Author's Note:
We are a DID system sharing our story to increase understanding of dissociative identity disorder and the complex ways trauma intersects with our LGBTQ+ identity. Each alter mentioned represents a different aspect of our survival and healing journey. We hope our story helps others feel less alone in their struggles and shows that healing, love, and pride are possible even after severe trauma.
Trigger Warnings:
Sexual Violence & Abuse:
- Sexual assault
- Childhood sexual abuse
- Non-consensual sexual acts
- Sexual coercion and manipulation
Self-Harm & Suicide:
- Self-harm behaviors
- Suicidal ideation/attempts
Violence & Hate Crimes:
- Physical assault
- Gay-bashing/hate crime violence
- Threats of violence
- Murder threats
Mental Health:
- Dissociative Identity Disorder
- Trauma responses and dissociation
- Mental health crisis situations
- Blackouts/seizures
Family & Social Rejection:
- Parental rejection and transphobia
- Victim-blaming by family
- Bullying and social ostracism
Substance & Behavioural Issues:
- Sex work/camming
- Exploitative relationships
- Grooming behaviors
- Age-gap relationships with minors
Identity & Discrimination:
- Transphobia and transmisogyny
- Homophobia and slurs
- Gender dysphoria
- Medical trauma
General Content Notes:
- Explicit sexual content
- Detailed descriptions of trauma
- Institutional failures (police, schools)
- Stalking and harassment
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Intro
💭 I write this in co-consciousness with Thalia. Mainly because it hurts too much to front-solo for long periods of time. Physically hurts. Causes pain and confusion and terror and dread.
My name is Mania. For those who don't know me, which will probably be most of you, I am flighty. Scatterbrained. Barely present. Easily distracted. These are all words I have heard used to describe myself.
And maybe they are right.
I am all those things.
But... I am also much MUCH more.
I am the first one to emerge when we wake up from blackouts and seizures. Who hears everything. Even when the rest of our senses are overwhelmed and stretched to breaking point.
And yet, most importantly of all, as irony dictates from my name, Mania... I am the sanest one of all.
... I am the truth. The truth the system is afraid of. I know everything. Well, nearly everything. I know things they have all forgotten. Remember the things that they have blissfully redacted. For that is my function. Thalia may be "the keeper of lore", but who do you think is the one who shares it?
Mania... Perhaps a little on the nose. But what do you expect from a fictive? We are one of four fictives in our system: Desiree, Puck, Delirium and me.
Delirium is the oldest of us all. We once thought that honour was held by Scarlett, or Talon or Kitty, but no. It was Delirium... back when they were known as Delight. Does that name strike a chord with anyone? Hmm... unfortunately, for us to. We won't say his name because of the allegations, but we will acknowledge the importance his work had on us. And how it bleeds into our system even now.
And then there was the Primary.
Dylan.
As a child, he tried to be good. To be the perfect son. The perfect brother. The perfect friend. The perfect student. The perfect young gentleman - one who would live up to the values and expectations of his parents and the expectations of his school.
This had one fatal flaw. We were a daughter. We just didn't know it yet... We were a late bloomer. Though we had a definite leaning towards the feminine. Perfect for the all-boys primary - until P6 - school, and a secondary school that pushed for boys to play Rugby and cricket. Where, in that masculine setting of sports and tradition, teachers would openly berate failure, particularly on the pitch, as "playing like a girl." Well, if I played like a girl, good. Thank you for the compliment. Proud to be, as far as I was aware, the only girl on that team.
From 14-17, we were non-binary, gender nonconforming, first privately and then more publicly, coming out at the annual speaker's dinner. Leaning into blurring the binaries of gender. With all the criticism and judgment one would expect from a "boy" wearing girls' clothing.
Girls' clothing.
It's clothing.
Clothing is clothing.
It is fabric and colour and pattern and style, and shape. It holds no gender. It is us, the people, often those not even wearing the damn things, that put gender on the clothes and judge others "accordingly".
Still, that didn’t stop Dad. He questioned it. Dismissed it. Picked apart our decision to wear that first 'girl’s top’ we ever wore - a tank top with a unicorn made of clear plastic diamante.
