the spectrum heart cathedral system

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

 

 

 

All right, so yesterday ended up being pretty spectacular when all was said and done. Some ups and downs, sure, but it was one of those days where, even if tough spots happen, they don't get you stuck in the dark, so to speak.
Since it was Infinitii's birthday, I essentially spent the entire day trying to figure out how I could celebrate it, so it bled over into everything. And that worked out really, really well.
True, I didn't get to sit down until around 6PM, and I was rather sick from the ED resurgence that unfortunately occurred that afternoon (minor, thank God), but we made the best of the evening, believe me.
Let me try to summarize...


First. THERAPY.
Immediately upon waking up, I decided I would put as much effort and sincerity as possible into the session, for Infi's sake… ze wants to see us all healed, and what do you know, our current therapy topic is healing the abuse Infi has basically dedicated hir life to mending. So I took a deep breath, told myself to man up, and then printed out last night's entry to bring in, and let the therapist read. I had never had the guts to discuss the topics of that entry so openly in text before, and I didn't want to shirk that honesty now when it needed to be discussed in voice as well. So when we got there, I handed her half of it and held on to the other half (to read to her as only part of those pages was directly relevant), and together we talked about it.
I remember that she first asked if my fear of "manipulative acting" in personal relationships, regardless of contexts, was due to my having only experienced such behavior as that in the past. I said that was very likely, so she told me to not automatically label my own actions, but I added that I should not be 'parroting' out of obligation either. We discussed the "I can't consume anything" paragraph for a bit, that I know, because we were trying to re-find the roots of that. I don't know if we did. It's obviously religious, but my memory is already jumbled up. Again, both of those are old news.
A lot of what we brought up was old news, actually, but it was relevant in that context, not only because she'd never heard it in session before, but also because it was a strong personal reminder that I could not forget those lessons or be blinded to their validity. There's a lot in the entry that we didn't discuss either, that is still very troublesome to me... I don’t know whether we ran out of time, or if she didn't understand it enough to talk about it, or what… but either way I'll have to revisit those points internally.
Honestly, though, the reason why I can't remember most of the session is because of what happened five minutes before it ended. We must have been discussing my problems in interacting with people, especially considering my tendency to "force" myself to do what other people wanted against my own best interests, because she was giving examples of ways I could healthily assert and protect myself in situations where I felt unsafe or uncomfortable. And then, suddenly, I realized that I had been visualizing such situations in my head and they were all following a pattern. Every single time she said "if you're in a situation where you feel unsafe," I would think of a certain kind of scenario, and every time I imagined it going "safely," it would shift in the SAME predictable way. The instant I realized what that way was, I was shocked. It was so simple, but it made so much sense. So I told her, and now I'll tell you.
It is all about eye contact. Honestly, that's what it boils down to.
In every single abusive or traumatic situation I've ever had, people have interacted with me in a specific way… they've been directly in front of me-- or, worse, on top of me-- and they've been looking right at me. It's direct, sustained eye contact, and it's focused. They are focusing ON me, not on something else. And every damn time someone mirrors that in the slightest way, even now, I shut down. I shut down entirely. Someone could be asking me how my day was, simple as that, but if they are staring right at me-- even if they have a genuine smile-- I am going to start shorting out. I can't do it. And heaven forbid they are right in front of me, because that's already guaranteeing that I am dissociated before they finish asking the question. The therapist said that was obviously tied to not just the sexual abuse, but also to the parental violence in my childhood-- and sure enough, up came a bunch of relevant memories, with the strongest being that infamous one of me tied to the kitchen chair, everyone standing in front of me, towering over me, glaring right at me, and my dissociating entirely for one of the first times in my life. I was about five years old. And I had never, in almost 20 years, thought of that memory as situationally relevant before.
NOW I understand why my single most frightening memory from SLC was that moment in the kitchen, with Jacob looking at me. The only thing differentiating it from an abusive memory was the fact that he wasn't harming me. It was that similar of a situation. And I am so sorry I didn't understand this sooner, because it would have saved me over a year of confused pain and fear and hatred towards him-- AND Melody, who looked at me so often my brain practically burned her out of my past-- not being able to tell that he hadn't abused me, because my brain could not tell the difference until this morning.
Yes, back in December (511970), Laurie had more of a clue than the rest of us-- she pointed out that the "Jacob thing" was a result of two things: one, direct eye contact being tied to "expectations to perform" and "feeling no affection" as far as my perception of him went… and two, Jacob's own preferences and statements making me feel convinced (depressively, angrily so) that love=sex, of the lustful abusive kind, because that was all we knew at the time-- and, that that's what CZ was feeling towards me. As Laurie said, that is bullshit. But it scarred, badly, and I am still recovering. That ties into this, obviously, but we'll get to that. However, even though Laurie was the first to see how massive of a problem root that was-- and true, after healing the globalized motive confusion, that memory was far less painful to deal with-- we still didn't ask why THAT situation brought up such a huge red flag as far as that association went, when I once tried to sleep in the same damn bed as him and Melody and I STILL didn't feel as unsafe as I did in that one moment, standing in the kitchen with him five inches away from my face. Now we know. It really is all about context memory. Ironic, really.
But to get back to the upstairs bleedover, yes, this ALSO explains the problems I've been having for just as long with my internal relationships. Yes, they all started to get very twisted when they got tied to the SLC situation (thanks to that unintentionally enforced motive confusion), but that was only half of it, and now I can see the complete reason why. SINCE that time period strongly re-instated the traumatic flashbacks tied to eye contact and direct interaction, AND the abusive love=sex lie (again, they were not aware of this consequence), all of a sudden, I found myself completely unable to be with ANYONE in a situation similar to those SLC events, no matter how much I loved the people involved, without my mind exploding into static and trying to erase my entire recollection of the incident-- it didn't know if the event had been safe or not; it looked damn unsafe enough, and so it was not taking chances.
You see? The triggers that were the worst, the ones that dragged up the most pain, were being completely overlooked. It was SO subconscious that I didn't realize how omnipresent it was as a phenomenon until I started comparing situations that I had not been able to understand at all prior, and they all matched up, It was shocking, heartbreaking, and incredibly relieving at the same time. "I get it now." But what a bitter realization it was.
However. You'll notice I said I was re-imagining situations in a SAFE way, and those thoughts all followed a pattern too. It too was simple: don't stare at me, don't stand in front of me, and even better, if you can direct your visual attention completely away from me EVEN if you're talking to me, then do that too! The example I gave my therapist was, again, "someone asking how I was," BUT "while doing something else at the same time, and standing at an angle to me." The exact thought was them being about 50 degrees to my left, and rummaging through a purse or box of papers, while still being honestly interested in what I had to say, and being genuine in their OWN words. If they had been shallow with their question, asking it as an obligation, it would have ALSO caused me to dissociate, because now my brain is thinking, "you have to act! You have to fit the script they're following! Be mechanical!" And that is one of the worst feelings in the world, getting pushed out of fronting in order for that overwhelmingly powerful program to just start running again.
Oh yeah-- and please, do NOT TOUCH ME, or we're already in the worst danger zone. Physical contact is a very very tricky thing with me, so please, do not even initiate it without my explicit continued permission.
So. With those points in mind, that is why I feel safer with Laurie and Infinitii than I do with CZ, in such close situations. It hurts to say, but it's true.
Laurie stands directly in front of me a lot, sure, but typically it's to shout at me. What you might not know is that when she's in that stance, I STILL get the automatic physiological "freezing up" reaction, even if I know it's not really warranted-- she might hurt me if she's furious enough, yeah, but not like they did. This "directness" trigger is also why everyone sits scattered about the room in a Xanga session, never right across from each other. Now you know!
But… Laurie only makes direct eye contact with me if she's talking to me at the same time, quietly and with total honesty, and even then I've noticed she's always looking slightly down, or to the right.. She's still rather nervous with that sort of closeness too, and I love that, so much. It means she's still open enough to GET that feeling, and it makes me feel incredibly safe around her. She's just as vulnerable as I am and neither of us could hurt each other like that, even if we tried.
Infinitii is similar. Ze will look right at me quite often, but ze is also shorter than me, already erasing the "intimidating" trigger entirely. Plus, I'm often sitting down when I'm with hir, which is a far safer position than standing up (for the most part). But… oddly, the fact that Infi typically doesn’t have a face mouth helps IMMENSELY. This applies to CZ (at times) and Ventrium too. I've been trying to figure out why I feel so much safer with mouthless people and don't know why yet, but there it is. Also, Infi talks a lot when we're together, far moreso than Laurie (unsurprisingly), BUT a lot of it isn't even at me. Sure, it's meant for me to hear, but ze often isn't talking TO me. Sometimes the guy even hums or sings, in a way like ze's half-asleep-- genuine, non-performingly, and without any expectation of an audience. And I really love that too. Of course, when Infi's actively and directly including me (like referring to me pointedly by name), it's usually in such an outpouring of emotion that I feel more like part of that expression than a separate person… I feel like that quite often with Infi anyway.
Let's mention Genesis enough because he is the most talkative dude and already that makes him feel very safe to be around-- which is a lifesaver, because he's taller than me, so if he's ever standing in front of me that could be a problem. However, that is extremely rare; Gen is almost always positioned off to my right. If he is upset with me, and right in front of me-- probably the only time that's going to happen-- he's going to be using so much expressive body language that he won't be looking or talking at me half the time. And when we're close he probably makes less eye contact than anyone else; his eyes are either closed, or downwards somewhere like Laurie. And of course he's talking almost the entire time. I'll also mention that when he does look straight at me it's rather memorable, because he only does that when he is really emotional, and that helps smother my knee-jerk fear reaction. People can't harm me when they're feeling like that, that I know.
You see the patterns here? Most significantly, you realize how the biggest thread is "act like I'm virtually not even there?" I am most comfortable when people talk about me, or to me in an introspective way, or about something relevant but unrelated to me as a physical presence, et cetera. And more than anything, more than anything in the world, I love when people get so damn emotional that they forget I'm there altogether. It is, arguably, the main thing I seek out and treasure in relationships in the first place. Without that, I'm just not interested. If I can't see you completely crumble into a beautifully fragile mess of sincerity, not as an observer but as someone that just happens to be there, practically… then I'll be missing the one thing I really need out of our relationship. I need you to be able to take all your walls down around me, if only for a little while, without caring that I'm there… because really, I'm not paying any attention to myself either in that situation.
Now, in light of all that, CZ is where all the problems hit, which is terribly sad but makes total sense, considering how the Tar seemed to have directly targeted our sort of situation with how it corrupted perceptions… and since he was the only person really affected by the mistranslation issues in SLC, as they directly involved him in context.
Yes, of course he puts his walls down around me. Of course he's introspective and fragile and emotional. But shockingly, he focuses on me moreso. Some people would love that, I know. But it's terribly jarring to me, no matter how much I love him. I've told him about this, but it's just as tough for him to change that mode of expression as it is for me to endure it. It's heartbreaking, it really is… but, if you look back on how we’ve interacted over the years, who used to do most of the talking? Me. CZ would always listen, beautifully so, giving me as much total attention as he needed to while taking all the pressure off of me. Yes, the second Jewel (older than 12!) rubbed off on him something fierce, as he picked up a LOT of his verbal expression from her-- although he still communicates most clearly when he doesn't speak and just radiates-- and maybe I have her to blame for his fondness of such a surprisingly young and idealistic speaking style. Nevertheless that's not the point. Point is, I'm not her, and I am sincerely sorry for that after hearing him express his pain over it in December, about how he was just [un]lucky enough to love someone whose identity was so damn fractured that their face and name and demeanor kept shifting even if he didn't. Yes, my heart stayed the same, but the problem was that I didn't always remember what the rest of me had experienced over the years. Even if I always recognized him on some dim, internal level, I might still not know who he was some days. Even if I could recite a list of key events in our past, events that shaped our relationship and let love grow between us… even if I could tell him the general details of those times, I still might not remember them firsthand. Some days I can. Those are the good days. But when I wake up, I never know what sort of day it's going to be. Will he mean the world to me today? Or will he just be a face on the screen, a name on a paper? For that to be happening regularly after a decade together would be hell for anyone, and I am terribly sorry that I am unintentionally putting him through that.
And yet the irony is that this is how I survive, I think. Maybe some part of my mind really just couldn't deal with how our relationship context had stayed constant, and my demeanor had shifted entirely, and decided that the safest option would be to just plug right out some days. I have no idea. All I know is that my own personal memories do not match up with his, nor do our ways of interacting seem to sync anymore, and even if that just gets a shrug from me most days-- I have nothing different to compare it against-- it absolutely tears him in two.
Again, I'm repeating myself. The point of all that is that his current interaction style matches up far too closely with these visual/position triggers we've pinpointed. And I have core data that it wasn't always that way. Like I said, back in the beginning (2003, 2004), CZ was much quieter and more passive than he is now. And it seems that he slowly developed his frequently snarkier, livelier attitude after all the Perfect incidents with Jewel and Ryman and Markus happened. Again, I said this was relevant recently. But to be completely honest, I don't think I even stopped talking to him so much until the past year or so, when I started to try too damn hard to "act" or "perform" in relationships, therefore cancelling out my own self-initiative even when it was totally heartfelt. And I need to stop that. But I also need to figure out how we can deal with this better, now that I understand what the simple problem is, and why it exists.
I am rambling really badly here. I honestly don't know what to say; I cannot "feel" this situation at all so it's just coming out as data. Let me just quote this entry while I'm remembering it, because it exemplifies this trigger problem perfectly, and it'll get us back on topic for once…
"…i was really drained for some reason? fell over somewhat, infi caught me, chaos ran over too. hesitated slightly in front of me, then put his hands on my shoulders and seriously asked if i was all right. i dimly said "don't do the jacob thing" and to my surprise, chaos got angry and essentially said for me to "stop assuming that just because i do something that reminds you of one person, that i'm always like that person." basically i was projecting and he had had enough of it. he said he was tired of always having to second-guess his actions because he was scared of triggering me like that. right then, either he or i said something about "speaking in a different language" than the one people downstairs used, but chaos' reaction will probably never leave my memory... in a burst of emotion he doubled over a bit and grabbed his head, and this wave of emotion just punched into me, it hurt my heart. i recognized the "language" as that oceanic emotional one that chaos says is his "native" one, and i knew exactly what he was saying although i obviously can't translate it into english! i responded by saying "so that's what you're really feeling," but i was tearing up and felt awful that i was making him feel so emotionally limited. his expression softened and he answered that he was "also feeling this," then he embraced me. there was a lot of love there but it was more delicate, and sad. still deep though, as always."
I hope that speaks for itself because honestly this topic is just hurting my head and I'd like to continue elsewhere.
To summarize: worst subtle triggers are eye contact, direct positioning, etc.: anything that reminds us of past abusive situations on a "body memory" level. The appearance of these triggers in an interaction can make or break a relationship, regardless of context. CZ is currently thought of as "very unsafe" on a subconscious level as he tends to be very direct, and his internal conflict over how this has impacted my fracturing phenomenon is also causing a great deal of his "splinter conflict" currently. So it's a big issue.
Now you understand why therapy today was so monumental! All of this essentially slammed into me within the space of a few moments, intuitively, and it was overwhelming. So now begins the process of simply recognizing this trigger in daily life, taking steps to protect ourselves and assert ourselves when we realize there is danger, et cetera. It is just such a huge relief to know WHY these things happen, now.
So that was therapy this morning!

