The last conversation I had with Dr. G, my psychiatrist of eight years was when I was 23 and leaving to drive to Oregon to start a new life.
Dr. G said to me "Goodbye (my real name here) or should I say Matt?
I shook my head perplexed.
He then asked me if I knew what dissociative identity disorder was. I said yeah why you think I have multiple personality disorder?
He said “you know what it is?”
I told him I didn’t have this and that I had in fact known someone named Matt in the past.
He said to me “Matt was REAL?!?!”
He said “But you didn’t have a friend named Matt”
I said he wasn’t a friend, he was my first girlfriend’s older sister’s boyfriend
Dr. G just kind of looked at me for a while and then said again, goodbye.
The thing is, all I remembered about Matt at this time was that he was my first girlfriend’s older sister’s boyfriend, he was this long haired hippy looking kid with glasses who did a lot of drugs. He and his girlfriend shared a room upstairs at my girlfriend’s parents house.
But then a few years later I began to remember in flashbacks…Matt was always there. It made sense now the time when I was standing in my girlfriend’s parent’s kitchen and he walked in and shook my hand saying “Nice to meet you, my names Matt. We used to be friends…at least I thought we were”
I had no idea what he was talking about at this time, I had never to my mind been friends with this kid, then his girlfriend, my girlfriend’s older sister, laughed saying “You’re going to end up in an institution some day!” I had no idea what she was talking about either.
But then, like I said, I began to remember. The flashbacks would come of me at fourteen hanging out with Matt and his girlfriend, wearing my old german army jacket and smoking camel wides, tapping out my little tic tac containor full of the coke that my friend Mike had stolen from his mom. Matt was there, we were in the old brick powder house in an old fort shooting coke, Matt prepared it and shot himself and then me up, I slammed my head against the brick wall behind me when the rush came. Pam was there, she was my age, Matt and his girlfriend were two years older than us. Pam threw up after watching Matt shoot me up…
Matt was always there, but Matt was not me…Matt was real. I remember flipping through my brother’s yearbook once and seeing his picture, this was before he dropped out at 16. Matt was real, he was a real person and every time I hung out with him I ended up dissociating…I don’t even know his last name, only that I think I remember it being something German sounding.
Damn you Matt! You crazy freakin bastahd!