Noble Kim - All of me: how I learned to live with the many personalities sharing my body

Copyright Kim Noble 2011, 2012

First published in Great Britain in 2011 by Piatkus

This edition published in 2012 by Chicago Review Press, Incorporated

All rights reserved

Chicago Review Press, Incorporated

814 North Franklin Street

Chicago, Illinois 60610

978-1-61374-470-3

Authors note

Much of the content of this book takes place in hospitals. Where other patients are mentioned I have used pseudonyms to protect their privacy. Some other individuals names have also been changed but their actions are all too true.

Cover design: Rebecca Lown

Author photos: Geraint Lewis

Cover artwork: (clockwise from upper left) The Naming by Dawn, Whatever by Ken, Lucy by Judy, Judy by Judy, Im Just Another Personality by Bonny

Photos of artwork: Aimee Noble

Title page and part title page artwork: Frieze People at Night by Bonny

Typeset in Swift by M Rules

Printed in the United States of America

5 4 3 2 1

This book is dedicated to our much-loved daughter Aimee, the sunshine of my life, and our wonderful therapist for her footsteps in the sand.

Thanks to Jennifer Todd, Wendy Glaister, Lisa Dixon, Klare Stephens, Anna Tapsell, Campaign Against Pornography, Helena Kennedy QC, Michael Fisher, DCI Clive Driscoll, Lydia Sinclair, Dr Rob Hale, Pearl King, Valerie Sinason and the Clinic for Dissociative Studies, Professor Howard Steele, Saul Hillman, Nancy Dunlop, Ina Walker, Suzanne Haddad, Julia Harrop, Shirley Hickmott, Ami Woods, Debs McCoy, Andrew Simpson at Springfield Hospital, West Thornton Primary and Junior schools, Susan Booth, Fiona Langan and Riddlesdown Collegiate, Palma Black, Sharon Jenden-Rose, John Morton, Henry Boxer, Gillian Gordon, Beth Elliot at the Bethlem Gallery, Malcolm Wicks MP. Thanks are also due to Robert Smith for his continuous support, Jeff Hudson for taking on this difficult challenge, Anne Lawrance and Claudia Dyer for their sensitivity and understanding, the team at Piatkus/ Little, Brown Book Group, Anita and Derek, Saatchi Online for allowing separate personalities to have their own artist web pages and Outside In for accepting us as individual artists. A special thanks to Dr Laine and her husband, Andrew.

In memory of my Mum and to my Dad and his new wife, Jackie. To my sister, Lorraine, and her husband, Lol.

To my family and friends including those sadly lost along the way. To my next-door neighbour and friend, Jean, and in memory of her husband, Stan.

To my invisible friends inside, who at times are too visible!

To all those with or without DID who have emailed me about their hopes and fears.

Kim Noble was born on 21 November 1960. She lived with her parents and sister and enjoyed an ordinary family upbringing. Her parents both worked and from a very early age Kim was left with a number of childminders although they werent called that in the 1960s. Sometimes it was family, sometimes neighbours, sometimes friends. Communities stepped in to help in those days. Most were kind and loving.

Some were different.

They didnt look after Kim Noble. They took advantage. They subjected baby Kim to painful, evil, sexual abuse. Regularly and consistently from the earliest age.

Kim Noble was helpless. She couldnt speak. She couldnt complain. She couldnt fight. She didnt even know that the abuse was wrong.

But she did know it scared her. She knew it hurt.

Yet she was so small, so weak, so dependent on her abusers for so much, what could she possibly do? And then her young, infant mind found a way. If it couldnt stop Kims physical pain it could do the next best thing. It could hide.

At some point before her third birthday, Kim Nobles mind shattered, like a glass dropped onto a hard floor. Shards, splinters,fragments, some tiny, some larger. No two pieces the same, as individual as snowflakes. Ten, twenty, a hundred, two hundred pieces where before there had been just one. And each of them a new mind, a new life to take Kims place in the world. To protect her. At last, Kim Noble was happy.

No one could find her now.

C hicago, September 2010. I never imagined the day I would find myself sitting in a television studio on the other side of the Atlantic. I certainly never expected to be invited by the most powerful woman in world media, Oprah Winfrey, to appear during the final season of the planets leading chat show. But here I am and, as I take my seat facing Oprahs chair, I can barely contain my nerves. The most-watched programme in America is about to be filmed and I am that episodes star guest. And yet, as soon as Oprah sits down opposite, my inhibitions disappear.

Oprahs studio audience is here to see her. I dont kid myself that Im the draw. The hundreds of people packing the auditorium reserved their tickets a year ago, months before I was even booked to appear. But the reason they love Oprah is she asks the questions that the normal American man and woman want to ask. I watch her lean in, gather her thoughts and build up to asking the Big One.

Do you remember what happened to you as a child?

Three hundred people fall suddenly silent. A few sharp intakes of breath. Then nothing, as they all crane forward expectantly for my reply.

I remember parts of it, I reply. Not any abuse.

Murmurs buzz around that vast hangar of a room. Oprah looks momentarily thrown. If you watch carefully you can almost see her thinking, I was told this woman had been abused! Whats going on? Backstage you can imagine a huddle of researchers thrown into panic.

Oprah maintains her composure. Then, ever the professional, she rephrases the question.

My answer is the same. No one did anything to me. But I know what she means and decide to help her out.

I have never been abused, I clarify. But this body has.

And then she understands.

Throughout our interview, Oprah referred to me as Kim. I dont mind. Ive grown up with people calling me that. Its all I ever heard as a child so it soon becomes normal. Kim, come here, Kim, do this. It was just a nickname I responded to, not something to question. Why would I? I didnt feel different. I didnt look different. A child only notices theyre out of the ordinary when adults tell them. No one ever told me I was special in any way.

Ive grown up accepting lots of things that seemed normal at the time. Like finding myself in classrooms I didnt remember travelling to, or speaking to people I didnt recognise or employed doing jobs I hadnt applied for. Normal for me is driving to the shops and returning home with a trunk full of groceries I didnt want. Its opening my wardrobe and discovering clothes I hadnt bought or taking delivery of pizzas I didnt order. Its finding the dishes done a second after Id finished using the pans. Its ending up at the door to a mens toilet and wondering why. Its so many, many other things on a daily basis.

Oprah found it unimaginable. I doubt she was alone. I imagine millions of viewing Americans were thinking, This is crazy!