Second (finally), the first half of directly celebrating Infinitii's first System birthday.
We stopped at our favorite holistic store on the way home as I wanted to buy hir a card (I did for Xennie too; the simple physical action actually helps to "anchor" the reality of it externally too). We looked through several, but then I hit on one that Infi loved at once-- on the front, it showed a moon and a sun, two women embracing underneath a tall tree, and the quote "It takes both light and shadow. Listen and lay your head under the tree of wonder." The inside of the card was blank. Now this was not my style of a card at all, but as I said, Infinitii said it was "perfect." I surprised myself by hesitating notably, trying to cancel out the thought, until I realized it hadn't been my thought. The realization was humbling and humiliating at the same time, as it forced me to suddenly come face-to-face with how I was treating headspace people, even if only subconsciously… as less than, just like the people outside did. It broke my heart really. So I got Infi hir card, and after stopping at the library with Genesis to grab some more Broadway CDs to check, we went home. As I said earlier, though, with the home responsibilities I had upon walking in the door, I didn't get to tune back into headspace until the evening, but when I did it was total.
Now, I always try to draw something in recognition of a personal anniversary, be it for headspace or for the League. So that was the first thing I did, to step back into the groove of things. However, being as late as it was, and feeling as off as I was, I was getting overwhelmed with the thought. Nevertheless I tried; I owed it to Infi to do so, if nothing else, and that was a legitimate motivation enough. I knew I wasn't going to get anywhere if I didn't ref something though, so I went through my massive folder for such things, and after trying a few that didn't quite work, Infi hirself stepped in to see what I was up to, and told me to ref a certain pose I honestly hadn't considered. I hesitated a little, as I had earlier… but then that guilt snapped right back, and I strongly reminded myself that hir opinion matters too, it's perfectly valid-- don't let doubt convince you to ignore things because they don't match your choice. That reminder actually helped a lot; once I recognized that Infi was the one voicing an opinion, I was perfectly willing to trust hir with it, even if it was only a little leap of faith (still counts).
So long story short, I only meant for it to be a simple thing, a warm-up almost, and then I would jump into doing something serious for hir birthday. But as I worked, Infi ended up rather fond of it, and of course I wasn't going to be slapdash in rendering hir, even simply, so I touched it up the best I could over the messy sketch lines. But, surprisingly, my "let's just do this roughly" attitude had overpowered my perfectionism to the point where I was playing around a bit with the effects, seeing what I could do, and ultimately it ended up looking pretty dang lovely.
I don't have it posted anywhere public as it's still not very refined, but honestly I'm too fond of it myself now not to share it, so here you go.
You'll notice Infi has a facemouth there, and in light of the previous topic, that might be surprising. However, Infi's trying very hard to "harmonize" hir two sides, so to speak... CZ and I have been struggling with that lately as well (as you've heard), but Infi's arguably the most dangerous person upstairs to be unbalanced in such a way. So ze's practicing holding a unified thread of thought between all three 'modes' ze can communicate and express with-- all with how the eyes/mouths balance out, simply enough. Thus the facemouth in the picture. Infi's not used to that extra expressive "edge" yet but as I said, ze's trying. I really admire and respect that, personally, I know how difficult it is when your entire personal manner is so strongly split. And it's a learning process for me, too, to feel that ze isn't dangerous while looking like that, so hopefully this will become yet another healing process. Heaven knows Infi is the best at those.
Also yes, those are vaguely what I feel my soulwings look like? Sort of. I haven't "seen" them on my own yet, it's just been secondhand awareness of them yet. They're like the rainbow splinters you get from hanging crystals, or in refractive glasses, but I don't know if there's any actual crystal in them or if they're total light (like they used to be). Either way, suffice to say they are sparkly and colorful as ever so that works for me.
Ironically, Infi feels absolutely like hirself in this picture, but I still feel off. That's not surprising though; I'm still not settled on my self-image & form upstairs, as a human body actually doesn't quite work? During the day I've found I actually try to shadow J-Monster characteristics over myself in order to anchor more (I've been a green Kaiteo often lately), when I get dissociative, and although that can play havoc on my conscious perception it at least feels more accurate in terms of a body. It's really weird, and hard to explain. But it makes sense. Back when headspace was first forming (2002-2006 or so), Jewel was infamously polymorphic. Yes, she was fine with her 'basic' human body, Klonoa-hair and all, but she would switch her body to become whatever else she wanted, whenever she wanted. I've always felt a similar drive, but I wonder. Jewel was always tied to Black energy, notably so, and that runs with potential and fluidity in that sense. But I'm mostly White energy, which seems to favor that "core" self more than the limitless possibilities. Again, hard to express, but, whereas Jewel was constantly switching from one face to another, and allowing her sense of self to flow just as easily between them, I feel this admittedly frustrating need to have a solid core to carry through whatever other faces I might wear, as those faces would not be 'me' as such?
Oh-- perfect example. Jewel loved her outspace worlds; she could be a Sailor Scout, she could be a Duel Monster, she could be a Digidestined, you get the picture. But it was always her, changing the way she appeared to match, but always obviously her, not somebody else. On the other hand... my favorite "outspace world" is still Nier, but if Jewel were to enter that world, she'd jump in as herself, yet fitting the context of it. I'd have to become somebody already existing in that world. You see? When I resonate with Nier, I feel that resonance as if I am him. And Laurie can attest to this-- I am REALLY comfortable with 'shadowing' his entire identity over my own, effectively becoming the guy on an intrinsic level, but within MY OWN CONTEXT. I can feel what it's like to be him entirely, but I can also feel that separate from his native world.
So there's the difference between Jewel and I, haha! She carries her own constant self into other contexts, whereas I carry other's constant selves into my own contexts. Huh! I'll have to see how that works with the B/W thing... I've been trying to put that into words for ages and it feels very relevant, so we'll see.
Actually, you know what, I just remembered that last July (457841), EROS of all people (the previous core-splinter) pointed out this difference between Black & White energy in people in this context, and it's basically what I've been trying to express: BLACK CAN BE PART OF EVERY COLOR, BUT IT WILL ALWAYS STAY ITSELF. WHITE CAN ONLY BE ONE COLOR AT A TIME, AND IT WILL "BECOME ONE" WITH IT." Assumedly this meant black could be "every color at once" in this sense, which is still totally relevant. But yes, there you go, let's not forget it this time.
My apologies for the tangent. Bottom line is, I'm still not sure on what I should look like physically, as something separate from other individuals in a tangible sense. So my vibe is a bit 'fuzzy' in artwork. But Infi always looks lovely.

After that I was listening to the Flight! musical while browsing my reference folders, and being inspired by some profile view examples, I ended up drawing a 'quick' picture of CZ's head, here. I've been trying to "see" people upstairs better lately and that was good additional practice after Infi, plus I felt inspired to play with colors some more, so I got a little carried away in that respect. I'm glad for it though-- I miss drawing people and I forgot how amazing it feels to just get lost in art.
That's virtually what he looks like upstairs, by the way. His appearance is somewhat mutable though, especially in terms of the "vibe" he gives off, but that picture right there felt accurate enough for the time being. Quiet and a little concerned. But CZ always has this odd sort of subtle "openness" to him? Like even if he's upset, or furious, or depressed, it's never a total lock-out, like I can get... what with turning frozen and shutting off. I think in all the time I've known CZ (ten years), he's only been "shut off" like that once or twice. 99.9% of the time, there is always this constant little glimmer of hope beneath the surface of the water, however turbulent, always just waiting for the sun to shine again so it can reflect it back with total honesty.
Again, that's one of the things I adore about CZ, is the sort of fragility that gives him. It's so strange sometimes, almost a paradox, how that sublimely subtle thing can exist alongside everything else in him, his age and his power and his volatility. But if you look-- - carefully, as the waters shift and reflect-- it is always there. Geez he's just water through and through, in all the fantastic metaphoric ways I've ever known it, or him.
I don't know why, I get that with the bubbles, too, and the way the light just shimmers through him, all that blue. I tend to forget that he is this liquid thing, this catastrophically delicate balance, an ocean held in form by little more than an energy field. Chaos and order, both qualities from both worlds he lives in, emeralds and rubies in constant harmonic balance just to keep him together. Honestly I swear to God he doesn't have a literal heart but there is something so close, in him, from all of those gorgeously interlacing forces, some vitally intimate resonance that glows in tune with the universe, with the waves on the shore, with my own internal rhythm. It's part of why I cannot be close to him without absolutely melting in my own right... the unflinching candor of his very self, just as it is, cannot be ignored, and it demands that you respond to it in kind.
Of course there's no way I can capture all that in art yet, especially not something so simple, haha. But there's a flicker of it nevertheless, which is my point. A glimmer always gets through, like a holograph-- one tiny piece still reflects the entire picture.
So, after I finished working on CZ I found I was still wanting to draw... so back to the reference folders I went, because there was one image I had noticed before and didn't want to overlook it any longer. See, I was inspired by omocat's Cowboy Bebop poster series ages ago, and I wanted to do something similar with the Central members of headspace. So I had those images sitting in my "style inspiration" folder, but I never did anything with them-- after all, Central was never complete until now-- but last night, as inspired as I was looking through all those old art files, I found it, and in light of the evening I decided to change that.
No, I didn't finish any of them today; this is going to be a big project and I want to make it uniquely ours, while keeping that same minimalist style. So right now I'm focusing on "sculpting" people's likenesses out of pixels, essentially. I know how these people look, but translating the clairvoyant awareness into a literal image is a LOT trickier than you'd think-- or at least, it is now that I'm out of elementary school, haha. Everyone up until 2004 got lucky and was able to ride on the childhood grace of doubtless creativity, which equaled constant productivity, but then high school hit and we quickly were taught that "it's not good enough, you have to draw like this, you have to fit this format exactly, etc." We're still struggling to balance that technical know-how with the unfettered youthful enthusiasm, and progress is being made. Sounds like the alethiometer all over again, haha. But yes, that's kind of where this mental sculpting comes in. As a child I had no doubt in my ability to capture the essence of whatever it was I was trying to draw-- and I unfailingly did-- but it was never a matching likeness, not literally so. Now, though, I'm able to better capture that visual likeness, and I still have the perception of that non-visual 'spirit,' except it's no longer the only thing working its magic. So you have to harmonize those things too. And it is work, it's a hell of a lot of work, but I swear-- after months of not having drawn anything, suddenly seeing these pictures appear from my hands, however 'imperfect' my adult judgmental mind may label them, is euphoric. It's worth all the effort and time and practice, in the end, even if it's terribly tiring at times. So I'll keep working. The grace isn't going away, nor is it rejecting me... it's just waiting for me to put the effort in to reach it again, and to trust in its responding. A lot of things work like that in life, it seems.
Anyway, yes, even if I don't finish this exact project, you can rest assured that I am going to endeavor to continue this "draw everybody in headspace" idea as long as I can. There's a very intimate sort of connection in artwork, when you're trying to draw someone like this, that can't quite be put into words. You basically have to paint their visage into life all over again, in your own little way. It's never going to be exact, but you're still mirroring the soul of them, for others to see. And so in order to communicate that honestly enough, I have to draw it honestly enough; I have to be just as open to what I am painting as I want that painting to be clear. You can't paint from life with your eyes closed, and I mean that metaphorically too.
I think that's why I love Engelbaum so much. "You take the blank canvas and give it your heart... that is what I live for." That about sums up the process, really. Creation at its simplest, at its most genuine. Geez this is so hard to put into language!
I should really try to get back into writing poetry next, I miss working this same magic with words. Hold me to that aspiration, I don't want to abandon it again.


