Second Map: The Box

I started with the kind of plastic box that people use to hold screws and bolts, and decorated the drawers. The drawers serve both as representations of the insiders and as places where each insider can keep things that are her's alone.

The top row of drawers has to do with the process--one drawer (lined with yellow fabric and holding seven smooth white stones) for God with me, one for an analogy from when my insiders rearranged that it was like rearranging the same set of building blocks, one holding colored pencils to symbolize the writing in different colors.

The second row of drawers has a bird on a nest in the drawer on one end and a stone egg in a drawer lined with red fur on the other end. In between are drawers representing memories and two issues I particularly struggle with (blame, and the things I still long for that I didn't get as a child).

The bottom three rows represent specific insiders (alters). The third row of drawers has one drawer for each of the 8 colors who usually write in my letters to my therapist--the adult parts. These are lined in the appropriate color fabric and mostly contain necklaces that represent the different parts, some also have prayers or notes. Pink--the adult part who carries the dreams of the little ones--has more of a collection. She has put in her drawer a small pompom, a shiny penny, a foreign coin our therapist gave her, and two tootsie rolls, as well as a necklace. The next row is for the teenagers, and the bottom row is for the little ones.

The purpose of the box is so that each part will have her own private place, a drawer that is hers only and where she can keep things that belong only to her. I do see it as a map, but that is a secondary function. I don't want to confine the parts to fit the map. For a long time, I actually carried the box to therapy each week in a big yellow bag I made myself.

I have made a table below that represents the box. Some of the parts represented have their own pages.

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