Adena M'lynn's Voice

by Adena M’lynn I found her— no, them— at sixty-three. A lifetime later, and the mirror finally cracked wide enough for me to see what had been hiding in plain sight. Dissociative Identity Disorder— they call it a diagnosis, but to me, it’s a roll call of every ghost I ever made to keep myself alive. Each one wore my face, but different eyes— some kind, some terrified, some tired of the fight. And now I stand in the aftermath, counting the wreckage of a life I thought was mine alone. How do you say sorry for the hurt you never meant, for the words another voice spoke through your trembling mouth? How do you own the pain when the hand that caused it was yours— and not yours? I see the faces I love— each one marked with the fingerprints of confusion, with the bruises of my becoming. And I wonder— did they ever know how fractured I was? How every smile I gave was held together with invisible glue and shaking prayers? There is carnage in remembering. In realizing that survival was not clea...

  by Adena M’lynn I wake up—  but it’s not my bed. Not my hands. Fingernails shorter. Breath heavier. I think… she was here. Mouth moves— the laugh is too loud. Eyes blink wrong. The mirror is someone else. I copy her smile anyway. Good mimic. Good girl. Thoughts pile— no—spill. I don’t know if I’m remembering or being told what to remember. Feels real. Doesn’t mean it’s mine. I try to gather myself— but myself scatters. Fingers of smoke. Pages torn out. Locks without keys. Will I go back— into my body? Or will my body crawl in here with me, into the dark place where the names blur and the days slide out of order? I ask— Who am I? It echoes. The answer comes back in different voices. I think I’m still searching. I think I always have been. Maybe one day I’ll find the heartbeat that feels like home.

Chapter Two She didn’t grow up with imaginary friends. She grew up with real ones—just no one else could see them. The first time she realized she wasn’t alone in her own head, she was eight. Sitting in the back of a classroom, staring at the chalkboard, drifting again. The teacher called on her, and just like that, someone else stood up inside her skin and gave an answer with a voice that wasn’t quite hers. The other kids stared. The teacher didn’t notice. But she did. She remembered watching her own hand move, her own lips speak. She heard the words, but she hadn’t chosen them. It was like watching someone else drive her body from behind a fogged-up window. That’s when she knew—something was living inside her. Several somethings. They didn’t come all at once. They arrived in whispers, in fragments. Some were loud. Some were silent. Some came to keep secrets. Some came to protect her from things even she didn’t want to remember. And all of them, in their own way, were trying to ...