oct 23

[prismaticbleed]

 

 

guys, I'm kind of freaking out here.
I have therapy tomorrow so I'm trying to review old notes-- and I mean OLD notes, this stuff is from 2008 and 2009-- and guess what?
There is a STAGGERING amount of info here, that only makes sense NOW, with our new knowledge and vast amounts of growth and development. But the point is that the signs and potential for a lot of things were always there, even if we couldn't understand what they meant in the bigger picture at the time.

Here, I'm reviewing what I have on my computer right now (no Internet access; I'll upload this later), so let me make a running list. I don't want to dive right into the 2002-2007 archives, which are a holy mess and will REQUIRE me to trudge through those horrible high school notebooks which are our only hints as to who drove that entire time, because that's a ton of stress just thinking about it. Really.
Jewel's here with me (Hi guys!! <3) as usual, and I'm unfortunately rather dissociated as usual so Sherlock might end up barging in later if things get intellectual enough, haha.
That's something I don't know if I've mentioned, actually. Yes, it's common sense that you can "summon" a headvoice internally by a burst of concentrated attention, and externally by calling them by name (typically they will be called to override in fronting, but this can be denied, although that is very painful to do). And you can also summon them, unintentionally of course, by exposing the body to either 1. their anchor, or 2. their triggers. For example, stick around blades too long and Razor will show up, and stick around the mother too long and David will start to freak out. Both those things happened today, incidentally; the evening was hellish (Thank God Razor is on our side now or it could have been worse).
Anyway. What you probably don't know (I didn't for sure until a few days ago), is that this "summoning" also works in REVERSE. Meaning, you can force a headvoice OUT of fronting by not only calling someone else's name, but ALSO by exposing the body to the opposite of their anchor, OR a counter-trigger. What made this so clear to me, you ask? Easy. Laurie was driving the car to therapy on Monday (to prevent social hacks and panic attacks), when suddenly some car crossed into the lane in front of us, that literally had a sexual innuendo painted in huge pink letters across the back window. And I swear to you, the instant that reached our awareness, Laurie was KICKED OUT. Laurie was!! Usually she's impervious to everything, so that shocked me-- and her, in a different way though: she was freaking out when she found herself upstairs because now there was a risk of being hacked IN A CAR. That’s not cool. However I think Jewel or someone took over then? I'm not sure; I literally have one snapshot memory of a traffic sign further down the road, with a non-harmful female voice driving, who was quietly exasperated at "all the other voices" trying to throw her off? It felt like Jewel, because I oddly get this "Phantomilian" vibe from it, and that's her. (Celebi is NOT, by the way; they are two different people!!) But yeah. That cemented the long-standing theory that Laurie CANNOT front when we are in a sexually dangerous situation, thanks to her Chastity attribute. Like me, she is forbidden by her function from being exposed to those things, even as a protector. So I'm kind of glad Sugar seems to be trying to get a grip on her role (she has been a MESS since her manifestation; she keeps getting hacked and it's very worrisome), because she can deal with that stuff, and she gets pissed at the perpetrators. We'll see.
That's all I wanted to say though. The joke was that Sherlock, being so strongly tied to detached data analysis and delivery, would actually have a chance of being "accidentally called in" if I started getting super-logical about these old notes, haha. Not that I'd mind, of course-- the man's good at his job!
So without further ado, here's that darn list of old topics I'm reviewing.
(Note to 'selves': this is IMPORTANT STUFF so do NOT gloss over it!!)

