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I'm harbouring a fugitive - a defector of a kind
He lives in my soul and he drinks of my wine
And I'd give my last breath to keep us alive...

A strange motto, granted, and not the kind of thing you would stitch on a sampler to grace the hallway of a grand home... but this was scrawled on the wall of a rambling house that was home to a motley group of - there really is no other word for them - fugitives.

It was not one of the first things put into the house to make it feel a homely place in which to live. The hand that wrote it on the wall did so in crayon, but not as a child would playing with the wall (and, no doubt, about to get into trouble from a disapproving adult). Rather it was a hand of controlled beauty, wanting to say something to unite the group who had been thrown together here and to speak to anyone else who found themselves invited in and allowed to wander these mazelike rooms and corridors. It was a work of art and design to say that those who chose to live here were ok and that this could be a place of safety and sustenance and life, not of fear and anxiety and the creep of death.

It was written by one of those who lived there, but it was as if the house itself said it. The highlighting said to those who read it: "I am a safe haven - you can hide in me and be whoever you are, no matter what may have happened to you." I know, you're saying a house doesn't breathe, but it was as if this one did. It was not originally the form that it now took, but it seemed that this house - and by the house I include the yard and the trees and the swing set and all that fell within the boundaries of this landscape - grew with those who came to live in it.

New corridors had appeared over time. New rooms came into being that any building inspector worth his salt would throw up his hands at in horror and paste a condemned sign over the front door. Not everyone who lived here had come of their own choice, but once a resident they came to see it as a cherished home. And strange though it may seem most of those living here were unaware of others... That had begun to change recently, but still there were those who had lived there for years whose rooms were only just being discovered. Part of the process of the house being able to cope with so many residents was the growing need for them to begin to acknowledge one another and somehow learn to interact and co-exist.

So, who should I introduce to you first... They know this is being written, and some are not at all happy with it. Some don't mind that they will be written about - they just don't want their names to be revealed. They think that if you know their names then you will somehow have power over them.

They see freedom in their anonymity, and a loss of some measure of strength if you know their name. The name is all that bothers them - you can know all that they know about themselves, which often isn't a lot, so long as you don't know their name. So I will respect that. Don't assume you are reading the truth when you read names for some will be pseudonyms. Perhaps this is a mark of the fugitive nature of their existence. The fear of no longer being who they are if they are known. A terror that somehow you will be able to demand they change if they reveal their names to you. Some know that change is necessary and that letting this be written is even a part of that. They even know that you, the reader of this, may be instrumental in any changes that may come about in their lives. But they want to be able to choose the change and grow healthily. Some of their arrivals in this house were forced upon them, and now they guard jealously any changes that may come into their own lives and into the lives of those who can't help but affect them.

I don't know who came to live in the house first - some have claimed to be the first, but later someone else has revealed that they know a little bit earlier in the ever changing history of this house... Should the rowdy ones be introduced first - those aggressive enough to not give a damn if you know them or not. But is that giving in to them and feeding something unhealthy in them?

Perhaps I could walk through the house and just introduce you to whoever we first come upon. There is no front door, at least no real door. There is no front porch or homely veranda. There is no front yard with a fence to mark the boundary where the property begins. There is no street with traffic and people wandering past. There are no street lights marking a greater existence than the house alone. There is only the house. From the inside (and I assume from outside as well, though I have actually never faced the front of the house from there) there looks to be a normal solid wood front door - doorknob, lock, and safety chain - all securely fastened, but the door does not open, neither to let someone in from without nor out from within. It doesn't even rattle in a storm like it is trying to free itself from its hinges or locks. It is sealed solidly - seemingly never to be opened.

Along the wall are windows on either side of the un-door-like door. Both have heavy curtains hiding glass, yes, but glass nailed over with planks of wood to reinforce it against some kind of attack from the world beyond the house.

