We all had periods of solitude at the lake as well. Lynn took long walks along the lake. Lynn and Gordon went into town together, leaving the Flock at the cottage feeling simultaneously loved and alone. The Flock explored the woods and meadows surrounding the lake.
At the cottage, Jo often woke earlier than Gordon and Lynn. She quietly pulled on her jeans, sweatshirt, and sneakers and set out to see this special world at dawn. Jo always wrote a note before she left, “I’ve gone for a walk,” so that Gordon and Lynn wouldn’t worry about her disappearance. “Don’t worry,” I added in my own distinctive scrawl, “we’ll stay as a group.”
26.
“Renee, you seem down,” Lynn said, taking me in quickly and then returning her attention to the rural lakeshore road. It was late August, our last weekend at the cottage before the Flock left for Harvard. This Saturday evening, Gordon was back in Chicago. Lynn and I were on our way to Manny’s North of the Border Taco Bar.
“Worrying about school?” she asked.
“That too.” I shrugged and continued my silent review of all the changes that had taken place since I had met Lynn in March 1981. Only two and a half years before, I had felt threatened by internal “compulsions” that had no name; now I knew I was multiple. Once I had wanted to destroy the other personalities; now I wanted everyone to be happy. The only thing that hadn’t changed was my feeling that we would never integrate. I couldn’t imagine what it would mean to turn all of the personalities into one. The personalities were much too different from one another for me even to consider that possibility.
Integration also seemed a denial of the other personalities. If all of us were unique and good, as Gordon and Lynn preached, what right did I have to destroy us all by integrating?
No. Not integration, but I did want cooperation. I knew we’d have to do a better job of working together if we were to be so far away from Gordon and Lynn. Our surrogate parents protected and comforted the young and more disturbed personalities. They relayed messages to the amnestic personalities and kept everyone calm. How would we manage without them?
I glanced over at Lynn. The potholes in the road were taking a fair share of her attention, but I knew her well enough to know that she was working hard to be silent until I was ready to talk.
“Did you know that I was still trying to run away from you when I sent in my application to Harvard?”
Lynn nodded.
“I was trying to get away from my growing dependency on you and trying to run away from the reality of the other personalities.”
“Renee,” she said, “I fooled myself about Harvard for a long time. I didn’t really believe you were going until you quit your job. You were so close to becoming dysfunctional last spring that I didn’t think there was any way you would make it. But now I feel better about it. This is truly an extraordinary flock—”
I cut her off.
“I am going to Harvard, but now I’m not running from you or from the Flock. I know they are as real as I am. I know they have needs as important as mine. And, Lynn, I love you.”
I told Lynn of the intensity of my own need for her, of how that need was felt manyfold by Jo, Missy, and others in the Flock. “And their need is as strong as Rusty’s and Josie’s need for Gordon.” I told her I knew that, despite or maybe because of the depth of our need, it was time for us to go away to school.
“We’ve had our time of being an emotional infant. Now we need to grow on our own. You and I both know that would be impossible if we remained here. You’d have to cut us loose in one way or another so that we could learn to take care of one another. No matter how you did that, it would be perceived as rejection.”
Lynn nodded and gave a sigh of relief. “Renee, I’m glad you understand that. But you know that Gordon and I will still be here for you. We’re all still family, even when you are gone. We know there is more Flock-work to be done. When you’re home on school breaks, we’ll spend lots of time together.”
Lynn was being sincere, but it was hard for me to trust that our relationship would survive separation. Keith and I had moved around a lot, and I had never managed to continue friendships once we moved on. I wanted to believe that my relationship with Gordon and Lynn was different, and it felt different, but I didn’t want to expect too much.