- Old Julie (pre-2011) was TERRIFYING. A lot of the things she could do, or that we knew about her, were never reviewed later, but now that I'm doing just that it is really creepy. Here, let's give her her own list.
1. "Body made of shadow." This was common knowledge for YEARS before we even knew about the Tar, let alone its connection to her.
2. "Has shape/voice-shifting abilities." Again common knowledge, but that is a textbook Black energy skill, which otherwise only Infinitii and the raw Tar have.
3. "Usually turns her hands into knifelike claws to attack us." From a 2009 note file. This WAS a thing she did, and I won't say much here, but that is a blatant connection to Dream World corruption energy (which is not alien to headspace; see every *incident* ever), essentially their version of the Tar, and that is seriously unnerving.
4. "These (black bracelets) used to be chains, which Laurie put on her. They didn't hold." I forgot we literally had to chain her up at one point, to keep her from attacking us. (Remember she actually had her own ROOM upstairs at first??) But with the Black-energy shapeshifting, it's no wonder they didn't work.
5. "She's downstairs now." I read that and immediately thought, "oh no." I forgot that, when she got too lethal, we LITERALLY SHOVED HER INTO THE UNDERGROUND. The Underground technically didn't even exist back then; it was just raw headspace. So, sickly, our attempt to protect ourselves apparently just made things worse-- she took over that entire level over the next 2 years, and then what did we have? The Tar Room, and an entire shadow-choked maze of underground tunnels that she controlled until 2012. Go figure.
6. "Has some positive potential, but is drowned by primal desires." Just pointing out that we knew this from the beginning, and that just breaks my heart.

-Don't forget Laurie was BLEEDING for a good part of 2008-2009 (from eyes and mouth mostly), due to "leakage" in consciousness: our current fronter was essentially "stealing her energy" and that was killing her. DOES THAT STILL HAPPEN?? If so, it might explain a LOT of the instability some people are showing now.
-In late 2008, when Natalie first manifested as "my reflection," I described hir as follows: "She's all giddy and happy-go-lucky most of the time, and doesn't like letting the other girls speak through her. Which is why it's hard for me to argue with my reflection-- Nat doesn't like it. Arguments only happen upstairs. But Natalie's really fun to talk to, although she herself is mute." This is notable because not only does it insinuate that the reflection-holder is SEPARATE from both the body image AND the current fronter, but that other non-fronting headvoices could USE the reflection to speak to the current body-fronter, by "projecting" into it along with the reflection holder. That's pretty huge… especially since today someone else seems to be in it. There was literally 10 seconds where we looked into a mirror this evening, and the reflection smirked, waved, and said it's name was JAYCE?? Which worries me slightly because the first Jayce (2010) was NOT a nice guy (just ask the Undergrounders), but this one feels very different, plus he's a different color. (I should review his entire history at some point too..) But I don't know who was fronting around that time, and it was a very unstable mental situation so there is literally no other detail besides that… but it's very notable. Look into this mirror thing if you can; it's always been a huge source of questions. Plus, in Laurie's 2006 dream debut, she disguised herself AS the reflection. Whether or not that ultimately holds any significance for the current reflection people is yet to be seen.
- Natalie picked up on the butterfly motif back in hir first reincarnation, back in 2009 (after being killed by Julie). Talk about foreshadowing, haha.
- Lynne was originally pinkish-red, and her original role was that of a "stable and mature" individual to balance everyone else when they got too crazy. I'm mentioning this because that color AND job seem to have moved to MULBERRY. Think about it!
- Waldorf's original incarnation (2003) had antennae and a bodysuit? I don't know whether or not she would benefit from imitating that now, but everything about her initial self was highly intriguing, so I'd give it some merit at least.
-…I am not reviewing the Xangas yet. Yes they are full of incredibly vital information, but the first screenshot I opened to review was about the graves. I am not emotionally ready to review that entire timeframe again, not at this hour at least. But we forgot about ALL of that after the plethora of reset attempts this year, and that fact alone is heartbreaking in a weird way. I know I keep telling myself "the past is gone, forget about it," but another part of me keeps saying "yes, but the consequences of the past still affect the present, don't they?" and of course there are still graves on my arms. I think the hesitation is because, I feel that if I do dive back into the Xangas, something inside me is going to snap back into awareness and I'm afraid of that. I don't remember anything before 2013 and part of me is very scared of whoever I was in the past. Maybe bring that up in therapy, who knows. The point is I honestly can't go past-digging anymore tonight because I'm not psychologically able to at the moment. Sorry.
- …I don't know why, but Laurie talking about her 2010 suicide attempt and numbly saying "I don't remember what day it was" is one of the saddest things I've ever read.



