oneword entries 2018

ceiling

There was no ceiling, in fact. There never had been. The room was domed by open sky, by endless stars, by soaring comets and brilliant nebulae and all sorts of cosmic treasures. The room had no floor, either; there were only endless miles of green, of blue, of brown and red and yellow– trees and fields and oceans and rivers, mountains and hills and canyons and caves, plateaus and tundras and deserts and dunes. What were walls, to a world. What were borders, what were boundaries, what were limits? What was a ceiling but a nonsense word, a nonexistent cap on an infinite climb, a vertical ascent stretching out beyond the atmosphere? There was no ceiling, there never would be, and life rejoiced for it forevermore.

2018 tumblr

JUNE 16

What's the weather like in your inner world?

-untilthevoidstaresback

Weather seems very context-locked? It doesn’t vary much. Certain areas are Always sunny, or Always rainy, or Always foggy, etc.
Central City always has clear skies with huge non-storm clouds that move through rarely for aesthetic effect, be it day or night. 
The view from the Core Room is perpetually snowing outside. We don’t know where this opens to physically.
We’ve never really seen rain in headspace? Which is shocking, as we adore the rain, but we’ll have to go looking for it. 
We also adore foggy weather, but we’ve only Ever seen it on the beach in a “out of phase” state, years ago. Fog is usually a sign of “unstructured headspace” which means if you walk into it there’s really nothing there. It’s just white fog.

If rain and unusual weather is going to be anywhere, it’ll likely be in the Color Realms– we know for a fact that the Indigo Realm is foggy & snowy, for example, and that does not vary. So it’s good food for thought! We shall find out.

Thank you so much for this good question!

What’s your inner world like? Are there any places you and your system like to go in it? Do any of them have their own lives in the head space -the self conscious system

-Anonymous

Oh man, it’s MASSIVE. 
The main area is called Central City. It’s a city about the size of Charlotte, NC (apparently; we just moved here and it seems legit), with mountains on one side, a beach & ocean on another side, and rolling green hills on either end. These green areas stretch out (theoretically) into what we call Heartspace– this is where the worldwalls of Headspace blur and bleed into dreams, where one can access imagination realms & such (these areas “belong” to the Jewel bloodline). 
Central City is unusual in that is is the “hub” of headspace but it exists hypervertically. The very top of it, the skyline, is perpetually nighttime, and the sky is spangled with galaxies and nebulae and more stars than you can count. Moving downwards to the level of houses and apartments, though, the city becomes bright sunny daytime. This area is called “Midspace.”
There is also a LOT underground. There is “Lowspace” first, which is slightly below ground level but still open to the air. Then there is the “Underground,” which is just what it says on the tin, and is full of catacombs and cisterns and such. Below that is the “Chthonic” realm, which is all caves and lava tubes and such. There are also MANY unmapped areas, areas that exist “slightly off-center” to the rest of reality (like Darkspace), isolated areas of “Bubblespace,” Daemon Realms, the Archives, et cetera. 
Then there are the Color Realms, which we have NO Idea where they exist in physical space, but there is one for every Spectrum Color and they are currently being explored and researched and built!

In general, the main internal managers live in Central– the main penthouse meeting area of Central City. A handful of casual folks live in Midspace, a lot of anxious kids live in Lowspace, the Retributors live in the Underground, and the Chthonics are full of traumatized people. Basically, your function determines where you naturally are born and live, although you can travel. 
We are internally-based so we, by default, ALL live inside. Our physical life was so chronically disturbing to our mental state that we didn’t really live consciously in our body; those that did ONLY lived in the body as they needed to stay isolated from the inside to protect us from trauma, and they couldn’t know about anyone else in order to preserve our disparate functions as well. 

Our current struggle is learning to talk to our Social subsystem and teach them that they don’t have to live in constant paranoid compulsive self-abusive fear on the Outside. They, at large, cannot even comprehend an “inner life,” let alone a sense of self-awareness enough to imagine themselves within. But we’re learning and working and making progress.

We know that’s a ton of general info on short notice but we hope that’s at least a substantial introduction!
 

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JUN 15

Hi! We’re a system of 8 (that we know of). I’m really curious, what’s it like being such a big system?! Is it like this one person has their own alters that have their own alters or?? Sorry if we seem rude! We’re super interested in how polyfragmentation works.