Happy Pride Month! Queer as Fuck! Gay and proud!
Yeah, we were gay. We came out at 13, though we knew much earlier. We just didn't have the language for it.
Or if we did... it was used as a slur. That's so gay. You're so gay. Etc. Etc. Blah. Blah. Blah. It's nice to see that in the year of our lord 2025, people don't do that anymore, right? ... Right? ...
So yeah, we were gay. Dylan was gay. And effeminate. And he was bullied mercilessly for it. For years. It cost friendships. People that he respected and loved... "Well, if that's love, it comes at much too high a cost."
So, yeah, Dylan explored his gender. His identity. And he became Harley Quinzel. A name he took from his hyperfixation on DC Comics.
How do you like my new outfit? Pretty hot, huh? - Scarlett's influence was definitely there. She emerged at 13; being outed will do that to a boy. All that trauma, that pressure cooker of perfection, was enough.
But you may ask where Delight fits into this?
They are the oldest of all of us, after all. They were the social armour. To help Dylan with his goal of making friends, to seem happy and bubbily and confident, to tackle crippling social anxiety and nuerodivergence that went completely undiagnosed until adulthood.
Delight appeared when Dylan was in P3. After Dylan failed to protect his brother from bullies and ended up in a headlock by a guy four years older than him. Boys will be boys, they said.
The bullying incident was brushed under the carpet. But it was that incident that determined our move to a private school. An all-boys private school.
It was P4... Or P5... The exact year eludes me. Hey, I'm not perfect. And I can feel my hold and focus ebb and wane and wax with each passing minute. Writing this takes considerable effort and mental fortitude, something we have been told repeatedly that we lack. That we are weak. That we are broken and mentally ill. That we need fixing. From strangers... from our father... from ... from ... anyway...
Where were we? ... Oh yes... the hangman's garter. A failed strangulation. A hanging ... and for those who think we are being poetical... No. We are being literal. Our long blue socks had to be held up with garters to ensure they didn't fall down and look untidy. Again, keeping everything neat ... and perfect.
We tried ... and failed to end it all.
We lived, obviously... but not ... unchanged.
After that, Delight doubled their effort to make sure Dylan appeared to be ... "okay". And it fooled everyone. Everyone. Just not Dylan himself.
That incident was also when Talon and Kitty first appeared on the scene. Dylan grew older. But his childhood, altered as it was, lived on... with the emergence of not one but two Littles.
And then we come to Scarlett --- Scarlett, Scarlett, Scarlett. I'm going to let her tell her story. 💭
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Scarlett
❤️🔥My name is Scarlett, and I suppose you could call this my coming out of sorts.
I emerged when our Primary was around 13/14 years old, after our first sexual encounter—a terrifying experience with a best friend that destroyed that relationship. When we confided in someone about how awful it felt, how nervous we were, how we felt like we weren't ready, well... it ended up outing him too. The guilt was crushing. I had thought I could trust this person. Clearly, I could not.
Probably should have known better. After all, as you heard from Mania, Dylan got outed at 13. But as you're gonna learn, that's me in a nutshell, live and not learn, I guess.
After that, everything spiralled.
Flirting with guys became our coping mechanism—or maybe our way of punishing ourselves. A game we didn’t want to play — but kept playing anyway. The rules were unwritten but understood: if we could control the attention, maybe we could rewrite the narrative. Maybe we could make it hurt less. Maybe if we made ourselves desirable, it would stop feeling like we were disposable.
Except it didn't hurt less. It was humiliating. Their rejection was inevitable, especially since the flirting was poorly thought out.
The flirting was clumsy, cringeworthy, and transparent, devoid of anything that mattered, like personality and charm and wit. It felt cold. Mercenary. Cheap. Like we were selling off pieces of ourselves for scraps of validation. And we hated ourselves for it. Of course, it was never going to work. And to be honest, at the time, we felt we deserved it. It was a mirror of desperation more than desire. Every time it fell flat, every time we were rejected or laughed at or ignored or hated, that voice was back—the one that said:
Of course, this happened... this is who you are. You're the gay slut. You deserved it.
