Gone

It was a Tuesday morning, I glanced up at the clock above Rhonda’s head while she rambled things I wasn’t listening to. 8:11am. Why did you say yes to this? My manager threw a Mars Bar at me as she headed around the reception counter, and back into her office. “Here, you’ll need this for energy”. I caught the chocolate with my free hand, balancing it carefully on top of the books, folder and laptop in my arms. Free chocolate, nice.

“Um, thanks Rhonda”. She was walking fast, and I followed. Out the back door of her office and through the wooden gate, we headed across the grass to the Main office building. She talked and walked. “No one is in here because of Covid, so you’ll have the building to yourself.” Oh thank god! Rhonda pressed the code into the beeping alarm system and flicked on the lights. “Don’t worry about the alarm when you finish, Marc is coming in at some stage today so he can do that”. She walked me through the tiny kitchen and towards the back office, the CEO’s office. “Alright let’s set you up in here and get you online”. Rhonda plugged in the laptop and went into the company’s email, linking me to the Zoom meeting set to take place.

My job for the past 3 years had been that of ‘Underrated Cleaner’ in a caravan park. Days of scrubbing faeces, urine, and all types of filth had further fuelled my disgust with humanity, but the pay was decent and much needed for a single mum. The park was positioned right on the beach and whenever I could catch a second of time, I’d gaze out at the blue-green waves crashing down on the sand, chasing the toes of little children playing at the shoreline. I’d close my eyes and listen to the building roar of the ocean, soaking in the strength and power it held, completely in awe of its ever changing form, and the calm silence as it retreated into itself. I gulped in lungsful of the sea air, scented with the divine fragrances of seaweed, salt and freedom! All of it dulled the pain and humiliation of the job, and as my father taught me “Beggars can’t be choosers”.

The government body that controlled the park had recently changed hands, enforcing policies onto all departments. By law there had to be an OHS representative in each role, (even the lowly cleaners). The managers were told to look for someone who could do it, and who wouldn’t say no; me. “You’ve volunteered to be our OHS rep for the cleaners, ok?” Um, I’m pretty sure I didn’t… Me being me had replied “Yep no problem, I can do that!” Not like I don't have enough on my plate.

So my name was thrown in by management, signed up, lassoed to a course I knew nothing about nor cared to learn. Rhonda left me with a “Good luck”, thumbs up, and permission to make as many coffees in the kitchen as I pleased. As soon as I heard the back sliding door shut, I jumped up and did just that.

Carefully carrying the cup, I blew soft air at the rising steam, and headed back into the office to set up my workstation for the day. I’d made sure the laptop camera was catching a half decent angle of my face, the sunlight not illuminating every pore and wrinkle, and that my coffee and Mars Bar were out of sight. The big white folder I’d been given, 2 workbooks, my black A4 notebook, 3 pens and 2 highlighters, all laid out neatly in front of me. I sat back into the black leather office chair, took a deep breath, and waited for class to begin. My nerves were through the roof. I worried that if anyone leaned too close to the screen, they would be able to see and hear my heart beating through my jumper. The last thing I wanted was to look like a nervous fool on the first day, but there was no stopping that.

I hate looking stupid in front of people, it's humiliating. I hadn’t done any kind of schooling for decades, what if I’d forgotten how to function at all? What if sniffing chemicals and poop all day had sizzled my brain cells? Thankfully a bunch of familiar faces popped up on the screen, I let out a sigh of relief. Some I’d worked with in the past who had moved on to the company’s sister parks, some I saw daily, and a couple of workers I’d only seen randomly in passing. This was due to their (way cooler) jobs as conservationists and wildlife experts, jobs I wanted for myself. Seeing their faces eased the tiniest bit of anxiety, and added some, knowing the people I was supposed to impress. The teacher appeared, a timid looking middle-aged man with a kind face, grey hair, and glasses. OHS class had begun.

Immediately I realised how boring 8 hours of this would be, I’d already been struggling not to fall asleep at odd times and if I zoned out, they’d know. The teacher had made a point that he’d be watching us on his screen to make sure all eyes were open, engaged, blah blah blah, Oh no. The last thing I wanted was to fall asleep in class, on the first day. You’re going to need that Mars Bar girl! Good point…

I pressed the button on the side of my phone and saw it was only 8:55am. Seriously? It’s only been 25 minutes? We're not gonna make it!. After making sure my hands weren’t visible, I undid the top of the wrapper and broke off a chunk of gooey caramel chocolate goodness!........ I don’t remember what happened next, but it didn’t get to reach my lips. In a split second, I was GONE.

