If I can get this far in life, if I can keep so many plates spinning without the whole crockery set smashing down, then anyone can. DID shouldn’t have to be the end of one life. It should be the beginning of many.

Living with multiple personalities is not something you just wake up fully understanding. For months, maybe years after I first accepted the diagnosis, I was still discovering new nuances, fresh areas I hadn’t considered.

To most of the outside world I am 'Kim Noble'. I'll answer to that name because I'm aware of the DID and also because it's easier than explaining who I really am. Most of the other personalities are still in denial, as I was for the majority of my life. They don't believe they share a body and absolutely refuse to accept they are only out' for a fraction of the day, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. I know how they feel, because for forty years that was me.

You can be as open-minded as possible and still be non-plussed. I didn't know a hundred different people. Even though some of them were only fragments' of a personality, how could that many exist in my tiny body?

The funny thing is, the more I dwelled on the possibilities of having DID, the more time I seemed to have to do it. For what seemed like forever, and certainly for the last few years since the acid and fire incidents, days had rushed by in a blur. It was strange to admit but I suddenly seemed to have more time to myself.

I'd heard all the jargon dozens of times ~ the 'alters', the 'personalities' — and dismissed them. Now they all took on new significance. They were no longer just words or ideas or theories. They were people.

I was running the gamut from fear to loathing and back to disbelief every time I had a spare moment.

The greatest impact my alters' behaviour had on me was not in the acts themselves but in the telling. And some of those tales I just was not prepared for. Opening my mind to DID was like opening Pandora's box. The demons that emerge could not be put back again. They were out forever.

If I can get this far in life, if I can keep so many plates spinning without the whole crockery set smashing down, then anyone can. DID shouldn't have to be the end of one life. It should be the beginning of many.

Living with multiple personalities is not something you just wake up fully understanding. For months, maybe years after I first accepted the diagnosis, I was still discovering new nuances, fresh areas I hadn't considered.