We started to believe that was our legacy—the kid who got outed twice. The one who lost their virginity at 14 in a way that didn't feel like a choice. And despite the supposed "victory of losing my V-Card," ... it didn't feel like a victory. We didn't feel anything except shame, disgust and complete and utter self-loathing.
People laughed. They called us names. We got the looks in the hallway. The whispers. The way boys smirked, or avoided eye contact, or tensed up around us, as if our queerness was something contagious.
Our self-esteem and self-worth were already so low, and apparently, we hadn't even begun to scratch the surface. Yet still we floundered. Because if people already thought we were trash, what was the point in trying to be anything else?
We had lost several friends when we came out as gay. This just furthered our isolation.
At 15, we were in our first relationship. That ended in tears, not long after a sexual encounter. This probably didn't set the best precedent in our minds about the "utmost importance" of sex and pleasure in a relationship, and made us feel like we had failed at the first hurdle.
Grindr
When we turned 16, we were in too deep. At 16, we discovered the magical world of Grindr through a queer youth group. Grindr - a shortcut to belonging, to validation, to being seen as sexy or interesting or wanted. So we downloaded it. Used it daily. Suddenly we were talking to older men—30s, 40s, 50s, 60s. Some married. There was the occasional guy around our own age who had similar ideas, but that was rare.
They asked for pics. We obliged, because of course we did. We didn't even hide the fact that we were underage.
One time, because he asked us to, because he told us it would be hot, we took a picture of ourselves in our school uniform, and then completely panicked and deleted the account as we realised the uniform was very VERY identifiable.
We swore never to go on Grindr again.
That self-imposed ban lasted four days. Then we were right back.
The cycle: Download. Talk. Flirt. Panic. Delete.
The validation was like a drug. And shame always followed this high.
My Valentine
Then we met him at our youth group. He was 25 and cute. Charming. Nerdy. Nervous. When we flirted with him at age 16, he reciprocated. We would meet for dates. Go to the cinema. Take the bus home together. Go back to his place. It started as friends. Then the benefits came. Finally, we were in a relationship—or so we thought.
Yeah. No.
Turns out the relationship was all one-sided. A fact I painfully learned when his parents laughed at me for buying him flowers on Valentine's Day.
To him, we were a summer fling. Some big joke. And we were the punchline. But we're getting ahead of ourselves.
The first time he met our parents was the night we were gay-bashed.
Walking with him down the street after youth group, we were attacked by a guy who threw cans of Coke at our back, and then punched us in the face. It was just a normal street. On a typical Thursday night. Routine enough to let our guard down and be happy. And then this happened.
Because I looked like a "faggot." I was the target. At the time, I felt relieved that my attacker didn't hurt my "boyfriend" - like I'd earned that split lip because it meant he was safe. That I could rest easy in the knowledge that I had done my job and protected us both by being a human shield.
Having the police scoff and imply it was our fault because of what we were wearing was its own trauma. Especially sitting next to my dad, who said nothing while my shame and fear was sneered at. Still quality time with dad, I guess.
We learned something that night: in the middle of the street. Shaken and bruised and bleeding.
That pain makes you valuable. That love means throwing yourself in front of the hurt. And if they don't say thank you—well, maybe you just didn't get hit hard enough.
I know. That's fucked, isn't it?
My parents had concerns about the age gap in our relationship. Briefly. After meeting him, they seemed to approve.
So we were official—or so I thought.
We would hold hands on the bus... at first. Then, sometimes he would touch me. Not the gentle, reassuring kind. The testing boundaries kind. The sexual kind. His hands would move further and further down.
This started happening more and more outside of the bedroom. On buses. Another time, a quickie in the cinema, during James Bond's Spectre. We laugh about it now ... because otherwise we would cry. And I have shed enough tears because of men in my 26 years.
We don’t remember the plot of that movie. Just the pressure. Just the fear. Just wondering if anyone saw. Wondering if he wanted them to.
