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

What's this one about?

Well, lately a few people have been doing things like, oh, speaking up in conversations over the net re: multiplicity--mostly to say, 'Hi, I know a bit about the subject so I can participate in the discussion too' and 'Multiplicity isn't purely a sensationalist self-created game'.

So.... it's funny, because it usually turns out in a few different ways.

A) The people already in the conversation shoot them down simply because we're not psych majors. It's something we study in our spare time. But that does *NOT* mean we're idiots. Sheesh. (The comment I liked best, after one of us had already gone into a several pages long discussion on the subject, was someone essentially repeating exactly what we'd already said and then adding ever so graciously, "I have some titles I can recommend if you want to learn more about mpd." As if we haven't read up on it... or *live* it....)

B)We can't admit that we are multiple, because we'd get given the 'you're just making it up for attention' routine, and we can't back up the side of multiplicity as a possibly good thing, because then we're just an 'uneducated idiot who is buying into the hype of the disorder'.

Etc.

What drives me nuts--and yeah, this is the heart of the gripe--is that we can't defend ourselves. It seems to be mired into public opinion that multiplicity can *never* be something that can be possessed by 'healthy' people. One of us got told by the selfsame 'I have titles' person basically that 'any stories about overproductive multiples were probably just self-induced cases'.

Well.... I'm not going to push the case of if we're overproductive or not, but we're holding down a perfectly normal work and college schedule (all 4.0's last quarter) without being hospitalized every weekend. We're happy, doing things we love, and--although we quarrel and get on each other's nerves--basically live with each other. And we're doing more *because* we're multiple than if we were integrated.

Want to tell us that we're not really productive?

How about that we're not *really* happy?

How about (and I love this) that we 'obviously can't be multiple, since we're doing well managing life'?

I guess I'm *really* sick of being told by the world that I don't exist. That either I can't exist, or that we're just fooling ourselves into thinking we're fine. We aren't stuck in whatever happened to us in the past--we're looking towards the future. We're not obsessed over *what* we are, but we're interested in how we can use our various talents in different ways. And we are sick of being told that we--as individuals--don't matter.

Where along the line did it become fine to look at someone else and tell them *you* know if they're really happy or not--and they don't?

How about if *you* know if they're real or not?

Well, I'm here. I'm not 'self-induced', and I'm not integrated with everyone else. And I don't need society to tell me if I'm real.

Sometimes, though, I wish that everyone else in here didn't care either.