I shook that worry aside. “I am concerned about how the Flock is going to manage school,” I said. “This degree is interdisciplinary, and the Flock has always split up academic work. Jo does theoretical work; Kendra is the writer; I’m the one who does negotiation and policy—no surprise. My worry is the amnestic blocks. I can usually know what the other personalities did, but I don’t have access to their understandings. Even though Kendra and I can talk internally, that’s not the same thing as having her skills. Jo and I can’t talk at all, no matter how hard I try. Her amnestic wall against the rest of us is still soundproof.”
“I know it will be hard—” Lynn murmured sympathetically.
“Then there are the little ones,” I said, cutting her off again. “Missy, Rusty, Josie, and some of the others will be terribly upset by leaving you. I don’t know how to get them through that trauma and handle school and handle all of the new relationships I’ll be developing with other students and professors. I hereby resign as leader/manager/whatever of the Flock.”
“I would feel better about your leaving if there were greater cooperation in the group,” Lynn said. “How about some little fusions among the personalities?”
I was gearing up to argue against the absurdity of making one person out of all of the various personalities, and to add that I didn’t know how to do it anyway, when Lynn said, “Now, Renee, I’m not saying you have to integrate, but if a few of the personalities got together in some comfortable way, I think you’d all feel a little less vulnerable.”
Lynn’s suggestion sounded surprisingly reasonable to me, and I grew interested in the idea as Lynn and I discussed the various combinations. Certainly I wouldn’t have my academic worries if Jo and I fused and I suddenly had all of Jo’s intellectual talent accessible to me, but that combination seemed far from feasible.
“It just won’t work,” I said. “I can’t talk internally to Jo, and, besides, Nancy and Ray were her parents. I don’t have any parents. We’re too different from each other to come together. But I do like the idea,” I added quickly, so that Lynn wouldn’t think I was being stubborn.
“It sounds good to me too, Renee,” Lynn said, “but I’m no more sure than you as to who would combine best, or how to make it happen.”
Nevertheless, by the time we reached Manny’s, two other personalities were also thinking about a merger. Kendra, with her strong protective feelings, and Isis, with her ability to distance herself from external demands, could provide me, the people-pleaser, with enough strength to handle the complexity of the relationships I’d face at Harvard. But this merger meant compromise, and we weren’t sure how much we’d give up for the good of the group.
However, none of the three of us claimed Nancy and Ray as our parents. We were willing to talk.
Three personalities sat down in our single body in the crowded, noisy bar. Suddenly, and for the first time, Kendra, Isis, and I were co-conscious. All there, at the same time, but still separate. Kendra sipped her beer and squinted at Lynn through the smoke. “OK,” she said, “Renee, Isis, and I are ready to talk about it.”
“Talk about what?” Lynn asked. She seemed confused.
“All three of us are able to listen and talk to one another and to you,” Kendra explained with a trace of impatience. “Treat it like a conference call. Let’s talk about whether or not we should fuse.”
“Kendra, is that you?” Lynn asked.
“Yes, it’s me,” Kendra said, grinning wickedly at Lynn’s surprise. “Remember, you’re the one who started this conversation.”
“It’s me too,” Isis said in her breathy, delicate voice.
“And, by the way,” I added, “it’s me, Renee, too.”
<
br /> Lynn shook her head in wonder and looked around at the strangers sitting at her elbow. She gulped her beer and plunged into the conversation. “OK, I guess nobody around us will be able to make sense of the discussion anyway.”
Kendra, Isis, and I were amused at Lynn’s concern for discretion. None of us cared. For a change, we were single-minded in our decision to talk out this fusion idea.
“It might be good if Isis, Kendra, and I got together,” I began, “but I’m not completely in favor of it. I mean, Kendra is a bitch, and Isis is a lesbian.”
“Wait a minute,” Lynn said, protective of everyone in the Flock. “Kendra’s not a bitch. She steps in to take care of the Flock when you’re too involved in pleasing everyone outside to take care of yourself.”
“Thanks for the support, Lynn,” Kendra said dryly, “but, Renee, my so-called bitchiness really is your fault. You simper around other people so much that when I finally get out I have no choice but to defend us. If I’m a bitch, you’re a doormat!”
