I watched Split and Glass on Netflix, where a fictional character with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) develops a personality with superhuman strength. James McAvoy was phenomenal, shifting seamlessly from one persona to another on screen. The story is a textbook case of severe childhood trauma: the psyche fractures to protect the vulnerable self. One of his identities, “The Beast,” punishes the undamaged—those who haven’t suffered.
[Spoiler Alert] The Beast sees the damaged as pure.

That’s what drew me in.

I have a friend with DID. Sarah is brilliant, cultured, well-read, and funny. She took many younger, “damaged” women under her wing. She was the one who introduced me to Broadway, gifting me tickets to Sondheim. We’d sit in cafes, visit restaurants, and talk about arthouse films and everything else. Her life sounded like a novel. She told me she was one of the first female TV producers—or something close. I’m not sure if Sarah is the original. I met two of her other selves: Tommy, a boy who constantly said, “Sorry,” and another, terrifying one—probably her internalized mother.

The switches weren’t as clean as in the movies. She once said she had a “Flat Earth Committee” in her head, which decided what she could or couldn’t do. That committee often said she wasn’t allowed to leave her apartment.

Before her DID diagnosis, she’d been given a charcuterie board of mental health labels: agoraphobia, depression, anxiety disorder. She’d been prescribed all kinds of medications. None of them helped.

Many friends tried to help her. After all, when she showed up as “Sarah,” she was wonderful. But over time, that became rarer.

I was the last one who tried hard. I had this urge to rescue someone else—maybe instead of rescuing myself. Her disorders were inflated versions of mine, so I could speak her language to a certain extent.

I don’t have DID. I’ve been dissociated, but not to that degree. I had dysthymia and episodes of major depression. Sometimes I wasn’t “allowed” to get out of bed. I had extremely low self-esteem and poor communication skills—unless I was in a professional setting. Then I became articulate, competent, impressive. I still have a voice inside that occasionally whispers, “Jump” or “Kill yourself.”

Over time, I realized that some of Sarah’s other personalities were sabotaging anything that might make her better. Whenever she admitted to feeling improvement, they lashed back—as if healing would erase them. As if their survival depended on her staying damaged. Ironically, their original role had been to protect her.

They exhausted me, as they had exhausted many before me.

I haven’t seen Sarah in years. She reaches out once in a blue moon—only in moments of desperation. The last time, it wasn’t even her. A mutual friend contacted me because no one had heard from her. Turned out she’d fallen and been hospitalized. She didn’t have her phone in the hospital room, so she couldn’t reach anyone. But she came up with an ingenious solution: she befriended the woman in the next bed and asked her husband to deliver a handwritten note to my building.

That’s Sarah—resourceful and fiercely capable when it matters. She once told me she’d made a deal with the “committee” to keep her alive. One of her friends with DID had died by suicide. Sarah wasn’t going to be one of them.

Eventually, I accepted Sarah as she is. There’s no “original” Sarah waiting to be recovered. She was already many when I met her. I just didn’t know it. She contains multitudes. Every piece of her is my friend. And I’ve let go of the childish fantasy that I could save her—or anyone else.

Everyone splits, to some degree.

There are incidents I don’t remember, but my body seems to. I don’t have a single, monstrous trauma, just layers: a verbally and emotionally—possibly sexually—abusive father; a manipulative, passive-aggressive mother; a narcissistic aunt; a silent, possibly borderline grandmother. Add to that a culture soaked in misogyny, inappropriate touches, and the absence of loving contact—and I was left scarred.

I didn’t split, but I did build personas: a tough bitch and an abrasive man—my internalized father—to protect the vulnerable child inside me.

I’ve spent decades re-parenting that little girl. I wanted her to grow up into who she could have been if she had been loved and left alone: a happy, loving, beautiful girl. A confident, capable woman who could love and be loved.

I didn’t become exactly what I hoped—but I like who I’ve become. I’m happy with this version of myself.

You can’t restore the original child. But you can hold your scars with tenderness. You can carry your pain gently, like something sacred. And in doing so, you become who you were always meant to be:

Clean and pure, with old scars.
Survive. Then thrive.