 It'd be really interesting to pick up on the stuff around DID because it's not something that a lot of people are aware of, and I think that, you know, there's also a lot of stigma around it. So it'd be really good to sort of understand a little bit more about it. Where do I start? Well, basically, it all started in my adolescent age when I had a traumatic experience. My father died and I couldn't cope with it at all because my family did not really appreciate me displaying any emotions, and I basically wasn't allowed to live through the things that I was experiencing. Any time when I would mention that I might be depressed, I might need some assistance with that, and it was all brushed off and I was told that I'm making things up. And I couldn't understand what was going on, but I was gradually shoving all my emotions more and more into a separate place of my brain where I wouldn't have to live through them. I would just get rid of them, but that's not how it works. You cannot just throw stuff away out of your brain. It just doesn't work that way. Basically it was then already where I already understood that something wrong is going on, and I started feeling that I'm not alone here. There's something going on all the time. I would just sometimes go from one part of the brain into another if that makes sense, and I could feel that there is absolutely two... I actually thought there was more, but at that point I felt that there's two people inside of me that don't share anything during the day, let's say, with the people I don't trust. I would be one person and I would be basically like they expected me to be and what they wanted me to be, but at night I would be another person and absolutely different. And because I was not allowed to be that person, that person was always there in the closet. And with time, at first it was possible to organize it in a way where the person in the closet was just hiding there, just coming back sometimes whenever it was allowed to. But then two years ago what happened, and it is where my music story began, this person just sprung up and couldn't be handled anymore. It's actually me. My other self is still there and now it's the reversal. Now she's trying to get back into the picture. And what happened there is basically... Well, I got diagnosed a year ago and this is when finally things started making sense because what happened two years ago was that when things started unraveling at very fast speed and they couldn't be controlled anymore, there were so many things that really tragic things that happened where relationships were broken, lives were broken. So many things happened. I don't really share much about that because it's not my life. It's the life of... You don't need to... Thank you. No, it's the life of my other self. There were people involved who lost her as a person. Some of them actually admitted that that person died even though she's still here. But I cannot allow her to get back into the picture because she lived her life for 10 years, not allowing me in. So now we've agreed that this is my time. But yeah, basically there are two lives being lived within this body. And if years ago this was... The situation were handled the right way. If there were therapy, if my emotions were not disregarded, this wouldn't have happened. And again, I cannot really open up on everything that happened because it's my other self, other personalities life. As you can see, I'm wearing a mask and I don't disclose my name purely because I don't want anyone to know because she had a stellar career, a family, lots of friends, everyone who knew her. And all those people don't need to know what's happening to me right now. So basically all this could have been prevented with therapy and which is why I feel the absolute need to share my story, to make sure that people know what that is like and to make sure that that doesn't happen to someone they know and they love. Well, thank you for being so open and sharing that with me and us. I had a period of my life actually where I was contemplating whether I had DID. I was going through this very crazy time when you reach adolescence as an autistic person or as anyone really, it can be quite a hectic time. You don't really know what you feel about certain things. You don't know where to place yourself. You don't know who you are as an individual and you're trying to assert yourself as a new person. And one of the things that I always really struggled with is emotions. And I found it very sort of disassociating and almost existential, just how different I felt in different emotional states. Now that I'm an adult, I know that the things that I experienced was more along the lines of Alexa Fiamia, the fact that I just couldn't actually put my finger on exactly how I was feeling. I just felt differently. So I was like, oh, I must be a different person. So I did a little bit of research into it, but I know that there has been a lot of stigma around it and I can't imagine how that must feel for people such as yourself. I really appreciate you being open about this. Just the topic that we're talking about today is around sort of neurodiversity and creativity. I don't know whether it's my place to ask how the idea has sort of influenced your creativity or is that something that you feel able to talk about? Oh, easy. It's actually the very reason of my creativity. Because people ask me a lot like, how do you find so much inspiration? I am just bursting with inspiration. I create things nonstop, like all the time. I don't even have to look for anything. Why? Because all those years where I was stuck in that closet and I was just collecting all the negative material, the funny thing is that literally us too, exactly because of how the split happened and because of the particularities of why it happened. I was the one receiving all the negativity and I am the