Pictures of condemned houses have the wooden slats nailed across the outside of the windows, but this house has the wood on the inside, perhaps to give the illusion of normality to the outside. But there is nothing outside. Because the wood is inside you can peek through the gaps and then through the windows and see... nothing....no grass, no street, no clouds of fog obscuring a view... just nothing... I'm starting to think I chose the wrong place to begin your tour of this strange place. But there is not a lot that is "normal" about this place, so I guess anywhere would be a bizarre place to start from your perspective.

This place is perfectly straightforward and ordinary to those living within its boundaries - the structure of the building and the yard out the back. This is all they have ever known, and some who have talked to "outsiders" have found it difficult to grasp that what they experience is not what all people experience. To them everyone lives in a house like this. Don't you?

The person I'm going to let you meet first is the one who is least afraid of you knowing her. She has interacted with the most outsiders - whether they have known it was her or not is irrelevant, but some have known, and even know her by name. Perhaps because of those interactions she is one of the ones I feel I know best, or at least know best in a way that can be described and read and hopefully make some kind of sense.

Jaqi. Angry, fiercely protective, exuding an air of confidence and self-assuredness, especially to the younger fugitives, but deep down, oh so very scared and unsure. She would never admit this but she longs for someone to see through the bravado - to see through it and then to stay with her and hold her. She will never trust another to look after her, or those under her care. That is something she sees as her job and feels very much like she has let down so many. She can't see that what she demands of herself has been and still is completely out of her reach. What she expects from herself she has never been able to deliver, but instead of seeing this as indicative of her humanity and her being part of something bigger than just herself, she berates herself for her failure and vows to try harder.

Her past failures have not strengthened her ability to protect, but rather fuelled her stubbornness. No-one has ever, ever touched - with malice or kindness - Jaqi since she came to live here, despite the fact that she is the one who has talked to the most outsiders. Sometimes in those conversations she has seen the outsider reaching to touch, but knowing they would recoil on contact with her skin she has quickly pushed someone else into the physical encounter - be it an unintentional brush on the arm, or holding a hand, or embracing.

She would say here that is because the younger ones need that kind of physical contact and she doesn't - she is beyond that. But that isn't why she pushes another in and retreats herself into a corner to watch from a safe distance. She backs away because she thinks - she would say she knows for certain - that the touch of her skin would burn an outsider. They would recoil in pain and horror from the feel of her. But I think she secretly fears that she would break down on contact. She would be forced to admit that she is touchable, and more, that she needs touch. She would begin to weep at the thought that someone was brave enough to step through the fear of being burned and touch her. And that is where she knows she would lose all control.

Jaqi has never cried. Never. Not for the pain of another person in the stories she has heard and things she has witnessed, and never for herself. Never. She will happily admit that horrible things have gone on, but she will not cry... if she does begin and even let a single tear flow, she fears she will never stop from the depth of anguish inside her. And then the fear for her becomes flipped. She wants someone to stay with her in that pain and those tears - someone to stay there and hold her until it subsides, no matter how long that may take. And that is why she will never take the first step along that path. Her deepest conviction is that she is not worth being looked after and that no-one would stay and see through what they began - so she will never begin that journey. Her job is to protect the safety of this refuge, and to look after the younger ones, even those who are scared of her. She will look after them, or die in the effort to safeguard the structure of life as she knows it.

I've told you nothing of age or appearance, apart from the fact, obvious from her name, that she is female. Nor have I told you when she came to live here. The answer to the last question is that I'm not sure, and to answer it I would have to attempt somehow to explain the structure of time within the boundaries of this place. There is linear time, like you know time - seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years. But somehow time in here can do whatever each individual fugitive chooses - whether that choice be conscious or unconscious, happy or excruciatingly painful. I know - you're thinking why would someone "consciously" choose "excruciatingly painful"? You think that makes no sense, and yet so many do just that - live out the whole of life in the light of one moment of a horrible memory, letting it shape everything from the way they see themselves, to what they do, to how they relate to others. Some who live here came in a moment, and have frozen at that moment, neither growing physically, mentally or emotionally. Some came at an instant and, for their own reasons, grew for a time, then stopped; or stopped for a while and then grew at a pace different to real time. Some grow slower and their physical growing up changes with their emotional state and their interaction with others who live here. Some grow with time, as outsiders do. Don't try to make sense of it, but all these differences can happily abide in adjoining rooms. Perhaps it is the safe harbour of this house that allows such diversity. Who knows? All I know is that that is how it is.

