Shelley sent me those questions for the Blogger Insider project.

1. I’ve been looking forward to meeting all of you. Would I be likely to meet anyone other than Gabriel at a first meeting in person and what would the first meeting be like?
Most likely you would only meet me, Gabriel at the first meeting but it is possible that you would meet someone else though that depends a lot on the situatuation…

2. How have family members reacted when first meeting one of your other selves?
Most multiples have learned to “act” as one person…..and so did we for a very long time… I guess I’m lucky to have Sunna as my wife and her family around…. I can’t really tell how they reacted or fealt… but I know that most of them “knew” long before I got the diagnosis….
My father however is compleatly in denial over this and that’s all I have to say about him…

3. Would you please describe what it is like for you when you feel the urge to injure yourself? Is “urge” even a good way to describe it? Compulsion? Addiction? A voice? Or is it more of an unconscious or subconscious action?
At one point or another I guess all those apply to me….
The self injury was (and probably still is in away) a ritual based on the mother’s delusions…. and her ideas of who I/we really were. She belived we were evil, sent from hell (or where ever) to destroy other people… by manipulating people… that we would “win them over” and then making all sort’s of bad things happen… like everything from people loosing their jobs to people getting sick and/or dying… so at first or until the body was about 17 it wasn’t me (Gabriel or anyone of us inside) who did most of the injury…
Yes I think “urge” is a very good way to describe it… maybe it’s even more extreme than that…. I don’t know if I am addicted to hurting myself but I have been addicted to drugs and the “longing” for drugs is I guess a bit similar to wanting to hurt the body… at least it is for me….

It used to be “a voice” telling me to do it… most of the time I didn’t do anything to prevent me from hurting myself but if I did the voice became very “loud” and the only way for me to quiet that voice down was to hurt myself… or the owner of “the voice” would come out and hurt the body instead in a much more violent way than I probably would have….

If I were to describe how the urges are like for me now as I am trying to fight the urges… I guess it would be something like this….
I have been awake for a couple of hours…

most of the time in a good mode… even joking around with my friends…
then all of a sudden I start hearing a ringing sound that gets louder and louder as I try to ignore it…
(before I would usually self injure at this point and then before the “ringing” would get loud sometimes before I heard it)
I feal my heartbeat rising….
I feel cold and hot at the same time….
I start to feel that everything around me is unreal… like black swirl or like evertying is spinning…
my body starts shaking…..
This can take from a few minutes to a few hours…. the urges realy don’t go away tho but they become less intense and easier to fight….

4. I am truly sorry about the terrible losses you and your family have suffered. You have surely helped numerous other people who have experienced the death of a child, through your blog and your involvement with relevant support organizations. What does this commitment mean to you?
I’m not as active in grief support organizations as I used to be… I used to host in one of the chat rooms at GROWW in 1998-1999 and that helped me a lot…. I was helping other people in their grief and I was getting help for myself…. At GROWW I have met people that I will consider my life long friends even though I haven’t “talked” to many of them in a long time….. and I will probably never meet most of them if not all….

5. How are you and your wife, Sunna, able to be there as support for each other when you are each also trying to cope with your own grief?
I guess it is for us as it is for any other people…. we talk…share memories… hug each other and cry together….

6. What do you believe is your greater purpose in the universe?
I don’t know…. to stay alive ?

7. What is your best memory from childhood?
I was 13…. my Aunt Maria came for a visit and stayed with us for 2 years…

8. Favorite moment in The Wizard of Oz? Scariest?
can’t really think of any….

9. Favorite time/activity in your day?
The mornings

10. Imagine that you have been magically transported to the most beautiful, safe, and peaceful place in the universe. Describe where you are.
“Hundred Acre Wood” Do I need to say anything else? 🙂