Trans Me And DID

I made a movie about my life being trans and having Dissociative Identity Disorder.

CW: transphobia, disordered eating, SA, hospitalization

If you want to read along, the full text, photos, and deleted scenes can be found here.

A few things to leave clear (spoilers, but also helpful if you don’t want to feel confused)

• My diagnosis is Dissociative Identity Disorder. The subcategory is Tertiary Structural Disorder, in which “I” am composed of Apparently Normal Parts (ANPs) and Emotional Parts (EPs).

• While other forms of DID involve a Primary identity who negotiates control of their body with secondary and tertiary identities, I am not the Primary.

• My name, ironically, is Prime. But that’s just the name of the person you’re talking to right now— most of the time you’re not talking to me. I’m just one of thirteen people who share different parts of our body, memories, and experiences.

• Michael was a real person, but in order to never be alone, we internalized a reflection of their kindness into a protective identity named Michelle.

• All thirteen of us are: Daisy, Cookie, Zoe, Winnie, Prime, Connie, Memory, Ace, Kameron, Marcie, Page, Michelle, Aries

• You can say hello to any of us in particular, but for our safety, most of us won’t often be able to respond

We stayed in three main hospitals:

• Children’s Rehabilitative Services UMMC

• Millcreek of Magee Treatment Center

• Mississippi State Hospital: Oak Circle Center

For further reading about those hospitals, please check out:

• Mississippi State Hospital Wikipedia

• History of Mississippi Psychiatry: A Dark Past Unearthed on UMMC Grounds

• A mental health scandal haunting America | BBC

• Exhuming a dark past: Mississippi State Lunatic Asylum’s 7,000 coffins | Washington Post

• A Body a Day: Constructing Deviance at the Mississippi State Asylum | Master’s Thesis by Rachel Christine Childs, University of Mississippi

• Former Whitfield hospital policeman arrested for fraud, extradited from Texas | WLBT

• Inhospitable in the Hospitality State: The Mississippi State
  Hospital in the Jim Crow South, 1865–1966 | Dissertation by Michael Thomas Murphy (2018)

• History of the Mississippi State Insane Hospital | Asylum Hill Project

• Glen Dancy v. East Mississippi State Hospital

• Doing Less With Less: Mental Health Care in Mississippi | ProRepublica

• Millcreek Employee Arrested | Magee News

• Keys v. Rehabilitation Centers, Inc. | Legal briefing at Justia

• The city left behind in Mississippi’s welfare scandal | Andscape

For further viewing, here are a few movies and documentaries about life inside (and outside) mental health facilities and the experience of having DID:

• Without Consent

• Out of Sight, Out of Mind

• Of Two Minds

• Girl, Interrupted

• Identity

• Shutter Island

• Split/Glass

• Daniel Isn’t Real

• Star Wars: Darth Vader

• Fight Club

• Psycho

• The Incredible Hulk

• The MCU: Moon Knight

• The Flash (CW): Caitlin Snow/Killer Frost/Khione

For two more people besides me with DID, check out these two YouTube channels:

• DissociaDID

• Encina Severa

For further reading on DID, check out:

• DID Research Hub

• Top 10 Dissociative Identity Disorder/Multiple Personality Movies

• Scientists Have Developed a New Explanation for Consciousness

• NAMI Protests “Me, Myself & Irene”

Thank you to my Patreon producers JL Lycette and Brent Hearn.

Video footage provided courtesy of DeconJon Aran via Pexels.

A final message to my therapist from the mental health institution

Dear Sharon,

I don’t know if you’ll ever see this. I just wanted to put this out there. I just wanted to tell you I finally got out.

And I don’t just mean I got out in the way I wanted. I got out in the way you hoped would one day happen for me.

I understand why I was sick. I understand what kept me in the same prison as the rest of my family.

Thank you for everything you did to help me.

I finally found the family that makes me feel like I’m home ❤