Leah Peterson / biography
1971: Hello!
1975: My little brother is born which causes the house to almost burn down. I drink homemade root beer at the next door neighbor’s home and fear I will go to hell for drinking beer.
1976: I have frequent urine infections and wet the bed. There is something really wrong with me. Oh, hello 6 other personalities! I start to self-harm.
1977: I play hide and seek with the teacher at school during recess and confuse hiding in the cupboard in the coat closet with naptime. I’m found 2 hours later and yelled at. I never sleep well again. I play hide and seek with the neighbor’s grandson who is much, much older than me. He molests me. He comes back during most major holidays to repeat the cycle. I never play hide and seek again. But I do hide quite a bit. Sometimes he finds me and sometimes he doesn’t. I give myself an unfortunate haircut and learn to love hats.
1978: Other people don’t have more than one personality and call themselves by different names at different times. I am weird. Stop it.
1979: I’m baptized a member of the Latter Day Saints. I’m happy to be a Mormon. I think. Except I feel fat in my whites when the water makes them cling to my skin. I’m confirmed directly afterwards and given the Gift of the Holy Ghost. I keep my eyes closed really tight through the blessing and wait for the tingle of the Spirit. I am disappointed and then feel unworthy for the next 20 or so years.
1980: I am a nerd who still wears hats.
1982: Reading(hiding) in the cherry tree in the front yard is what I want to do every day, all day. I will spit cherry seeds on you and you will never know it is me. And then I will laugh. Also, I roller skate like nobody’s business.
1983: The barn is another great place to hide. I have a Benji poster on the wall and my own rope swing. The cow smell is annoying but I’m willing to put up with it for the privacy. And no, I WILL NOT play in the faux log cabin and pretend to be a pioneer woman ANYMORE.
1984: My mom enrolls me in another art class. This one is drawing. I love it. The kid sitting next to me wants to know why I have scratches on my arm. I am embarrassed and start wearing mostly long-sleeved shirts. I clog.
1985: I want a boyfriend. I start drinking and smoking and partying.
1986: I get a boyfriend and stop engaging in life outside my head except for him and partying. School? What is school? I have anorexia and weigh 98 pounds at 5′ 10″. I feel fat. I try to commit suicide.
1987: I go live with my sister for the summer. My parents are hoping that the time away from my boyfriend will encourage us to break up. We don’t. Shockingly, I spend the summer partying. I practice the religion of bulimia and anorexia in cycles.
1988: I go to live with my brother. I think I will die. Then I meet a cute guy. Life will continue. I see my first therapist and join an eating disorder group. My sister-in-law refuses to let me eat any more of her bottled peaches since I’m just going to throw them up. Then, I go to live with another sister. I get pregnant. I get married. I’m 17.
1989: My first child is born. I spend a lot of time pretending that I don’t have a dissociative disorder. It takes a lot of energy. By the end of the year, we move to Germany because my husband joins the Air Force. The Berlin wall comes down. The people over there wish all the Americans would go home.
1990 thru 1995: I have three more kids. I drink lots of beer and vodka and smoke like a chimney. And then I don’t drink anything or smoke anything because I’m pregnant or I’m going to be a really good Mormon and Mother. Repeating this cycle over and over is really fun. (not) I go to lots of therapy. I discover that I have a dissociative disorder. And then I rediscover it after I tried to forget it and pretend I didn’t. Repeating this cycle over and over is really fun. (not) I’m also mis-diagnosed with OCD, Bipolar and Borderline Personality Disorder at different times. My husband and I go to the Mormon Temple in Germany and get sealed for eternity. I am so sure that this will finally make me a Real Normal Person and God will take away the other personalities. The ceremony is strange. I don’t understand what is happening. It feels odd. We don’t go back. I’m still the same.
1996: Now, since one of my personalities is a full fledged alcoholic, I almost lose my kids to the military equivalent of social services while my husband is in Italy. He comes home just in time and sends me and the kids back to the States. Reset.
1997: No. Really. Seriously. I mean it this time. I can be a normal mom. We move to Southern California. I’m so awesome.