“I wouldn’t put it exactly that way,” Lynn demurred, “but it’s the essence of what I was trying to say.”
Isis smiled serenely at Lynn. “You can see why they both need my broader view of the world,” she said.
“I feel like I’m at a tennis match,” Lynn observed. “Why don’t I just facilitate instead of offering my own opinions? Isis, what do you think about all of this?”
“I’m not the sex maniac Renee seems to think I am,” she responded. “Sure, I had some affairs with women years back, but I’ve had far fewer affairs with women than Renee has had with men. The essential characteristic I bring to this merger is my ability to find peace in myself without depending on other people, like Renee, or fighting them, like Kendra.”
Isis continued speaking aloud so as not to be rude to Lynn, but she directed her comments to the two other personalities. “Don’t worry, Renee,” she said. “I’m not going to attack our roommate when we get to school. I don’t desire every woman any more than you desire every man. If it will make you feel better, I promise to refrain from sexual activity at Harvard. If we join together, will you promise to do the same?”
“Ah, OK,” I responded a little hesitantly. I wasn’t used to the other personalities’ talking to me directly about what they wanted.
I turned to Lynn. “Do you know what I’ve just realized?” I said excitedly. “Kendra can be more subtle in her self-protection if she has a chance to do it earlier. And if Isis joins us both, Kendra and I will be able to feel a little more distanced from other people. We’ll be able to understand that each person’s perception of us is not a life-and-death matter.”
“Exactly!” Kendra and Lynn said together.
The Alliance, the first fusion within the Flock, occurred that night over tacos and beer. Neither Lynn nor I was exactly sure how this fusion would work, how tightly woven the three personalities would become.
Kendra, Isis, and I retained the individual right to pull out if we liked. I didn’t feel much change that night, but there were no longer any barriers to communication among the three of us.
The next day, the change was more apparent to me. Suddenly the world was filled with color, form, and design that I had missed through my neurotic focus on people alone. “Isis-and-I-together sees so much that I never saw as Renee-alone,” I told Lynn. “And there’s something else. I feel more like my own person now. Kendra has given me a protective coating. I don’t feel dependent on anyone’s acceptance, not even on yours.”
Lynn smiled lovingly. “The Flock is growing up.”
—
A FEW WEEKS LATER, Lynn, Gordon, and the Flock stretched out on Lynn and Gordon’s living-room rug, reminiscing about cherished times from the summer. Lynn and Gordon cuddled all of us between them.
After midnight, I sat silently in the car while Lynn and Gordon drove me back to Steve’s. In the morning, we would begin the long drive to Cambridge. I hugged Lynn and Gordon, and then the Flock parted from the people who had nurtured us through our emotional infancy. Now, at the end of a summer that had been both demanding and fulfilling, it was time to set aside infantile needs for the demands of graduate school.
DIARY September 9, 1983
Summer is over at last. I am physically and emotionally exhausted, but I believe we have achieved what we hoped for. The Flock has gone off to Harvard armed with new strengths. The Alliance has pooled resources from personalities who before got in one another’s way or worked at cross-purposes.
I will always marvel at how it came about. I will probably never have another experience like our four-way conversation at Manny’s. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing and was equally surprised that the other people in the crowded bar were oblivious to the miracle happening before them.
Particularly this summer, when I spent so much time with the Flock, I sometimes forgot that they shared the same body. Renee caught me once, but she didn’t know of the many times I planned an activity that I knew would be nurturing for little girl Missy or insecure Jo, completely forgetting that the Flock set its own agenda of who might be present when. I learned to work around the unexpected presence of a personality and (therapeutically) always kept in mind that some of the others might be “watching” while I spent time with another. But I never thought about what it might be like to interact with more than one at a time.