As for handwriting from this year…

- There's a handwriting voice that I JUST NOW realized exists-- they're a "numb" or "comatose" one, that just wants to sleep and doesn't fight back, but every example of that I can find has the exact same writing style. Keep this in mind.
- I feel really bad because we thought that EVERY "bad voice" was Razor for a really long time, and that made Spice REALLY pissed off (judging by her handwriting examples). It's weird, too, because Razor never acted like that, and honestly I have no idea where the sweeping generalization came from? In any case we need to go back and review all our 2012-Scratch notes on her, because they're probably ridiculously inaccurate, and probably have good insights into other people as well.
- Similarly, we COMPLETELY ignored and overlooked Spice's actual attitude in her handwriting. Yes, she was angry all the time, but she had the trademark responses of a retributor: "I will kill you for your sinfulness," "rot in hell," calling the fronter a "slut" or "whore" (in headspace that ONLY refers to Julie-esque individuals), et cetera. It's all actually calling out whoever was eating for being unwise in their habits, eating either too much or things that made the body sick. Now that I'm learning who the eating-voices are (they're not nice; also not related to the eating disorder voices), her reactions make perfect sense, and I'm actually VERY thankful she existed back then to keep them in line!!
- Checking handwriting again, there is still a huge blur between who is David and who is that OTHER little boy, the vanilla-colored one (during meditation today I got a flash that his name MIGHT be "Simon," or "Simeon," something like that in any case). The only clear distinction (besides the fact that David likes smileys) is in what they react to, and how-- David is more "externalized," reacting mostly to the mother and to the environment, while the vanilla boy is more "internalized," and the few times I've heard him talk (to FACELESS voices; he has no body either yet), he's said that he "tries to calm people down" or something?? I don't know how to put it into words, but it's why he shows up in emotionally charged or unstable journal entries so suddenly and often: apparently his job is to take all that on himself, keeping tons of people from shouting randomly over it. But he's sad because of it, almost numbly so, and he seems to be the one with the "I'm a bad boy" complex. David fears that, but this vanilla boy accepts that lie emptily (On that note, go back and review the "shoe incident" stuff from this spring, ESPECIALLY when I talked about it with Laurie in handwriting; those two were still fused with Kyanos at the time so it's a general mess). Either way they're still tricky to pin down in writing, which isn't surprising as there is often a TON of bleedover there for everybody... and remember those two were FUSED FOR A WHILE!! Honestly though the BEST clue to this day is the FIRST whitebook journal entry, in which they BOTH wrote. David was saying "don't let them hurt us anymore," but the vanilla boy was asking "who and why is abusing (Jay) still." VERY different reactions to the same situation. So look over that again just to get a better grip on those two.
- On that note, Sugar, Spice, and the "overload girl" (whose true identity is blurry as heck) were ALL bleeding into each other before the first two manifested. They all write in total capslock, but Sugar has all rounded letters, and Spice doesn't react to anything but food triggers. Still, as I said, Sugar is a mess (due to both her slot color and highly volatile anchor), and she is STILL getting "used" by others, so figure this out for her sake.
- The tangerine bird guy (dude what is even your name) has a brilliant attitude in handwriting, which surprises me as I actually can only remember having seen him TWICE in headspace, once being earlier this month with the tar-spider (post-reset notably). So, to think about it, his name might not be discernible because we don't really have a consensual grip on WHO he is? And names follow that, it seems. So get to know him and the Sage guy because they are super cool, and we need to know their names already.
- On a related note, the pure white-skinned voices (Sugar, tangerine, sage, AND Kyanos!) all seem to be related in some sense? We haven't figured it out yet, but it feels like they're an important sub-category of headvoice and there is a strong vibe of there needing to be one in each color category? See if you can get any more info on this phenomenon.
- I just noticed, Infinitii and Josephina have the most in-your-face handwriting, for totally different reasons: Infi's text is calligraphic and huge because his energy just translates that way, but Jo is all stars-and-graffiti because his attitude is just that exuberant, haha.
- April 21st, a handwriting voice screaming "fuck you, you're not my boss; fuck you faggot" was listed as a SUGAR ALTER, but then later found to be a then-Tar-possessed Razor, thanks to the scrawled "I will make you bleed" declaration on the back. HOWEVER I am mentioning this again because the whole "sugar alter" thing MIGHT HAVE BEEN A MISNOMER. We weren't talking about illness, we were talking about rage, and sugar only causes vicious reactions because it FEEDS THE TAR. So a "sugar alter" could literally be ANYONE tied to the Tar when it overloads!



