Fascinating conversation! I have also created "other worlds" throughout my life. I can remember using this technique only as far back as junior high. I would walk home from school all by myself and pretend that the most pretty and popular girl was my best friend. I would carry on conversations with her as we walked along- but, still, was completely aware that it was all unreal and only my imagination.
As years passed, I used various other worlds and lived the life I should have lived if things had been different. I would be in a bad relationship and cope by pretending that I was in a relationship with someone else and that things were peachy. Doing this also got me through boredom at work, riding on the subway, and many other situations that called for "escape."
Unfortunately, the lines became blurred over some thirty odd years and now I have a hard time sequencing or remembering events, and having control over my dissociative episodes. This IS dissociative disorder in that our person and environment become unreal, and therefore, our thoughts, memories, feelings, moods.....our various personality aspects get fragmented and develop a life of their own.
I know there are at least four of "me." There is the little girl I was born as but never got to be who is fascinated by faery tales, castles, lady bugs, butterflies, and likes to play and laugh. Just try to get out of the department store without buying a slippery slide or hummingbird habitat.
There is the intellectual, sophisticated me who got me through evolving levels of career and financial success. This is the me that learns computer programs, composes business proposals, knows how to connect a cable AB switch box to a entertainment system so that you can watch a movie on HBO and record a football game on ESPN at the same time- while recording BOTH on two different VCR's. :O_o:This me has been a car washer, fast food worker, cocktail waitress, VIP sales agent, advertising administrator, vector/photo graphic artist, and a "followed" anti-violence blogger.
There is a rager teenager me. This one has the smart mouth and the I-know-it-all attitude. Does not accept criticism very well and will always have to Google it just to prove my point. Bit destructive, however. Picks her lips and nails, smokes, drinks, drugs, piercings and tattoos, swears like a sailor and has an affinity for bad boys. Never on time and just generally doesn't GIVE A $hit! This is the one who has melt downs and behaves badly in public- though that could also be attributed the the six year old if the store is out of slippery slides.
There is also the femme fatale. Not much to be said here other than this is the me that functioned in an area that would have been impossible to do so otherwise. God I miss this one. She seems to have gone on hiatus for the moment. She's quietly lurking- waiting for the right kind of wrong to spring into action.;)
So, that's my take on DID, or at least how I come to the conclusion that I have it. T had suggested it- but says only I can confirm. In that regard- taking into consideration that I was born not quite fully baked, had a violent childhood and adulthood, SOMETHING had to give. I guess it was my immensely talented and creative mind :D
