may 19th

Anonymous asked: When you meet someone for the first time, how do you go about explaining to them what D.I.D. is and about the other alters? Would you do this right off the bat to get it out of the way?

This is something we’ve actually never done before, actually. For most of our collective life, safety and psychological survival depended on not telling anyone. So we ended up with a lot of “disconnected splinter alters,” basically robots who didn’t know or care about the rest of us, and functioned only to be the expected smile-and-nod.
In recent weeks life has become too overwhelming to stay hidden anymore, for various reasons. We’ve currently told two people outright that we have D.I.D., one being a doctor and the other being a family member (the latter having been unexpected, the result of an unannounced and undeniable alter fronting).

Also we don’t meet people very often, if at all. Social contact is extremely difficult and often triggering for us, so leaving the house is tough enough without having to converse with someone, sadly. Nevertheless, in an optimal situation, we would definitely say we had D.I.D. right off the bat— not to “get it out of the way,” per se, but because withholding that truth automatically forces us to lie about 95% of our entire life. We’re sick and tired of having to do that, to be blunt.

 

Still, even if we cannot answer this question, it is very valuable food for thought and we thank you for that.

 

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@ 11:58 pm

 

 

Last night was really interesting. (Dating this entry for that, not today-- I tried to type last night but the laptop kept crashing.)
Yesterday we unexpectedly ran into a few more things we cannot eat without terrible pain-- sadly that's what often happens when Emmett doesn't front.

(VERY sick, all day. don't remember much as a result.)
(got to the point where at midnight i had to get up and walk, just to relax. head was a mess, fuzzy and loud and bad. so i tried to calm down. laurie showed up, asked if i was okay. i noticed she was incredibly clear visually, told her so, then decided i'd go upstairs too. i sat down to her left and i remember i wasn't looking at her at first, i was struggling to figure out how to express emotions. she put an arm around my shoulders as i did, i remember actually leaning against her shoulder as i continued trying to talk, didn't think anything of that action at the time as it was just a natural expression of both emotional exhaustion and trust.)
(lynne walked in a few minutes in, she was wearing her flowy nightgown-pajama getup as usual. she sat on another couch slightly across from us, angled to the right. i'm glad she showed up; she's been around just as regularly as laurie lately which is great)
(anyway i ended up talking to headspace people for a solid hour, first time we've done that in a few weeks)

