Taekook Oneshots

Multifaceted

@pxndaku asked for a oneshot wherein one of them has DID. This is gonna be a long author's note, but it's important. (also I've given them both DID)

I want to clarify: this is NOT necessarily an accurate portrayal of DID (which used to be known as Multiple Personality Disorder, 30 years ago). Having said that, I do watch a lot of DID YouTubers, so whilst I approach this with respect and hesitation, I think the knowledge that has given me will make it more accurate than...well...Split. I am not trying to take the voices of those with DID, or speak over them. Most of the terms used here, specific to the community, I will list below for clarity, to avoid confusion:

Alter: alternate state of identity: one of the personalities
System: a group of alters in one body
Protector: an alter that mainly protects
Persecutor: a traumatised alter that often uses methods similar to those of an abuser in a misguided version of 'protection' (NOT dangerous to anyone outside of system)
Trauma: anything unpleasant that someone believes they cannot survive, can take many forms.
Partner system: a relationship between two DID systems. often, there will be many romantic relationships between individuals, or familial bonds. this changes from partnership to partnership.
Front: to 'drive' or control the body and interact with the outer world

I realised I wasn't totally normal when I was in my teens. I mean, everyone has their emo phase, or some variation of it. But there was something odd about the situation, something that I'd originally seen as a trait that everyone experienced but wasn't.

To put it simply, I started to notice that I was losing time. It was little things at first, like forgetting where I'd put my keys, or where my favourite things were. And then it was full conversations, that my friends would reference and then expect me to understand the joke. But every single time, I just had to fake a laugh, or look like I was rude.

And then the voices began. I thought it was my inner voice, in the beginning. Telling me that I was wrong, that I was doing something wrong. That I didn't know what I was doing. That someone else would do it better.

The notes came next. Written in pen on my arm, on my legs. Bruises appeared that I'd never seen before, scars from actions I didn't take. I'd wake up with bandages round my limbs and wonder when I got injured, pull at them only for the affected area to burn with pain. I would wake up, and be standing in the middle of the street, fully dressed, walking somewhere with no idea of how I got there, where I was, or the intended destination.

I learned the truth a short while after I turned twenty, just two years ago. I have DID: Dissociative Identity Disorder. Something, many somethings, happened to me when I was too young to understand, and my brain fragmented into several parts, several identities, in order to cope. I was the one who lived daily life. And during most of my childhood, and my teen years, there were massive gaps in the timeline. Because 'daily life' became replaced with 'living hell' during those times, and someone had to live that for me.

Otherwise, I wouldn't have been able to cope.

I met the individual that turned into my partner system online, a few months after that official diagnosis. They were older than me by two years, but we understood each other's pain, and we got on well. So it didn't take long for a friendship to build.

Especially between myself and the host, the one in charge most of the time. Taehyung was an easily scared individual, sometimes, but he was also very intelligent, artistic, and intriguing. I fell for him without knowing what I was doing. It was Jess, one of the alters in his system, who figured it out first.

We were talking during a video call, when she switched out, realised what was going on pretty quickly (she could see the face of our body on the screen), and proceeded to give me 'the talk'. As Taehyung's primary protector, in charge of looking after everyone in their system, it made sense. It was the conversation I needed, to confirm that I was right to question my own feelings.