Author's Notes

I was at work and on the phone with Kodi. I had just e-mailed her the latest revision of the poem "The Touch of Your Hand." She liked it, but said that she didn't have the reaction that I might have been looking for. She was scared because the poem brought up her intimacy issues. I tried to soothe her a little by telling her that it was just me. And I wasn't expecting anything from her. I simply wanted her to know how I was feeling. I'd repeated the phrase it's just me a few times and then she replied, "Hey, that would make a good title for a poem. And it could be written from both our perspectives." I agreed with her.

Later, I had the idea that we could collaborate on the poem. So, I wrote down the words that I had said to soothe Kodi and sent them to her in an e-mail, telling her to add the next few lines and send it back to me. Well, that went over like a lead balloon. She liked what I wrote, but she didn't want to help write the poem. She told me that she loves the way I write and that I could write her point of view better than she could, since she is not a poet. So, the second part of the poem is from Kodi's perspective, and I wrote it also.

Just in case you were wondering about the Borg reference, that's because Kodi is definitely a trekkie. But obviously, that's not the only reason I used it. If you're familiar with any of Kodi's work, then you know that her childhood was anything but perfect. She was abused by both parents from infancy until she was in her mid teens. To survive the years of abuse, Kodi's mind had to protect itself, which it did by splitting into many different personalities. When Kodi first told me that she had Multiple Personality Disorder (it's since been renamed to Dissociative Identity Disorder), she likened it to when Seven of Nine was connected to the Borg collective.

My friends really don't understand why or how I could love someone with MPD, but it's not as difficult as they imagine it to be. It's not like they show it in the movies, where the person is constantly freaking out or blacking out when they switch. Kodi has done a lot of work through therapy and on her own to become co-conscious and to reclaim her life, in order to become the person that she wants to be. So, I basically skipped the crisis stage she went through in the beginnning when she first started working through her childhood traumas. For me, I've always just seen her as simply Kodi. All the different personalities are just the many facets of who she is; they're all her rolled into one body. Granted, she still has a long way to go in her healing process, but I have no doubt in my mind that she will get there.

Kodi is a survivor, and I am so very proud of her. She is the best thing that has ever happened to me. She has changed my life in so many ways for the better. I can't imagine my life without her.

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