1999: Surprisingly, I’m having some issues. My kids start having to take care of themselves. I am a basket case for most of the time. But I WANT to be better. The guilt is palpable in the house. No one wants to be there. My husband is traveling quite extensively. Can you blame him? Wait - should I go to therapy?
2000: I’m spending hours and hours and days and weeks online talking to people I have never met. I have multiple accounts and multiple sets of friends. This confuses me because the accounts are under different names. The ‘friends’ call me by different names. Some of them appear to know me very well but I’ve never met them. Huh. I delete them. A few days later, they are back. I don’t get it. I’m so far in denial that I travel and sleep with strange men and don’t know it until later. I decide that I’m such a horrible person that just breathing the same air as my kids will hurt them. I decide to leave and go live in Canada with a guy that I met online. I’m sure my husband and everyone involved will appreciate my efforts to stop hurting them. I can’t face him so I write a private letter to him trying to explain why I’m leaving and how I’d rather never see my kids again than to hurt them anymore. He lets his entire family read it. And then begs me to come home when I call 3 days later. My personalities are split (clever, no?) on the vote of going back home. I end up going back for a while so that the kids can adjust to me being gone instead of just leaving all at once. I end up staying for another year. We go to couple therapy where I become something of a unique specimen. Our therapist can’t wait for us to come. I begin to dread it. My husband stops going. I try a variety of anti-depressants and anti-anxiety med cocktails. With each one I gain about 15 pounds. It’s hard not to be depressed when you keep getting fatter. However, my obsessive compulsive habits lessen and it is no longer important to think for 3 hours a night about what I would do if we had an earthquake. I shorten it to 30 minutes. In fact, I get pretty good at condensing almost all my weird habits.
2001: We take the family to Hawaii where we are going to forget all our troubles and become a real family again. When we return, I go to my first mental hospital. Guess what? I have a dissociative disorder. I know, right? Shocking. I start writing down everything that is happening to me. All my personalities take turns writing from their perspective. I start getting serious about getting well. I go see my therapist twice a week. It’s a 5 hour commitment per session including the drive. The more well I get, the harder time my husband has. I start painting more and some of my work shows in New York and Los Angeles. I feel like a fake.
Sept 11, 2001: My husband calls from New York and tells me he’s watching buildings fall around him and that he’s never been happy his entire life since he met me 14 years ago. He says he could have been in those buildings and been killed and the thought of his sad life makes him want to cry. I’m devastated and consequently, many of my personalities go on strike. I make up my mind to leave for reals this time. Only one personality is out and about for the duration as every other personality has decided life isn’t worth living. She’s about 17 years old. Her decisions aren’t that great. I have no medical coverage so my therapy ends cold turkey as does my medication. I move into an apartment a few miles away, sign up for school and don’t go but instead start to attend bars religiously and get hooked on meth. Kids - meth is not a good replacement for Effexor.
2002: In February, after being raped and having a miscarriage, I call my sister in Seattle to say goodbye as I am going to kill myself the next day. She tells me to get in the car and drive to see her. She tells me if I want to I can kill myself after I get there. She just wants to see me first. I ask my friend to go with me. He is very kind and drives up with me. We smoke meth the entire way. He flies home and I stay with my sister, her husband, her passel of kids, her dog, her chickens, her peacocks, her guineas, and her bunny. I sleep for the first week straight while detoxing from meth and alcohol. I’m lots of fun to have around. I don’t even try to kill myself because I don’t even care that much. A few weeks later, I find friends at the bar and smoke meth again. I do it for about two weeks and it scares the crap out of me so I quit. I compensate by drinking more beer. In April, I cut myself with a razor blade deep enough to warrant emergency attention and stitches. The doctor on call berates me for being so stupid while he closes the two inch long by one inch deep laceration on my leg. I go straight from there to the mental hospital. In May, I’m released to the care of my sister and accept the terms of having to attend therapy. The hospital sets up my first appointment and I mistakenly go to see Dr. Clancy who has stopped seeing people with dissociative disorders. After speaking with me for an hour, he decides to make an exception and take me on as a client. He helps me see that my kids may have a use for me in their lives after all. In July, my divorce is final. I complete the integration process. I feel like 7 times myself and go on a power trip. I think I am invincible. I’m also extremely sensitive to light, smell, but mostly sound. Odd electrical sounds will sometimes make me ill and certain smells make me want to cry. In August, I decide to try and go back to San Diego and figure out how to move close to my kids. In the meantime, my ex-husband has moved to the north side of LA. I have no job and know no one in that area. I figure the best course of action is to start in San Diego and work my way up. I’m scared. I have no real plan but getting back to my kids is paramount. In September, I really do it. I pack up the car and drive back home. I sleep in my car for a few days but then an old friend says I can live at her home for a few weeks while I get back on my feet. I go to a networking event and meet Joe. Oct-Dec: Do I like yogurt? Do I like scary movies? Do I like to wear socks to bed? These and many other compelling questions are asked, contemplated and answered over the next few months and into the next year since I have to relearn almost everything about myself post-integration. I start to keep one of these new fangled blogs so my kids and I can keep in touch better. I have no medical coverage and have to beg, borrow and steal to get medication. Sometimes I have it and sometimes I don’t. It sucks. I tell Joe that I’m not ready to date. We see each other almost everyday for the next few months.