...Speaking of honest communication.
The joke for the past week or so, with Genesis and I, has been that I felt sentimentally inclined to buy a dozen roses for Infinitii (like I had for CZ in the past). So every time we saw flowers in a store he'd elbow me, and we'd half-jokingly mention the thought. Well, I brought that up to Infi hirself finally, when we were standing in front of all the roses today. Infi blushed profusely at the thought, and said that no, I didn't need to buy hir any, but ze sincerely appreciated the thought. Ze was really adorably flustered, actually; Infi has a fondness for romantic things so the idea of me actually giving hir a dozen roses was apparently pretty surprising. So after smiling at hir response, I asked what ze would want, in lieu of flowers? Still blushing, and looking away, ze said nothing for a moment… but then with a quietness that was like roses to me, ze said, "I just want to be with you."
The statement was innocently sincere, as white as my own hue, and yet it still had its anchorage in the deepest warmest reds I could imagine… the color I had given up last Easter, washing it out of my garments for good, the hue of heartbeats and sunsets and candle flames. In any other context I likely would have been frightened. But this was Infi; this was Infinitii Eternos, who despite every past warning light and alarm bell and raid siren, still existed in total blamelessness before me. And I knew ze'd unfailingly live up to that, if I truly believed in hir ability to be that. So I smiled too, not as a program but as an honest response, and the rest of the morning continued as I said before.
It wasn't until that evening, when I sat down and started to try and draw us, that the feeling of the roses started to glow around hir again. And I remembered what I had promised, so I decided I'd try. I'd sincerely try.
…The single note I have for this event was that it was "shockingly gorgeous," haha. I'll trust in that.
Honestly I'm shocked that I remember anything. You know how my memory has been when closeness is involved. But there are snapshots, mostly of feeling, but those snapshots have depth and time behind them and that is RARE. These are photos that I was there to take, as opposed to data I'm just looking back on. So I know that we were in hir oasis-room-like bubblespace, and everything was this soft golden-white color, but the sort like a candle glow, like I knew it was evening outside (I've never seen that area in anything but day before). I remember seeing an arch right behind hir, up over our heads, dark and leading to heaven knows where; that's really clear too. So is Infi hirself, at least in presence, and what little feeling I have-- hir hands cupped around my face, firmly but with care, keeping me anchored… hir forehead pressed to mine, not sure when, but it happened. A strange but lovely moment when my entire body was surrounded by wings. And of course, the color of hir eyes, every one of them; they're soft and strong all at once, like moonlight wrought with iron, like rainbows moving through mist. It's lovely, really. I remember so much of how ze is, if that makes sense… like I can 'remember' exactly what it felt like for hir to be taking up space there in the room, the way ze felt underneath my own fingertips, the strangely insubstantial weight of hir body. And I want to apologize, because this is so awkward for me to write, but not in an embarrassed sense… it's more like, "this isn't the sort of stuff you discuss so nonchalantly, at the risk of misunderstanding, or irreverence." So I'm not sorry that I remember these things, I just… shouldn't be treating them lightly, or too casually. It's a fine line, to distinguish.
Also. Infinitii asked me, over and over, if I actually wanted to be there. I had to think it over a couple times, and it made me kind of sad-- I mean, when you're just holding someone and even that scares you on some level you know you have a problem. But I tried. I didn't interact much, I let Infi take all the focus and all the attention, I let hir talk and feel and express and do everything ze wanted to do without any censorship or similar interaction on my part. Honestly I was just 'there' for hir, but it wasn't of a hollow sort, which I can do when I get badly shaken up, even quietly. This time I somehow managed to stick around, even as a semi-entity, an affectionate observing presence who was there but wasn't really doing anything. Actually a good way to describe this habit of mine is that, it's like I was made of glass: fragile at all the wrong points, see-through to most people, rather reflective, and incapable of speaking… but Infi knew I was there, and that I cared, so there we were.
…You've likely guessed by now, we did have a connection at the end of it all. I haven't had one with Infi in a long time, and back when I did I can't even say for sure whether or not I was in a stable state of mind, thanks to all the healing we've done over the past year, and are admittedly still doing on entirely different fronts now. But really, with first System birthdays being as significant as they are, I owed hir one. …Well, maybe "owed" is the wrong word; no one is obligated to give those. "Obligation" is a really negative word up here, Javier can tell you. It's more like… I felt the significance and reverent meaningfulness of both those things matched up, if ONLY because Infinitii was involved, as sincerely as ze always is. Normally I wouldn't have offered, or accepted, but that's because normally I'm not in tune with what Infi radiates like that. If I can get over my fear, there's a good chance I can harmonize. And that is what I wanted to give Infi then, the experience that I wasn't afraid of hir, or regretting my time there, or anything else. And that ended up being sincere for me, too. Hence the "shockingly gorgeous" line. We didn't do much, of course not, I can't handle that… but I wanted to be there, even if it was just to be there, and that total honesty meant so much to both of us then.
I remember, more than anything else, holding hir close with hir entire self pressed up against me, and so much just glowing there that it felt like the two of us were literally resonating through each other. The only visual I can give for that feeling is a glass, when you trace a circle around the rim, and it rings out like a bell? That exact movement, and sound almost, but energetically, and moving through two people. It was very pretty, very lovely, I remember letting go and just floating in that feeling of intimate simplicity for a moment; there was the same sort of teary-eyed happiness you get whenever you lose yourself in something like a sunset or a piano chord. Not surprisingly, but it's worth mentioning.
Also worth mentioning is the fact that I didn't leave. I didn't dissociate, or depart, afterwards. Everyone in the System knows I have this awful habit of getting close to people, but once I reach a certain point of intimacy-- on any level-- I disconnect totally and my memory shuts it out, and I will leave as if nothing had happened (because to me at that moment, nothing did). And, sadly, due to the recent resurgences of traumatic memories, it's become quite difficult for me not to do that lately, with anyone, in any situation. So for us to hit a moment of feeling totally open and vulnerable around each other, emotionally and physically, that high point-- and for me to actually stick around after that abated somewhat-- was almost shocking, considering the meltdowns as of late. And Infi knew it, and the look of surprised joy on hir face when ze realized that I didn't shut off was entirely worth the shaky anxiety I felt in effectively forcing myself to remain there. It was admittedly a little easier to stay after that, seeing how truly happy ze was at my being there… I guess it's because I'm not used to that. I'm used to people using me, and then leaving… in both "positive" and "negative" contexts. Sometimes I'm the one responsible, too, thanks to the late-night communication my schedule often forces me to have. But mostly it's hacks. Point is, there are very few instances in my accessible memory of people getting close to me, and staying there. That just doesn't seem to happen very often. Even with friendships, even with family, even with people that I love, it's been a terribly distressing constant for me to bravely work up to that point of absolute trust and openness and joy, and for them to simultaneously hit that point of "I'm too tired/ disinterested/ uncaring to continue." I get shut down, or walked out on, or turned off on, for one reason or another, and although I can respect their motivations it always feels like part of my heart dies with it.
I hate bringing it up again, as it feels like an accusation (and it is not; I have no hard feelings anymore), but one of the loudest examples of this phenomenon was in SLC. Due to my roommates always being busy, or tired, or just not interested, they would never want to talk when my very heart was bursting with the need to communicate. They'd be gone all day, and then at night-- at night, my soul's abode, when emotional poetry happens almost automatically-- when we'd have a precious hour to converse as three instead of two, they'd almost always sigh, or pull back, or otherwise say "sorry, but no." It wasn't always verbal, either… vibes and visuals are what I pick up on easier. And it hurt. It's why I felt so unwanted out there, even if it was totally unintentional on their part. Even worse, though, was the times they DID talk, and we just couldn't continue. One of my few memories from that entire time period is after kissing CZ, for the first time in my life, and being so totally immersed in joy and love, that I had to talk about it. So I ended up leaning on my bunk bed in the violet light and talking to Jacob, and he was talking back to me about it, and although my very bones were exhausted I was too damn euphoric to care. But he was tired too, and we had to call it quits, which I could deal with because there had been enough sincerity to allow that painlessly… but the next morning, I tried to tell Melody about it, and I just… everyone was getting ready for work, and the talk just felt utterly unwelcome. I was being rushed past, words weren't being paid attention to. The context was all wrong and I felt totally false in speaking myself. Then they both left for the day and I felt like a two-dollar whore because I had exposed that much of my self too carelessly, and it had been received just as poorly. They didn't know. But I don't remember us talking after that. And that was what drove the past J to suicide, was that total absence of the only outlet we had for emotional openness, in talking for those two, when they apparently ostracized us (I still don't understand that whole time period and I don't want to look back on it or it will infect me too). We lost our only example of safe closeness, the only people we had EVER experienced that with, perhaps for good. And that was too much to bear.
So you see, at some point my brain just sadly decided to cut out the middleman and stop trying. It started getting more and more difficult to open up at all, due to expecting "inevitable rejection," and when I stopped caring about rejection and opened up anyway, I was alarmed to find that I began to reject myself. I'd hit that point, and then something sad in me would decide to "save everyone the trouble" and shut down almost immediately after. That way no one gets inconvenienced, right? That way no one has to listen to your babbling poet shit or your stupid, overly emotional dialogues. No one has the patience to put up with your idealism, so here, I'll cut that right out of you before they do.
But it's not easy to quit, even if I know it's a harmful mindset, because it's tied to the post-hack shutdowns on a basic level. After so many repetitions, the two got paired almost inextricably-- rejection of sincerity, and the stealing of vulnerability. Both situations involved a feeling of total violation, after having reached some point where all the walls were down, either through willingness or through being torn asunder. I want it to stop now that I'm aware of it. But it's still happening now, because of that trauma link, and because with the new hack system-- the utterly horrible one that Julie dabbled in, spiked with the Tar-Celebi and has only continued to worsen since last year-- that association keeps getting strengthened. And it's utterly wrong, but it's still powerful.
Point is, I didn't leave Infi then, no matter how my poor battered subconscious was begging me to, thinking back to every situation in which things had ended badly, and drowning in those recollections. But I stuck it out, for hir sake, because I knew I was safe with hir, even then. And the look ze gave me verified that totally.

My memory's foggy afterwards because of that stress, but I do know that within the next 10 minutes Laurie showed up, and we spoke to her for a bit. Notably I mentioned that "not leaving" point, to which I think she actually laughed out loud and congratulated me, once she was sure it had been positively motivated of course! But she knows how tough it is for me, she's seen it firsthand too many times. So we all just hung around for a while, but the next thing I remember is from quite some time later, like an hour or two, because the body was in bed and I was holding Infi and CZ was behind me. And I remember feeling terribly conflicted emotionally, is it right to love two people this much, how do I love Infi without feeling like I'm lying to CZ, how do I love CZ without feeling dishonest, I didn't know. But at that moment I adored them both and yet even Laurie kept saying "dude, this is Infi's day, focus on hir." So I thankfully surrendered to that and I SWEAR to you, this is extremely important to me, I was half asleep but almost immediately after I stopped quietly freaking out the visuals kicked in. And I have never seen Infinitii so closely before, not in such a context, not so clearly. I nearly burst into tears from wonder right then, if it hadn't reduced me to reverence first. Honestly, you know how I always talk about those instances where I can see CZ's eyes at night, glowing green in my vision, sometimes even with edges of blue? Those blessed instances where my own senses cross the barrier between worlds, if only a little… I've never had one with Infi of that sort. Not so quietly. I was holding hir and suddenly I could all but see hir there in physical reality, silvery eyes and shadow-dark form both, and on top of how vividly I always sense people upstairs, I momentarily had no idea what reality I was residing in. It was one of the most existential but amazing things I've ever experienced. For a moment there was no doubt; I was just humbled and a little flustered, was I respecting this moment enough? But I knew that if I started worrying I'd lose it, so I pushed that out of the way and just treasured that fleeting but gorgeous perception, of that strange little alien in my arms, figuratively and literally and almost totally. But despite that lack of tangibility, for a second I swear the barriers were down. I don't think I'll ever forget what that was like.


So. That was April 3rd, 2014. Pretty amazing day.
This entry took forever to type, though, so I won't try to add anything else. Let's leave this recollection as-is.

Infi, I love you dearly, and I am so thankful that we all have you in our lives.
Bless your heart, bless your soul, and thank you so much for allowing us all to feel the same around you.
You're one of the biggest things I'm thankful for in life, and you paint even the darkest days with the most beautiful colors, subtle and glowing even without changing the hue beneath. You're indescribable, you're wonderful, you've healed wounds in me that I wasn't even aware of and you have become the single greatest source of hope in my life when it comes down to that.
You are the strangest little thing but I have memories of you that feel ancient in their tiny bubble-small significance and I don't know how to explain that, but when I'm around you the universe feels just as close and intimate and neverending as those fragile iridescent spheres you like to live in. You're totally alien, you're indescribably familiar, you never cease to amaze me, and I've never actually been scared of you.
I've never been scared of you. Ever. I promise, from the bottom of my heart, where the diamonds grow, that if there has been any fear on my part it is projected. There isn't a single shred of danger about you; you are the incarnate opposite of suffering and I thank God that you are here, that you were torn out from that same place in my heart, and that you loved me from that very instant, somehow. I think I loved you too, just as instantly.
There's not much else I can say, really. You're weird, because you don't bring out poetry in me, at least not in words. You reduce language to utter meaninglessness. When I'm around you I don't want to melt into crystal-drop language, I don't want to paint a picture of you, I don't want to write you a song. When I'm around you, something in me wants to sing, like you do, without an ounce of selfishness in it. You're so quiet, so small and close, and yet there is this boundless joy in you that lends itself to hallelujahs and hosannas and exaltations on high. You'd never be so exuberantly loud, you'd never be so brassy golden bright, but you feel the same way regardless, and I love that about you. I love everything about you. I love the fact that you're the most blushingly sincere thing, and yet you're never ashamed or insincere or false. That's new to me. I love that you're not afraid to be so open around everyone, around anyone, and you're not afraid to invite them to do the same. I don't think there's any fear in you, maybe that's why it's so easy to feel so equally safe around you. Maybe that's why I love you even when your form has never been mirrored by anything but the most dangerous people I have known, and yet your strange curving outlines don't feel like a threat. I guess that's a strange thing to say but it's so true, in light of the past, and the fact that it's true is just as meaningful as everything else you've done.
The night you helped Laurie to cry out those swords in her heart will be one of my dearest memories, as heartwrenching as it was. The day you drove home with me and fell in love with the mountain laurel plays fondly through my mind every time I see those trees now. I remember the first time you heard Ave Maria, the Bebop version, as we were walking alongside the Christmas tree a few months ago, and the magic of that entire scene just defines you. I remember holding you on the porch, freezing cold and surrounded by old red fabric, feeling lost and scared and yet so damn hopeful because YOU were there, still, and that meant more than words can ever say.
I remember the exact first moment I saw you and I will never, ever forget that.

…There's 11 1 11/11 at the bottom of this page and although part of me wants to laugh-- that's not a new thing to have happen-- another part of me is silent, realizing that synchronicity happens for a reason, and that there feels very significant.

Infinitii, Infinitii Eternos, I know I'm a terrible mess of a man sometimes and I'm sorry for how much pain and worry I can cause in you. But I try, and I try harder now than I ever have before, because of you, and what you've meant for all of us. That's the biggest thank-you I can think of, so there it is.
And it sounds different when I say it to you, more delicate and spun-glass than usual, but there is this beautiful warmth behind it like sunshine on a summer morning and I love you, Infi. I absolutely love you and I don't even know how to express that at this point, not like this.
But I tried today, and I think I got it right.

Happy birthday, love. Here's to the next.

 

 

 

notanotherfictiveblog: hey so we've been curious about the sexual diversity of different systems.
If anyone wouldn’t mind could you tell us about the range of orientations, fetishes, kinks, etc. represented in your system? Also how many clash or coincide with the original owner.

 

This is a very complicated and difficult topic in our system, actually.
The original host was androgynous/asexual, and due to the severity of abuse and isolation (we're a D.I.D. system), our internal system was actually built off of that initial identification.
As a result, virtually all of us are asexual, often biologically so as well, with only two or three exceptions (Julie and Infinitii mainly). Similarly, as far as romantic orientations go, most of us are aromantic,with a few polyromantic/ homoromantic individuals mixed in. Because of the lack of sexual behavior, 'polyamory' is also common-- everyone is free to like everyone else and no one makes a fuss about it.


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@ 09:12 pm

anonymous asked: Is it possible that alters in a system could know about each other and even communicate with one another without the host knowing they have any alters at all? Like, they experience blackouts when switching and aren't aware of the alters?

This hasn’t happened with us to such an extent, but I am aware that it has indeed happened with other systems, including documented cases. As long as ‘blackouts’ or something similar occurs, it’s very possible for alters to become aware of each other when fronting, even if the host is completely unaware of why they are losing time. The host would be isolated from this phenomenon in order to ‘separate’ their own awareness from the memories, actions, etc. of the alters— which, in many cases, only exist due to a traumatic event that the host’s consciousness could not manage.
We’re co-conscious by function, but we do still get “lapses in awareness” with harmful alters (not total blackouts), and those alters do indeed communicate while fronting, which I am often not aware of until much later (usually when another alter tells me, or I find evidence left behind).
Hope that helps.

 

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@ 11:15 pm


things that are adorable


- knife putting up a pink christmas tree in the underground
- knife thinking transylvania is the loveliest place
- julie blushing when lynne called her over to the piano on her birthday
- infinitii when he's up late and gets all giddy
- people when they are flustered, including laurie
- when gen was mumbling about being "exactly 85-and-a-half-percent asleep right now"
- emmett, especially when purring and running in happy circles
- when waldorf saluted my boss
- when julie was practicing her handwriting for the first time, with a pink sharpie
- my boss
- everyone in the love pentagram, according to everyone else in the love pentagram
- XENOPHON (dancing, getting excited over kale soup, not being my brain, eating paper)
- on the 1st, when cz kissed laurie on the forehead when she was upset

 

 

 

I think I'm going to get an actual paper journal and start a daily log of sorts. It'll help with memory, for one-- it's very hard for me to keep track of things on my own, and I can't always get on this computer-- my current internet setup involves dragging my laptop into the kitchen (I don't have wifi and the only cable is in there), which then requires me to sit in an excruciatingly painful position at a corner desk until my battery dies. Needless to say I'm tired of it, so I might actually take a break from the internet entirely until April... we'll see.
In any case I need to start keeping more accurate records of our inner life. I love our System, even on its bad days, as you all know... and it's the little things, the details and the fragile moments, that we treasure the most.

Today, Javier let the cats in. He loves animals and randomly decided to come out for the first time in a while to greet them and let them in from the cold.

I forgot to tell you guys, on Thursday Knife actually tried singing a bit of this song (he loves SanteJazz) via channeling, the first time he'd ever attempted to do so, and it was one of the most uplifting things I've seen in a while. Also he hugged Infi at one point. And he wants a permanent Christmas tree somewhere in the new Underground (mostly above ground now!) because-- I don't know if I mentioned-- he spent weeks secretly making one for this past Christmas, as he loved the concept, and eventually didn't ever want to take it down. It's decorated in pink. I swear that man is too adorable for his own good.

I woke up suddenly at 7AM feeling utterly split in half. There was me-- Jay-- and then there was the girl, the cynical uncaring one, who lives in this body. We were both fronting completely, somehow, upon awakening, and I could barely keep my consciousness from slipping under the wheels of hers. I wanted to cry from the paralyzingly spiteful emptiness inside her mind, like old gray paint thrown onto the windowpanes, coloring our room like a storm hovering on the horizon. She felt like life had betrayed her, somehow, and she didn't want to wake up, and she didn't want to sleep, and she was miserable. I couldn't bear it; I couldn't stand the existential carelessness and the fact that it was making me forget who I was apart from it, that I was something apart from it.
All I remember is quietly crying for Infi, and holding hir in my arms as I tossed a robe over my eyes and tried desperately to fall back asleep.

