Alter Integrates
I
was invited back to China for another semester and we hadn't been able to find
anyone to house Kristin, so we both returned to China, hoping the claims that the
air pollution
will lighten as the winter eases and less coal is burnt will be proven true.
The second semester was much like the first. I continued to lecture and teach the Bible study, and Kristin continued to teach Sunday school at the Three Self Church. We continued to cast out demons on the freeway overpass late at night, and I again got very little sleep. Kristin's skin and health, which had recovered in southeast Asia, worsened again in China's toxic air, which didn't improve and actually worsened during the semester even though the coal burning did decline as the weather warmed.
One day, I returned from lecturing and Kristin seemed different. When I asked what was going on, the two-year-old alter said that Kristin had gone "Bye Bye," meaning that she had integrated, because she couldn't stand my declining to marry her right away.
I couldn't believe it for two reasons. First, I had no idea that the adult Kristin had been an alter as well. I thought everyone else are alters and could and should integrate, but not her. And if she was an alter - an alternate personality - then who is the main personality of Kristin? Second, that Kristin was the one I had been with since the beginning, the one with whom I had bonded through more than a year of intense spiritual warfare, and the one I would marry, if she wanted, after all of the other alters have integrated. How could she just leave me like that, without even telling me that it was even possible for her to leave, that she was considering leaving, and leave without even saying goodbye?
I was devastated but had no time to grieve or process my loss because the two-year-old alter immediately introduced me to another alter whom she said is the new main Kristin. Lest she feel rejected, I put aside my sense of loss and tried to make the new main Kristin feel welcomed, but wondered how much of my time with the one who had just integrated she knew about, and how long she is going to hang around before she integrates as well.