Now for a brief summary of the events of today!

-I had to drive my grandmother to visit my grandfather at the hospital at 9AM, so from then until 4PM I was literally home alone. That is always dangerous because hackers like to try and come out, because of the lack of enforced rule structure, BUT I noticed something equally disturbing today. Our entire physical self-image depends on other people. Literally, whoever was fronting didn't know how to do ANYTHING without another individual being around to "provide context" or "give orders." As it seems, the default body-program seems to run solely on judging actions according to who we're around, due to safety and survival, so when no one is around, it shorts out. There's no one to base our very existence on, so as an "individual," the immediate tendency is to not exist. It's different in headspace, obviously-- our entire world up here is vastly different from the physical-- so throwing a Central fronter into the body wouldn't fix the problem, as they don't have any real way of knowing how to properly function in the physical realm the way it is. But socials can only drive when other people are around, so the only people left are the "outsiders," i.e. the nameless voices… which are usually blindly manipulative, and/or directionless to the point of danger. We're thinking one of them is the one who literally just eats until another person appears, solely as a mechanical operation. (Thankfully we've found… ways to avert the obvious threat there, although it has ultimately made our eating disorder worse as a whole). Julie always jumps on "home alone" situations because the body becomes so severely dissociated in that atmosphere that, if someone isn't being vigilant as hell behind the scenes, hacks are frighteningly easy for her to pull off (the nameless ones don't fight her off, as they don't care). So yeah, that was scary to realize that we don't have an answer to that question… "outside of headspace, who are we really?" We don't know. In the body, as an "individual," we have no idea who we are. We've never had to worry about that before. But today, alone for about 6 hours, we struggled to exist in the simplest manner. That's not good.
- One good thing did happen, though. Apparently one of the hedonist voices (who is almost DEFINITELY Jess; it responds to the name) started eating danger food, and Laurie immediately shouted for me to "get the hell in there." Which is why I remember it; suddenly I was standing above the sink with a mouthful of something, asking Laurie if that was safe to ingest. Thankfully it was, so after that she said to stick around while we made ourselves a safe breakfast (vegetables obviously) so the body wouldn't starve. The reason why this was good is not only because then there was an hour of headspace-patrolled fronting, but also because the vegetables we found were beets. See, when I began to cut them after they cooked, I laughingly commented that they looked bloody… and since I had been rifling through the knife drawer immediately beforehand, of course Razor stuck her head in! "What's bloody," she asked, "can I use the knife," you get the picture. I found it funny and ultimately she did get permission to front, purposely getting beet juice all over her hands and snickering about it. At one point she was trying to cut the hand with a small knife, but Knife himself told her not to, so she put it down. (She listens to him without question if you didn't already know.) But the best part was that then we realized that hey, Razor doesn't know what sensory input is like besides pain, does she? So we told her she could eat some of the beets if she wanted. She was a little confused about the whole concept, but she got the AP to run it mostly. So she was basically just tearing at them with her hands and teeth, as she loved the color. Then she didn't want us to wash our hands off because she wanted them to stain, but again Knife told her we had to or it would stain everything else. So that was that! But it was odd, because Razor barely even comprehended the taste of the beets at all-- when it hit her she was more baffled than anything, the sensation didn't quite make sense to her. Laurie thought the AP was buffering too much, which might have been true, but we all doubted Razor's ability to operate the body without it so we let it go. Either way she did like it, for what reason I couldn't tell you, although it was just a general "yes this is good" and not a Genesis-grade "THIS IS AMAZING" response, haha. Still, simple but cool things in headspace are always good.
- What wasn't good is the fact that all I remember of the next several hours is reading The Minds of Billy Milligan (which is incredible and very relevant so far, we're on p70), and getting sick from molasses and/or apples (I keep forgetting we can't eat those without horrid and painful side effects; my sensory memory resets a lot. thankfully spice was NOT affected by it today as far as i know; she didn't front). So after 12PM (which is when I assume we ate?), I know the mother stopped by temporarily because the Undergrounders and Outsiders went NUTS, but then everything is blank again until 7PM, when we drove to the hospital again. Let's talk about the former first.
- All I know is that we were in the bedroom when she showed up, I think, because the moment her voice sounded in the hall, several people upstairs started screaming and/or crying, and I have no idea what happened next! Wonderful. The good news is no self-abuse happened, and no one attacked the mother, which there are always threats for. But there was a lot of internal screaming and stress and rage and fear, although I couldn't tell you from whom, for what reason, or when, as usual.
