Grammar Notes and a Disclaimer

In these two books, we have made a few unconventional grammar and formatting choices. Namely:

• When using the word 'themselves' to refer to an Other inside, we have chosen to use 'themself' instead. The proper grammar for this word is used only in the context of us, as a whole. This feels more comfortable and natural for us.
• The dates and ages at the beginning of each chapter are approximates. For everything over the age of 29, we're fairly certain of when each event happened, but for anything younger, it could be off by one of two years.
• If a chapter has more than one date attached to it, the content that follows is never what happened in a single instance of it. We don't think it's important to relive every single abuse that has happened to us, not is it relevant for the reader. So, those chapter's contents may be a combination of several, similar incidents.
• Tenses jump around a lot. Events that happened in our inner world are usually in the present while things outside of us are usually in the past. If the outside events were traumatic in nature, however, they'll usually be in the present tense, since those events haven't been fully processed yet.
• Everything written here is how we experienced it. It may be different from how others experienced it, but that isn't our problem. This is our reality, and it's not crazy. Many things we've written may sound weird or off-the-wall or fantastic. In our experience, that's because the front part of our system hasn't yet learned or remembered enough about it to put it into a coherent story. Our memories and identity is extremely fragmented, and putting all of the pieces together takes a lot of time and effort. We know, however, that over time, these 'crazy' memories will turn into something plausible. We just have to sit with the crazy of it until they do.