All of Me Read online

  Speaking of driving, sharing a body, I think, is a bit like being the driver of a bus. Regardless of how many passengers are on board, there’s only one person in control. The only difference with us is that any one of those passengers can take over the steering at any point.

  Oprah wasn’t alone in assuming that our mind must be a crowded place with all those voices arguing with each other about which way to go like some kind of Pushmi-Pullyu. That, after all, is what it’s like for many people with DID whose fractures aren’t as extreme as Kim Noble’s. Yes they have multiple personalities but these personalities can hear what the others are saying, they can see what they’re doing and they can sometimes even talk to each other. You can’t imagine them losing a computer or throwing policemen out of their house or not realising they need to pay for things. Even if a particular alter didn’t do something naughty at school, at least it would realise why it was being told off.

  Life must be so much simpler for them – but thank God I’m not like that!

  My thoughts are my own. When I’m in control of the body, that’s it – there’s no one else. It would drive you crazy having all those voices in your head. Imagine being able to see what other people are doing when they’re in charge of your body? It makes me feel sick even thinking about it. It must seem like having a gun to your head and being forced to do things against your will. No matter what you see or what you hear or what you remember, there would be absolutely nothing you could do.

  As for having personalities watching me go about my business, that’s no way to live, is it? I can’t think of anything worse than being spied on all the time. Picture it: you’d always know that whatever you did, whatever you thought, wherever you went, you’d never be able to escape.

  I’ve spent enough of my life locked up under twenty-four-hour guard in mental hospitals to know how much I would hate that.

  So, who are the other personalities who influenced my life without my ever realising they existed? Thanks to Dr Laine, the therapist who has treated me and all the other alters of Kim Noble, as well as observations from our daughter who tells me what the others are like, I’ve learnt quite a lot.

  Bonny was the dominant personality before me. She was ‘out’ and in control of the body for the majority of the time, just as I am now. When she was in charge, I was just another one of the other personalities coming and going. It’s impossible to imagine now and it certainly didn’t feel like it at the time. Even when, years later, I was told again and again that I only ‘existed’ for an hour or two a day, I rejected the very idea. How would you react if someone told you that?

  Were they saying I was a role that this Kim Noble woman likes to play? Or that she’d made me up like a character in a film? Or that she changed into me? Were they suggesting I was Frankenstein’s monster?

  That wasn’t what they were saying at all, I know that now. But I wouldn’t listen. I didn’t want to understand. I was just like all the other personalities who are still refusing to listen today.

  One day, perhaps, they’ll accept the truth as I did and then their lives will make a bit more sense. As much as I hated discovering I was just another personality, the relief of not being so confused all the time was incredible. Whether I liked it or not, at least everything began to make sense. Even that feeling of always being in a rush, needing to get things done, of time running out, suddenly became clear. Without realising why, I’d somehow always known I only ever had a few minutes to achieve things.

  Bonny took charge shortly after our daughter Aimee was born. She is the one who fought the council for access after Aimee was snatched at birth by social services. Unfortunately the stress of that struggle took its toll. If it hadn’t, if Bonny hadn’t cracked up under the pressure, if she were still the dominant personality, then I wouldn’t be writing this book and we would never have become artists.

  And I would still be in denial about DID.

  When Bonny retreated to the background, Aimee was devastated. Bonny is the one she called ‘Mum’. It took a while for me to earn that honour.

  Before Bonny there was Hayley. I only discovered her when I found lots of old bills lying around addressed to her in Richmond, Surrey. That’s where Hayley lived during the 1980s – while Bonny lived in Croydon and I had my own flat in Fulham. Three addresses for three different personalities – I don’t know how we afforded it. Just one example of how complicated our lives have been.

  Hayley was a force of nature – she had to be, considering some of the things she endured. During her six or seven years as the dominant personality we got our first – and only – long-term job. Unfortunately, that was around the time that she was exposed to the activities of a paedophile ring. When Hayley reported the ring to the police, she received anonymous warnings to be quiet. Threats of physical retaliation escalated until one day a man threw acid in her face and someone tried to set light to her bed with her in it. Fire is the most harrowing experience for any human and it has continued to affect us all. The good news is Hayley was a strong person – at least for a while – and she continued her fight against the attackers. The bad news is the effort caused her to burn up. Like Bonny, after years of fighting for our rights she faded into the background, cowed and exhausted.

  And then there are the others, the ones who come out sometimes every day or every week or every month. They all have their own patterns, their own triggers. For one it’s water – one of the personalities, Spirit of the Water, can’t resist coming out whenever there’s a toe to be dipped or a shower to be had. For another it’s food. Judy takes over for most of my mealtimes. Salome, a highly religious Catholic woman, always emerges when we go near a church.

  And then there are the children.

  Katie, at three, is the youngest alter to regularly come out. She used to be around a lot more when Aimee was younger because they loved playing with each other. Sadly, the older Aimee gets, the less Katie wants to play with her. She just wishes Aimee would stop ageing – like her.