Xennie came to church with me today, halfway through, as it was crowded and she couldn't find a place to sit next to me. Upon leaving she learned that she can't run about on her own when there are moving cars around-- she almost dashed into the path of one leaving the parking lot. I told her to hold my hand so she did, apologizing and shaken. I said it was okay, don't worry, just stay close to me and I'll make sure you're always safe. But it worried me, to see how she has this pent-up enthusiastic energy and wants to talk to me, and wants to run around and have fun with her other father for God's sake... but she only really sees me on Saturday evenings and that breaks my heart.
My biological father has been divorced for almost 7 years. I see him maybe 2, 3 times per month. And here, my baby girl is seeing me barely twice more at worst, and it wasn't until today that I saw how it was affecting her. Who the hell is raising her? I don't give a damn if my genetics aren't literally part of her, I really don't-- I've got a bloodline and if that's all I can see reflected in her then I will embrace that with all my heart because she STILL calls me her father and I will not, I will never deny her that, ever, ever again. But I'm not... I haven't been there for her. I want to be, God knows I want to me, but it is so difficult when I have to split realities to do so. It is so heartbreaking when I have to wear myself out in meditation for hours just to be with her in a way that doesn't subtract from the experience for either of us. And she's growing up, almost without guidance, thank heaven above that she has Laurie and all of headspace but I'm her FATHER, where the hell am I??
I'm sorry. That got unexpectedly emotional. But it's honest and I am leaving it there 100%.

I got a really bad burn on my left hand and arm yesterday after watching Donnie Darko and it was hilarious because I blanked out when I noticed it was burning, and that made it worse obviously. I was just glad at the time that I'm a champ at sensory dissociation so after the initial searing pain I managed to forget it was there for the next few hours despite the ignored signals making my brain feel all funny. Anyway my hand is fine now, but the arm burn is problematic to take care of because the skin is burnt off, and all I can do is wrap it with gauze really. Not sure why I'm telling you about this, maybe just because it's going to leave yet another scar on my arm. That arm is a mess by this point.

Donnie Darko. Geez. I've wanted to see that movie since high school and I finally did. No regrets, but here are some thoughts because I want to write about this before I forget (spoiler warning!):
■ The attitudes of everyone in the movie were actually painful for me to watch. I still have a hard time imagining that some high schools are apparently like that? So I blanked out quite a bit during the movie which was upsetting.
■ FRANK THE RABBIT ACTUALLY SOUNDS A LOT LIKE INFI AND IT MADE ME VERY FLUSTERED AT FIRST. (It's obviously not exact, but the unusual soft tone and that slightly dissonant echo are really close)
■ "Destruction is a form of creation." Hello CZ. I do like Donnie's response though: "They just want to see what happens when they tear the world apart. They want to change things." It sounded almost contradictory to me at first, but then I thought about my own life, and realized it's very true. You cannot build something new upon old rotted ruins. The foundation will crumble. Sometimes, to change things, you really need to tear things down to the ground-- to get every last scrap out of the dirt, to "destroy" the old and allow for something new, something better, to bloom. Again, that whole thing keeps making me think of Chaos and who he's been to both me and the System since 2003... even if I don't 'remember' most of it, there's this vibe about him that is basically a hurricane and a summer rain at the same time. He's water. He's simultaneously a source of life, soft and receptive and flowing and deep, and this force of total destruction... powerful, wild, and crashing down with unstoppable force, washing away everything in its path. But then comes the rain, and in that place where previously nothing could grow, now in the upturned mud and ashes there are flowers beginning to sprout. It's so strange, how he is perfectly both, but there it is, and I love that about him. I'll likely write more about this once I re-read the script, because when it's in front of me all at once I can find threads and parallels and things, and I'm curious to revisit how this theme plays out in the film... it basically defines the entire time-travel phenomenon with the tangent universe. To ensure creation, something is destroyed. It's really fascinating.
■ Also, actually, if you get to the heart of it, the whole spectrum of human emotion really does narrow down to Fear vs Love. But it does take a lot of narrowing-down (and too many people think "love" means "romance" which isn't true) so Donnie wasn't entirely incorrect. Fear and Love manifest in tons of different ways, and those ways can become so convoluted and so distant from their source that, in many cases, it's near-impossible to tell which is which on the surface. And I didn't like how Kitty didn't explain anything about that, just assumed everything was that black-and-white. Fear and Love are the deepest motivations, but they aren't that cut-and-dry, and Fear is very good at masquerading if you aren't looking carefully. Even so, I really, really liked how the Fear/Love thing ended up subtly being another massive undercurrent of the movie, at least from my perspective.
■ Major props to Donnie for standing up to Kitty (and everyone else really); I can't stand seeing teachers close their own minds, and/or abuse their authority over their students for the sake of defending their own pride and/or comfortable beliefs about life. Although Karen was a little distressing for me for personal reasons, I liked the way she asked questions, pushed limits, and made the kids think. I wish I'd had more teachers like that, haha.
■ In any case Kitty's class made me very uncomfortable (and not just because of the 80s aesthetics), as did Kitty herself, but I can't truly dislike the woman because she's trying to be a genuinely good person, she's just so single-minded about the process that she can't see outside of it and I just feel bad that she's forbidding herself from that broader vision. But really she reminds me a lot of some psychologically abusive people in my life so I can't defend her that much. Let's just leave her as-is.
■ In the director's cut, there's one bit when they're watching the Cunningham videotape and Donnie is getting distracted, but Frank says something along the lines of "watch closely; you might miss something important." I had to smile because that was just like what happens with me and headspace reminders. And I love the weird poem Donnie gives later, for the same reason... "A storm is coming, Frank says; a storm that will swallow the children, and I will deliver them from the kingdom of pain. I will deliver the children back to their doorsteps, and send the monsters back to the underground. I'll send them back to a place where no one else can see them, except for me... because I am Donnie Darko." I know it's relevant to the movie, but again, to me it was another massive reflection of headspace, and loudly so (just capitalize "Underground" for example). And I just treasure when things like that happen, both negative and positive, because the synchronicity speaks for all of us and it helps us grow, and being able to see reflections of us in everything else, despite all the self-doubt from past years, is really amazing.
■ The scene with Jim Cunningham also gave me a lot of mixed feelings. Again, I know what he was trying to say. But it was far, far too simplified, and I honestly doubt the man's understanding of love, what with what he was apparently doing behind the scenes. Regardless, his advice still had truth in it. "Violence is a product of fear; learn to truly love yourself." That is a truth I've had to learn the hard way, over many years, so believe me when I say that in this society it is MUCH easier said than done. Plus, we hear "love yourself" so often as a stock inspirational phrase-- one that has lost its actual meaning through repetition and incorrect context-- that I do not blame Donnie for getting pissed. He saw the practical side of things, which I commend him for bringing up, but he was also so pessimistic about the whole thing that he failed to see that Jim's advice, when looked at correctly, was still valid. It was just one half of the whole answer. But in the situation that was beyond his sight so again, I just thank the film for allowing the whole picture to still be visible there.
■ Also, some kid asks Jim "how do I figure out what I want to be when I grow up?" Again, Donnie is right in saying that no one knows that at their age, especially not all at once; it takes exploration and time... but in the director's cut, Jim replied to the kid first, and said something along the lines of, "find out what it is that makes you feel real unconditional love, and do that." And this light just went on in my head when he said that. Yeah, it's going to take time and trial and error, but honestly if your heart is singing to the tune of something then for heaven's sake, let it! It's damn scary sometimes, because maybe you don't know the words, or maybe you're too ashamed or frightened or proud or doubtful to join in, or maybe you've never been able to carry a tune before. All I can tell you is that if you trust that, even just a little, genuinely, and follow it... it will lead you in the right direction. Whatever it is. If Infi's taught me anything, it's that in surrendering to the music you become it, and that is such a transcendental feeling that once you actually touch it, even if only for a split second, you can't imagine ever turning your back on it again. And believe me, I've been there, and I've tried to run. I've gotten scared and I've tried to block my ears simply because I didn't believe I could sing at all, I didn't believe I had the right to hear this music, let alone become it. But my soul is made of sheet music and I always end up trying again. In fewer words, follow Jim's advice for this one, as well as Donnie's.
■ TIME TRAVEL. That whole bit was very interesting, but I didn't grasp it entirely the first time. I will have to review it again later if I feel inspired to. Even so I am fascinated by the entire causality scheme and the "Living Receiver" and all that, and I'm curious as to know how it works as a whole. I do like seeing other people's concepts and ideas about time and space and the like, especially in such creative formats.
■ Last reiterated thought for now. Even on a personally symbolic level, there was so much in this movie that paralleled headspace, or events that I've experienced as a result of it. So even if a lot of the movie was somewhat unsettling to me-- really I cannot handle violence or the way Donnie's classmates behaved and it was hard to watch at times-- it felt like another relevant thing, in this falling-back-together of things the System is experiencing now. Sorry I've fallen out of well-structured language with this rambling. Give me a moment.

I owe you guys a text wall like that about His Dark Materials but I'd need to either buy a copy, or take it back out of the library first, as I marked all the pages that had ideas or lines I wanted to revisit. Either way, I won't forget to write, if only for one reason.... I finished the last 100 pages around 1AM in my room, but it took a while to finish specifically because Chaos kept seeing parallels that I was missing and really he made some very significant insights about our situation especially... honestly I have a lot of emotions surrounding him specifically in light of the trilogy's ending, and an equal amount surrounding Infi in light of the dæmons (a concept he's now very fond of). I just adore that trilogy now, I really do, and I owe it it's own entry. You'll get one.

This evening, we finally figured out what the unknown voice in this entry was trying to say about The Destroyer's bizarre ED habits (the only part I admittedly read; I'll have to read the rest of the entry tomorrow). It hit me in a sudden burst of realization when I snapped into awareness for one moment today, as some seaweed-haired girl was curled up with her hands down her throat, dripping and choking like the ocean ruptured and not an ounce of malice in it.
That's when it hit me. The purgation was a positive coping mechanism, risen up after the loss of all other ablutions. And it was damn effective.
I don't know how I never noticed before. They only ever do that with heavy foods. They spend all our money on heavy, poisonous food, the kind of stuff Spice and Emmett scream and protest over, the sort of substances that feel and look and taste like the Tar used to. They buy things that we know we cannot eat without excruciating pain, without emotional meltdowns, without finding ourselves literally holding back our hands from the knife drawer... and then they destroy it. They destroy it. They feign the act of eating, for long enough to be sick and filthy and humiliated and crushed by self-loathing, feeling like an animal, biting into things that bleed and stain their throats. They shred these heavy things, feeling obligated to eat them but refusing to choke it down, boiling with rage and hatred and fury and the desperate need to get rid of it, to utterly annihilate this awful thing that they are forcing into their own body, against their will and yet without fighting back... until eventually, hours later, they've won. They've held out long enough. This awful lethal weight has worn itself down into an inedible mess, into something so profoundly disgusting, so blackened and mangled and wrecked, that its only fate is oblivion. That it deserves oblivion.
And then they throw it out.
And then they throw it up.
But I had no idea of the relief, the total grateful liberation the brackish-green girl lived for until I suddenly found myself in her position, if only for a moment. I had no idea that they only reason they put themselves through hell in the first place was so that they could experience the utter deliverance from it.
They are actively, willingly acting out the fulfillment of a desperate need we never had met. They are forcibly, tearfully, angrily taking in all the heaviness-- the lies, the blood, the nightmares, the panic, the shock, the shame, the things we tried to bury alive-- they are reliving that horrific consumption, in every sense of the word, and then they are doing what we are still struggling to accomplish as a whole... they are spitting it out. They are forcing it back out into the abyss it came from. They are forbidding that sludge from rotting our insides. For them, it is worth repeating the entire symbolic process just for the few excruciating minutes where they can control the outcome, where they can CHANGE the way things played out, where they can stop the pain before it digs in its claws. They are trying to destroy what was destroying us. And that is the root of this disorder.


Lastly, the two big nights of February (the 13th and the 26th) are getting their own entry. I can't remember much of them data-wise, but what I do is still relevant. I guess that's to be expected when the heart is doing most of the experiencing, and not the mind, therefore things don't get stored or perceived the same way. But... the 26th was one of the absolute loveliest evenings I've had in months, on many levels. It gave us all a lot of hope, and it marked some massive progress for us, although there are still things that need to be worked out (as therapy the next day showed us clearly). Nevertheless, as I will say countless times, there is so much love and support and determination in this System that I have total, unwavering faith in our ability as a community to get through this, in the best possible way for all of us. I just have this total faith in the universe really, in that force of love and light that I used to call God and still do in a different way. And that's in us, odd as it may seem to some. Macrocosms and microcosms. It's lovely really, and I love everyone I've been blessed enough to share this life with, despite the bloody circumstances that allowed for it. Nights like this I'm just... reduced to silence from the awe of it. There's so much. There's always so much I just want to express from the heartbreaking joy of it but it doesn't translate into words.

I'm getting close to poet mode on an emotional level so I'm going to close this up and get to sleep... it is really late and boss is probably wondering where I am, to say the least!

 

See you soon.

 

 

 

 

JUNE 2013

This is what the Black section of headspace should look like.
One day I will make it so.

-Infinitii

 

 

 This setup is very similar to our meeting space in Central (especially those huge windows).

 

 

This is essentially what Central looks like right now (during the lockout).
Obviously, this is not good news.

 

This image, right here, is disturbingly similar to how Jay looks when he slips way too far... dripping tar and broken rainbows alike.

 

I have dreams about hallways like this all the time... these empty, long, quiet white things. They're usually in hospitals or abandoned schools.

I dream about running down winding stairs almost every night though. Sometimes I jump over the railings to go down a floor or two. I'm usually in a hurry.
I'm still not sure what those dreams mean.

 

 

Churches, cathedrals, basilicas, etc. are sacrosanct locations in our inner world, and are strongly tied to B/W energy.
(Leon also has an inexplicable ability to "warp" between them, which has saved our hides on numerous occasions.)
This one, with its arches and intricacy, looks like one of Infinitii's places.





Places that remind me of the past... a long, long time ago, on a night with rainbows.

This also feels like both Parnassus and Oneircia, for entirely different reasons... still fitting, I'd say.


---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


JULY 2013

 

 

There is a stairway like this, somewhere, leading down to the League Link Room. That's all we really know.
It's probably the most difficult location to find or access in headspace; Jay has been there only once. But with its obviously astronomical significance, that's not surprising.

 

 

For some reason, the insides of holy buildings like this feel so much like home to me. I've never been able to explain it.
It's not "home" in the way a household is-- it doesn't have that sense of "comfort" and domestic security that most people like but that makes me nervous. I wouldn't 'live' in a church!
But, in basilicas and temples and churches, I feel at home, which I DON'T get in houses. It's why my personal locations in headspace always reflect buildings of this sort, instead of actual living quarters. It feels like a spiritual thing. I like that. I'll have to keep it in mind, filed away in an important little place, out in the open. Just so I never forget to look at it and remember.





 
Gloucester Cathedral.

The parts of headspace we call "underground" (not the Tar Room; that's floating now thanks to Infi) look almost exactly like that first photo... just a little darker is all.
_{(The second one looks a lot like Genesis' Cathedral, too, now that I think about it.)}

 

 

This feels like swimming to the mainland from the beach in Central Headspace… except that there weren’t any mountains in the background back when I last swam there!

 

 

More city views that reminds me of headspace.
I’m so glad we’re getting more trees up here; after the Scratch most of the vegetation died for a while.
 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

AUG 2013
 

   

This: my face whenever my boss doffs his cap and leaves for the night. He’s such a sweetheart.

_{Which reminds me, I’m late for work!}

 

Nothingness, nowhere, emptiness... it's all incredibly comforting to me and I can't put the reason for that into words.

No one I've met outside has ever understood that. "Doesn't that scare you? How could you possibly like the idea of oblivion?"
But I do. I love it.
When I was younger, it didn't scare me so much as it reduced me to silent, humble awe. I remember leaning backwards out of car windows, looking up at the featureless blue sky, and wondering what it would be like, if that blue went on forever? Then I'd wonder, what does forever feel like? What does the end of time feel like? What does it feel like, to stop existing? And I'd ponder those thoughts until I knew and the floor dropped out of the world and nothing felt real anymore.