I kept telling myself:
This is what couples do. This is normal. Because we were together, right? And I was mature enough, right?
But deep down, there was always this quiet little voice saying, "No." Saying, "This isn't it." Saying, "You're not being loved. You're being handled."
Yet again, we ignored it.
Want to know something else funny? He was still on Grindr the whole time we were together. I learned afterwards. Between that and the Valentine's Day humiliation, I started to pull away. I talked to other guys, looking, I think, for someone to undo what he did.
18 Today
On my 18th birthday, someone I believed was a friend, someone I had feelings for, sent me pics and asked if I wanted to meet for a one-night-only deal. He would give me the birthday present he knew I wanted. The present, as the picture outright stated, was him railing me. We were with Mum at the time, having a nice celebratory meal in a restaurant. We never met. And after that, he pretended like this never happened.
Another lesson dressed up like intimacy. I was legal now. But I'd never felt smaller.
Welcome to Uni
University brought hedonistic benders—flirting, sex, hookups, blow jobs—nights full of "pleasure" that left us feeling emptier than before.
At the end of first year, I fell for a guy my friend group hated. And when I say hated, I mean hated. One night out with him, watching movies in our halls and clubbing, AND NOTHING ELSE. That was enough to ostracise me from the entire friend group. They were members of the LGBT Society. So after that, I felt I could never get back in. It destroyed our social standing. Though maybe that was for the best. Because they were not good people. They were cruel, vapid, and shallow. Their actions—bullying and mocking us through a private Facebook chat—pushed our Primary to try to hang themselves again.
Failed... again.
The damage was done. We received a reputation as a "dick-flu whore" who had no self-respect and cared more about sex than the true meaning of friendship.
They didn't see the mess underneath. The loneliness. The desperate grasp for something real. The hurt.
What made it worse was that my ‘friends’ weren’t entirely wrong. The guy I went for drinks with— was the kind of guy who flirts, then ghosts, then flirts again, sending dick pics nonstop, only to get off and disappear when he grew bored of you.
Didn't help that the other girls in our halls had "the slut chart." According to them, I was racking up notches thick and fast.
Then there was the friend who lied about breaking up with his partner to have sex with me in a bathroom stall. When I confided in someone about feeling like a homewrecker, after learning the truth, it got back to him. He demanded apologies like he were the victim. Him. Not his partner. Him.
This cycle repeated four times—him claiming his relationship was open, him messaging me, then revealing it was a monogamous relationship, then apologising and starting again.
Four times. Once is an accident. Twice is careless. But four times...
Each time we would feel hurt and betrayed that he lied to us, promising never to trust him again. Until he apologised. And then he would use the same oily charm and our foolish naivety—our desperate desire to see the good in people—to make us think maybe, just maybe, he was being truthful this time.
Apparently, self-respect and critical thinking were something I had never learned at school. Or maybe I did. But I didn't think I deserved it.
Mum used to read us the boy who cried wolf. Guess that makes us the sheep... and him the wolf.
And again, to add insult to injury, confiding in a friend led to more pain and betrayal.
Yeah... It's not looking great for us, is it?
So when we say we are not a good person, we mean it. We aren't.
Kink Daddy
During this time, there was Kink Daddy 32. That ... relationship (?) started when we were 18. Still figuring ourselves out. But he didn't wait for that.
Every time we made a new Grindr profile, he was there again. Persistent.
Then this moved on to Facebook. He bought us revealing outfits - schoolgirl, nurse, maid - and demanded that we perform on camera for him. Not asked. Demanded. He would call, not bothering to check whether we were free.
For a brief time he called me his girlfriend, but most of the time we were his little slut, his whore.
This constant barrage of messages only ended a year ago. He never took no for an answer. Even after telling him we were in a committed monogamous relationship. That our Primary was demisexual.
He only wanted to meet for sex.
And we did ... twice.
First time, he brought sex toys to the cinema, which, looking back, makes me physically shiver.