  At least Aimee had some fun times with Katie. I don’t think the little boy called Diabalus has had much laughter in his life but I don’t know because he doesn’t speak English. When he first came out he only wrote in Latin. After that he spoke to our therapist in French. If Oprah thought my life was crazy before, what would trying to fathom how this personality is fluent in two languages when I can’t speak a single word of either have done to her? It tips most people over the edge.

  Another child with communication problems is Missy, an elective mute. She and Aimee have wild times together, especially when they’re painting. But something in Missy’s life has made her too terrified to speak.

  Which brings me on to Ria. That’s the name I’ve given the frightened twelve-year-old who seems – apart from Kim – to have suffered the worst of the sexual abuse. Ria thinks her name is ‘Pratt’ because that’s what her abusers called her. It was actually on Oprah that Ria revealed for the first time the extent of her memories. It was so harrowing I could barely watch it – literally. Every time Ria came onto the screen there was a switch and it was Ria herself watching TV. It took four or five attempts before I stayed in control long enough to learn her secrets.

  Ria remembers being abused. I don’t know how many of the others do but their various ways of suffering suggest previous trauma. Judy, for instance, is bulimic. She’s convinced we’re fat even though we don’t have a spare inch anywhere on us. Then there’s anorexic Sonia, who, far from throwing up, refuses to eat anything. I can tell when she’s been at mealtimes because I’m usually starving afterwards. Abi used online dating sites to combat her loneliness, while Ken, a twenty-something gay man, is depressed by the homophobia he experiences on a daily basis.

  They all have their issues. Dawn’s suffering, however, has nothing to do with the child abuse. Perhaps that’s why it’s the one problem I identify with most. Dawn was the personality who gave birth to Aimee. She was also the one who witnessed our daughter being taken by social services. The
trauma sent Dawn into hiding. By the time she returned too much time had passed and she refused to believe Aimee was her little girl. To this day she’s still searching for her baby. To Dawn it’s as real as the search for Madeleine McCann, even though Dawn knew Skye was alive.

  Then there’s Julie, whose erratic behaviour – squirting fly spray on bus travellers and trying to drive with her eyes closed, for example – contributed to our being diagnosed as schizophrenic. Together with Rebecca, they nearly got us put away for the rest of our lives.

  Rebecca started it all. Whatever her memories, she is the alter who is struggling most to deal with her past. Rebecca is the one who took the overdoses time after time. She’s the one who got us locked up in mental institution after mental institution. She’s the one who nearly ended it once and for all in a hotel room in Lewes.

  In hindsight, being diagnosed with DID and knowing about the other personalities earlier would have explained to me why I got into so much trouble at school, why my parents and teachers were always calling me a liar, and why I was kidnapped, as I saw it, by one asylum or therapy centre after another. Perhaps then I wouldn’t have thought I was being experimented on by doctors who accused me of having anorexia, bulimia and schizophrenia. And maybe I would have believed them when they said they were doing it all for my own good – to stop me trying to kill myself again.

  If I’d known the body really was doing these things, then forty years of my life would have made so much more sense.

  But, as impossible as my life seemed being hurled from one crazy situation to another, like a pinball pinged around by unknown players, it was still preferable to knowing the truth. Because to accept that my body really was doing these things would mean accepting something else.

  That it had been abused as a child.

  And obviously our brain didn’t want us to know that.

  The whole point of DID, as far as I can tell, is to protect a person from trauma. It’s a defence mechanism that kicks in to stop something unpleasant from ruining your life. As Oprah pointed out, it’s no different from anyone pushing a dark memory to the back of their mind in order to get on with their day, whether it’s being told off by a teacher at school yesterday or splitting up with your partner. If you don’t deal with the pain or anxiety – if you can’t resolve it or stop it or forget it somehow – you’ll spend every day thinking about nothing else. Your life will be as good as over.

  Some memories are too big to bury in one mind, though, and that’s why Kim’s fractured into so many others. If she saw an abuser locally or someone who reminded her of them, or if their names were even mentioned or their memory flitted into her head, she could just vanish.

  The tragic downside, of course, is that the abuse still happened. Kim’s body was still subjected to unspeakable tortures – except other personalities were now the victims. Kim had no way of knowing, but her disappearances opened the door to the ordeals suffered by so many others. We – our therapist, Bonny, Hayley and me – know Rebecca was abused, and Ria and Diabalus and so many others. We don’t know how many times they suffered before they too found a way to hide, leaving another poor soul in control of the body. But we do know that their lives would never be the same again.

  I was lucky. I was never abused. That’s how I was allowed to grow, unlike the child personalities stuck forever at such a young age. Not only was I never a victim, I had no idea it was going on. If Kim Noble’s alters were co-conscious, like most DID sufferers, then I would know everything. We’d all know everything and we all would have seen it happen, whether we felt it or not. How would that help Kim then?

  That’s why the body makes it so hard for the personalities to ever accept we have DID. Because in order to accept it you have to come to terms with the fact that men or women have abused your body – and thought they were abusing you. It’s very plausible that I have met my body’s abusers. I don’t know who they are. I don’t want to know. But many of the other personalities do. They will never forget and they will never recover.

