A little girl named Kim has been abused, over and over again. But she has found the perfect hiding place: she has ceased to exist. In her place, hundreds, maybe thousands of personalities, 'alters', have come out of her splintered consciousness. None is aware of the existence of any of the others. Patricia, who would eventually become the dominant personality, writes about what she can recall of her life, and slowly comes to terms with the idea that the huge chunks she cannot deny are missing from her memory, belong to other personalities who share her body.