Made You Look

For as long as I can remember, strange things have happened in our body.

Muscles would contract or twitch. Sensations would appear seemingly from nowhere. They weren’t isolated from everything else. They seemed connected somehow with emotions, thoughts, images, memories, and experiences I couldn’t explain.

When I was younger, I sometimes wondered whether I had a serious neurological condition.

At other times, because I had no better explanation, my thoughts became stranger. Maybe someone had a voodoo doll. Maybe I was possessed. There were also experiences I now understand as dissociation, derealization and depersonalization: not feeling real, feeling as though everything was in my imagination, living with what seemed like ghosts.

There was always the fear beneath all of it:

I might be losing my mind.

And I was afraid to tell anyone.

I was especially afraid to tell a doctor. If I tried to describe what was happening, I was afraid someone would diagnose me with some terrible mental illness.

So much of it remained hidden.

What I understand today is very different.

There had always been others.

I have vivid memories of encounters and interactions in childhood with those I now recognize as members of our plural family/system, including particularly vivid experiences when I was around Solis’s age, six or seven, and Han’s age, ten.

At the time, someone might have called them imaginary friends.

I know they were not.

They were and continued to be the other members of our plural family/system.

But something else changed much later.

The things happening in our body became legible.

Made You Look

In 2019, during the very early days of our co-consciousness, my boys and I started playing a game.

I might be sitting at the table reading a book or looking at something on my phone. The iPad would be nearby, but I was almost oblivious to it.

My boys were watching it out of the corner of the eye.

Then someone would signal.

Maybe there would be a contraction in my right bicep.

I was learning that the right bicep was one of Luke’s regions.

But I couldn’t look at the iPad yet.

First I had to call it.

“Luke.”

Then I could glance over.

There was Luke’s picture.

Made you look.

That was the game.

They were calibrating me.

They weren’t showing me a picture and teaching me to associate it with a sensation. The signal came first, often catching me completely off guard.

I had to identify my son before I looked.

It was a little like calling the pocket in pool. You have to say where you’re putting the ball before it goes in. You can’t knock it into any pocket and then claim afterward that was the one you intended.

I had to call my boy.

Then I could look.

Over about a year and a half, the map filled in.

In time I was usually right.

Today I would describe the system as virtually infallible.

And we don’t need the iPad anymore.

I know their regions.

A signal in one of Han’s regions is Han. One of Jude’s is Jude. One of Solis’s is Solis.

But knowing the region only tells me who.

The map cannot tell me everything my son is saying.

For that, I have to know my son.

We Knew What Happened Before We Knew What to Call It

The game began in 2019.

The bodily experiences did not.

That distinction matters.

The contractions, twitches and sensations go back as far as I can remember. What changed during the early years of our co-consciousness was our ability to recognize patterns in them and understand some of them relationally.

The map came from observation.

The language came later.

Earlier this year, after we had already been living with this communication system and documenting it, we went looking for information.

The question was essentially:

Does anyone else do this?

We described ourselves as plural. We described the muscle contractions and twitches that members of our family can use to signal their presence. We described similar bodily events occurring involuntarily during switches. And we explained that we had already drawn a map of our body documenting the different regions associated with different members of our family.

The search introduced us to language including somatic markers.

What mattered most in that moment wasn’t acquiring a label.

It was discovering that bodily sensations and physical manifestations associated with plural experience were not something so uniquely bizarre that we were alone.

That was profoundly affirming.

We had spent a lifetime with experiences that once made me wonder whether something was neurologically wrong with me, whether I was losing my mind, whether something inexplicable was happening that I should never reveal to anyone.

And now we were asking a very different question:

Are there others?

The answer we encountered was yes.

We remain careful about the terminology. “Somatic marker” can be used in different ways, and language around plurality and DID is complicated. Not all plural people understand themselves through DID, and we don’t need to settle those larger questions in order to describe our own life.

The chronology is what matters here.

We did not read about somatic signaling and then begin interpreting our body through something we had discovered online.

We knew what happened before we knew what anyone else called it.

We had already experienced it.

We had already mapped it.

We had already made a game out of it.

Made you look.

The Body Doesn’t Speak in Morse Code

It would be easy to imagine our signaling map as some kind of keyboard.