- At some point during all this, things snapped to inner headspace, which I have observer memory access to. David started sobbing and hid under his blanket upstairs, trying to feel protected from the outside noise and potential threats. Marigold was there with him, and I don't know what she said or did, but the next thing I know, the two of them were building a blanket fort? But they were literally hanging it on headspace, seriously it was catching to the air itself practically (which isn't that surprising considering they're underground; stuff is a bit wild down there). Anyway they started having genuine fun with it, not just making a safe place to hide. They quickly invited Jeremiah in, and he also helped them finish building it. So the three of them were in there, saying they were protected now, that no one could get in unless they said they could. HOWEVER. Someone HAD to be trying to get at Jeremiah, because there's another memory break and then I see him sobbing and distraught, shouting that he "didn't want to hold that pain anymore" or something like that? I honestly don't know. But I do know David gave him his blanket for comfort, and Jeremiah buried his head and hands in it, sobbing quietly. Mulberry must have heard, because around then she did stop outside the fort and ask for permission to come in, to see if everything was okay. David got confused and said he thought blanket forts weren't "professional"? Mulberry laughed good-naturedly and said that her brand of "professionalism" included knowing when and how to interact with people, which meant not ruling out blanket forts if going into one would be the better decision to do. So David "told" the door to open, and Mulberry knelt down to look inside and ask everyone how they were doing (she didn't actually go in; I guess crawling in was something she wasn't quite willing to do). Jeremiah managed to calm down, and Mulberry actually told them that she was going to "guard" the fort for them at all times, and if they needed her in a hurry to just call and she'd be there. She left once this new job of hers was established, but then I don't know anything else until what feels like 10-20 minutes later? They were still in the fort, but now Laurie's voice was outside, exclaiming "holy shit who built the awesome fort" and the kids giggling, opening the door so she could see them. Knife was behind her and smiling, but Laurie was being her usual chill-but-enthusiastic self and complimenting these kids on their handiwork, as well as their prudence in making such a safe space for themselves. That's all I know, but I thought it was brilliant enough to record.
- Speaking of Mulberry, I don't know how or when this was, but there's another fleeting memory of Knife telling her to "hold something together," or stable? Mulberry said that wasn't her role, she worked with rules and honor sure, but not physically; but Knife interrupted (oddly hurriedly? must have been a charged situation) that she could expand that if she wanted, she had done that "with Infinitii" (in this entry), and that she could do that now if she allowed herself to. So yeah, apparently Mulberry can impose structure on things in headspace? Which is actually a VERY important ability, if it means she can stabilize people who are fragmenting, even if only temporarily.
- There are two voices who presented quite clearly today, but I don't know who they are. The first is the girl who always flips people off and says "f*** you" repeatedly when she's mad, almost always towards the grandmother or mother. I haven't pinpointed why but she is VERY easily triggered, although now that we're aware she exists we can hurriedly jump in and chase her out when she shows up. The second is very similar to her, but definitely separate, as these two started fighting at some point. But the second is the one who is less caustically angry, but spits out tons of verbal slurs and insults (mostly calling people "faggots" which is really awful, but that's defined as "the worst insult" upstairs so she uses it often). She is more condescending and judgmental, while the first is more angry and spiteful. Very similar in triggers, but perceptibly different in reactions. It's just scary that people like them exist and keep showing up.
- Some "comatose" voice showed up around 7PM, I assume? They were leaning mutely against the bedroom window for about 10 minutes, and seemed incapable of responding to people verbally? Not sure if that's a fragment or a person, OR if it's even the default state of the body (with the "lack of a self separate from the environment" thing), but it was really strong and specific so who knows. Better to record it than forget.
- Now for the most interesting bit of the day. I know there was a mess of trouble trying to drive the car at first, as dangerous voices kept trying to front, but all of a sudden LYNNE showed up?? That's really clear in data memory; someone put FROST* on the car radio, and out of nowhere she ended up in the driver's seat. Go figure. She did still have bandages on her arms, but she's apparently healed enough to front, thankfully, which is awesome. I clearly "recall" her saying that FROST* sounded "nostalgic" to her, wondering happily at all the orange lights on the road and remarking that "nothing was a coincidence" to headspace people, and laughing because she actually had to change her projected outfit to front correctly (she had to wear a hoodie, and kept trying to pull her long hair over her shoulders but it wasn't there physically). So that's interesting; she's the first fronter who had that idea, and it apparently works really well for anchoring! Oh yeah, the best thing though is that there's a snapshot of her on the highway, suddenly