Jaqi arrived as a seven or eight year old, when she realised that someone needed to be a defender in this life. Yes, even at that age she somehow knew that no-one else was going to do the job and that if it had to be done she would have to do it. Thus she came to live here. She grew up for about a few years, and now she exists as an angry ten or eleven year old - knowing what she wants and holding fiercely to her right to achieve it, but lacking the authority and the ability to succeed properly. ******

Up the stairs in the centre of the house, there is a long corridor of rooms. Somehow, like the laws of time, the laws of engineering don't apply here either. One of the rooms seems to face the opposite way to all others. It is seemingly at the end of a long corridor, and yet is on the way to anywhere you wish to go in the upstairs. You don't want to go near it, because what you hear from there could break your heart if you listened for too long, but to go anywhere you have to pass it. This is a room known only to those who live there - no outsider has been near it or has ever been told it even exists. It is a tiny room - no windows and apparently no door, yet somehow you can see in and talk to the little one who lives in that place, and you can certainly hear him. The boy who lives there would probably be about two and a half, or maybe three. I don't know his name, and he has never spoken to anyone. He can hear when others try to talk to him, because he responds by quivering into silence or screaming in terror. He has no toys, no bed, no decorations on the walls, no light, no clothes.

There is carpet on the floor. He huddles in the corner - not that the width of the room is much greater than the space needed for him to fit. He never sleeps. He whimpers in terror. He groans in pain. All he does is cry. But no-one can reach him and comfort him. I guess he is aware of others because he fears them, but I don't think he cries because they can't help him. I don't think he could know enough to think that through.

He just cries... and cries... and cries...******

There is a six year old - no, he is 6 years and 100 days old, he informs me - living here. He has a sister who is exactly the same age, only maybe a minute or two older, and a million years sadder. They live in the same room, somehow almost occupying the same space, but not quite. Neither of them want me to tell you their names, so they are going to call themselves littl g and angeliq, because they came to live here on a Christmas day a long time ago.

What made them move into this house and seek solace in its refuge? A man - was hurting them really, really badly on a day that was supposed to be special. He had woken them up early and taunted them with a heavy and full-looking Santa pillowcase on the end of their bed. But instead of there being toys and dolls and nice things, the bag contained some rope and a knife. He tied them up and did things that shouldn't be done to a little girl or boy. Angeliq was the one he did most of the bad things to, but littl g suffered them too - maybe that's one of the downfalls of being a twin. When he wanted to take a break from what he was doing and get himself some food or a beer, instead of just leaving Angeliq tied up in the middle of the floor, he put her in the bottom of the wardrobe, tied very tightly so she could only squirm and wriggle like a worm. She hadn't had anything to eat or drink, or been allowed to go to the toilet. There was yucky stuff inside her and starting to crust on her body and in her hair, and she was bleeding and sore from cuts and kicks and punches to various parts of her little girl body. While she was lying in the hot stuffy wardrobe she remembered that Christmas was about the day that Jesus was born. (She had been to Mission School a few times.)

So, lying there in pain and growing distress at the aches and pains that weren't yet fully at their peak, and were only a small part of the rest of what was to happen on that day, she whispered in a very small voice - he had told her not to make any sound, and she was pretty sure that he wasn't in the room, but she could never be certain that it wasn't a trick - "Happy Birthday Jesus." And she waited... and waited...