  From the moment I became the dominant personality I promised I would discover as much about the life – or lives – of Kim Noble as possible. After a lifetime of confusion, I needed to have the facts – however unpalatable I found them. However, trying to tell this story when, for a lot of my life, I was only around for a fraction of a day at a time has been hard.

  Fortunately I’ve had wonderful help from the one person who knows more about Kim Noble than anyone – our therapist, Dr Laine. Just as I often used to come out during sessions that Bonny or Hayley had travelled to, so the other personalities have all had numerous sessions themselves over the years. Sometimes one of them will have a genuine need to see her, or perhaps she will want to see them on the dominant personality’s behalf. (For example, if there is a concern about how a personality is behaving.) It is through therapy sessions with Dr Laine that we have learnt so much about the abuse each personality has suffered and their other trials. So she knows my story, she knows Hayley’s story, and Bonny’s, and Katie’s and Judy’s and Diabalus’s and so on and so on. You’ll see scenes from some of their lives at the start of each chapter.

  Of course, I’m well aware that if Bonny were still the dominant personality then this book could read very differently. The same is true of Hayley – and I hate to think what would be written by Judy, Ken, Rebecca or any of the others. We all have such different memories; we’ve all experienced so many different things.

  For my own part, I admit, for a long while the tempting thing to do would have been to give up when the whole world seemed to be conspiring against me with lies, brutality and incarceration. I wouldn’t have been the first personality to fade away and I wouldn’t have been the last. But I didn’t. I struggled on to lead the life you’re about to read and I came out the other side. A life as a proud mum and a successful artist.

  My name is Patricia – and this is my story.

  CHAPTER TWO

  It wasn’t me

  The room looked as it always looked and smelled as it always smelled. The girl didn’t like it. She didn’t know why she was there. Where was Mummy? Where was Daddy?

  The sound of the door closing made her freeze. The footsteps drowned out the sound of her tiny, terrified breaths.

  At least she had her bear. Teddy was her favourite. The one she always slept with. The one she always cuddled when they hurt her.

  ‘Well done, Pratt,’ one of the grown-ups said afterwards. That’s what they always called her. ‘Now get out of here.’

  ‘Kim Noble stand up!’

  The entire class fell silent. I’d never seen Mrs Baldwin so angry. She was a lovely teacher, normally, very tall and thin like a witch, but friendly. And she could do magic. She would rub a sixpence in her elbow and make it disappear before our eyes. You never knew where it was going to pop up next.

  Right now, marching across the room, she looked like she wanted to make me disappear.

  But why?

  ‘What did you do that for?’

  ‘I haven’t done anything,’ I mumbled, shocked at her fury.

  She grabbed my arm exasperatedly and pointed at the sleeve.

  ‘Then what is that?’

  I stared at my wrist, then the other one. I could feel the eyes of thirty classmates burning into me. My entire blouse was covered in thick splodges of black paint. My skirt too.

  ‘I didn’t do it.’ It was all I could think to say.

  ‘Oh really?’ Mrs Baldwin was calming now. ‘Then who did?’

  I stared at her blankly. I had no answers. Again.

  ‘It wasn’t me,’ I said. ‘I swear.’

  Standing outside the headmaster’s room a few minutes later, wet and cold from the paint touching my skin, I just wanted to cry. If another girl hadn’t arrived I would have been in floods.

  ‘What are you here for?’ she asked sullenly.

  I pointed to the paint.

  ‘Oh, right,’ she said, already bored. ‘Nice.’

&
nbsp; ‘What about you?’ I asked.

  The girl smirked. ‘I hit someone.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Course I did. He deserved it. But I’m not telling him that!’

  She gestured towards the head’s closed door.

  I felt like crying even more.

  ‘But I didn’t do this,’ I insisted.

  ‘No, of course you didn’t,’ she laughed. ‘I didn’t hit anyone either!’

  Headmasters must hear that every day. But I really hadn’t done it. I knew I hadn’t.

  Had I?

  *

  That paint episode is probably my earliest memory. I was five years old, at West Thornton junior school. In fact most of my early memories were spent outside that office. I was always in trouble. Always saying, ‘It wasn’t me,’ and always being called a liar. Hardly a day went by without me thinking, It’s not fair.

  Forty-odd years later I can see it from the teachers’ point of view. Mrs Baldwin had seen me pick up that paint. Watched me cover my hands in the stuff then smear it down my sleeves and lap. Witnessed it all with her own eyes – then heard me deny it.

  What else was she supposed to do?

  Anyone would think it’s an open and shut case. Guilty as charged.

  Except it wasn’t me.

  But if it wasn’t me, then who was it?

  You could say my problems with identity started the day I was born.

  My parents wanted a ‘Gary’. Based on no medical evidence whatsoever, James and Dorothy Noble were convinced they were expecting a son to go with their daughter Lorraine. A short list of boys’ names had been duly drawn up, with Gary the winner.

  And then I popped out.

  Bureaucracy didn’t give you much breathing space back then and a maternity nurse was soon hassling Mum and Dad for a name to put on the birth forms. When they couldn’t think of anything the nurse said, ‘Well, I’ve got to write down something. I’ll put “Elaine”.’