-confusedcohort

We’re all actually our own people, for the most part! A handful of us have “their own alters” but even then they Can exist apart within the System. 
Honestly, for us, polyfragmentation is a result of our psyche Needing hyperspecialized alters. We have a Lot of trauma and distress to deal with, across several contexts, so our System responded by making Many Very Specific Alters instead of a handful with very complex jobs. That’s too distressing, confusing, and dangerous for us. For example, we have a trauma-rooted eating disorder, and we literally have alters that exist to eat specific foods because No One Else Can, and that is THEIR specific job. For us, it couldn’t work any other way.
Polyfragmentation typically occurs alongside CPTSD, which we do have– when traumatic events become chronic and inescapable, sometimes a handful of alters just cannot survive.They break after so long. No, to get through such a war, you need an army. Which is what we got.
It can be overwhelming– switching can be Super fast and disorienting, and there can also be a Ton of people hovering about any any point, waiting in the wings to jump out Just In Case danger occurs– but it’s become normalized for us after so many years. It’s no less complex or difficult, but we at least know how to manage it. We know it’s for our health and survival and so we all respect each other’s roles, no matter how small they may seem, because Without that specific alter, we would Not have been able to Survive that situation in the past in one way or another.
Not only that, but many of us have purely Internal functions, operating solely within Headspace for the sake of psychological management, whereas others only work in Bodyspace, taking care of physical and social functions that Internally rooted alters often can’t even comprehend– they have no Need to, for their own jobs. So specificity is key.
Hope that makes sense? We love answering D.I.D. questions (this is our terrible beloved life after all) so don’t hesitate to ask some more if you’re curious!

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JUN 7

me: please tell me how to obtain success, my god.  I am so simple, and so small, and I feel the flames of destruction licking at my heels at all hours

you, an enormous yellow flower extending into the heavens: 

(via snakestack)

#system spirituality #this moves our heart to weeping #one of our favorite posts in the world #yellow #flowers #god concept #words


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MAY 13

"[To the Lotus Cathedral:] I know there are many of you, so the image of you all together I get as a follower, for the types of people meme: matchstick people. Sometimes, you ignite an inferno and there’s chaos, and sometimes, you light a candle peaceful and comforting. You have promise and potential, and you always bring light and hope to the dark."
- Anonymous

We really adore this. We’ve always identified heavily with fire, for good and Ill, and this is a perfect representation of it. Fire burns, and that burn can sterilize or sacrifice or scourge or shine. It brings both life and death, both warmth and pain, both a light to comfort and a light to blind. It’s a hearth and it’s a heat wave, it’s a candle and a conflagration. Fire is at our very heart and we all carry it so differently, all of us igniting that spark from our very selves. We are indeed a matchstick people. It’s a good thing to remember and meditate on, it’s so dear to our heart.
Thank you so much for this response.

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MAY 7

So, Our collective body turns 28 years old today. Gosh we’re so much older than we feel, haha. Multiplicity will do that.

We’ve never celebrated our birthday before– due to depersonalization & trauma & such– but this year is new and different, so we’re going to respect it.

Lastly, if any of you want to toss some spare change at [us] we can buy ourselves a cake even. You only get one genetic birthday a year after all. 🍰

God bless all of y'all ❤️❤️❤️

#happy birthday to us #really this is a leagueworld celebration day more than anything else #but we wouldnt even have those without having this body to work through #so happy 28th #heres to the rest of our life

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APR 10

“You who never arrived in my arms, Beloved, who were lost from the start, I don’t even know what songs would please you. I have given up trying to recognize you in the surging wave of the next moment. All the immense images in me — the far-off, deeply-felt landscape, cities, towers, and bridges, and unsuspected turns in the path, and those powerful lands that were once pulsing with the life of the gods— all rise within me to mean you, who forever elude me. You, Beloved, who are all the gardens I have ever gazed at, longing. An open window in a country house— , and you almost stepped out, pensive, to meet me. Streets that I chanced upon,— you had just walked down them and vanished. And sometimes, in a shop, the mirrors were still dizzy with your presence and, startled, gave back my too-sudden image. Who knows? Perhaps the same bird echoed through both of us yesterday, separate, in the evening…”

— You Who Never Arrived,  Rainer Maria Rilke

#to the system from the system with love #i am in tears from how deeply resonant this is #i adore all of you #all of you forever #poetry #rainier maria rilke #this makes my heart ache in the way that matters

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APR 13

vesperalia: “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry)
[Digital Collage, 2017]

This quote has always meant so much to us.

Paired with this astoundingly System-resonant image, it means infinitely more.

…Pun fully and adoringly intended, inevitably.

#I BEG YOUR PARDON #this is so resonant its unreal #honestly weeping over here #hearts #eyes #system spirituality #i adore this so much it hurts #daemons #infinitii #i cannot possibly articulate how profoundly this moves me #jay's post

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MAR 24

"Where your pain is, there your heart lies also."

-Anna Kamienska, from a journal entry featured in “A Nest of Quiet: A Notebook”

#oh #this is our history in a nutshell #this makes my heart ache in the way that matters #quote