And that's where Angeliq slipped into the background. Somewhere deep inside she thought that if she said happy birthday, then Jesus would remember about her and see what was happening and he would fix it. But he didn't... No matter how long she waited - and she knew he would come back so she didn't have forever - he wasn't going to help her. He wasn't going to make it stop. Littl g stepped in and said that Jesus didn't care about them and that he was never going to do anything to help. He was sure he could if he wanted to, but he just didn't want to... He didn't care enough... She didn't matter enough to be helped...Jaqi had been hiding up till then, so she knew what angeliq had been through and knew that she probably couldn't take much more. So Jaqi did something that, even in years of looking back, she has never regretted.

While he was out of the room, Jaqi went into the wardrobe and untied angeliq and put herself in her place. She mussed herself up a bit, so that her dad wouldn't be able to tell the difference and they both tied the ropes exactly the same as he had done them. Then angeliq slipped away, curling up away from harm, but not crying - that might make too much noise and he might know she was there. She didn't want angeliq to be hurt like she had been, but she knew she couldn't take very much more of the kicking and hitting and cutting and ... and .... you know... you can guess the depths to which he was going in his messing around with this little girl...

So jaqi took the rest of what was meant for angeliq, and they were so alike that no-one could tell it wasn't the same girl. And just like littl g had watched the first rites of pain that he inflicted on angeliq, littl g watched what he did to his sister...And afterwards, when they had had enough and put her to bed, still dirty, still hungry, still thirsty, still ashamed at what she had been made to do, still with his kicks aching their blows in her sensitive parts, they left.

With his words, "That's Christmas for you - the best one you'll ever get!" ringing in their ears as he turned off the light and shut the door laughing at his cleverness, they left. They both comforted one another and tried to look after the wounds, but really they were in places neither could reach, no matter how much they wanted to help each other. They were together, but so terribly alone. And that is how they have been ever since they came to this house that night. Somehow there is no comfort in the knowledge of shared experiences. And they don't talk about it at all, with each other or with others, but jaqi swings between being annoyed at and being jealous of her sister's thoughts about Jesus. Angeliq somehow doesn't see things the way jaqi does. She doesn't see her wishing Jesus a happy birthday as a dumb thing to have done. She doesn't see it as a waste of time. She doesn't share littl g?s despair at him not having helped - she has no answers to the questions and objections littl g raises, but she seems to not need them. And angeliq feels so sad and worthless. Her despondency is overwhelming as her only answer is that they were not worth rescuing, let alone worth being cared about or even seen by Jesus.

JOURNAL EXTRACT

In the end, a reason doesn't change any of what has happened or any of how I've coped with it...The more I think about all this the more I end up at a very different place to any I've ever let myself go to before. I can't help thinking that maybe getting through this - whatever that ends up looking like - somehow means embracing it. What I mean by that is instead of hating it (my "disorder") and resenting them (the "others" inside me) somehow turning that around and appreciating it and them. I can say the words and to a degree give mental assent to the fact that had it not been for it and them I would not have coped, not stayed sane (if I can actually call myself sane with a diagnosis of D.I.D.!), not survived, not be who I am, not be alive... but I don't really know that...

Maybe "power of paradox" kicks in here. I hate them, try to shut them out, push any sort of conscious awareness of them - their memories and experiences and also their current actions - away, deny them, ignore them... and what do they do in response? Scream louder, steal time and existence from me, cut me, hurt me, take over, not let me sleep as they demand rights and time; but the time they claim doesn't really achieve anything - it leaves me with no knowledge except that of having missed something; the tiredness tells me I was up all night but I have no awareness of what I did. And what I hate even more is when other people have seen me in those times: it's not that they necessarily know it wasn't me, but they'll mention conversations and I have to rely on pretending and bluffing in the hope that they say enough to let me piece together the bits of my life that I missed... I end up feeling cheated and ripped off because, in a way other people know things I've said, things I've done, who I am - things I don't know about "me".

