There came a point in my recovery where I no longer fit my DID diagnosis. I was in a weird limbo where I was still dissociating, but it was getting less and less. My system was able to communicate and work together better than we ever had before. We had reached functional/healthy multiplicity and were on the road to final fusion.

Was it right to still call my experiences DID?

A lot of folks in the DID community reassured me that I still had my DID. I was told things like "DID is a life-long condition" and "even if you fully fuse, you can always split back into a system."

On one hand, hearing this was comforting. I had lived with DID for as long as I could remember. I couldn't imagine who I would be without it. On the other hand, I felt hopeless. DID is a double-edged sword. It was both the gift that allowed me to survive my trauma and the chains that kept me stuck in it.

I was so tired of being unable to live in the present. We were tired of the floatiness, the lagging communication, the inability to process what was in front of us as reality, the always not being here. Was it impossible for me to exist without dissociation? Would I always be like this?

Nope. I'm glad to say that things changed! I have been living happily without dissociation for years, now. Final fusion feels wonderful to us, and we are still plural even after reaching it.

But do we still have DID?

If you're of the opinion that plurality is only allowed to be DID, then I guess so. But if you think of DID as simply a diagnosis, a cluster of symptoms, then no. I don't have a "marked discontinuity in sense of self and sense of agency" or memory gaps anymore. I'm not distressed or impaired in any way.

If you think of DID as a neurodivergence, an altered form of brain development, then maybe it is reasonable to say that I still have DID. I will always have the capacity to dissociate to such an extreme...right?

Actually, maybe the answer on that is not so clear cut. There's evidence that psychotherapy can repair some of the neurological damage of PTSD, so who's to say that can't also happen with DID? Maybe I don't have the capacity to dissociate to the same level of DID anymore? I don't know and I don't want to find out (for hopefully obvious reasons).

Would I still have DID even if I couldn't split back into separate headmates, with amnesia to boot?

I'm not really asking for an answer here. I'm sure others will have their own varying opinions on where we fit. For me, though, I personally feel like I simultaneously still have DID and don't, but also neither.

Post-recovery is just weird like that.