The story

Writers often use personal experiences as inspiration for their creative work, including memories, environments, and encounters, and aspects of their internal landscape. However, when a writer has a mental health disorder that isn’t recognized by certain professionals in the mental health field, has been grossly sensationalized by Hollywood, and she’s ashamed of the diagnosis and the stigma, things can get a little dicey. 

 

They certainly did for Merrick, and while The Insiders started life as a whimsical story about the protagonist, Maria, moving to Royal Air Force Akrotiri, making new friends, and nearly crashing the plane once or twice, Merrick was determined to make Maria be ‘normal.’ The problem is that Merrick, the writer, has dissociative identity disorder, and by denying her internal experiences, as well as refusing to allow her protagonist to experience them, she was cutting off her nose to spite her face. 

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The final iteration of this book includes several (quirky) insiders and an interweaving of Maria’s inside and outside world experiences. Writing it has helped Merrick learn about who she is, why she’s the way she is, and to holler boo at shame––because shame is a creative killer. 

 

Merrick, the writer, has diagnosed dissociative identity disorder and she’s learning to own it.

Maria, the protagonist, has the disorder too, but she doesn’t have a clue why she’s the way she is.

Delvin, a teenage insider, and The Old Mother, the insiders’ Russian matriarch, will set both of them straight.