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I “woke” up to the scene of a small disaster; You fell asleep!? Why are my fingers sticking together? I checked the screen; nothing had seemed to change except the chapter we were on. Everyone was acting normal, the teacher was chatting away, the others seemed to be focused on their work, and on what he was saying. All were oblivious to the fact I had just fallen asleep for an unknown period in front of their eyes. I wanted to scream, cry, and run away, the tiredness had been getting worse, but I hadn’t passed out in public before!

Months ago I had told my doctor that I thought I had Narcolepsy, just like my mother and grandfather, but he had said that it wasn’t possible. He didn’t believe me about any of it. He put it down to irregular sleeping patterns and whacked me on Zoloft; The band aid approach to mental health - one size fits all.

“How often do you go outside?” Wait what? “How many cups of coffee do you drink per day?” If I don’t have coffee, we all go down with the ship… “Perhaps a nice stroll outdoors occasionally will help, and we need to regulate that sleeping pattern of yours!” Oh yeah, the one where I wake up screaming and kicking my blanket across the room? Good luck fixing that one! “Oh no, you don’t have any serious problems and if you did, the path to discovering them is a long one. You don’t want to do that do you?” ‘Guess not Doc, I guess not… Maybe it was just lack of sleep, maybe I'd just dozed off undetected? I almost had myself convinced, until I looked down at the desk, the undeniable truth was laid bare in front of me on the polished wood.

Brown lines of chocolate and caramel were smeared across the desk in swirling patterns, like a 3-year-old let loose with a crayon. I tried opening my main workbook, but the pages were sealed with blobs of nougat, panic mounted in my soul. This isn’t happening, this can’t be real, what have I done? It wasn’t just the workbook, the small green OHS manual’s pages were stuck together through random chapters, and the sheets in the big folder were the same. My notebook! I pried open the paper, trying not to tear it apart. Still, class rolled on like nothing had happened, No one noticed, relax! Then I discovered it wasn’t just chocolate, someone had written things.

The sticky pages were littered with writing that I didn’t recognise. There were random sentences in fancy script, others were barely legible. Some of the words had been crossed out or covered in black spirals drawn over the top. Random scrawled words mostly spelled incorrectly were written throughout the pages.

That’s how I knew it couldn’t have been me. I pride myself on having the ability to spell almost any word, a side effect from a childhood of no internet, instead reading every book in both my parent’s houses. My most amazing feat in Primary School was the ability to spell the word “Sternocleidomastoid”. Ha! Still can, no red line under that one! What was in front of me looked like scribble, the attempted forming of words from a person with the spelling ability of a 3-year-old! None of it made any sense.

I flew into multi-tasking clean up mode, afraid my manager would walk in, or anyone for that matter! They’d discover I’d graffitied the boss man’s desk with chocolate, during minutes in time I couldn’t explain. My heart was racing to clean up the evidence. No one can ever know... All I had was a handful of tissues in my bag and a water bottle, but it did the trick. I wet the tissues and used them like a sponge, the soggy white clump breaking apart against the stubborn, sticky mess, and dried it with my jacket sleeve. I sat upright the whole time, tried to look normal, pretended to be following the class who were referring to page 93, sub section 1a? Whatever that was. Desk cleaned, a fake laugh and a smile for the camera (pretending I was in on their jokes). I focused back on the books in front of me. Never had I seen or done anything like it.

The writing wasn’t just in my notebook. Once I’d opened the pages in the other books and the folder, I found more. Scribbles, writing, drawings of eyes and 3 dimensional cubes encasing random words. Particularly it seemed, the word ‘Worksafe’. It looked like the stuff my father used to draw when he was on the phone to a client in the 80’s and 90’s. I closed the books, it was too much to look at while trying to focus on the course.

3:30pm came, class was praised for their efforts on day 1 and we were dismissed. End meeting, close books, shut down laptop. I had made it through the first day of OHS training, my time-lapse of consciousness, seemingly unnoticed. I sat forward in the leather chair and put my head in my hands, I had no idea what had happened the second I woke up. The evidence that I was behaving like a person, slapped fear in my face. I hadn’t been asleep for a few seconds at all. I had gone somewhere else in my mind, and someone else had taken over.

I felt sick. I was filled with questions. What just happened? Had I done it before? Where in the universe was my soul during it? How had my body convinced 10 people in front of me, that I was not asleep? In my experience on this planet it’s obvious when someone is, a: Falling asleep, or b: Has already fallen asleep. Because you were never asleep in the first place…

The following Tuesday I was scheduled in for Day 2 of the OHS course. Yippee! Somehow last week’s incident involving the shifting of my consciousness through space and time, had gone completely undetected. I prayed to anyone that would listen, to keep me focused, to keep me, well, there.