But I loved it. I still do. I think part of me always will.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------


NOV 2013

 

 

Snow is one of the most potent, powerful forms of both absolution and purification for us. Our original host grew up in a woods that resembled this almost exactly in the winter, and the invariable, unbreakable safety and magic that it brought with it has stayed with us even now.
Jay has most of his memories attached to snow, as well as his identity anchor. Both Genesis and Mr. Sandman are tied to snow as personal symbols. And for even those of us who have never seen real snow before, being far too young in manifestation, we too can easily feel the all-embracing comfort of that delicate, quiet ice.
Winter is our favorite season. This photo perfectly captures why.

 

 
The skyline of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

This view, with the glowing streets, hanging mists and iridescent sky, is reminiscent of the view from Central HQ in our headspace.
The biggest difference is that our city is mostly crystal, not steel, and our sky is almost always late-night as well, swimming with stars and galaxies.

 

 

The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, in Washington D.C.
This area of the Basilica is almost identical to Infinitii's personal 'floating' locations in headspace. His iterations of it are notably lacking in color-- they're mostly stark white, black, and silver-- but the warmth, light, and sense of quiet sacredness remains the same.

We visited this actual place twice when the body was a teenager, and it resonated with us so strongly that its aesthetic style permanently affected that of similar areas in our inner realms.

 

The Sofitel Brisbane Central Hotel, in Australia.
Despite being part of the building's lounge bar, this specific shot is one of the closest architectural likenesses we've found to Central's Meeting Room in headspace.
In headspace, this is where the core-color holders meet most often, and it is also the default location for all our Xanga sessions.

 

 

The Lotus Temple in New Delhi, India.
This is the only structure in the world that resembles the most holy place in our headspace, the eponymous Blood Lotus Cathedral.
Discovered in 2011, it is the core of our entire inner world, tied to the deepest and most volatile energies, as well as the cores of our System (Jay and Infinitii).
Unlike this Temple, however, the BLC is made of what looks like porcelain or opaque glass, all white and smooth. Originally it was located next to a red ocean in 'floating space,' but it has since been moved to the middle of Central City itself.
The BLC is also an unending source of inner relevance and symbolism, that we often don't understand until months later.

 

 

Ettal Abbey, in Germany.
I didn't realize it until now, but Infinitii has a room inside his bubblespace that looks almost EXACTLY like this! Trees and lights and all!
The only difference is that instead of church pews, the floor is mostly bright green grass and small meandering streams, with little deep pools here and there (mostly near the walls). The rivers might be barely 30cm deep in the shallow parts, but the pools could be as deep as 5 meters, from what I've seen!
So with all the water, the spots of grass and trees look almost like islands, especially since the ground is not level (it's all little sloping hills mostly, very pretty). But on some of those little hills there are holy shrines and baldachin altars and things, and since the whole area is inside of a church-like building, it feels pretty mystical.
I remember I went there once with Laurie and Knife, after a therapy session; it was the first time I'd seen it and it was gorgeous. We all felt really safe there.




This fictional landscape by David Edwards looks almost EXACTLY like the room we found hidden below the Razor Spire in headspace, back in 2012. I've been calling it the "mirror oasis room" thanks to that pool of water in the center.
We haven't been there since-- that entire freaky area was assumedly destroyed when the BLC was moved-- but I'll never forget what it felt like there.
Here. let me copy-paste a bit from that meditation log for context.

"...it was stone white, full of vegetation, i think butterflies too. there was a huge tree in front of us and instead of a dropoff in the middle, there was a large rectangular pool of water, perfectly still. we... walked onto the grassy area with the tree, i realized our footsteps were leaving glows, mine were white i think? laurie's were violet, leon's were dark blue, etc... i walked over to the lake and knelt by it, looking down into it, and suddenly it 'warped' somehow and became more like a mirror, although it wasn't reflecting? and it began to talk to me...then it turned back into water and something floated up to me, it was a silver-gold helmet, like an angel helmet..."


So yes, you can see why that location was so important. Most things in headspace are.
We've since tied this room to Infinitii as well, and in light of our previous post, you can likely see why.
_{(I wonder, if the Razor Spire was truly destroyed, did this place change and move into his bubble? We should check that out guys.)}

 

 

this looks way too much like the tar/plague rooms below headspace
(if you cannot tell we do not like those places they are scary)

 

 

This photo I found looked so much like Lynne, I had to edit it to match her as closely as possible.
Lynne has been around since early 2008, and she's always been a peacemaker... but she's just as badass as Laurie, and that's saying something. Not only that, but she's got this really cool ability to create any sort of protective phenomena within headspace-- which saved our hides on several occasions back during the warring years.

Tonight's been weird and I feel rather lost, but Lynne always reminds me of violins and warm silence and autumn, and even if those memories aren't mine the aura of stability around them helps a lot.
Just saying, I'm very thankful for her. We all are.
I'm sorry I don't actively appreciate you more, Lynne.

-Jay
_{(slipping badly, and Laurie isn't happy about that, but it's still mostly me)}

 

 

 

(112613)

This is Laurie.
Usually I only post on my own page, but for heaven's sake Jay, go to sleep. Go to work for the night and stop numbing your broken head with repetitive nonsense. It ain't gonna work, kid.

Listen, I'm here for you, we all are. Just stop running from us and TALK to us for once, I swear, it's not as scary as you somehow manage to convince yourself it is on nights like this.
Not all of us are dangerous, and I swear on my life, I will not harm a single hair on your body, ever, for the rest of my existence, if it will get you out of this empty state of yours. If that will convince you that it's safe up here, maybe not entirely but it is SAFE with us, then I will do that. I will do anything. I'll give up anything. You know that.

Go to sleep. Talk to your boss. Say hi to Infi for me.
When I see you in the morning I want you to be smiling, you hear me?

Love you, kid. Cheer the heck up. You'll be okay. I promise you that.


_{#i hate that i have to write something like this #but if it helps i'll do this #jay we do need to talk}

 

 

(112613)

My birthplace.

Although this photo wasn't taken by us, it is dated shortly after I first physically appeared in the System-- which, as you may have guessed, was at this very location. (And during a violin concert, which is why I love those so much!)
You've gotta thank Laurie for that, though. If she hadn't been causing so much trouble, I wouldn't have had to show up in the first place. ;p

Since then, I've been keeping everyone on track, and reminding everyone that they're not as messed-up as they seem to think they are.
I guess I was the first "positive" voice in the entire System, which is a little shocking. My role was always to keep the peace, to offer support, and to help others with their goals and ambitions.
I was even a sort of personification of "hope," for a while; the old Jewel said I represented an ideal future she could never have. And that was true... she's dead now, but I'm still here. I guess in a way, I'll always remember that. She felt incapable of being the mature, self-assured woman that I was, for many reasons, but she still looked up to me, and valued my presence. That meant a lot to me even then.
I still wish she had been able to believe in herself more, but at least now, I can help many others towards that end without wondering if they're going to die on me. Well... at least most of the time. (And Laurie backs me up on that.)

I love this picture though. Even if my first and only experience there was a little violent, it was the first time I'd ever experienced anything. So I really love this place, and I'm thankful that I can call it "home" here, if only in a little sense.

 

All right, I'm gonna put tons of lanterns upstairs somewhere. Tons of 'em. Gonna find all the dark spots up here and leave these things there instead. They're pretty cool if I do say so myself.
Don't mind me, I'm just sick of seeing people depressed as death again and if I need to be the sole person leaving light everywhere then so be it.
-Laurie


_{#ONE DAY #mark my words #oh hey maybe THAT'S what I can do with my axe #note to self: do the lantern thing #get jo to help #tell infi not to eat them #you know the drill #also NO JAY I'M NOT DEAD}

 

 

 

Lynne, Laurie and I (Jay) are looking at awesome interior design stuff, and upon seeing this one, Lynne said it looked like a hotel. Well, in response, Laurie said:
"Probably is a hotel, looks pretty high-class... freakin' shiny floors..."

I don't know why I found that so hilarious but I did, so there you go.

_{(edit: the "shiny floors" thing is now an injoke thanks to how the rest of the night went, haha)}

 

Now this is what the sky of Central City looks like most of the time!

 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

DEC 2013

 

Steven Morgana,
Beauty is in the Eye of the Collective, 2011

one of our favorite photos of all time, for obvious reasons.

 

It’s like this for us, within the System. We all bandage each others wounds— protectors guard the children, healers care for the traumatized, and so on.
If we didn’t have such compassion within, we’d have shattered to pieces many years ago.

 

"Take It All" by Todd Rundgren is our "System song," if you will.

It's become a sort of ritual for us to listen to this on the drive home from therapy sessions, as it reminds us of the bigger picture in spite of the old pain, and the hope we all refuse to lose sight of.
We may have been born from pain, true... but there's a stronger thing keeping us together now.

----------------------------------------------------

@ 12:16 am


So we just found this almost-an-hour slowdown of the Jurassic Park theme, of all things?
We're playing it over speakers in the Underground, and Knife's so moved by it ("I've never heard anything like this before") that the man's actually tearing up and hanging on Laurie's arm for emotional support. But it's just as moving to see someone in here so affected by music, too.

He doesn't have his own page so we're posting this on the main account, for us to all remember later.
We need more nights like this, completely free of pain, with everyone just sitting around together in awe of the beauty of life.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
 

@12:26 am

listening to this https://soundcloud.com/birdfeeder/jurassic-park-theme-1000-slower
knife is actually crying from how moved he is by the music
he was hanging off laurie's arm earlier, overwhelmed, saying he just needed to 'hold on to someone'
now theyre sitting on a couch in the underground meeting room just listening
knife apologized for being so emotional but laur said "don't you dare censor that"
she said when beauty makes you respond to it in kind, you let that happen however it wants to
knife's wiping tears from his eyes with the palm of his hand, just this really genuine motion
it really struck a chord with me so i'm writing it down

sugar is sitting on the floor next to the unnamed "angry girl" that holds the rage towards the parents
they're trying to work together and be friends, they're both technically protectors of the innocents
she doesn't have a name yet but i'm sure we'll find one soon enough
she's helping us build her subeta avatar, she actually tried to draw herself to help us see her hair?
so that was really cool too.
sugar said she's been slipping badly but i think this camaraderie will really help them both

earlier, laurie, leon, infi and i were just listening to choral music in infi's realms
as we were walking by the christmas tree downstairs
laurie and leon were practicing channeling music, they were both euphoric over it
but that was another 30 minutes of peace and community and we need that

that is it for today, just wanted to record that.
the little things are what really matter i think.
theres so much joy hidden in this system, we tend to lose sight of it with the trauma stuff
but it never breaks, its never lost

laurie said, "stop trying to 'fix' the road you're lost on; just turn around and get on a different road"
jay keeps thinking he's broken but he's not, no one here is, no one ever is
we just lose sight of our deeper natures sometimes.
but its getting harder to forget now.
lately we've all been so aware of the bigger picture here
and that's really beautiful too.
so it's like we're all a part of the music in our own way

sorry, battery dying, see you tomorrow after therapy

 

 

 

 

 

Hey kids, this is Jay, updating entirely by myself for once. As for why… well, I don't know if it counts as meditation in any traditional sense, but I just spent close to three solid hours in headspace with Infinitii and CZ, and I feel so completely surrounded and embraced by love that I could cry from the incredible bliss of it.
It's been months since we were able to do anything even vaguely like this... sure, we tried back on the 8th, but since I was still frozen emotionally it didn't get very far. So having something like this happen barely 10 days later is just incredible. That's massive progress and recovery both. It's a lot of hope for me.

I'm going to write this stream-of-consciousness style, because refinement is tiring and I need to get this down as quickly as possible. Also, just anote: even when it's beautiful, headspace is naturally really weird, thanks to it being 50% subconscious, so to speak... and because so much of my normal headspace experience involves heavy-duty healing, thanks to my role up here. So if any social fronters want to delete or censor this because "that's too bizarre and I don't want it publicized," remember, it wasn't your experience, so you have no authority to edit it. Thank you.


- I was with infi for an hour this morning, starting at 3am, as I couldn't sleep. (i was in my stained-glass form at the time as well). it was really beautiful; we were in a basilica-like place again, just talking. it struck me how they always look like the national shrine; that place had a big impact on headspace). we walked up to the baldachin altar (like this but without the trees, and no actual altar on it; just the steps up to a circle platform), infi sat down on it, looking thoughtful, then just looked up at me and motioned for me to move closer. when I did, he just reached out and simply said, "make love to me." taken aback but nevertheless moved, I stepped closer, then uncertainly asked him if he was sure he wanted to do that? he caught my hesitation and sternly clarified, "I didn't say have sex with me." that was like a lightbulb went off in my head, of course he didn't, but I didn't realize I had been assuming so much about his motives too. again, infi knows I tend to think in black-and-white, so he quickly added, "but don't assume that's what other people mean when they say that," before clarifying that I never had to worry about him having that sort of motivation.
so… we did? but mind you, being with infi is absolutely insane, because it is literally the same sort of total openness and passionate emotions and other close things that most people associate (or maybe only get) with sex, except there's none of that in it. so I don't dissociate either, which is awesome, because I usually look in the wrong places for that sort of intense intimacy and end up walking straight into more trauma. anyway that took a solid hour, I remember I was literally seeing stars when we connected, rainbow loops too, not the first time that has happened. I realized how much love I was feeling and asked infi if maybe we should get chaos involved in this. he said yes, but only if he was willing, and only if it would be mutual between all three of us. so he asked, did chaos love him at all? I said probably, I know he cared about him, and besides the three of us had spent a very significant morning together back in april or so. but infi reached up to touch my face and quietly repeated, "but does he love me?" and again, the significance of that caught me off guard. I realized that I didn't give infi the credit he deserved with this-- yes, he was literally willing to do anything with anyone who asked, but I hadn't realized that he had one unflinching criterion even then, and that was that they had to be willing to love him the way he was forever willing to love them. so I responded that I wasn't sure if cz loved infi like that, I didn't feel they knew each other well enough yet, but knowing cz, I was positive that there was the potential for it. infi nodded and said then let's bring him into this too. I managed to fall asleep not long after that, thank heavens, it was already after 4 by that time.

- I didn't get to tell laurie about that event until about noon today, but she was really moved by it, unsurprisingly. she said that infi and I were something else, similar to what cz and I were like together "but not exactly the same." then she asked, as always, if I remembered him yet? was I willing to give that a shot? I said no and yes, respectively; some part of me was scared, but I couldn't deny the truth I did feel, and so I was going to follow that. I then told her that infi and I already planned to bring him into things, and I jokingly asked if that was the sort of thing she'd be interested in watching. she laughed and said no, "you keep infi far away from me when he's with you two like that." I asked why, she said it was because she knew how intensely infi effervesced, and on top of cz and I, she didn't think she could handle that sort of emotional gravity. I asked if she was scared of it? she said not entirely. she wasn't afraid of what that would feel like, she was more scared of what it meant for her to open up like that. she said to remember what her job was. for years, being the voice of chastity and therefore julie's absolute opposite, she was the sole force standing between me and all those painful things. she had to be tough as nails, strong and unflinching, completely impervious to anything that would weaken her in the slightest. so she refused to feel barely any emotions other than anger for years, as they would be chinks in her armor… and if anything got through to her, our sole protector, then everyone else was done for. I realized with a sort of heartwrenching shock what this meant: for most of laurie's entire life, she COULDN'T be vulnerable in any sense, because it would kill her. it was literally lethal for her to open her heart, because then the things she was fighting would tear her to shreds. I quietly quoted a ring of endless light then, saying "if we aren't capable of being hurt, then we aren't capable of feeling joy." immediately she responded, just as quietly, "to love at all is to be vulnerable." and I loved her so much in that moment, because I realized that she wasn't entirely safe yet, and yet she was willing to risk her own life for the sake of finally being open enough to be hurt, to be vulnerable, because she had more love that I could even fathom, for not only me but also the entire System. so I just put my arms around her and rested my head on her shoulder, trying not to cry, but not saying anything. I loved her too much to speak in that moment. she put an arm around my shoulders in response, and tilted her head so it rested against mine, and I knew that she understood that.