The next time, he would tell me in graphic detail how he was aroused by the person next to him on the train up to where I lived and asked if we would do the same for him. Then, when we got home, he ordered us to do housework in the maid’s outfit, ‘overseeing’ us. Before cracking him open a beer as he sunbathed in the garden in his Speedos. Rubbing sunscreen on him. Waiting on him hand and foot.
Treating obedience like currency. He didn't want a connection—only performance. Only sex. To fulfil his kinks.
I thought that we could still salvage something. So we did what we were told. It became increasingly clear where I stood with all this. It needed to end. We just didn't know how to say no without feeling like we were the ones being cruel. Selfish.
And because I was no longer a good girl for daddy, a good slave for master, he left. That was the first time I had power, control in that relationship. Before that, we felt like we had no agency. No self-belief or confidence that we deserved better than his ... love.
The History of Wrong Guys
Then there was Three-minute Mike, who came in his car, came into our house, came on us, and left without a word.
The taxi driver who asked for our number after dropping us home and then lingered, creepily, outside our flat for thirty minutes.
The Uber Eats driver who lied about forgetting a Coke so he could get back into the house. Because of what we were wearing to answer the door. And then would ask if we wanted to go on "deliveries" with him after we, or more accurately, he was done.
The guy who gave us visible hickies the day before work. Who would also vividly tell us what would happen to him—and us—if we were ever openly queer in his home country. Execution. As if the danger would somehow make it hot. It didn't.
The guy at work who spent the whole day flirting with us, stayed over, and then claimed he had lost his phone after going out on a night out and leaving his bag at ours. Only to flirt with a colleague of mine right in front of us and make us fear for our safety at home.
The guy who used us for pleasure and money and then tossed us aside because his fantasies and fetishes were becoming all-consuming and too extreme. Never checking in to see about our comfort level in that one-sided relationship.
The guy who could "deal" with me being trans, but not doing drag. They wanted their perfect woman. Their fantasy. Not mine.
Several more guys who just wanted sex. Discretion, keeping us a secret. A side piece. Guys who had us in tears on "dates", had us physically shaking and uncomfortable, yet still we would go home with them.
Each one chipped away at what little confidence we had left. Each one a reminder that we were invisible, disposable.
Three Years
Then we met our ex-girlfriend at a sauna. For three years, we hoped we'd found someone who loved us. She was polyamorous; we weren't. We tried to be, scared she'd leave us.
Three years of hope. Of bending. Of trying to be enough. She did leave in the end. Left to live with her new partner in another country, without even telling us until the decision was already made. But not before humiliating us.
We did so many things we never thought we would do. She persuaded us to start cam work, a porn Twitter account, an OnlyFans. Told us it was empowerment. Told us it was our choice. But empowerment doesn't come with strings attached. With manipulation behind the screen.
She would initiate sexual cam chats without telling us her partner was watching. She thought it was hot. We felt sick, embarrassed, and shameful. Like we could not stoop any lower.
Then came the final kicker.
She said I could come live with her and her partner—but only if I stayed in the sex dungeon. Like that was all we were worth. A role. A kink. A function.
Not a person. Not a partner. Not even a friend.
No... I would have been her pet.
We've not heard from her since. And honestly, we don't miss those days. Or her. And we feel numb and cold saying it. We were going to live together. Well, not anymore.
Fake it till you make it
During lockdown, we continued camming for guys. Our heart wasn't in it. But we thought we had value by "entertaining" people. Faking orgasms for guys who actively degraded us. And thinking this was worth it. Single. Lonely. No one to connect with. Desperate for validation.
And that’s not even counting the guy who matched us on Tinder, then threatened to murder us with a stapler if he ever met us in public. And for what? Just for existing as a trans woman.
But apparently, that didn’t violate Tinder’s safety policy.
... ... ...
Then came the Brighton Sauna incident. I was just shy of 20. We went to relax, breathe, and celebrate completing our dissertation.
We left violated in the steam room.
Pinned against the wall. His fingers in my mouth stopped me from screaming out, saying no, stop, help. Touching us. We closed our eyes. And then he was gone. All to the background of some old-school porno on the TV screen. That was the music to my silence. People watched this happening to us, smiling like it was some kind of show. All while we were left feeling powerless, alone, and worthless once more.