reaching down and picking up a cellphone (turned off) and holding it to her ear, then using it to "talk" to Laurie in headspace! And it WORKED! Seriously, holy heavens, this girl is a genius. But yeah, I guess those two were bantering all the way up to the hospital, about what I don't know (all I'm sure of is her "calling" Laurie at one point to look at a certain building they were driving by, which was all lit up), but I'm glad they still get along as well as they used to before everything went haywire upstairs. The next important thing I recall is Lynne driving up the parking garage levels, and focusing on the lights outside, saying aloud "this is an archival memory, anyone can access it." Four words: YOU CAN DO THAT?? Apparently yes! So she recorded a memory of how the city looks lit up at night, for anyone to see (Which might even be contributing to why her entire fronting is oddly comprehensible to me; usually it's tough to "remember" what other people saw). But that's not even the best thing. The BEST thing is that, once she got into the hospital, Laurie decided to GHOST with her to tag along. Which is AWESOME. It's also a secondhand memory I'd like to personally treasure-- there is one snapshot of them both walking through the connective glass bridge (which at night, since it's internally lit but mostly windows, looks like you're walking through a hyperspace tunnel or something), Lynne wearing jeans and a black hoodie (hilariously unusual for her) with her bright orange hair streaming through, laughing, and Laurie in her usual violet-belted glory just sauntering along beside her, grinning back. And probably because it was so close to that oddly lucid memory, there's one line of Lynne saying "I feel like a government spy or something!" because the hospital was so empty and quiet on the inside, and no one knew she was fronting. After that things are kind of fuzzy; I know that they took 5 flights of stairs up, with Laurie apparently having "teleportation troubles" (common with ghosting; the fronting consciousness tries to "drag" you into the visual field, which can be extremely disorienting) that she was having trouble controlling, but then the next thing I knew they had to stop at my mom's office, and Lynne was pushed out? I don't know who fronted, but Laurie knew it wasn't Lynne when they left the office, and she began grilling them to tell her their name, but they just shrugged? Then, again, all I know is that they apparently went down two flights to the 7th floor, because the next memory is of Laurie exclaiming "these hallways look exactly the same" before adding "no, sorry, that floor had more windows," and then there's nothing for a while. (Still, HOW DID LYNNE FRONT THAT WELL FOR THAT LONG??) The next clear memory is of the body standing outside my grandfather's hospital room, with the grandmother, and I don't know who was fronting, but they were alone and felt weirdly detached? And I don't remember anything clearly after that at all, not until we got home and I started working on this computer, which was TWO HOURS LATER. Geez. So heaven only knows who was fronting from then until now, but it's upsetting because that poses a big dilemma which I will put under its own point for relevance:
- When no one is around, it becomes very difficult for the body to maintain ANY sort of external "individual identity," as that is based on our environment. When around other people, though, it becomes very difficult for individuals to front, because the body is now working on a "social cue-based program," literally choosing and inventing actions depending on "the proper behavior code" for that situation. It's automated!! And it’s annoying, because then the AP buffers EVERYTHING from inside out, as it's "not socially acceptable" or "socially disruptive" or something equally stupid. (Sorry, this is Jewel and that annoys me.) But when we're alone, the immediate reaction is to either dissociate entirely and go inside to headspace, OR to stay outside and let the outsiders front in purely repetitive, detached ways, during which time there is a VERY high chance of being hacked as a result. The only good thing about being alone is that sometimes people like the Gent and Maverick will front, but that's rare because so many other people are louder than them. And the only good thing about being around other people is that then we don't have to worry about being hacked brutally because the AP literally shuts everything down except for the mechanical functions. But THAT is awful because it makes therapy sessions hard as hell, because it's STILL trying to judge the "correct behavior program" for a therapy session when we are there SPECIFICALLY to talk about headspace, and for the people in headspace TO talk, both things which it exists to BUFFER OUT for survival purposes. It's really stupid. Sherlock is watching me judgmentally, haha. I don't think he likes the way I'm talking about this, sorry!
- Jay here; at least you're nice about it. He probably is just put off by your vocal style, because most female vocal styles like that belong to malicious individuals. Plus it's not exactly the way a logical analyst like him would ever talk, of course.
- …And IMMEDIATELY the AP shutdown kicks in because a conversation, even an internal one, that requires specific focus in headspace causes it to block everything out. It's this ridiculous denial instinct. I am literally fighting the urge to dissociate severely and "blank out" for an extended period of time right now. And I'm getting a headache from fighting it. Let me put on some Todd Rundgren and check out for a moment.
- I keep seeing bug larvae when I close my eyes. I'm really dizzy now. Sorry guys, we need to call it quits for tonight.