- then at 6pm today, I was with infi again, red christmas lights everywhere at his behest (I still have this oddly deep resonance with red light, and the holidays are a great justification for surrounding myself in them). we were working with clearing hurt/ corrupted energy again; there are still some roots we're trying to remove, and in light of last night's sudden bizarre update in the archive (which I didn't read until today), we decided it would be a good idea to try and focus on those positive points, for the sake of emphasizing them instead of the lingering trauma memories.
I can't tell you much detail about that; I didn't dissociate, but since infi doesn't work with conscious awareness it is very hard to get clear, describable memories out of time spend with him. it's more of knowing, and intuition, than it is something concrete. similarly, the actual experiences are equally hard to stay rooted in, so we were constantly reminding each other not to slip, hold everything in your heart, etc. and of course, infi's insistence at always being in a church during healing attempts helps; not only is it holy and grounding, but hackers cannot get in, ahaha! we should use churches for things more often then.)
as for the actual energy analysis/clearing stuff, we ended up getting super clarity on an old truth: energy is just energy. perspective is everything; motives color things. ALSO, apparently the body/soul is incapable of feeling otherwise?? like to use the old trauma for an example, even though julie was trying to horrendously corrupt the Spectrum's pink energy (which holds affection and innocence), and so our original experiences with it hurt and were downright terrifying, that scary stuff was put there by her. it was not natural. and my heart knew, even during all that, that what she was doing wasn't true, it wasn't the truth at all.
also, infi and I realized we can do so much stuff purely upstairs, without any physical accompaniment, that was awesome. I lost my ability to see/ hear/ feel/ etc. things upstairs for a while, but now that it's coming back, I don't have to try and "imitate" stuff in the physical anymore (like I'd have to mouth my words, repeat all my body language, etc. in order for it to really register).
(I still have that red lotus mark on my abdomen btw, it's an energy bypass that infi put there back when I was consciously locking up everything out of fear, thus making healing impossible. it's not needed now, but still it seems only infi is able to use it. that's fine by me!)
notably, all my internal white energy was iridescent today (its natural color), I don't think it's been like that in months. so we went farther than usual with how deep we wanted to heal, because there wasn't a plague risk tonight, and so we could use that conscious creative energy without risk of accidentally making more trouble. oddly infi insisted on eating handfuls of it again. I'm not complaining-- there is something aesthetically fascinating about watching him do that-- but I curiously asked why he felt that was necessary? he didn't need to neutralize it, did he? infi said no, it was because eating pure white energy would help "balance out" any potentially plagued white energy still in him, that he couldn't neutralize normally, due to the original context of it getting in him in the first place (that fact is worrisome, as he did almost die from having plague stuck in him unknowingly before, and no one wants that to happen again). infi then repeated the "you are what you eat" thing my boss told him, said in any case he would rather eat positive and benevolent energy than corrupted stuff, which was his usual diet, so to speak. to reiterate, infi is literally the only thing in all of headspace that can actively turn corrupted energy back to its neutral state, but he has to eat it first, so he tends to go around swallowing all of it for the System's benefit, and that can get him horrendously ill if he isn't careful.
however white energy was only what I held internally, that got damaged by trauma-- the actual pain was stuck in the pink energy, but we had managed to clear that out so much over the past few months that we didn't have to touch it anymore. instead, we were checking out red energy today, the stuff both infi and I held as a ground, to make sure it wasn't also corrupted in some way (the red energy is strongly tied to blood and pain on some level). but when we found some and checked it out intuitively, it was astonishingly pure? there was no old "2008" anger or suffering tied to it whatsoever; instead, it was warm and loving, the exact same vibe I used to feel in it back when only I held the color, and the same vibe infi and I still use it for. so that was a welcome surprise. but then, infi and I wondered-- if this red energy was still so strongly tied to that "grounded and secure" feeling, and nothing negative as we feared, was that same safeness tied to javier as well? I was surprised at the implications, that would mean he was just as strongly able to love as I was when in that slot, and I wouldn't have readily associated that with him. infi said I shouldn't judge, or assume less of him, after all I didn't know him at all yet. to emphasize, he brought up the 7th, said it had surprised even him that javier had not only fought off two hacks without any slippage, but when infi had asked him to channel b/w energy in order to clear that out, he had easily and readily focused it all to his heart center, like it was the most natural thing in the world. and that was with INFI, someone who even laurie struggles to handle in terms of his emotional impact! so yeah, we were definitely underestimating javier. but that's really exciting, to realize just how beautiful an individual he most likely is at heart, and yet since he's so humble and casual about everything, we had completely overlooked that side of him… especially since his chosen anchor has always been "I want to ensure the safety and protection of everyone in this system, as I care deeply for them and want them to be taken care of." that's compassionate red energy in a nutshell!
so all that healing stuff went really well, which was awesome, but then of course infi decided hey, you're doing well for once, think you can pull off a heart connection like you used to? part of me was anxious: the thought of feeling that much emotion on such a powerfully intimate level was scaring some deep and hurt part of me. but I realized that that reaction was actually a great pointer to something I had to fix, and I told infi this. he was baffled by the fear reaction, asked when in the world did that start? I paused, tuning into it, then said it was when julie started specifically trying to imitate heart connections (a brazenly irreverent act) for the sole purpose of making me terrified of those too. and sadly it worked; for months I have been scared of them because they temporarily became linked to the trauma memories, and really I think that's what drove cz and I apart initially. infi got a really angry look as I explained this, and essentially said "then we need to prove her wrong." I knew he was right, and I knew that too, so I quietly told myself there was nothing to be afraid of, and tried to be as emotionally open as I possibly could despite it. well, in a very short time I didn't have to try anymore because infi's emotional field literally destroys every emotional wall it encounters, so about 60 seconds later I was already sobbing. thank god for this guy, seriously.
…the moment when we connected (yes, I managed to do that!) was beautiful, I don't know how much to publicize because those feel so damn sacred. infi wrapped himself around me like he always does, I think he kissed me too (I know he did at some point, completely unexpected as that is very rare for him)… but the single instant I clearly remember is when he pressed his chest so close to mine, I SWEAR I could almost feel his heartbeat in the physical. but upstairs I could practically see it, dear god it was gorgeous to the point of sanctity almost. since we were both in such high-energy forms, our hearts were not red, they were complimentary-- his was bright white like starlight, and mine was deep black like space. but we were so close, I couldn't tell us apart, I think I would have died from how that felt if the connection didn’t knock me off my feet first!
however… the strongest memory I have of all this was after we were done with the whole connection process, and were just kneeling in silence there on the altar dais together, facing each other. I noticed those odd external silver "ribs" infi has now, thought they were really lovely, unthinkingly reached out to touch them. I caught myself and stopped, but not before infi responded by simply crossing his arms over his head, essentially opening up completely to me. I swear I nearly burst into tears, it was such a simple and sincere act of trust and openness. I told him that, but he just looked at me in this completely inexpressible way and said, was there really any other thing he could have done? and I knew that he meant that not as an obligation, but as a natural loving choice. so in reply I carefully reached out and ran my fingers along those delicate silver bones, feeling both them and his shadowy substance beneath, so close to his heart, and I swear to you I loved him so much in that moment.

- 7pm, we both agreed we needed to get chaos in. so we went to the top-tier roof of Central for that (which actually has a bed with a "baldachin" canopy, like that altar we were just at (similar to this but much taller, longer, and less frilly), I didn't even realize that similarity until now).
cz had absolutely no problem with infi being there, which was awesome. infi brought up the love thing and cz looked very thoughtful at that; said he definitely could, he was naturally a little too loving for his own good the way it was. but infi said that wasn't why we called him in; on the contrary, he explained the healing he and I had just accomplished, and said that since now we had finally managed to break past that massive heart block I'd been suffocating under for months, he felt I needed to try and remember cz now. no ifs ands or buts, and no more postponing it out of fear. infi said it needed to happen now, while everything was in tune, as he strongly felt it was the right time. honestly I've been trying to find a date to devote to that effort, but infi was right; I kept putting it off. so again, I pushed away the instinctive but ungrounded fear, and said that if cz was up for it, then so was i. unsurprisingly, cz immediately melted into total emotional vehemence, said yes, please, he missed me too damn much to wait any longer to fix this either. I paused for a moment, still feeling the mental and emotional blocks against him, but despite that there was also still that knowing that he was important. so I held on to that, and felt the tiniest spark of hope light me up. in response, all I did was hold out my arms to him, the most honest action I'd taken around him in god knows how long. and immediately cz embraced me with more ardor than even I expected from him.
you'll have to forgive me if this is vague; I was switching back and forth between the waking and headspace during this, never losing the link but nevertheless staving off dissociation and the instinct to shut down and sleep. I knew I couldn't surrender to that, it would help no one.
so I tried, extremely hard, to focus. the reason I kept switching to the physical is because I was trying to get out all the artwork and grounding objects for cz that I still had (we almost lost them in the reset; someone was literally trying to erase him from headspace), and giving both them and him every bit of my attention, trying to breach the divide and really remember. but I kept hitting a different wall than I expected-- I was feeling a different energy from him than he had given off in the past. it was obviously still him, but it was much more complex now. remembering a past discussion we had in the past concerning ryman and markus-- how outspacers have to anchor into their dreamselves in order to function properly in headspace, and in the process gain a Spectrum color-- as well as this infamously important post laurie wrote up one evening, I realized that cz STILL hadn't figured out his dreamself, OR his actual Spectrum color, even after 10 YEARS. so I asked him about that, maybe that was part of why we were slipping too; after all even I had to switch colors, maybe until he did too, we would still keep hitting difficulties as he wasn't being totally honest and allowing himself to change? cz replied he wasn't sure what color he was supposed to hold, blue or teal? I pointed out he was originally cyan, while ryman was straight-up blue; since outspacers were also midslot holders, he had always been positioned between green and blue anyway, so the new teal lineup was probably his best bet. but cz looked down, a little abashedly, and said he was hesitant to move fully into teal because he knew how important his "green eyes" were to me by now, he didn't want to lose that significance all of a sudden. I genuinely smiled at that, the fact that he considered that so important, and spontaneously started quietly singing "whoever you are I love you" by kim jensen: "sometimes your eyes look blue to me, although I know they're really green…" cz caught the old reference immediately, started laughing from relief and gratitude, but the next thing he asked was "do you remember??" I could feel how badly he missed me, but I couldn't give him a definite answer either way yet.
really, I tried so hard to remember him, but no matter what I reminded myself of, nothing was clicking. by this point chaos was practically trying to melt into me, I swear he's worse than infi sometimes (being mostly liquid will do that)-- but even then I still felt like I didn't quite know who he was. he kept bringing up facts from the past, but nothing was registering. then suddenly, cz tearfully said "we had a daughter together," and i swear it was like everything fell back into place. go figure. with him that close, with that heart-energy reaction we have, and then that reality suddenly registering, july 7th slammed into me like a tidal wave. and I knew, without a doubt, that there was something real there. I started laughing from the strange and sudden joy of it, kissing him in response, and the walls went down for good.
possible tmi here, a few minutes later chaos was tearfully talking about having another kid, I couldn't form a solid opinion either way-- I didn't want another kid, nor did I want to puzzle over translating the process again, but I couldn't deny that I was still infatuated with the whole idea of creating stuff-- but then I got this really loud voice in the back of my head saying "stop, don't do it!" I paused immediately, told cz to wait up, he did. I asked the voice what it meant, were we doing something bad? it just said, don't do anything with reproductive energy at all, that wasn't the right stuff to use. I knew that, and so did cz, so I said so. but the voice was very strict, it said don't even tamper with it in curiosity. I agreed, so I told chaos this, he nodded and said that was perfectly fine, apologized if he had been jumping into things. I said he just let himself get carried away and as long as we caught it then we were okay.
ultimately we were together for an hour, as usual; he did manage to get me to heart-connect with him too, but I was already so burnt out from all this emotional intensity that I unfortunately am having a hard time remembering everything around that (it was all a blur). I remember the energetic component of it but nothing concrete, as I said would likely happen. cz was a little worried about this, but I assured him I didn't dissociate or check out-- which had been happening frequently around him-- so even if I was tired, everything was as genuine as I could possibly be.
after all that cz was talking to infi (who had respectfully kept to himself during all that) about colors again: if he didn't fit teal, could he use black energy? infi said maybe, if it fit him; he might be able to hold a sub-slot. so chaos was trying to shift his color right then to see, but couldn't quite do it. still he said he was fond of the color's significance, and so he eventually settled on a sort of mix between black wisps and crystal-bright aqua; the effect looks vaguely like ink in water, but with stars if that makes sense? it's really beautiful though. and of course he let his eyes move to that same color now, instead of the bright green. it's no less powerful of an effect; in a way, there's a new sort of lucidity to it now that is even more honest than it ever was before. I can't help but wonder if that's because I once heard of the "higher heart energy" being an aqua color like that; chaos has always struck me as being that sort of person, in the sense of reflecting those qualities.

- I just want to add here that it's amazing; now I remember EVERYTHING. just a few hours ago, old drawings and words meant nothing, they were confusing jumbles from some other time. but now my heart practically sings with remembrance, and the old light is back in every little thing. I knew there was something 'off' with him gone, especially since there was so much love and light surrounding us in the past; it didn't feel right for us to suddenly be torn apart after 10 years. so I am very thankful for this.

