About September 2000, my friend Jennifer told me about a great place for information. There were some online conferences on Dissociative Identity Disorder worth attending. I always seemed to miss them though. But this place, HealthyPlace, had transcripts of the online conferences. It also provided a free web hosting service and a place where people write journals.
My first web site was at HealthyPlace.com. It wasn't very interesting, I wasn't very creative and I got frustrated because I just had a really difficult time publishing the pages I did create. I also signed up to write my journal online: I still write there, but not as often as I would like to. I still can't believe I started writing there two years ago.
I re-read part of that journal and I can almost remember how upset I had been getting. When you sign up, you send in an introduction and a picture of yourself. That was a very difficult thing to do. Think about telling people about DID. Think about putting your face up there for the world to see. Yikes. I was scared. But, I can reflect back over this two year stretch and honestly say that writing my journal online for the world to see has not caused me any harm. In fact, I have received a lot of support, and feel that I have inspired people in return.
Oh how I remember that they mixed up my picture with someone else's. It took a few months for someone to finally correct that error. I could have thrown in the bag at that moment, but I endured all of the pain and confusion. And, as usual, it wasn't until the situation was resolved that I finally understood why it was as triggering for me as it was. Sure, I was having an identity crisis every time I logged on, but that was not the root of the problem.
I wanted to bring my journal here, to my own web site.
This is my story of the here and now. "I can do this."