreme measures then I have the right to take extreme measures with them when I’m angry; which is an unjust way of dealing with any situation.

There was this side of me filled with aggression and then there was the other side of me similar to indulging myself in self-pity, holding myself responsible for the passive-aggressive behavior.

There have been three personalities that have emerged during the ordeal of dissociative identity disorder:

One such Personality holds the trait of not tolerating any kind of bullshit behavior from whosoever,

the second one of those personalities holds the traits of wallowing in misery and holding myself accountable for all the bad things happening around or with me and the third personality holds a neutral perspective or rather understands that life is neither black nor white but Grey.

The third personality just wanted to hustle and make things work.

Juggling between these dilemmas (at that time) was a hassle, hence I started taking therapy/counseling sessions.

Visits to Multiple therapists’ couches found an incorrect problem for my behavior and declared my not being able to hold stable relationships as a problem. Being told the same thing by numerous people myself also believed that this might be the problem.

My problem or instability to deal with these personalities was stereotyped as a young female in her early thirties, who got her heart broken frequently. My previous therapists thought that I was just acting out after a breakup and failed to see the bigger picture, and I failed to see how this could be an actual real-world problem.

Even after reading so much about different kinds of mental disorders or reading multiple articles on the same, I failed to see the problem of DID (disassociative identity disorder).

If we are to categorize when my symptoms of DID (disassociative identity disorder) or when the switching of different personality traits started it was with minuscule matters like forgetting names or running behind schedule, being antisocial, and being irregular, etc. so it consisted of a lot of anti things to my usual put-together self. I thought these things were just a result of me going through the “enjoying my youth phase“.

I also started hearing a voice, from within that used to help me navigate; a very smooth, velvety, deep voice navigating me through the waters of life! This version of the voice from within used to horrify me. Working in a soundproof Studio with four walls I thought either someone was pulling a prank on me or there was something wrong with me.

As the Paranoia hit me I even got the surveillance cameras checked for my sanity but there was nothing wrong or no one pulling a prank on me.

Visiting yet another therapist who again identified a completely unrelated problem with me I started on heavy Schizophrenia medication. The medication didn’t sit right with me and after a month of course for the same I stopped taking those.

Taking matters into my hand I thought of helping myself rather than hopping onto different therapists. Gradually for some time, things were fine.

I started getting better and one day after a good night’s sleep, I woke up in a hospital. There I was informed that I had tried committing suicide and that’s how I reached the pit stop of learning what was wrong with me.

That’s how I learned that I am suffering from dissociative identity disorder aka DID…And that’s how the story started