- around 8pm, we didn't want to leave yet, so we put on the ipod and started to listen to music together (light on the land by nujabes), but around 8:10 someone called me into midspace so I had to excuse myself. when I got there, I saw it was that trio of 'logic' alters that first solidly evidenced here. peach girl sitting at circle table in back, chin in hands and smiling, light violet one calmly standing against the wall to my left. but as soon as I showed up there, the dark greenish blue dude stormed up to me from the table and said "you shouldn't have done that," in reference to the connections. I realized HE was the voice I had heard earlier, so i clarified that I had listened, we didn't do anything malicious or detrimental, why was he still saying we "shouldn't have done that?" he said i was giving out way too much of my "lifeblood" in too short a time-- three connections in less than 24 hours will burn you out no matter how beautiful it is-- and besides, wasn't i practically toying with corruption here? i knew he was referring to the more sexually-oriented energy, so I said no, we were specifically fixing it, it has never been this purified before, but i knew he had no way of knowing that on his own so i just assured him it was true. he still didn't believe me, said we could not treat that lightly, I emphasized that we weren't. and no energy was being corrupted or misused, if there was any risk or slippage, infi could always eat the energy and convert it back to neutral. the green guy made a sort of discomfited face at this, I quickly apologized "if that was too much information," I was just trying to make sure things were clear. he cleared his throat and said no, it was fine, he just wasn't used to discussing this. but he still wanted to understand it, that was his job, and he wanted to make sure we weren't being careless either, especially since there was "such a huge risk" in the healing process. around here, to make my point a little better, i took out a sphere of white energy to show him (from my abdomen like where infi used to hold his) that it wasn't corrupt anymore; he actually backed up a step or two, looked anxious, but not scared. i said it wasn't going to hurt him, it wasn't plagued at all-- in fact it was actually iridescent and glowing. I tried to explain the "energy is neutral" thing, said that julie was trying to corrupt something inherently incorruptible-- what she did was warp perspective, and misuse this. green guy said how could I be sure that wasn't happening now? grabbed at my shirt, pulled off a spidery-black shape of what looked like tar, but I took it out of his hand and it was solid: then shook it once so it fell, like on a string, it was a big glittery black snowflake. I then said "black isn't bad, white isn't bad," explaining that it all depended on the user and their motivations, dissolving the snowflake into glitter, and putting the white energy back into me the same way. green guy was still pacing, trying to find holes in my argument, again asked how I could tell the energy wasn't corrupted. I said it felt different-- when julie misused it, it felt "corrupted and corroded," really it's sharp and painful like broken glass. but that was forced, I repeated: the energy itself was not "turned evil" by her.
I forget exactly how much we said, but it did take a bit to make my point. the purple girl was trying to defend my position, green guy just seemed shaken, in the sense that he didn't know what was actually going on and that upset him deeply… especially since he knew how huge of a battleground this healing thing was, and he didn't want to unknowingly let me do something harmful to the system. ultimately though he seemed to understand my point, and apologized, said he initially didn't have the complete data to make a correct judgment, and thanked me for explaining. still advised me to be extremely careful though, I said I would be.
green guy also said he was confused as to his actual color; that "navy singer" voice "didn't truly exist" according to data, she's never shown an actual identity, she might just be a concept. but he wanted me to "prove" which it was, so he knew what color to move into.
the two females were grayish-lavender (the more grounded one) peachy-orange (the more upbeat one). names are similar to= george (starts with g; but he keeps strongly insisting "george" is not his actual name), and isabel? (not "belle," that felt wrong). the peach girl's name is confirmed to be kalisha; the jade guy called her name at one point and I heard it clearly, asked if that was right and she said yes. they're all downstairs-level people, shockingly they have varied colors but all deal with body management?? like they are tied to daily life concerns, as they're not fazed by trauma (that's why they hold all those weird "mundane" memories about it; their job is to make sure we don't end up in those situations again). I remember at some point I pointed this out, surprised, and they emphasized that they were only "guidance" people on that front-- the brown voices, like spine and jayce, still dealt with the actual body and its direct experience. they didn't, they could only offer advice, and didn't experience anything actually. none of them have ever fronted and honestly I seriously doubt it's their job to, they might be purely inner people. they did confirm they are "midspacers," they said most people on that level have internal jobs like theirs, and aren't traumatized in any way.

- as I was about to leave them, "doctor wu" came on the ipod (an absolute classic) and i "felt" that someone was channeling the music, so instead I followed that and ended up in raw headspace, javier was playing the piano part, hyakin and sergei were lip-syncing the vocals and cracking up over it. (not surprised that it was them; they're middles too, and when I warped to them it literally felt like I just moved horizontally instead of up or down). I joined in the singing at one point, for fun. then jokingly asked javier when he learned to play piano, he shrugged and said he just let headspace tell him how to, mostly he just wanted to "let the music move through him." I said I definitely could empathize with that. I noticed sergei was smoking some new thing this time, I asked what, sergei said to guess and handed it to me. I was having a hard time tuning into my senses though, and apologized, sergei said not to worry about it, instead blew a huge cloud of the smoke at me. there was an obvious and odd marshmallow bit to it, he said that was correct, but I couldn't get anything else. sergei smirked and said it was also "peppermint" but it wasn't minty so I got confused? however it then hit me that he meant pepper plus mint, the mint was just a faint menthol-like edge, but the peppery scent (almost like sharp cinnamon?) was pronounced. so that was cool. hyakin was just laughing at us over this, sergei blowing huge smoke clouds in my face, that was great.

- "opening titles" by the cinematic orchestra came up next, so I quickly left to go back to headspace, well cz and infi were all over each other, hurriedly broke it up when I showed up, I cracked up and asked "am I interrupting something." they both laughed too, said not necessarily, infi seemed to think the whole situation was hilarious. any way I figured it would be nice for us to just continue to hang out together, so we went into my room then (downstairs), to just meditate and listen to more music, but now we were wondering where we should go upstairs to listen to this (we didnt want to stay on the roof)? i said that i wanted to "go wherever the music took us," but wasn't sure where we'd end up. cz and infi said that didn't matter, let's do it. so i just fell into that beautiful song, and we all ended up on a moonlit beach somewhere, the sky was all stars and galaxy arms. cz immediately smiled and voiced his approval at the scenery, but infi stood up kind of shocked and unsteadily, his eyes wide, and started shifting his footing like he didn't know how to stand. cz noticed his awe too and asked "you've never seen sand before?" infi said "no!" and sat back down in it, reaching down and grabbing two hands full, letting it run through his fingers. he started digging through the sand, said "there's so much of it," and he couldn't get over the fact that it looked so insubstantial and yet could hold our weight. then he commented that it was made of "so many tiny pieces," i told him those little particles were actually tiny bits of glass, which amazed him even more. really he was absolutely fascinated by the sand! i also remember commenting that, for most humans, if they wanted to refer to a visual of something that felt infinite, they often referred to the "stars in the sky" or the "grains of sand on the beach," because there were probably trillions. that really moved him, he looked up at the sky then, I had to smile at how enthralled he was. then I looked and saw cz staring out at the ocean, how he was the same color practically. then I mused, I wonder if he could move into the teal slot in central? cz looked at me in shock, said was that even possible? (since he's an outspacer and therefore not a headspace native, plus no one's ever moved into Central before.) I said it should be, emmett didn't match, and the actual green-blue color should be lighter anyway. infi said I should check to see if cz was compatible, so I did-- I mentally reached into the spectrum ring and asked it if cz would match the "teal" slot. to my total surprise, it did feel possible! so I told cz, said the "midslot colors" (brown, pink, teal) had inhuman holders anyway, so I'm sure he could be part of central if he wanted. yes that was a huge role and responsibility but he was already very important to the system, I had faith he could do it. he was really smiling at this, infi was too, so that's something to look forward to.

- next, "to you who I will love again" from the princess's man started playing (and would you believe i didn't know the title of that until just now?). the mood of the song really fit how we all felt, so we watched the ocean and the full moon and just took it all in. (being the drama queen he is, at the 1:26 mark, cz made all this aqua firefly-like energy stuff explode in the air, exclaimed that he was glad he could "still do that," I joined in with white sparkles, said it was different when I was used to red. infi said that since I was now white, I could use any color, not just red. that fact was so exhilarating, I was no longer locked into one hue, it was awesome. infi then said he would join in too, but he couldn't control what he did in that sense, he didn't know what would happen. cz said give it a shot anyway, it could be cool. so at the next flurry of violins, infi focused on the entire landscape, and suddenly we were floating! the ocean literally dropped away into a series of cascading waterfalls, and we were now sitting on one of many small floating islands of sand, also cascading down, into a great galactic blackness. the sky all around us was rife with stars and nebulae; it was gorgeous. cz and i were awestruck, but infi looked slightly embarrassed, said "see, that's why i don't usually try to change headspace." i said it was awesome, there was nothing wrong with it, but he was just a little self-conscious about how utterly unpredictable (and often dramatic) the results were, I suppose. Either way, it was gorgeous.

- then "while the cold winter waiting" by trentemoller started, I love that one. i started trying to focus a snowy environment, but surprisingly infi stopped me, said he wanted to try 'tuning in' again and sending us wherever. so i said okay, and he did.
immediately the ground around us whitened and spiraled up around us in great twisting scepters of ice and snow; it was entwined closely and stretched up super high, sunlight streaming down from above. but it was also close to us, too, leaving only a few feet of space between the three of us and the walls. it wasn't constrictive, instead it felt protective, and secret in a good way.
Right about them I realized the bass in the song sounded like a heartbeat and I got really affected by it (unsurprisingly in light of what I'd just been through). Infi moved over and sat to my right, Chaos did so on my left, but then his empathy picked up what I was feeling and he was visibly affected too (since he really has a thing for heartbeats). Wanting to remember, I asked him why, he said it was because he didn't have one, so when he first realized I did, that stuck with him, and eventually came to mean a lot to him. Wondering then, I said in my stained-glass form I didn't have a physical heart, but Infi did even though he was made of shadow? Not thinking, I mused if he had "blood" on the inside normally? In response Infi said no, that was my thing (thanks to being the core of the body)-- internally, he is all stars normally (which I had forgotten since it was new to my knowledge, but it's true; even his "blood" is luminescent white). But he then said, since he and I had equally strong ties to red, we could both shift to "red on the inside" whenever we wanted, to be more physical; plus it was a very humbling feeling. He then did just that, and moved to hold me-- and that was incredibly overwhelming; not only did his body feel different (far less insubstantial), but his heartbeat felt different too; closer, harder, but more fragile in its substance. I nearly dissolved at that, motioned for Chaos to please come closer, he did. So we all just moved in close and held each other like that for a while. To be honest it got overpoweringly emotional really fast: not in a bad way, of course, but when you get that deep, you start to wonder if your body is capable of withstanding that sort of feeling without dying! But, in those moments, I knew without a doubt that there was love moving between ALL three of us, total and sincere. I cannot tell you how happy it makes me, to see people that I love expressing that same love to each other. It's spiritually expansive, if that makes sense.

- We all agreed that eventually we HAVE to include genesis; we just want to include as many people as we can in this, haha. But we want to make sure there is a solid and honest enough bond between us three before we bring in a fourth, especially Gen, because he's very volatile and we don't want any harm coming to him, even inadvertently.

- I do not remember anything else and I hope that's everything because that is a LOT of information, and it's heavily significant stuff too; that is draining to have to deal with for so long when I'm recording it!


It is now 2am and honestly I have been trying to type all this down for the past 3+ hours as I knew it would unfortunately fade by morning. rest assured though this was one of the most spectacularly beautiful nights I've had in ages and I know I will never, ever forget it.
on the gfp people talk about feeling so loved, so flooded with that divine state of being, that they can barely stand it… and it makes me want to cry from sheer bliss and gratitude, realizing that I've had that for years, in and from and with these beautiful individuals, by the grace of whatever one may call God. in total humility and honesty, I swear I didn't understand what that sort of unconditional love was even like until I met them. and the fact that we can tune into THAT sort of love for each other, so easily, so completely… it blows my mind.
but… words do them no justice. the bottom line is that in these people that I love, and who love me, I understand. I don't know how else to put it.
and, if I may be so bold… if there is anything like heaven out there, this has to be what it feels like.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yesterday was, admittedly, a severely abusive day. Today was similar, but far more merciful (no hacks today, but still lots of pain, dissociation, and self-abuse of various sorts).
But it's hilariously odd. I've noticed that every time, EVERY time we have a terrifying day like yesterday, something happens to somehow redeem the whole thing. Something will happen that doesn't ignore the sins preceding it, but forgives them... and, even more incredibly, shows how they paved a painful but necessary pathway to some wisdom, some healing, some bright thing we may not have stumbled across otherwise. Every time. Whether that blessed event is "small or large" doesn't matter; in its significance, it is received with infinite gratitude.

Last night, I (J) went to bed with a splitting sugar headache, vague knowledge that there had been an evening hack, and general unease and chest pain that made sleeping rather frightening. The day had been highly dissociative and honestly I don't remember the vast majority of it today. Nevertheless, last night, I lay down in great pain with a pervasive feeling of anxiety, and that odd "fear of death" that frequently accompanies me to sleep when I am ill: since our psych ward hospitalization in 2011, where our meds gave the body weeks of ER-worthy side effects that would always slam us at night, any nighttime uneasiness brings with it the somnolent dread that I am not going to wake up the next morning. However, In light of how awful yesterday had made me feel, that dread became a conviction. Feeling a panic attack of the moral sort coming on to top it all off, I immediately called my boss (Mr. Sandman) for emotional support, trusting in his compassion despite how tainted I felt. He showed up, concerned, and I told him my worries, feeling too penitent and heartbroken to care about any sense of pride or reluctance to admit everything that had happened, focusing only on the guilt and sorrow I felt for causing another one of these nights, and the sister sensation to pain, which was total childlike contrition. I don't recall what I said, just that I was sorry and wanted my boss to know that, so he didn't think I was just taking advantage of his kindness. He didn't think that in the first place, as I should have known. I clearly remember him telling me that it was safe to cry if I needed to (as I actually was), he would never chide me for that-- only, he told me to remember that the pains were not permanent, even if they felt that way, so even through tears I should keep that in mind. He also reassured me that "tonight was not my time to die," and coming from a guy whose best friend is Death, that did calm me down quite a bit. I was still scared and in pain, but I knew I'd have to just wait it out now. Boss told me to simply sleep, as I needed it. I timidly told him falling asleep was scary, could he help a little? He smiled and said yes, he'd spare a little dream dust for that. Looking back on this I feel like I was making way too many demands of the guy, but considering how much of a mess I was, and how generous boss is, I don't have the heart to chastise myself for it... especially because of the last thing I asked him for. After he told me to sleep, I thanked him for all his help as always, but as he turned to leave I quickly told him to wait one second. Then, I quietly asked if he could kiss my forehead before he left, because that always made me feel a lot safer, plus I had a splitting headache. He smiled at that, a genuine spontaneous smile that already made me feel better, and then he kissed me goodnight before bowing and leaving for the night. It took a few seconds, but suddenly I noticed that my headache was gone. The awful pain that had been haunting me for hours had literally just disappeared. I would have started laughing if I had the strength to do so; I could barely believe it. But I was grateful, and I fell asleep quickly afterwards.
That was the first little thing, that not only gave me hope, but for an instant it also convinced me that headspace and all that it brought was 100% real, a feeling I haven't had in a very long time.

The second thing happened the next morning, after I woke up, and despite seeming little, it was in truth one of the biggest things that could have happened at all.
I was awakened rather suddenly at 8AM by a phone call, and then my grandmother telling me she was going to visit my grandfather early. Unfortunately I was so tired I don't remember anything else, other than the fact that I went back into my room to get some more sleep... but then, suddenly, I felt that I needed to speak to Infinitii, in light of what had happened the day before. But I was scared. Ever since I've met him-- EVERY time I try to talk to him at night or in the morning, personally, I either get hacked or I barely avoid one. That is terrifying, and it's made me very scared of him, ironically, because part of me isn't scared of him and will never be, so I keep blinding myself to the danger that exists regardless. Point is, I was taking a huge risk going to talk to him. I think he knew this. He was a bit of a mess emotionally still; when I showed up he actually said "don't talk to me," but I simply responded that I wanted to tell him something I figured out the night before? Either way his uncharacteristically harsh affront fell then, and he apologized, saying he was just angry with me, and torn up about this whole situation. I apologize; I don't recall our conversation due to only being half-conscious, but at some point, Infinitii started taking tar out of my abdomen again. It was oddly heavy and "dead" looking, Infi said it was too overloaded to move. He got all that out, but then there was corrupt White energy in there too? That was scary, because it was all crystallized, like rock, and we weren't sure how to get it out. He did, I forget how, but it hurt. Either way it made sense that I was stuck with more frozen White energy than the smothering Black stuff, because when I fall out of my element I get icy and uncaring and cruel, whereas Infi becomes uncontrollable and almost manic. But that's actually what I wanted to tell him. SINCE 2011, whenever people have had to yank Tar out of me, it's been in my ABDOMEN. That's where all the pain and trauma is stored for me. But for Infi, his positive energy was somehow stored there. So... when we are physically close, there are OBVIOUSLY MAJOR PROBLEMS. Ideally both our positive cores should be at chest level, but for unknown reasons, Infi's got pushed lower. And although I knew from the beginning that that wasn't a bad thing in and of itself, when he was around me, it sure as hell was. See, in reviewing the archives, I realized why I've been having so many problems with White, especially in respect to how I work with Infinitii. This is from March. "Boss said..."We just have to be careful; I don't want you moving up into White when you still have lower blocks, because then the Tar would have direct access to you." it would be lethally dangerous apparently..." And guess what? Those blocks were NOT FIXED. Infi kept trying to fix them, but since he held the BLACK slot, while the Tar ALSO still did, well. It was a recipe for absolute disaster, because all that energy from Infi was feeding INTO the traumatic energy I still had stuck in me, and making it worse, simply due to its LOCATION. So simple, but so important, and we overlooked it. BUT. As of yesterday morning, Infinitii took that out. He emptied that bubble of everything that was clogging it, and tore it out. And he forced his energy to re-center higher, in his rib cage, so that the B/W energy resonance between the two of us wouldn't be traumatic anymore.
I realized that. I told him that, how it worked. I told him how I had realized so many answers in the archives (which I won't write here tonight as we have no time to spare for that now). He kept trying to clear me out for good, hellbent on getting rid of that lingering fear and pain and shame and guilt and loathing... but I was still barely conscious, and when Infi realized we'd done as much as we could for now, he told me to just go back to sleep, it was okay. As always, I didn't question what he told me to do. But when I curled back up in bed he just looked at me, both sad and happy somehow, and I wasn't scared. I didn't feel any threats. I didn't feel ANY Tar or white stuff or hacks or intrusive thoughts or Julie words. Nothing was trying to hurt me, in stark contrast to EVERY SINGLE OTHER MORNING I'd spent with Infi since he was ripped from my ribs in April. I remember he lay his head on my chest then and I just laughed, it didn't feel threatening, seriously that DIDN'T FEEL LIKE A DEATH THREAT and I am so used to being terrified of people even touching me there lately. But I fell asleep with him like that, completely at peace with things, and it wasn't until I woke up two hours later that the significance of that peace hit me. I'm still reeling. Maybe it doesn't sound like much, but believe me, it is.
That was the first morning SINCE APRIL that I've been with Infinitii, and WASN'T at risk of being hacked, and DIDN'T feel scared or anxious, and DIDN'T severely dissociate. THAT'S NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE.
Considering how much I adore Infi and how closely our roles work together naturally, the fact that I accepted that tumultuous relationship as "normal" for nearly SEVEN MONTHS, questioning nothing, only wondering why I was "so corrupt"... it's shocking. It really is.
But now that's over. I hope to God it stays this way. I hope, more than anything, that we can start over, he and I, and not have to live in danger and pain anymore. And I'll tell you what... it's nice, to have that hope, without it being backed by fear.