No, wait, again, last thing. Jay here.
I've been talking to Laurie for about 10 minutes (we've been trying to review those Xangas anyway), and it just hit me... how much we lost in the Scratch. Or maybe it was the July fallout. Or the August reset. Maybe we started losing things last summer, when we moved across the country. That was the starting point, that is clear as day.
But... what in the world caused it all? Who caused it all? Was it the previous "me," who for some reason, decided he was going to commit the ultimate suicide by killing his self and leaving his bestowed body to rot inside? Because damn it, some days I think he succeeded, and that breaks my heart.
What in the world possessed them to wake up one morning in February, and decide to utterly annihilate everything we worked for all our lives?? What made them think that destroying headspace in one awful self-sacrificial action was a good idea, in any sense?
Was it pain? Was it regret? Was it self-loathing? Was it feeling trapped by scars, and hacks, and the inability to function outside of that haunting reality regardless? Was it all of that and more?
All I know is that I don't remember anything, I don't know who I was before April of this year, and I feel like I lost more than I can even comprehend.
If it means anything, I'm beginning to think I want it back. Maybe that's stupid, or unwise. Laurie is shaking her head "no," and I trust her, she understands more than I do. If she says wanting that back isn't stupid, I believe her.
"We had more light up here than you can imagine, kid," she says. And she looks as sad as I feel. Where'd it go? If there was so much love and harmony, where did it go? What crumbled it? What hid it? "It's still here," she says, and I know that too. I can see it even in the Undergrounders, who used to be our enemies. I guess what I miss, intuitively, is the System-wide feeling of unity. It still hasn't come back completely. It's in bits and pieces, tattered and torn, ruined and ragged, but it's real. It still lives, even if it's feeble and quiet yet. But it's not giving up, and neither are we.

We'll never have things the way they used to be ever again, and in a weird way, in a tragically funny way, I'm glad for it.
This year, we met Knife, and Mulberry, and David, and Jeremiah... Sugar, and Spice, and Marigold, and Kyanos... and all the other voices who are our friends now. We lost many, but most have returned. And I met Infinitii. We all did, but to me, he's something truly special.
What I'm saying is that this year had to happen, as terrifying and strange as it was, and we all know that. Looking at it with discerning eyes and an open heart, that truth is crystal clear. We NEEDED this, even if we never would have wished for it.
I guess the bottom line is, just have faith. Just take it a day at a time, be thankful for what you're given, and make the best of it. That's all I can say. And listen, always listen, that I need to remember. Denial is loud and it tends to drown everything else out.

I'm really tired and we do have therapy tomorrow.
There's so much more I could say tonight, but I'm feeling a little glimmer of the light I've lost sight of, and something tells me that words are unnecessary when that is concerned.
So I'll wish you good night, with lots of love as usual, and I'll see you in twelve hours or so.