A Song of Life: Being DID

Hi.

I’m Jeffery, a childhood abuse survivor and disabled Marine with DID living in the Deep South.  I was born to a military family devoid of any form of physical love and affection.  I was trained be a “child warrior” during the Cold War in Europe.  Beatings were common.  I am from everywhere and nowhere, having been yanked from one environment to another for the first fourteen years of our life.  Like I tell folks: I’m from everywhere and nowhere, and home is where I can park my stuff.

Facts:

I was born to Army parents in a small German hospital overseas where I disappeared for awhile.  Neither the hospital nor my parents could find me, then I reappeared awhile later.  No one knew where I had been.  Neither do I.
I have two birth certificates: one from the hospital, one from the American consulate.  They say I was born in different years.  I was born 9-11, during the Cold War, in ’59.
I’ve got over 12 years of post-high school education.  “We” are a compulsive learner.
The best thing I ever learned was teaching myself how to learn.
By the time I was 17 I had read every science fiction novel that I could find, and most of the short ones.  That was in ’77 – I couldn’t find one I hadn’t read, not in any library.  So I gave it up and started reading other stuff instead.
I’ve been a carpenter and an engineer, certified mechanic (gas, diesel, 4 stroke or 2 cycle) from 2 wheels to 24.  I can rebuild most anything.
I studied Engineering Design while putting myself through college.  Out of 90 students only I and one girl graduated.  I taught the class for awhile – the Mechanical Engineering part of it.
I learn things by reading and/or doing them.  I remember everything I’ve read – most of the technical and engineering stuff.  I’m a “facts” trivia man, specializing in . . . anything.
Don’t ask me about someone famous.  I’m not your man.  While able to remember facts about paramecium and the far side of the moon (it smells like gunpowder, by the way – just another fact I know) – I’m lousy at remembering names.  I’m not the kind of person that makes famous people famous.
I learned to shoot the mini-gun on a Huey Cobra using the Heads Up Display (HUD) by the time I was 13.
I was setting punji stake traps when I was ten.
I was voted “most honest man” when I worked as an engineer for a pharmaceutical firm.  I designed factories for them.
I had a three month long party one time.
I was kidnapped by a guy who thought I was a kid in the MKULTRA program.  Fact is, I was part of a program, but not the one he (and I thought) at the time.  It was another program, kinder, more mild.
There’s a lot more, but I’m bored.

What Other People Say:
“You’ve lived an interesting life!  You should write a book about it.”  Fact is, I did in some ways.  But only about a part of it.
“You give love so unconditionally.  You’re unlike any man I know, dad,” my daughter said to me sadly, almost gently one time.
I am brutally honest.  “Cruelly so,” has been the words I’ve heard in my (our) past.

“You’re the smartest person I know.”  I’ve heard this one more times than I care to.  It doesn’t matter.  Facts don’t make knowledge; knowledge doesn’t give wisdom.  And I’ve met much smarter people than I in all walks of life . . .

I’ve been a janitor at a cotton mill.  I’m a survivalist.  I own guns, but am extremely paranoid about them.  It keeps me safe, as well as others.

I – or ‘we’ (my alter selves) wrote a book called “The Boy” which we started when ‘I’ was seventeen.  It took 34 years and is the product of several ‘alters’ (something I didn’t realize until 2011).   It’s the story of an abused child, an abused and sexually groomed child, a beaten child.  It will lead you down the journey of my child, the inner one, and you will come to understand HOW and WHY a child might beg for his abuser to abuse him; have sex with him – as well as an indepth understanding of a sexual abuser and sadistic monster.  It will put you inside their heads and their hearts – I know, since their heads and hearts are inside of mine.  It will give you a glimpse of DID.  Everyone who has read it says: it’s a really good book.  There’s lots of symbolizism, double and triple meanings as well – another result of my DID system and ‘alters’ inside me.  Don’t take my word for it – take  of other reviewers.  It’s a really good read – either as an adventure/crime story or a deeper, more symbolic book, and one which child sexual abuse survivors will identify with.

We have three blogs – one for “Mikie’s Stories”, which is “The Little Shop of Horrors” (kinda tells you something about our pasts, doesn’t it?); Matthew’s journals, or “The Lost Journals“, which is done my my more contemporary “Teen” alter and Marine, plus a few more . . . includes some artwork and lots of poetry – and this one, current events, comments and so . . .

Anyway – have fun, check out the book we wrote – ALL proceeds benefit abused children – be good to yourself (or selves).

“To understand is to feel compassion; to feel compassion – love.  And with love and compassion comes forgiveness . . .”

Learn to understand; tolerate that which you do not – and remember the Golden Rule: “Do No Harm” – and if you must make a choice, choose that which harms the least . . .

Live. Love. Laugh.  And pursue Happiness as best you can – while harming no one else – and realize:

It’s in YOU . . . if only you can find it within yourself.

’nuff said.

~Jeff and Friends