The Intricate Lives of Systems: Fractured

I was afraid of love. It’s already difficult to maintain a relationship with just two people, but what about those few of us that have more people in our head. Is it even a possibility?Enter Mars, an eccentric transgender man who loves sundresses and wearing bright colors. He was as enchanting as a Van Gogh painting, a senseless aura of whimsical stuck in frozen motion, but planted in reality. Maybe this is why he wasn’t afraid. He was a collector of broken things and oddities, and I loved this detail about him. I knew this fact from the moment I met him, a classic meet-cute between two transmen in confidence, but was still always scared how he’d react to my reality of dissociative identity disorder.I’m not dangerous, like the movies you see, and the only current real danger in my life is falling helplessly in love with him. There was a struggle to this form of acceptance though, as it wasn’t just my own perspective to consider, but the existence and feelings of others in the headspace who resided on the inside and took turns driving at the front like a shared vehicle. Unfortunately, part of being in my life resembles a game of Russian Roulette but with friends; instead of a bullet, you get to meet a different person.This is our story, the perspective of a person living with eight alters, and the challenge of letting this single miracle of a man love us back; but that’s the beautiful thing about being enamored with someone, and the joy of them returning the same ecstatic emotion… It can heal old wounds, even the scars that reach out across multiple people in a shared body.(Author based the book on their own individual experiences living with dissociative identity disorder. This story is a reflection of their personal journey.) Read more