I'm not entirely sure where I'm going with this article. Heck, I'm not entirely sure how completely knowledgeable I am on this touchy subject. But, I've always been curious about the human psyche, especially our identity. And in honor of the new movie, 'Spilt' that just made it into theaters, I'm gonna write my intake on it. If I've made mistakes on this topic, please let me know and point me in the right direction, I do want to learn more about it as a whole.

So for a couple of years now, I've been questioning the significance of one's identity; I mean, what truly makes us a person on this planet in the first place? If we are meant to die 70 odd years from now, do we get new personalities? New identities? How bizarre right? Anyway, the significance of a personality is what makes a person human or an animal different from all the rest. However, sometimes having a complicated personality can be taboo in our delicate society. Sure we can identify the person with that particular personality as a criminal, but what if we are forced to have more than one personality?

Don't ask me why I've been thinking of this sort of thing, but ever since I went into a self-research thing of Dissociative Identity Disorder for a novel I've been planning, I can't help but be obsessed with the concept of such a complicated disorder. From my research or common knowledge from google, it is a disorder that develops from a very traumatic experience in a person's life. They create personas that act as defense mechanisms for that one person and they barely remember the situation since it mostly acts like a trigger for the host (original person). When I first discovered this, I wasn't so sure about it being real after watching a documentary on a woman with 15 personalities. Personally, I thought she was faking it since the majority of her personas were quite similar to each other. However, once I started watching it again and reading some material based on this disorder, I understood it despite the fact that I myself don't have the disorder. While I love the concept of having more than one identity in a single body, I can't help but feel dismayed for the rare people that have it. This disorder is a very rare disease and not often described in medical records and novels. It sort of like, a different form of schizophrenia, but more humane since the personas truly believe they are alive and not their host. It's so destructive and antagonizing yet it's a reality some people do face in secret and they're afraid for their lives that they may hurt someone or even themselves.

This makes me think as a writer, how can I bring awareness to this disorder despite not having it like novels such as "Identical" by Ellen Hopkins. Sure we all have different traits that make us who we are, but knowing that this sort of thing exists is something we should have common knowledge about since it contains more than one illness in a person. It's not only one person that is affected by it, but it's also the personas as well since they truly believe they are their own being and not the host.