2003: Joe and I move into together. We drive up to see the kids and their dad drives them down to see us once a month. It’s a lot of driving. The kids are great sports about it and don’t complain too much. I work as a loan officer for two different companies. After a spectacular tanking, as I can’t bear to sell something to someone that doesn’t need it, I get a job working for GTI. I finish writing my book. People start writing me emails with questions about depression and mental illness.
2004: I love working at GTI and the people are fabulous but I can’t stop longing to be close to my kids. I start writing columns for Writer’s Monthly and shooting photos for North magazine. Some of my paintings show at Mixture in San Diego. I am generally dissatisfied with everything I do. I start looking for work in LA. Joe is fabulously supportive. I am so focused on making more money that I quit my job at GTI and go to work for an eccentric older man that wants me for less hours but more money per. His name is Ivan Boesky and I have no idea why people look at me weird when I tell them his name. It doesn’t work out because the amount of work he said there was and the amount of work that there actually was were too completely different numbers. I quit and there is no love lost on either side but he does still owe me my last paycheck. I do odd work for some friends and keep trying to figure out how to move closer to the kids. In October, I find my dream job working for a company that supports ending poverty. I’m so excited. This means I can move close to my kids. Hooray! Joe turns moody. He asks me to marry him about 15 times. I say yes. Then he won’t talk to me for about a week so I tell him the wedding is off. He says ok. Then he says wait, I do want to get married. We play this game all the way up until December 21st when we elope with the kids and get married in Vegas where a midget with too much makeup and a wig declares us man and wife. We spend our honeymoon at my parent’s home in Utah.
2005: We move up north to the LA area and I start my job. Joe looks for work and silently punishes me for making him get married and move away from his family but makes me great breakfasts every morning and packs me a lunch in my lunch box. After living in a hotel for 3 months, we find a home to rent about 10 miles from the kids. Joe finds a job. I commute and work 13 hour days. Joe works from home and hates his job. In August I get very ill and do a kazzillion tests and see many doctors and specialists until I want to puke. It turns out I had a miscarriage, PCOS, a weak heart and an injured lung. Joe gets mad at me for being sick. In September, I’m working half-days at IDP and feeling awful. I start drumming up some freelance work for Joe and I to do at home to supplement our income. Soon, I can’t commute to work at all. I ask Joe if he wants to start a web development company with me. He says yes. He thinks he means it. We have the kids about half the time. In that area, things are great. Joe and I love each other but as our 1st year anniversary gets closer, we both wonder if we made a mistake.
2006: Joe and I spend the first 4 months falling apart and get closer to a divorce. I don’t write about what is going on in my blog but he does. Joe stops working but doesn’t know why. I start to panic. In May we start to see a marriage counselor who tells us that working together at home and living in the same place you work is a bad idea. We said, ‘Whaaa?’ and then decide to make some changes. Both of us recommit to our marriage because being married is way more important than working together.