I’ve come a long way in 2 years. You wouldn’t recognize me. My family doesn’t know me. At first, in 2020 when this next stage of mine started, I didn’t know what was happening to me. I had this overwhelming urge to leave. To just “get up and go,” and every day it got louder and stronger. And the first chance I got, I went.

I wandered for a time, uncertain where I was going. It would be two years before I saw the big picture and understood. Two years of transformation before I finally found the voice that was calling me.

I was 66 pounds heavier. I was locked in my own mind. A prisoner to my environment. Broken and bleeding and tethered under the abuse of my then-husband. I was born in a prison and had no idea that I was a branded slave. These last two years, I tasted freedom for the first time in my life. And the truth has been bitter-sweet.

In Broken, I showed you the room in my mind. This was a Dome. My Dome. I showed you William. I showed you Bergen (Ian in Broken). I showed you Angel, Erik, and Elizabeth, My conscious mind. And using William and Bergen, I walked you through my past and my current state of mind having no idea myself everything it was that I was showing you.

Today, 2 years later, looking back… It all makes sense.

***

Back then, I wrote to you from my Dome. Today, I’m writing to you from Brooklyn. My therapy was a nightmare. It was gruesome and the hardest thing I have ever done. In ways, it was harder than surviving the initial trauma. And I did all the therapy work while still under the abusive regime of my then-husband.

I have Multiple Personality Disorder (Today, known as DID: Dissociative Identity Disorder). I had no idea until May 2022 that I had this until one of my Alters wrote a letter to me and my Boyfriend. In 2015, I had been diagnosed with DID, but therapists are not to discuss DID until and unless the Alters reveal themselves. So nothing was said. My therapy and Shadow Work continued and I had no idea what I had inside of me until…

***

“This isn’t how you do things, Anna.”

I looked up from the floor and stared at Bergen peering down at me. I shook my head. “No. It’s not.”

“You invented William to help you transition. You just didn’t know it then, Lass.”

I nodded. I knew what I needed to do.

“Paint the scene, Lass. It’s time.”

“I’ve been here before, Bergen. So many times. I’ve tried telling them. Showing them my mind. Showing them what this looks like from the inside…”

Bergen knelt down on the wooden floor before me.

“You need us, Lass. You need all of us again. Be yourself. Do what you do. Paint the scene.”

I looked past Bergen.

“Back to the Dome,” I said and smiled. Bergen smiled back.

“Back to the Dome.”

***

A Dome is the term in DID for the place in a Multiple’s head where all our identities go to meet and convene. Here in the Dome, our personalities take shape and form and have voice. It is normal for Multiple’s to have many Domes. I have a few. My Marble Room… My Irish Cottage in the forest… my silver lake under the Parisian Opera House. The open field of flowers. The stainless steel labyrinth filled with doors. Angel’s doorless room where she lived chained naked to the floor for decades. One Dome for every identity. It’s like their home.

And when I wrote Broken, I took you to the Irish Cottage. Simple. Traditional. The white wash stone had a single red door in the front at the end of a stone foot path. The door opened to a quaint little kitchen. A table, a refrigerator where scotch and whiskey collected dust, and a gas stove. where a kettle sat.

A man’s clothes were piled on the floor. A long woolen coat draped over the back of the chair. Warmth flooded me and a smile pulled at my lip. Beyond the kitchen table, a wide archway led into a living room with a large picture window filled with plants. A piano was pushed against the wall and a book shelf pushed against the wall flanked the archway where a sectional wrapped around the room.

I knew what I had to do. I knew best how to do it.

“Anna.”

I turned and there they were. Bergen standing at 6’2”. His longsword, “Firstborn,” strapped to his back. His long black hair tied back with a bit of leather. And his shirt, gone. Always gone. I smiled. I finally knew why.

Beside him, a BDSM Mistress stood donned in a black leather corset, stern and strict, her hair flowing down her bare shoulders. A flogger hung at her hip and her leather boots with 3 inch heels climbed up her thighs. Kallan. My Witch and Fae Queen. Adam’s Fae Queen.

At the table, Goddess Imagination sat, her long blond hair flowing past her waist. Streaks of blue, purple, and pink shimmered in the gold when she moved. Her skirt, the only thing she wore, glistened like ethereal gold down to her ankles.

And a girl. Plainly dressed and silent sitting on the floor in the corner. Angel.

“I see you all now,” I said, my voice low. “I see you, and I know you.”

They smiled at me. Waiting for my queue. Waiting for me to begin.

“You know what to do, Lass,” Bergen said. “We’ve got your back. We always have your back.”

I nodded. My courage restored. A calm settled over me. It was time. Tell my story.