8:15am: I walked with Rhonda through reception and into her office, she gestured towards the box of chocolate bars on the counter “Want one?” Don’t touch the Mars Bars! You’ll turn into Mr Hyde! I politely declined. “Grab the key, you know what you’re doing now” That I did not, but I grabbed the ‘Head Office’ key and headed over.

I got into the building, punched in the alarm code, and headed straight for the coffee machine. This one had to be extra strong, extra sweet and tongue blistering hot. A good slap in the face to begin the day. 8:25am everything was set up as it should be, camera angle right, workbooks laid out, pens, check! Class began and honestly it was a good morning. The first day nerves had eased into second day nerves, but I knew now what to expect, you just needed a little logic. “Oh no, there’s a screwdriver in that chomping machine, whatever shall we do?” Pretty basic stuff. I was writing in my black notebook about rules and regulations, improvement notices and the time span on reviews, GONE…

*******************************************************

No! I came back to reality with a blast. It felt like I had burst through the surface of the water, gulping in a huge breath of air after being under for too long. I looked at the laptop screen, wanting to scream and cry! Hold it together! Everyone was talking at once, panicked! Saying things like “Oh my god is everyone ok?”, “That was crazy!” and “I should go ring my mum!” What have I just missed? Something big had happened. Something they all felt from different areas of the state, everyone was scared. I mean, I was too but not for the same reason.

The office door flew open and Marc rushed in, looking like he’d been touched by a ghost. He started asking me if was ok. Well that all depends on you Marc. Whatever happened to you guys, we didn’t feel a thing! But if you’re talking about the little 'zoning out' party we had then no, she’s not ok. “Yeah, uh I’m ok. That was so full on! Are you ok?” He agreed how ‘full on’ it was and rushed back out the door again “I’ve got to call my wife!” The teacher and the others were still jabbering away about how amazing this thing was, and a 15minute recess was called. “How about we all take a breather, go and call your loved ones, I’ll see you soon”. One by one their faces vanished as they logged off, leaving me staring at myself through the eyes of the internet. I logged off too.

With trembling hands I closed zoom, opened Google search, and typed ‘Natural disasters in Victoria’. There it was. “At 9:15am Victoria experienced an earthquake to the magnitude of 5.9, the biggest felt in over 3 decades.” An earthquake. A huge, window shaking, desk rumbling, earthquake. My heart sank. I looked at the time, 9:25am. In less than an hour I had gone again. Vanished without a trace, yet my body had been engaging with my co-workers and teacher, drawing, and writing strange things in my books, sitting through a freaking EARTHQUAKE! I was more confused than I’ve ever been in my entire life, and I still am.

The rest of the day was a blur; I did my best to be an active participant, but for hours I was still attempting to piece together a time lapse. That night at home I sat on my bed and opened my notebook to the page where everything had gone wrong. 5 sentences were written in my handwriting about the OHS course, I could recall those parts. But then there was everything else written and drawn all over the page.

It’s about life- written in basic bold lettering, surrounded by that bloody 3-dimensional cube I had seen day 1. Earthquake 9.22am - ALIENS! Ascension – Fancier more flowing lettering, written in red pen with black flickered lines on each letter for effect. Dylan <3 – The only Dylan I knew passed away tragically at only 14. Lav has to be *illegible – Mum/my Terrible handwriting, lines scribbled everywhere. Na6rsus s – don’t even ask…

There were also pictures. One was of a flower I drew frequently throughout my life that looked like a Purple Dahlia only not purple. This one was scribbled in black pen, the edges of the petals layered in heavy lines, shaded with soft, tiny pen strokes. It had been coloured with highlighter in patches of green and orange, giving off a watercolour effect. It was quite interesting, but I wouldn’t have chosen those colours given the choice… The second picture was of an eye, heavy black pen around the eyelid and eye itself. Long thick eyelashes and an eternal stare. I don’t usually draw eyes or faces for that matter, flowers I’m ok at, but eyes? No. I turned the page, turned another, flipped through the entire book. More pictures, more writing, all of it in different styles. Random sentences including dates and ages.

9 years of age -put to *illegible – arrow drawn down the page 1972 – arrow to the left - Self*illegible - a shield of armour drawn around it.

