Leave now if you don't like people tearing off on occasionally self-righteous #%*#&%* sessions.

This rant is for July 20th, 2001. With many thanks to Astraea for sending these quotes to us.

You know, it's no wonder that the world thinks we're freaks. Not only is it easier to keep us at an arm's length--ooo, can't risk multiples close to us, they might *bite* and then you'd need all kinds of shots--but we're convenient scapegoats for anyone who doesn't want to take responsibility. Couldn't be us, they say. Must be *you* who's remembering it wrong and hey, what was that about that FMS stuff again?

Heavens and Hells and Others help me if I ever actually make up 'false memories' about if I remembered to pay the phone bill or not.

But being given the bright red letters of MPD and DID to pin on our chests automatically means that we're expected to obey 'as we should.' We'll be good boys and girls and others, and rave and rant a la Exorcist so that everyone will know to stay far away from us. It's our duty to be insane, and we daren't disappoint the media and psychs by removing ourselves from easy target status. We'll go into the hospitals and make some psychologist rich by digging up traumas we don't need to remember. We aren't people. That's the furthest thing from *anyone's* mind these days--we're commodities, and we should stay that way in our little boxes.

We are the easiest of excuses. Don't like your wife? Why, the 'parts' of her you don't like are actually, gasp, wait for it, alternate personalities and they should be removed for her own good. You're just trying to *help* her along. Yes, everyone else is the one with the problem, and only you can see it. Because they're too self-deluded to realize that what your physical DNA states is the entire extent of what you are.

There are surgeries to correct a person's gender. I want one to give me the number of bodies I should have had from the start.

We are the simplest of things to control, because society believes we lack it. Utterly. Which is exactly why I must be letting Raven stomp around the office and throw monitors out the windows, right? I'm not actually typing this--I'm really on the floor letting Kate crayon over the financial reports. Oh yeah. See this person here that's just shrugging with a smirk? That's a fake; I think I'm 'multiple', so quick, get away before my eyes roll back and I go for the kitchen knife conveniently stashed in my desk drawer.

As if I'd have one there. Sorry, guys--I'd rather not keep sharps around in the rare case that one of us uses it on us instead of on another person. No. That doesn't mean we're at eternal risk of self-harm. It means we're watching out for ourselves and being responsible about it. Do you see us going into the local fast-food mart and going haywire? I don't think so. We're too busy trying to figure out who wanted what for dinner, and who keeps racking up the speeding tickets.

As nice as it is to be thought of as extra-nifty gifted folk, I hate to say it--we're mundane. We have mundane concerns. Some of us would like to go see a movie on the weekend. Some of us would like to undermine the world. But whatever we are, it's primarily nullified by the sheer number of us. If you have one of us in one direction, you'll have another the other way. We're our own balancing systems. Don't try and tell us you know our weights better than we do. Don't try and tell us we're wild animals frothing rabid at the mouth.

"I'm trying to portray multiplicity accurately. I understand that the only way a mind can split is through a life-threatening or sexual trauma before the age of seven, and that only super-intelligent children with psychic ability can split their minds this way. Can the host talk directly to an alter, or..."

Or what? Or can we have about as much communication with ourselves as most people do with each other on a regular basis? Don't tell me... you actually think it's better to walk around in a closed world, interacting with people only on the surface level before you go back to your secure suburbia where all the Scary Multipley Beasties are far away in the Other Places. I won't let you know about the one next door. You look like you need a break.

About the only weird thing that I personally can do is cause my computer to short out when I have a temper. Yay. Go me. I can call up network service providers and extort them to stay away. Y2K? That was the great MPD/DID threat, didn't you know?

Hate to break it to you, world. But most of us just don't care to play along with your ideas of what we should be.

"Well, thank you for your informative letter. I sure learned a lot, and I appreciate your clearing up my misconceptions about a fascinating disease. I'm going to write my screenplay the way I originally conceived it, because if I used your ideas, no one would believe it. After all, it's gotta sell! :) Have a nice life."

Thanks! Hope you get hit by a truck! After all, we've got a population problem here on Earth!

And ooo. I've been graduated to a 'fascinating disease.' This makes me... what? A bacterium, dancing around happily on this petrii dish of the mind? Spiff.

It's needless to say that, at times like this, I wonder how it is that people like that can be considered more sane and decent than us.

Our flaws may be right up in our face every day, but all that means is that we know how to deal with them better. We already know that we'll run into serious problems if we try to fool ourselves into thinking we're the perfect, self-contained masters that most people will believe themselves to be. Funny, that. For all that we're sinners and saints in one, we're less hypocritical than your average adult. But wait! We can't have *that*--it would mean that the 'normal' people are thrown into doubt! They might have problems too! Gasp.

You can hear my shock a mile away.

And what is this 'host' thing again anyway? We had to take the proverbial stand again the other day when a well-meaning friend was trying to untangle our plural characters online. 'I'm going on the idea that so-and-so is sort of like the 'host body', he said, 'and that it usually controls the actions, while the other one is a kind of latent personality within the body.' Er, it's not that easy, we said. Can't you think of them as just complete people stuck in the same body? A shrug from his side and the attitude of, 'I don't care if I'm wrong. It's what I can understand it as, so that's all it is.'

'Oh,' he piped up helpfully next, 'and I've been reading about Freud in classes lately.'

Dance, my little bactrii. Dance.