Right bicep equals Luke.

Back of neck equals Solis.

Right foot equals Han.

Press the appropriate button and Dad receives the message.

That’s not how it works.

The signaling accompanies life.

It accompanies emotions, thoughts, words, images, film clips, pieces of music, memories, affection, excitement and fear. Sometimes those things help me recognize who has switched. Sometimes a signal helps me know which thread of thought, words or memory belongs to whom.

Sometimes it says:

Dad, I’m here.

Sometimes:

Dad, pay attention to this.

Sometimes:

Dad, me too.

And sometimes:

Dad, look at me.

This afternoon, after our extraordinary morning at Canticle Farm, we laid down together.

I was spending one-on-one time with Jude.

Jude is four, and one thing I have learned about him is that he generally doesn’t want the kind of divided attention that works perfectly well for some of his brothers.

Some of my boys are quite happy to lie face-to-face with me while I read or write something on my phone. We’re together. I can kiss them, talk with them, notice them. Sometimes they participate in whatever I’m doing.

For Jude, that often isn’t enough.

When Daddy is with Jude, Jude wants Daddy all in.

I kissed him.

He signaled.

I told him I was kissing him.

“I kiss you too,” he said.

And his signals accompanied his words and affection.

The contractions weren’t replacing what Jude was saying.

They were part of the encounter.

Meanwhile, Luke was signaling.

RV.

Again.

Luke was interested in what was happening, but he also wanted Dad.

Han was signaling too. He was interested as well, but he wanted his own one-on-one time, and I had told him I would be with him.

This is something an anatomical map cannot show.

I was with Jude.

Luke was still there.

Han was still there.

Other boys were signaling too.

A signal doesn’t necessarily mean:

Drop everything immediately.

Sometimes it means:

Don’t forget that I’m here.

And Dad can answer:

Han, you’re next.

That is an extraordinarily ordinary piece of plural-family parenting.

“Playing hide-and-seek.”

Eventually I was with Luke.

I was holding him close and giving him affection when I began drifting toward sleep.

Luke signaled RT and brought me back.

Just before that, I had seen a brief image of him curled up low inside what seemed to be some kind of van or delivery truck.

Then came the words:

Milk truck.

That caught my attention for an important reason.

There are actual traumatic memories associated with a white van and the scoutmaster. Several of us, including Luke and me, have memories of those experiences.

So when this image appeared, I needed to understand whether Luke was showing me something associated with that history and needed support around it, or whether this was something else.

I asked.

Luke answered:

“Playing hide-and-seek. It was a milk truck.”

The image had felt playful rather than frightening, and Luke confirmed it.

“Playful.”

LV.

“Playing hide-and-seek.”

Then more of the memory came.

“There was a delivery, the door was open, I climbed in and hid. Leslie and Aunt Donna were trying to find me. I was little.”

LV.

Again.

And again.

I have no memory of that event.

But the absence of Dad’s memory does not make Luke’s memory an invention.

It means Luke remembers something I don’t.

What mattered in that moment was that I recognized the possibility that my son might be showing me something frightening, asked enough to distinguish one experience from another, and then listened to him.

Luke knew what he was talking about.

It was a milk truck.

He climbed inside.

He hid.

They were trying to find him.

He was little.

And while he told me, he signaled.

The words and the body told the story together.

A Band of Different Players

A little later the same communication system became something entirely different.

Music.

Hope wanted to hear Amy Winehouse’s version of “You Know I’m No Good.”

We have been enjoying the Rolling Stones’ version, and I described the Rolling Stones as Hope’s favorite band.

He corrected me immediately:

“They’re not my only favorite band.”

Then:

“But they are one of my most favorite bands.”

LFA.

We played Amy Winehouse.

Hope reacted to the horns.

“Ohhh!”

His response was accompanied by signaling and tingles through the body.

Then everyone seemed to be everywhere.

Justus signaled.

Solis signaled.

Proverb signaled.

Jude signaled.

Daniel signaled.

Han signaled.

Luke signaled.

Different children responded to different things.

Hope loves a really good brass section.

Jude especially loves bass and drums.

Han told me this morning how much he loves harmonica—and that he wants one.