Several names were written amongst the pages and the chaotic writing. Names like Evelyn, Izzy, Lilly, Simon, and Henry. DO NOT ZONE– More writing STOP WAK UP MOFO!!!– (yes, it said Wak up) Lovely party- A line from Ace Ventura? Help me- Written in cursive text DON’T SPEAK- The last two were underlined and the ‘don’t speak’ was upside down, in the top corner of a page. There was just no way I could have done all of it while unconscious. No way in all of science. That meant one thing, and I didn’t want to admit it.

I told my son, my best friend and confidante. I showed him the books, told him everything I knew had happened. He smiled, something I hadn’t expected at all. “Boy, I just told you I might have like, multiple personalities, or I’m possessed or some shit and you’re ok with that?” His response was amazing, supportive, and understanding. “Of course I’m ok with it, I kinda think you have DID. It just makes sense.” The weird part? He had been researching DID for a few weeks prior to me being able to admit I might have it. He’d learnt a lot about it, even remarking “You know what Mum, I’d be surprised if you didn’t have DID with what you went through as a child!”

DID, previously known as Multiple Personality Disorder, changed to ‘dissociative identity disorder’ in 1994 to ‘reflect a better understanding of the condition’, and in my opinion, to reduce some of the stigmas attached to the old name. The disorder is a more common result of long-term emotional, physical, and sexual abuse during a person’s childhood *Tick…

From the very beginning of life I had been littered with abuse. I can clearly recall memories from when I was only 8 months old that have been confirmed by members of my family, none of them good, and all filled with lapses in time. Had I created my own world as a baby? Had I made alters in my mind to hold the memories I couldn’t handle? Alters? What the hell is an alter??? I thought it was the chunk of wood the priest stood at while he bored me to death as a kid, but no.

It all finally made sense. But that was impossible, I couldn’t have DID. I’ve never even believed it was real, thought the people who had it were just acting out and slightly loopy. I mean, how can you just disappear and reappear as if nothing had happened? One minute knocked out, and then wide awake in the blink of an eye? Because we took over for you…

I have always been able to hear voices in my head. To my recollection they’ve been there forever. Discovering it wasn’t normal shocked me a lot, I'd just presumed everyone was the same. When I was a teenager, my friend and I were watching a movie that was based on a character with schizophrenia, who talked to the voices in his head. I blurted out “Oh yeah, the voices in my head argue with each other all the time!” Hahaha! No... That’s when I was told that not everyone hears voices, especially different voices, of different genders, having fights over their wellbeing and decision making, every minute of their life, bouncing off the internal walls of their skulls. Apparently, that just made me weird…

I used to think they were my emotional states, because they spoke in the way I pictured an emotion would. There’s the sad one, the strong one, the immature one, the mean one, the angry one, the motherly one, the 3yr old, the sarcastic one, the one that wants me dead! How many are there? I couldn’t tell you. Maybe there’s a chorus line of them, who knows if I don’t? My thoughts are filled with questions I can’t ask. The answers I don’t want to hear.

What if people think I’m a monster? What if they think I can’t parent my children as I have for 21 years? Did I have a beast in me that grew stronger with rage? That would explain the night I threw my abusive ex-boyfriend across a room. I’d found him repeatedly smashing his head into my two son’s cupboard door, their innocent eyes pleading with me to save them. So I did. It all happened so fast, I grabbed him and threw him into the main bedroom. I watched as his 90kg 5ft9 body went over the top of the queen-sized bed, his head crashing into the drawers on the other side, denting his forehead with an imprint of the drawer handle. As he screamed abuse and claims of domestic violence hypocrite, I stood there staring in wonder at how my anorexic arms and beaten down body had found the strength.

The worst part, the part I never imagined could be real, was when I realised that they could take over my body whenever they sensed danger, or even when there was no danger at all. (OHS course, huge threat there). After the initial shock, I became mad. Why couldn’t I have disappeared when my sister died? When Dad died? When Mum died?

Now I know that there is only so much a person can take on, even when that person has been imagined into existence. I created such people, and they had faced the darkest sins of my life, the ones my mind knew I couldn’t handle. But time takes its toll on even the strongest of us all. Sometimes, something must give way.

I have locked away a lifetime of wounds to my body and soul, constructed a filing cabinet inside my head, chained up, padlocked, never to be opened again. But it seems the files are too full, the drawers overloaded. The metal prison is bursting at the sides and the chains are broken, the voices have had enough. My mask has fallen to the ground, the pressure of my abandoned mental health has begun to take over my physical world, my control has been threatened. I have been silenced my entire life but it’s time to heal and be heard, to tell the story that I promised myself I would never tell. But where would I begin? You could start it like this?...

Once upon a time my sister told me that I was the sanest of all the four siblings, how very wrong she was.

And so say all of us.