(atrium room? open roof. shiny floors, lynne joked about that. to our left, big glass wall, showed forest outside. there were circular little lights in the ceilings, i turned them down lower, then turned them out entirely, said the bright light didn't feel right at that hour. i was wondering what sort of light would work, said lanterns might. asked lynne to make some. she asked if she could, i said yeah, everyone in headspace post-december had 'creation abilities' or at least the total potential to. so lynne made these big floating paper lanterns-- the spherical kind, all warm orange light. they were like 12 inches across. we had them float up in the air above us. i remember how amazing it was seeing how different they both looked in the lower warm light, images were really clear. laurie also made her own lantern, it was violet of course. oh yeah the three of us also 'manifested' energy differently, like when we called something into tangibility it was a totally different style and vibe for each of us. i'll have to make note of that phenomenon later as i see it happen; i don't quite remember it now)
(we ended up talking, forget about what, but a noteworthy topic was how i kept dissociating, had trouble feelings things and being a direct person, etc. old stuff but still happening. i think i was in tears because i said i felt 'cut off' from the rest of them sometimes, being the only person charged to be in the body as much as possible, what with the core bloodline and all. it got confusing and it was a real struggle some days. at one point lynne moved her seat over in front of me and began talking to me, very sternly but with real compassion, about that-- saying that everyone in the spectrum loved me just as much as i loved them, and as far as they were concerned, i was not 'separate' at all even if i was the core, so to speak. i was just another dude in the system, and i was just as worthy and meaningful and great as everyone else to everyone else. that meant so much to hear. either way lynne actually teared up too? i remember her wiping tears out of her eyes. that struck me because she usually has level enough emotions to not need to cry. i think she also hugged me. that whole conversation with her was very significant)
(I know for a FACT that infinitii showed up at some point around here, i heard hir call me from hir bubble and was going to go into it, when infi noticed i was preoccupied and came down into the room instead. i ended up embracing hir rather ardently when ze first appeared, quietly though, i was overwhelmed and sad by the day's events and infi always brings out that sort of reaction in me, it was cathartic really. i think i spoke to hir by myself for a bit, we made sure the both of us were okay, no threats or anything, and then infi decided ze'd stick around. so ze sat to my left on a bubble-chair sort of thing ze manifested, talked to the three of us for a while, it was really great.)
(there was also some sort of joke on infi's part; i was saying how i just couldn't fully stabilize into a human form, kept trying to look a bit more alien. laurie said that was fine, no one was going to judge me, i could look however i felt. i wondered aloud if i'd end up looking anything like infi. ze laughed at that, said ze wouldn't recommend it, as i'd "have trouble walking with [these] feet," and lifted one leg in an almost pinup-like style to show hir infamous needle feet. i laughed and asked how ze did walk with those then? like i knew ze couldn't figure out walking with human feet, how did hir weight carry normally? infi said ze'd show me, linked me into hir body awareness and then got up and walked a bit. now that was cool, also weird as heck; infi doesn't quite carry weight in the way most physical things do! ze's somewhat 'floaty' in that sense; hir entire makeup is black energy of course, so it has tangible substance, but it doesn't really pay much attention to gravity in and of itself. hard to explain; it feels almost "expectant," like it's this totality of form all just held there, in that space. actually that works! it's like it's in space. it still has weight, but it's floating in that held spot. anyway that's why there's no superdense pressure in infi's feet. geez love why are you so impossible to put into words)
(leon and nat walked in at one point, both also in sleepwear, nat's is so similar to his normal outfit it took me a second to notice which was funny. leon was barefoot too. they only meant to stop in for a minute but they ended up being there for quite a while)
(lynne had them both make lanterns too, leon didn't think he could at first but nat reassured him. leon's looked so pretty (indigo light!) that we temporarily turned all the lanterns in the room indigo for a minute. that made everyone's colors look really weird, haha. also nat laughed at lynne about the lights, and him being a moth, ultimately he actually flew up to them for a minute, they were both cracking up.)
(by this point they figured they'd stick around so they jokingly asked "what's the topic" and lynne mentioned the problems i was having with self-worth and identity in the system. in response i clearly remember leon talking very sincerely to me about that, again words are not available as data but the feeling is there. he said i meant a lot to him, especially since i was the only person to say he deserved another chance at life back in 2010. but he reassured me that no one thought of me any less. nathaniel spoke up when he was finished, i know he didn't say much, but i remember how he was once the body's reflection holder so he was familiar with a lot of the old struggle. the thing i remember him doing is making a heart-shape with his hands, over his own chest, and smiling at me. he said to "remember that." again the impression was to remember self-love as well as love for others, sorry it's hard to put all this into text. but the two of them did help a lot)
(leon and nat were tired and were trying to go to sleep but kept getting caught up in conversation, wondering 'should we just sit down already or not,' then when they finally decided to leave, suddenly jo and wally appeared in the doorway and asked what was going on in there. we thought this was hilarious)
(we jokingly 'telepathically' checked on javier around here, he wasn't asleep yet but it was close. he laughed when he heard what was going on, said he might have to join in. i said he didn't have to if he was tired. somehow he ended up mentally telling leon to go to sleep, as we mentioned that, everyone ended up laughing. but at that nat and leon did leave, we all wished them well)