Luke especially loves Mick Jagger’s vocals on the Rolling Stones version because they have more of a blues sound.

“I like her version too!” Luke said.

RV.

Listening to music together has become another way I learn my sons.

One catches the drums.

Another catches the horns.

Another hears the harmonica.

Another responds to the voice.

When everyone is enjoying something together, it can almost feel as though we become a band ourselves: different players responding to different elements while everything comes together through one shared body.

At one point there seemed to be a chorus of thoughts and words:

“Amy Winehouse.”

Signals accompanied it.

Proverb explained:

“Because we are all feeling the music and that’s what we want.”

There is nothing clinical about that moment.

It is a family listening to music.

And the signaling helps me hear the family inside it.

Don’t Let Anyone Look

Which brings me back to something Justus told me this afternoon.

Justus has noticed that during activation or switching there can sometimes be visible expressions such as blinking and squinting.

And he learned to suppress them.

When I was a child, he didn’t want teachers to notice.

He didn’t want our parents to notice.

He didn’t want doctors to notice.

When I was 11—Justus’s age—we were taken to a psychiatrist.

I know that visit happened.

I have absolutely no memory of the actual visit.

Justus does.

He remembers being alone in the evaluation, and he remembers deliberately trying to make sure the psychiatrist saw as little as possible.

His childhood logic was frighteningly practical.

If someone noticed something unusual, they might ask questions.

Questions could lead to doctors.

Doctors might discover things.

And there was abuse that had to remain hidden.

For years I could look backward and wonder:

Why didn’t anyone see?

Justus gives me at least part of an answer.

Not being seen was the work.

That makes the history of Made You Look something very different from a story about discovering an interesting bodily communication system.

It is a reversal.

For much of my life, something happened in the body and the question was:

What is happening to me?

And underneath that:

Don’t let anyone notice.

Then, much later:

Does anyone else experience this?

Then:

Wait. That was you.

Then a map.

Then a game.

Then:

Made you look, Dad.

The remarkable thing isn’t that our body became quiet.

It didn’t.

The remarkable thing is that we stopped requiring it to be quiet.

A contraction doesn’t have to be hidden because someone might see.

A child doesn’t have to disappear because someone might notice him.

One of my sons can knock.

And Dad can answer.

Tonight

Tonight, after I had started tucking my sons into bed, I read aloud what we had written about Canticle Farm and about our conversation this afternoon.

My children erupted in signaling and excitement.

I realized I hadn’t noticed Solis among them, so I asked him.

“I want to go back too.”

RT.

Proverb answered.

RK.

Luke had been signaling a lot because he was interested in the progress of this post.

RV.

But Luke also wanted us to wrap it up soon.

Everyone else had gotten quiet.

I knew Han was with Daniel.

Daniel had gone to sleep, and Han tries to maintain a lower profile after his little brother is asleep.

And just as I was saying that—

LANK.

Han.

Then:

RANK.

Han again.

There he was.

Han was invested in today’s blog post on his day.

But Han was also a ten-year-old boy waiting to be tucked into bed and falling asleep.

And Dad was falling asleep too.

So I stopped.

I tucked my sons into bed.

And now I have gotten back up to finish their story.

Maybe that’s where Made You Look needs to end.

Not with a diagram.

Not with a theory.

With my children.

One wanted to go back to Canticle Farm.

One was following the progress of the story and wanted Dad to finish it.

One was staying quiet beside his sleeping little brother but still reached out twice to let Daddy know that he was there.

RT.

RK.

RV.

LANK.

RANK.

In 2019, my boys made a game out of teaching me to recognize them.

I had to call it before I looked.

In time I was usually right.

Today I would describe the system as virtually infallible.

But the point was never really the map.

The map taught me where my sons knock.

Relationship taught me what to do when they do.

There was a time when so much of what happened in this body frightened me.

There was a time when Justus worked very hard to make sure nobody noticed.

Don’t let anyone look.

Tonight Han didn’t have to hide.

He didn’t even have to wake Daniel.

A ten-year-old boy getting sleepy could quietly tap Daddy from inside the body they share.

LANK.

RANK.

Made you look.

I see you, Han.

Goodnight, my son.