This was the start. Over six years, we would be sexually assaulted no less than ten times. We lost count after that.
The last one was the most traumatic. He picked us up on the street after an awful weekend at our dad's. We wanted to feel something. We were hollow. And he flirted. And he seemed nice. Sweet. A beguiling accent. Didn't care that we were trans. Made it sound like we were seen.
But then he said it. We were his "first." He just wanted to try it out. We weren't a person. We were an experiment.
It hurt. He didn't use protection. Shoved his fingers, his dick inside us. Grabbed our throat. Squeezed it tight as he stared into our eyes and asked us why we weren't into it. Why were we crying into the bare mattress? Not "should I stop?" But why weren't we into it?
He didn't stop. Not until he was done. By then, we were long gone. Dissociated. Another alter had taken over.
A message to the therapist
So yeah. This is why we are in therapy.
That and two more failed relationships. The first ended when his parents used our transness as ammunition to destroy what could’ve been something beautiful.
And then the other—the guy who dumped us because we couldn't get pregnant. And then stalked us online and sent us messages about how his life was never the same since we blocked him and ended things. He threatened to end it all if we didn't come back to him. As if we owed him our body. As if our worth was tied to fertility. He knew we wanted to start a family, and he weaponised that and perverted our dreams into a fetish.
This is why Dad's words hurt so much. Why we are so defiant when he says we dress like we are going to the bedroom. Or told we are not welcome in his home in short skirts and thigh-high boots, as it brings shame to the family and the household. When we are called a harlot. Slut. A whore.
Because shame has been weaponised and used as a metric against us too many times to count.
This was the same man who told us that if we had worn a coat on Halloween, someone wouldn't have jumped us in an alleyway and had their way with us. As if we invited it. As if being violated was the result of a fashion choice and not the failure of others to see us as human.
Rouge, another of our alters, calls me the Ghost of Nymphomaniacs Past. A ditsy, airheaded bimbo. And while we know these are meant to be good-humoured, affectionate jokes, we can't help but get annoyed—no, not annoyed. Angry. Trigger phrases. Because these words have memories.
So we fight. Not with the world. With ourselves. But we don't want to fight anymore. Not inside. Not outside. We're tired of being our own battleground.
We wear what we want. Because we are not dressing to provoke. We are dressing to exist. To reclaim. To say, "We are still here."
Today
And finally—finally—we've found something gentler.
Someone who loves us for us. No costumes. No conditions. No pretending. Who genuinely loves us. And we love them. So very much. Grateful to have them in our lives and to be there for them in kind.
We're just sorry it took so long for something this good to come along. ❤️🔥
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It's a goodnight from me ...
💭That's what Scarlett wrote to the therapist. But she missed out on a crucial detail. A fact that she was not aware of.
It was during the second year of uni that Delight ... became Delirium. We don't know what drove this change. All we know is ... it happened. The change was instantaneous. A rapid character shift so pronounced that even our mum noticed when we came back one time. She said we seemed like a completely different person. She was right. Just not in the way she meant it.
Rouge took over the role of protector, and Kitty filled the void of trying to make friends... child-like enthusiasm is not enough, though. And people find her voice, her excitable presence and manic energy to be overbearing and irritating. Mum would bristle when she was present. And no amount of cake can cheer up that kind of rejection from your own mother, even if she said it in the heat of the moment.
This chapter has an ending, though. Maybe not a happy one, but an ending nonetheless. I don't really know if there are truly ever any happy endings in life. As Scarlett mentioned ... we found someone. Someone special. We have incredible friends who love us for us. And we are in regular therapy with a therapist who sees us for us.
So... yeah. A contented ending of one chapter and the new beginning of another, marked with self-discovery and growth... and Pride. Pride in who we are. Where we come from. What we have fought for. What we survived... And what we will do to create a brighter tomorrow...
Now... I will go and rest and let someone else finish this epistle. 💭
........................
And a goodnight from Puck
⚡So goodnight, unto you all - give Puck your hands if we be friends, and Puck shall restore amends. ⚡
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