(jo and wally were hovering around the doorway for a bit (wally also referenced the "princess of chairs" injoke for some reason, laurie laughed out loud at that), we asked why, they said they weren't sure if they were interrupting anything. we said no, but then jo said he'd sit down except that infi was there, and he'd never really dealt with infi's energy in a room before (it forces people to be more open and 'quiet,' instead of brightly energetic). somehow he decided he'd join us anyway, sat down directly across from infi actually, to laurie's right. the conversation was a bit awkward at first because he was really kind of moody and touchy at first? wally was being a bit pushy, but playfully so, except jo reacted angrily to that, they almost ended up bickering. it reminded me of genesis, what with that sort of fiercely independent streak, i mentioned that to jo. said it was kind of a 'yellow' thing, at least in that saturated a hue. however the sort of aggressiveness he was showing felt like more of a tar thing. we figured that was because it was late, and the subconscious gets really powerful late at night, hence the hack threats and slippage. so we just all decided to be extra careful. jo apologized, as did wally, we said that was okay, but we were all a bit shaken then, it's always creepy when people start acting instinctively.)
(somehow that uneasy intro ended up letting jo open up rather quickly, i think it was just the emotional whiplash so to speak. again not sure how it built up to it, but he said he was kind of angry because he and wally were out of the loop again? and he wanted to be, he was tired of getting the tail ends of conversations and things. he continued on this for a bit, then at some point somehow segued into the fact that he hadn't forgiven himself for how he met cannon in 2010. i was surprised, i said i never held that against him, there wasn't even a memory of it for me. my literal first impression of jo was seeing him standing next to laurie after all that, that's the only data i have. i asked him if he remembered the pseudo-hack he was blaming himself for, he said no, that was mutable space so he had no concrete recollection either. but he felt terribly guilty because he knew how that sort of thing felt, and how terrifying hacks were, etc. so having been part of something similar was really eating away at him. i actually felt a sort of visceral rage bubble up at that, not from me but from the people who hold that, not wanting to forgive simply because they were feeling nothing but pain. that scared me, i'm still not sure how to properly deal with them as i get overwhelmed. but i reassured jo that it was okay now, i didn't tie him to that, it was in the past, it was okay. the whole time waldorf was rather surprised too, she had said "you still haven't forgiven yourself for that?" at the start, like they had discussed this on their own.)
(at the end of all that jo was angry-sad and ended up half-demanding where julie and spine were, the other two that were often missing from conversations. lynne looked notably pained upon realizing spine hadn't been around, but i think one of us actually called for julie then? we put the intention out in any case.)
(forgive me if this next bit is blurry; the later it got the tougher it got to keep things stable so memory is off)
(either way, julie did end up walking in, from outside actually (back behind infi there was a door). she seemed really sad? she stopped at the entrance, laurie actually stood up in surprise first, we didn't expect her to show up there. we called her over, i remember laurie hugged her, i think they talked for a bit too. but then julie started talking to lynne and i, i think? she talked a lot, that i can tell you; she was very emotionally upset and wanted to express her thoughts.)
(i remember infi was comforting her at one point, they were talking rather familiarly as they did so, it suddenly hit me that 'wait a minute weren't they technically 'dating' at one point?' but i had to smile, it was a really genuine caring between then which i always love seeing in others. textbook pink energy, the real kind)
(something REALLY WEIRD happened around here?? everyone noticed that i couldn't talk without dissociating, and physical contact even upstairs was pushing me into danger zones. i said it was freaky because i felt people being 'triggered' even then, as anchor resonance, didn't know how to deal with that. laurie and julie wanted to see what happened, for their own individual reasons obviously. i said the kind of contact changed the trigger, so i asked laurie to kind of push me, like it was a joke. she was hesitant to do so, but did. immediately the reaction was matching-- since it was 'a joke,' the person triggered was jezebel, who acts with that sort of attitude (hard to put into words? like when people pull really dangerous pranks, or think hate jokes are funny, pushed up to 11. it's a sort of "i'm better than you, so abusing the shit out of you is fun to me" extreme stance), and who apparently can be triggered through me if we're not careful. shockingly, the second her energy was superimposed over mine, julie tried to grab it. this shocked me back in totally, julie got mad, told laurie to push me again. she did, jezebel snapped right back with the intent to start a brawl (again, with the "legitimately grinning as i strangle you" feeling; just hit me that the word is schaudenfreude), but julie was quick, grabbed her by the shoulders and literally ripped her out of my energy field. that was really strange visually-- her aura was a sort of blackish brown, and really 'unstable' around the edges, like someone layered lines of white ink over each other messily. when julie tossed her out, laurie was in shock that it was her, everyone grabbed their weapons straightaway. she melted into tar almost immediately and reared up huge, i got scared for a second, but then infinitii jumped up just as intimidating with hir wings. there was a second of charged silence and then they both jumped in attack at once, but infi wasn't fighting ze was trying to swallow all the tar energy so 'jezebel' (who is the tar in a physical form) would have to reform elsewhere, leaving us alone. needless to say ze won, but had to go into hir bubble to transmute all that i think? i really don't remember, i'm sorry. ze wasn't in there for too long though)
(there was some reference to jo being the old "id reaper," i think he said it himself, i remember him holding his scythe. julie told him to stick around because she said "we could really use one of those" in light of recent things.)