This must all sound so bizarre! How can I ever expect that anyone reading this will be able to follow the convoluted twists of who I mean by "me" at any given time? And if I can't expect them to follow it, it would be sheer folly to contemplate them understanding... I strayed from where I was going with that reference to "the power of paradox". Let's see if I can put it ply... I hate them, therefore I push them away, therefore they cling even tighter and demand and take without asking (- knowing that asking will be fruitless as I'll just deny them!)... The small flickering dimness of a light bulb moment - an idea I'm barely daring to whisper the faintest murmur of hope into - says that maybe the opposite will work: IF I try to love them, therefore I embrace them and their experiences and their actions, then they may settle down and quieten their demandingness...

However, I have no idea if that can even happen, how I go about doing it, what 'doing it' would look like, or if it would work. And if my motive for doing it is to get rid of them, then they'll see through me and know that I'm not really embracing them and acknowledging and appreciating their contribution to keeping me alive......they don't trust me, another part is that I don't trust them; and another is that I fear them. I fear what they have been through, and I fear them having to share that knowledge with me as part of this elusive process I'm trying to embark on... ? I'm harbouring a fugitive a defector of a kind and she lives in my soul and she drinks of my wine and I'd give my last breath to keep us alive... (The Indigo Girls)

That song quote above is what I chose to start off "My Crowded House". A little while back I had a thought that felt revolutionary and has begun to settle itself in my heart as I keep mulling it over. Integration... a scary word... and where psychiatrists want to head...but I'm not sure if there is one true definition to it, and that what clinicians define it as may be very far from what it is in practical terms.

In the movie "Voices Within", based on the book "When Rabbit Howls" by Trudi Chase, the central character has multiple personality disorder and this becomes her catchcry: "2-4-6-8, We don't want to integrate!" She came to such an appreciation of her 'others' that, if integration meant they would disappear, then she didn't want it...

The Indigo Girls' song had said similar things to me: the 'fugitives' and the "others" inside me, and I am the one hiding them. And thus 'to keep us alive' becomes a cry against the traditional view of integration. ...then one day recently I was wandering around singing the song and a novel idea hit me: I am the fugitive, not them. They are harbouring and protecting me, not the other way around. And they are the ones who would and have done whatever it takes to keep us - to keep me - alive.

Just writing that out weeks later it still blows me away... And perhaps this whole process could somehow be them 'giving their last breath to keep us alive'.

What does that mean? Is it somehow saying thanks for what you did, have done, and are doing, but now you don't have to do it anymore... Is it going to involve listening to each one - hearing whatever it was that brought them into existence, whatever trauma was seen as so bad by my psyche that the only way to cope was to split - and somehow letting them each know that they don't need to do that job any longer... I'm a grown-up and have the capacity, because of the community around me, to handle what they don't think I can: it can become part of me and I can have it... and they can rest, or play, or whatever... Is that what integration really is?

Just writing that has me sitting here in abject terror... me thinking: "No, that's too hard - I can't cope; I can't know more than the horror I already have inside!" ...and them thinking, crying, screaming: "NO! he can't cope with what we hold; that's why we exist!"

Part of the fear and anxiety that is being churned up inside is that this is about to be read by someone other than me (and "them" reading over my shoulder, as it were)... What if it is garbage... what if it really doesn't make sense... what if it is completely incomprehensible... ... or what if I might finally be on the right track and writing this, letting this be read, allowing this to be talked about; what if all that might actually work... (whatever 'working' might look like...)- and I don't know which of those two extremes terrifies me more...Why bother?

Won't looking at the pain just make it worse? How do you do this? What will it look like? Is this something that needs to be done alone, or does it need to be done with other people helping you and being 'in it' with you? What sort of things can well-intentioned people do or say that can actually hinder this process? How can people help you in this? If this is important, what are the consequences of not doing it? Is this a once for all process, which having been 'done' never needs looking at again? What will having 'done' this look like on the other side?