pessimistic one. She is optimistic like the change when there was a switch between us, the most recent one. Everyone who knew her were astonished how everything changed in an instant. There's an absolutely different person. Because I got all the dark and negative stuff into me. But that is the reason why I could create so much. But everything I create comes from darkness. I tried many times to create something positive because I actually want to be nice to the world. I want to do good things. So I thought, why don't I create some nice tunes for people to chill to? It doesn't work. I can only create from all the dark experience that I had over the whole of my life. And all of this baggage has been within me and now it's bursting. So also I kind of feel that we have assigned parts of the brain that are assigned only to us because that personality didn't even listen to music. She couldn't create anything at all. She didn't draw. She didn't take pictures. She didn't do music not even close to that. Whereas I think we also are ambidextrous, which means that... I'm sorry, that's my phone. I hope it doesn't bother you. It sounds like an ice cream truck. Yeah, that's the sound for my speech. So it's basically that we're ambidextrous. I can write with both hands. So she was a right-handed person. I am like, I'm not left-handed, but I can use both hands freely probably because my part of the brain is the right side of it. So basically I think this is also one of the things that apply to my creativity but also to the mental condition. I'm used to not opening up on those things. And with music I started being much, much more open. And all my songs are basically like every single song that I ever made was inspired by some event that made me very emotional and very unhappy. And I just wrote a song about it. Basically the whole music project was around that. I was just like you writing poetry first. And then I also realized that... My mom was the same. My mom was the same. She's yet to show me this very depressing poetry, but I'm waiting for it. Yeah, well, depressing poetry. Then I realized that I actually want to sing that poetry. Then I realized that there is no one really there to help me and make music for it. So I'm going to do it myself. So I went to school to study music production. And there we are. But it's always about those verses. It's always about getting those things out there. And I just recently released my first EP, which has five songs. And all of those five songs are based on five different emotions and events that I went through over the course of last year. And this is also something that brings my audience to me and makes people relate to what I do. But yeah, I think without that, I might have still been struggling with getting the thoughts out of my head and living through that. Because again, there was this a lot of forbidden feelings, like feelings that I'm not allowed to do those things and also thanks to the project. I also prove to myself and others that I exist. Which is, again, as you mentioned with DAD, one of the things that appears quite often is that people with DAD feel like that thing doesn't even exist because of the society, how the society views it. But even worse, the people with DAD already feel that they don't exist. So they don't have to have a society to tell them that. Because it's always like, oh, maybe I'm actually that person. Maybe everyone wants me to be that person. Maybe I actually am. Maybe I'm not myself. Maybe I'm her. And that's where it's the most frustrating. And I actually wrote a song about that too. And it's like one of the most dramatic things I've ever written. It's just it's really painful to struggle to understand who you are and whether you exist. And again, thanks to that, thanks to my music project. I find people who are like me, I can think those things through. So yeah, this is how creativity basically helped me with my mental health issues. I think it's quite a good if I try and make a little bit of a comparison I mean, you know, like that in the past, there was a lot of mystery around autism, you know, the basis of what people understood about it was through movies like Rain Man. That was kind of people's perception of what autism is. You know, as the world has sort of progressed and people autistic adults and advocates and allies have got online to talk about it and sort of, I guess, address the stigma and sort of give the reality of living on the spectrum. People start to, I guess, take it a bit more seriously. You know, like you can definitely see a contrast between people nowadays that you talk to who use like social media and who actively, you know, go on and search things and watch content on YouTube and, you know, there's a lot more opportunities for them to really be exposed to neurodiversity, I guess, things related to autism. And even though it is debatable, but even though we are a portion, a minority of the population, because of social media, we can all congregate in this massive online circle, which is very big, you know, if you take the world's population to be to be conservative based on the stats, 2%, it's probably more than that 2% of what is it like, 7, 8 billion? There's still quite a lot of people. And I guess, you know, one of the issues that might be, you know, a problem, you know, the problem for me talking to perhaps the older generation, like my grandparents about it, is that they just have no idea how to relate at all. They don't have any comprehension. I can imagine that considering the rates of DID and also the stigma around it, it's going to be very, very, very difficult to be able to be open about it, be able to genuinely tell people about it without, I guess, receiving, you know, the judgment, I guess. Do you think that would be a good comparison, or is that? Well, first thing I did when starting this project was just to actually