(anyway we ended up trying a different contact trigger, i forget what though? it was something neutral like a hand on a shoulder. but the reaction was rabid and i couldn't even hold up-- it triggered wreckage and she flat-out SPRANG out of my energy field to face julie, like she literally jumped out of my aura like it was a warpgate and entered the room. she was vicious as hell at first, snarling at julie, then stopped suddenly. she looked really confused and discombobulated. also her physical form wasn't stable, it felt blurry, colors were off. then i noticed she had a tail, that wasn't right. i called her out on it, she noticed and actually quickly apologized. her energy field wavered massively for a second, then split entirely in half. now she was standing there looking fine, but SPINE appeared next to her, looking as if she was about to collapse from exhaustion. lynne jumped up and caught her, eased her over to the couch next to her, we all asked what the heck just happened?? she said she had felt a trigger threat inside, from our level, but in order to 'jump up to it' and go through the body she HAD to move with spine, who was tied to the body still. again i don't know how to put into words. she apologized though, especially to spine. however she ended up "snapping back" to her own chthonic level and practically blinking out of the room, because she had been 'trigger summoned' if you want to call it that; she couldn't stick around unless she really focused to and she hadn't been doing that.)
(as you can guess stuff was very weird around now. jo had been very shaken up by that, also julie, who was in tears shouting at the rest of us after that, "why are triggers still that severe," she was heartbroken that the pink energy was still being mangled even if it wasn't as blatant as it had been before.)
(jo and wally left around here, they were really worn out and headspace was getting fuzzy anyway)
(lynne and spine were talking for a bit? it's so great to hear and see spine talk, she used to be so quiet. lynne was really doing everything to comfort her, it was touching. i know the conversation there was actually partly me apologizing, not realizing how spine was affected by switching and things, i was really sorry as i cared for her a lot too. but that talk ended well, although there was a sort of nervous scared charge in the air, we were holding on to trust in each other though. lynne said she was going to take spine to their room and they were just going to sleep this off, we wished them well.)
(i cannot remember what exactly happened here, just me julie laurie and infi, i know we talked but i cannot tell you about what. however the atmosphere obviously changed entirely, the four of us tend to be more introspective and emotionally charged than the others in central)
(infi also had to enclose hirself in a bubble at this point, ze was getting 'giddy' thanks to the time, but that can easily turn into massive danger zone. so ze was just trying to calm down and keep everyone else safe.)
(do not ask me how, but cz showed up??? and that was bizarre because HE was slipping thanks to the headspace energy, and almost immediately infi actually leapt out of hir bubble and declared that 'that wasn't him' or something? and immediately forced cz to 'split' like julie had done with me earlier. and he DID split into two people-- the one being his 'Perfect' self but in a body close to his normal one. that was so weird and scary, but even worse that total cognitive dissonance almost caused a BLUESCREEN. stuff totally glitched out and tried to 'reset,' the environment collapsed and we ended up in whitespace. we took a minute to regroup, everyone but me & infi had some time lag too. but then we wondered, where do we go, what now, and actually julie was the one to act, sent us into a 'pink realm' which i didn't know was even a thing? i felt our position in space warp and then we ended up in some lovely sunset place, in what was like a big gazebo or pagoda, cherry trees everywhere. and the other pink people were there, knife was standing on the steps near us and turned around, shocked to see us.)
(julie tried to quickly explain what was up, but really i was having a hard time seeing or hearing at all at this point, everything was like a jumbled mess of color and shape. also cz hadn't followed us there, he had gone back to our room in central (or wherever it technically is now), laurie said. no one said anything about him because obviously no one knew what the heck had just happened, really i was shaken up, i didn't realize that was a thing that could happen. unfortunately i haven't looked into that since then, i'll have to tomorrow)
(jeremiah and sugar and mulberry were there, only ashen wasn't. knife said that was because she is still totally chthonic, the people there typically don't leave that space. everyone was mostly talking to julie, infi was staying by me, we were both kind of nervous because we react badly to headspace instability, as we're tied to that energy and so we can slip very badly and honestly we were both close to that point. laurie was kind of shifting her attention between us and everyone else, trying to get a hold on the whole situation. jeremiah spoke to me briefly? and i remember sugar doing something like lightly tapping me on the head with one of her cane swords, like a kind admonishment of sorts. she looked stern but concerned.)
(i remember telling laurie i felt a mess, after julie finished talking i think we either went back to the room from before, or i had to unplug from headspace (the house was getting noisy around then, yes at 1am). either way headspace was really a mess at that time i had no idea what was happening or why. i was sad i couldn't stick around more-- even if the night had been shaky at the end i really loved seeing everyone and the sincerity of the whole hour had stayed with my heart very strongly.)
(minty checked on me before i went to sleep, the bear was fighting off shadows momentarily? he insisted he was fine though, it literally took him about five seconds then he walked over closer to say a few words to me personally.)

(today genesis was around mostly, trying to keep me stable, i was still recovering and a bit dissociated. body was weak and still a bit sick. spice showed up in the evening to prevent any eating troubles, i know i saw emmett and tobiko too, helping out. that was a huge relief.)
(also laurie ghosted for like a minute earlier, i had to toss something on the compost heap outside so i was running through the woods. the sun through the trees was super lovely, and i guess instead of just viewing it from upstairs laurie decided she'd join me. i literally did not realize until i 'felt' someone running to my left and noticed it was her, that was a shock! but it was nice, i really smiled at that.)
(lastly as you may have noticed, the victorian pink girl has tentatively chosen the name "ashen." every time i thought of her over the past week that name would come up, so we're using it for now. it may change, it may stick. but there it is.)


sorry for the stream-of-consciousness entry but that is the only way i can ever type these things.
now it is late and i am tired so i am going to sleep, good night everyone