It was astounding. I wish I could have filmed that conversation at Manny’s and show the film to every clinician who doubts the reality of MPD. Voice, mannerisms, essence changed, literally from second to second, as Kendra, Isis, and Renee spoke during our conversation. It didn’t take me long that night to realize that my role was primarily spectator or cheerleader. The real drama happened internally for them.
They (she?) compared the forming of the Alliance to single strands of rope entwining to make a strong cord. I think this is a nice metaphor, but it doesn’t touch my experience of watching it happen. I felt a chill, an excitement unequaled by anything except giving birth. “My God, there’s a person becoming here!” I thought. I felt so enthralled to be part of it; I felt so sad that Gordon wasn’t with us.
And, to extend my metaphor, I have to admit to some “postpartum” sadness as well. Renee changed drastically overnight. By morning, she walked with the grace of Isis and spoke with the confidence of Kendra. I felt the kind of sudden realization that I had felt when my own little girls became adults.
The Alliance couldn’t have been achieved without our summer of nurturance. I think we have greatly improved the chances of Harvard’s working out. Even Missy and Rusty have accepted that they are going, secure in the knowledge that Gordon and I love them and that we’ll be in contact through letters and phone calls. Josie doesn’t really understand, but I think she will stay quiet and save her appearances for school vacations, when we are together.
Jo, still outraged that she didn’t have a say in the decision to go to Harvard, is the only really important holdout. I’m counting on her being unable to resist the academic atmosphere she has thrived on in the past.
Gordon and I are slowly beginning to bask in the luxury of having time for ourselves and for each other. It is only now that the Flock has left that we, and especially I, have fully realized what a drain this summer has been. I have used my resources to the last drop. I’m looking forward to a long hiatus (until Christmas), with only occasional phone calls from the Flock, so that I can build up emotional energy again and make plans without considering the Flock every minute. I’m sure that by December I’ll be ready, even eager, to invest some concentrated time again.
BOOK
IV
27.
“I feel like I’m driving my daughter off to school,” Steve reflected at the start of our trip to Cambridge. We had rented a station wagon so that he could fly back to Chicago after the trip, and the car was packed to the roof with books, typewriter, clothes, and enough familiar objects to make a dorm room home for the school year. My relationship with Steve h
ad so deteriorated through the prolonged summer of dependency on Lynn and Gordon that “father-daughter” seemed a not too inappropriate description.
We didn’t talk much during the long trip. When Steve did break the silence, he spoke of the wonders of Harvard and his special memories of being a student there.
“You’re not making this any easier,” I snapped. I didn’t want to think about how disappointed Steve would be if I didn’t love Harvard the way he had. But that qualm distracted me only briefly. I was too busy withdrawing from Gordon and Lynn.
Steve wouldn’t have understood if I had tried to tell him how painful this withdrawal was. There was no way he could appreciate my relationship with Gordon and Lynn.
I experienced equal silence within. None of the other personalities was injecting internal comments or pushing to share the outside awareness. We were all miserable to the core. I had ample time to worry about what would happen next.
I knew that it was ridiculous to blame Lynn for my being a multiple. I had been plagued by it for many years before I met her. Yet the Flock seemed worse, with personalities further apart and acting out more vigorously now than we had been before beginning therapy. Lynn had said that therapy was like separating the strands in a tangled web of yarn. It made sense that things would keep getting more separate for a while so that we eventually came back together in an organized way.
“Maybe the others won’t surface so much away from Lynn and Gordon,” I considered. “Maybe I’ll have all of the time.”
This thought, which would once have brought me great comfort, now brought only fear. I had never been the intellectual in the group. How could I do it alone?
I would have been scared even if I hadn’t been multiple. I had never been on my own before. I went to school in Charlottesville, which I knew as well as I knew Richmond, and shared my apartment with cousins. I made new friends in the security of familiar surroundings. Every move to a new town had been with my husband. When we separated, I remained in Chicago, a city I already knew, and I quickly eased into a relationship with Steve.
The Flock Page 24