cut off myself from everyone in my life who was from her life, from the past life, because I know that those people would not understand at all because of how different we are. So, like, all her best friends, all her, like, very close people, they would not understand a thing of what's going on. And I just realized that it's just, if it's impossible to explain, although, again, admittedly, there were people who understood that something has happened, but when I approached them with a diagnosis, some of them, and that was also quite a pain. They were saying that, no, you need to search for another doctor, which I did, by the way, I actually had two doctors diagnosed me, just, you know, to be sure. And, yeah, so I just realized that I need to be around people who actually are willing to understand neurodiversity, at least for the time being, before it becomes, not mainstream, but like something that the world understands, because right now it's like, it's growing. Yeah, it's growing, exactly. And so, yeah, I don't, I'm not thinking about it yet. I know that for now, with my audience as is, I can already see that there are so many people who appreciate what I do, and they appreciate what I'm sharing with the world, and they actually understand it. I don't know whether it's the way I'm explaining it that is more, not relatable, but like people tend to understand what I'm trying to explain, or is it the people, because my audience is like pretty niche because of the genre, but somehow those things came together, and I don't think like over the over the year that since I started, I would have only one or two people who wouldn't believe me. And even then, I provided arguments, there's I have a quite a few things that can make anyone just stop and listen, because I can even like if I if I give a picture, there were people, well, I don't share my face too much, but like, if I if I do it in a safe way, like, there you go, look, is that the same person? And my other self actually doesn't look like me, which is, which is crazy, but it's been proven by scientists that some people with DID might develop biologically, physically different appearances, which is crazy. But yeah, we don't we don't share too much aside of our history, our parents, our like background, but otherwise, we're very different. And so I can easily prove to people who don't trust me. But luckily, there's very many people who who do trust me who understand that such things can happen in the smart world. And there is a reason why why that happened. So somehow, so far, I've been very lucky that I don't have to go out of my own way to prove myself. But still, yeah, I am I'm getting ready for for those things to to happen one day. And I don't know, maybe to a diagnosis could help. Yeah, I think it's it's crazy, just like so I was talking about like the Rain Man film around autism and stuff. And, you know, there is there is a lot of movies and a lot of films out there which hinge upon the the the idea of split personalities of multiple personalities. Like that sounds very like in my head, that sounds very similar to the effects that that Rain Man's had on society. Like, I think there was a film, what called Split, about the I can't remember his name, the bald headed do do goes crazy and is a personality where he like crawls on the walls and stuff. Like, do you think that that that kind of sort of sensationalized media is kind of harmful to I guess, I guess individuals like yourself? I did think about that. I'm not sure it depends on how narrow you look at the movie. If you look at the movie and say, oh, if that's how it happens, then it's happening all the way through. Although what I liked about this movie is that it portrays the people with D.I.D. as very unique systems. This is what it is. Like, there's very unique systems. If you can have two people inside one head, then and and it's already something different to what you see from other people, right? So how many actually different mixes of different people could there be? So it's like, OK, in one in one system, there might be evil personalities in another system. There might be all harmful personalities in my system. The one thing that kind of makes us similar is that there are like two very hardworking individuals. This is, I think, something that we relate on and that that's probably genetic, some very we're very energetic and and hardworking. Well, I don't know, just just that. And so which is why we're I think we're pretty adequate and we can actually communicate with each other as opposed to other systems where where there's like absolute chaos and people those personalities within the one hand cannot agree with each other. But yeah, I I I actually did like the concept like how they explained it that those those changes in one's brain can be very unique and that those changes can actually be even physical, which is true. This is what I have have seen in. We even have like different weight, for instance, is like my my balanced weight, I don't change from from my weight now and and she was struggling with her weight, which is 10 kilos more and she couldn't lose weight ever. I didn't even have to. I didn't do anything. It's just disappeared. She she was binge eating all the time when she was stressed. When I'm stressed, I don't eat at all. I just I hate food like that's how bad it is. And this is this like different hormonal systems, different physical, like, my rhythms and stuff. This is how crazy the difference are differences are. Thank you very much for that. I am. Yeah, it's it's really interesting to me to to, you know, I'm always very very keen and very interested in learning about different, you know, brains and their experiences. And I'm always, you know, I'm always very I guess I just want to say that I I appreciate you sort of telling me about it. Um, thank you very much for that, no tricks.