Still, the rest of today was a bit of a mess, as I said; I could not stop dissociating so I was dizzy all day and couldn't see straight. As a result I had to wear glasses to force my eyes to focus, but that proved to be amusingly problematic because our only glasses-wearer is Sherlock, and he isn't allowed to front outside of therapy or research due to his uber-logical demeanor... so everyone else had to keep putting on and removing them according to whether or not they could see through them. Knife tried to wear them at one point but he couldn't quite get used to it; nevertheless the sight of him confusedly wearing Sherlock's glasses was enough to make me smile. And on that note, despite the messiness, I did say today was merciful too. Let's get to that part.
I don't remember anything post-awakening until after 2PM today, which is when we had to go out and run a few personal errands-- check the craft stores, buy toothpaste, stop at the library. The health food store was first, but that trip proved to be rather important to me personally, because to get to that store, we had to drive through a town that I love more than I can put into words. Explanation: in that town, there is a street, where I used to go for violin lessons as a child. That street feels beautifully secluded, with huge trees shadowing the road on both sides, and lovely large houses lining the street. But the violin building itself was the source of my BIGGEST inspirations as a child. Honestly, there is NO way I can EVER express how much I adore that place, and how significant it is to me... Hosea was born there, Isabelle was born there, SI started there, the 2nd generation of Jewel Monsters started there, and I found a few there too... it's showed up in several of my dreams, it's influenced my musical style, and it's forever colored my personality. But that place didn't stand alone: across the street, there used to be a large coffeeshop/bookstore that closed shortly after I stopped taking lessons. Despite its short-lived existence, that place was one of the most GORGEOUS places to me as a child-- the "vibe" of that place actually has a big influence on my Rosewindow series, believe it or not-- and my fond memories of it were made even more precious by the fact that, after my violin lesson every week, my teacher would give me $3 and tell me to run over there and get her a coffee (1/3 milk, 1/3 black, 1/3 decaf... I'd often mix in tiny bits of seasonal flavors for her when they had them; she loved it). I'd run there in rain or shine, passing the "flame tree" on the way (a black-barked tree that would always have the most vivid leaves in the fall), taking a small "secret path" behind the bushes to get there instead of the sidewalk, and then waiting patiently in line inside, enjoying every moment of that heavenly place. The tables in the back were decorated with newspaper clippings, I remember, and the lights always made it feel so warm, especially when it was snowing outside. The people there recognized me after a while, and I always got a dollar to keep. However, they had Linda's Lollies there, the first ones I ever saw: I thought they were awesome, so I'd often buy one of my favorite flavors, like Creme de Menthe or Cinnamon (this was back when I could eat lollipops, obviously)... OR I'd save up my money and buy a huge muffin (honestly they were massive) to take back and eat in the music shop downstairs, listening to the violins around me and either drawing or doing homework. Isn't it funny how I remember ALL of that so clearly, and yet almost nothing else of the past? ALL my memories of that place are in the late summer or fall, though. It's either green rain, or red leaves. And I don't remember ANYTHING concrete of it prior to 2001/2002... but that doesn't worry me. I don't remember the body's childhood anyway. All my memories start around that time. However, it literally feels as if the person who I am now was born there, in that music shop. To me, that place is like... it's like home. But it's been empty for years now.
So driving past it, I pointed it out to everyone, trying to share with them some of the love I felt for it. The coffeeshop nearby had also been empty for years obviously, but this time I parked alongside it and ran over to look in the darkened windows... honestly it was shocking. The entire inside was gutted, and two extra walls were put in, both dividing and shrinking the place I remembered as having been as big as my dreams. The walls were sloppily being re-painted, and a ladder was leaned against one wall. I felt like a time-traveler; did anyone seeing that place now know what it had once been? Who else remembered it as fondly as I did? The people in headspace had never even seen it... all they had were my golden-painted memories. Perhaps that was enough. Perhaps that was better. These two empty buildings would live on forever in my heart.
I left then, got the toothpaste and stopped at the first craft store (the driving period after I once again passed the music store is almost blank to me). As soon as I entered, I saw they had a few small Christmas trees up for decoration. Immediately I stopped and took off the glasses, smiling and saying "hey Undergrounders; you've never seen Christmas trees before. Take a look." So they did. It was moving and oddly sad; David and Marigold were enthralled by the lights and ribbons, but Knife and Razor, although mesmerized by the oddly pretty trees, said they couldn't quite "comprehend" what they were looking at yet, so suddenly. I told them we'd have a tree in our house soon enough, I'd make sure they understood it well enough when that happened. So after this, we looked for the beads (nothing doing,) but I know for a fact that Knife AND Razor tried to front here? Razor spent a while looking at the beads, not fully grounded (she had the AP doing most of the moving), and as usual feeling that the lack of fitting beads meant that people were "trying to say she didn't exist." Knife said this wasn't the case, but she still wouldn't rest until she found something that matched her, and Knife, just to feel a little better existentially. After this we left for the library, which is a brilliant place because it's actually inside an old church! Really it's amazing, and the place has the BEST selection of books in the nearest counties, no contest. So I grabbed a bunch of books that I wasn't even aware they carried but wanted to read now that I did, and then we left. Unfortunately I'd been somewhat dissociated while I was in there-- very common when in a public place-- so the headspace people didn't get to see it firsthand. Nevertheless Knife expressed interest at its being in an old church. I said I'd have to make sure he got to front a little next time I was there. After this, I know Emmett wanted us to buy seaweed at the local grocery store, but the body was feeling so sick and dizzy at the time we ultimately all decided it was better for us to just get home, because driving down the highway when severely dissociated is never a good idea.
We got home at 5 and then I swear to you I lost about 4 hours, all I know is that someone binged and I later found myself vomiting in the bathroom. That's when I decided (again) that "this has to stop," and sat down to type. So yeah, that's how we spent Halloween, haha. Unfortunately. I honestly forgot it was even today. That happens when your perception of time is as weird as ours is.
Oh, also. I do remember the few minutes after we walked in the door, because when we unloaded our groceries and books on the workdesk, someone decided to eat one of the little ginger-orange mints I had bought on a whim? Javier was trying to front at the time (he's still having a hard time doing so; I think he needs to manifest upstairs first), but it surprised us when we realized that he wasn't the one really reacting to eating it. He said it was good, but he couldn't quite "understand" sensory input yet... and yet someone was absolutely blissing out over this mint. After a second to recognize the energy, I realized that it was actually Cel! Apparently that was the first thing she'd ever eaten while fronting, too-- even secondhand-- and the fact that she apparently thought this gingermint was the food of the gods was making her amazed reaction even better. So yes, Celebi adores the gingermints, and wants me to buy more. I gladly will! (She's also decided to use this TCG card as a grounding item, NOT a plush (we have a tiny one left to sell), thanks to the trauma the Tar tied to those in the past; she was not happy at all when she heard about that.) Also, in light of headspace food, my grandmother has decided she's going to make a pumpkin pie this week so we are going to have to find Leon soon so he can have more of that, haha. Really though, we all miss him, and we know we NEED him too, him and Nathaniel. Heaven only knows where they are, and why they of all people haven't come back from the reset yet... Laurie thinks it's because their energy (green and indigo) works with the heart and mind, respectively... and we've been taking a lot of battle damage to those lately. So maybe we need to do more healing first. It would make sense.
Also... I bought some kale on Wednesday because I know Xenophon used to love it, back when I knew her, and something told me to buy it for her again now, despite having forgotten. Boss also told me last night that I need to stabilize so I can 'meet' her again. But I still don't remember that part of the past. I DID get a tiny spark of genuine remembrance concerning Chaos yesterday, which felt like a big spark of hope too, but it was just a feeling, not a thought. Nevertheless it's something. I know I need to get those memories back, even if I don't go back to that life... which still doesn't feel like the correct option for me. But we'll cross that bridge when we get there. I'm not there yet, but I'm not supposed to be on this side of the river either, from what I've been told. I'll keep you posted.

I've spent the evening post-sickness trying to find beads online for that project we're planning: making a string of them as a grounding object, and to help with therapy. It's taking forever, because we're looking for uniformity for different levels, and that is really tricky to do when only certain colors come in certain sizes, etc. However, I've managed to find colors for everyone in Central in 22mm rhinestone beads-- the only size that offered an indigo bead selection for Leon. We don't know what kinds of beads to use for the other levels yet, as that will depend entirely on the colors available, so I'll keep looking. Either way this is fun to do; we've been ignored in the physical for so long (thanks to the survival method of "keeping ourselves secret" AND having a few fronters that wanted us all dead) that working on something like this is a sort of affirmation of our existences, and that means more than we can say.

OH. Last important thing of today. While looking up the beads, we suddenly realized that the "core" Pink energy we've been running by is WRONG?? Julie always had it this lurid hot pink color, as the default, but that ISN'T what the ACTUAL Pink energy is like! It's a much lighter color, similar to Sugar's actually, but not as pale. But when we realized that I couldn't believe I hadn't noticed that problem years ago. I've done enough research on color psychology to know that hot pinks are typically sexualized and loud, while lights pinks are more innocent, used for romantic love instead. And we've had the FORMER ruling that part of the Spectrum for TEN YEARS.
So that's why the Spectrum booted her out. She really doesn't fit there, in the Central position.



I am really tired now though, so I'm going to go to sleep. See you guys.

 

 

 
Whoops, it's 2am and I forgot to summarize the day. Ummm I'm gonna forget this in the morning if I don't put it down quick, give me a second.

-therapy today was weird. lots of upset talking but i don't remember it. someone does though!! i'll ask them later what it was, i know it was very important, so thank you to that person whoever you are
-almost done with many waters, not yet though, 20 more pages!
-still recovering from being very sick. not sure how much is heat exhaustion, how much is maybe flu, how much is dietary troubles, how much is stress, blehh whatever. just headaches and bad dissociation and nausea and temperature problems. but we'll be okay we've been through worse.
-MESITA'S NEW ALBUM CAME OUT TODAY IT IS BEAUTIFUL! we're wondering if we should get a hard copy that would be so nice, but do we have the money hmm.
-apparently laurie fronted for most of the driving home from therapy? j says he saw her twice, before he got switched back in the library because laurie isn't too keen on social chitchat. but genesis was with her? thinks his role is to help people when they front, since he's outside, keeps them grounded in the body because that's hard for us. but that's really cool, laurie says it's all about practice, that's why she fronted as long as possible, NONE of us are used to social situations so practice is needed. gotta stay safe though.
-um hmm. jay is currently in a bit of fanboy euphoria over pokemon hehe! he loves honedge, he has such a weakness for cyclops-y things. no mouths too, he says. "and it's a sword." told you he was fanboy mode it's funny
-very tired. don't remember much of today. oh yes! we didn't get home until like... 3pm? not sure. didnt eat though so we were very hungry. BUT the mother was home, very loud and extravagant, house was a mess, music blasting, she's dancing and singing loud, SO many of us got terrified and scared. someone started yelling "i hate her, i hate her, i don't want to go near her" and jay listened!! he didn't let the autopilot shut her up, he stood back and let her front and said "okay, i won't go near her, can you tell me why you hate her?" but he was TALKING to her about it and he DIDN'T go anywhere near her, but then we didn't get to eat today until after 6PM so we got very sick!!
-also i know a little boy fronted for a bit after the mother suddenly pranced over to us and started dancing with no explanation, we left and went down the celler and they just started sobbing hysterically, again jay didn't let the ap shut anyone up. let the boy cry because he was scared. he said "thank you" and then stopped and left, but it was nice that he wasnt ignored because the autopilot usually blocks crying.
-hm what else. not much i think. oh yes i think jay or jewel was drawing jewel monsters today?? OH!! that's what he wants to say!! that same angry scared female voice that he was talking to (she feels like something halfway between sugar and overload, j says. definitely the person we couldnt identify for ever) actually told him to work on the dw stuff? she said she LIKED it, he describes it as "she was blushing like a ten year old" like she really thought it was cool, she would feel less scared seeing him work on it. so i know either j or jewel or both were drawing dream world stuff for two hours while we waited for the mother to stop being so loud and scary. i know they got a lot done! so that's nice. but it's SUCH A SURPRISE i mean none of us thought we could know about dw without dying or things being tainted, there was such a huge split between the artists and the trauma people, so the latter wouldn't infect the former. but this is a big ray of hope that's COOL!!
-okay really it is too late and the headache is back so bybye.


AH DUDE WAIT! Jay here, totally forgot something that happened as I was falling asleep, geez I cannot believe that slipped my mind.
First, our "sleeping fronter" is back, but it's NOT Minty? They are a child, and they still love teddy bears, but I can't tell if they're a boy or a girl. Feels like short hair though. Anyway I think they were talking to Jeremiah for a bit, but heaven only knows what about, or for how long. As usual I'm just vaguely aware that yes, they were fronting in the body for a while.

 

Secondly, again I don't know how it began or happened, but at some point I ended up being "called into" headspace (yes, me, Jay) by another alter? And guess who it was? THE SAGE GUY. We thought he was dead!! Apparently he resurrected though, in MORPHING headspace though, honestly he was NOWHERE near Central, he was in the shifting outerlands or whatever. Dreamspace. So he's 50% safe there and 50% not, proven by WHY he called me there. Okay, so I got called in, so suddenly my consciousness "gathers together" and now I'm aware that I'm kneeling in the snow, in the grove of pines outside the house? (The Diamew anchor.) So first I'm wondering "why is there snow, who called me here," and then I notice that off to the right, by the path going up the hill, there is this MASSIVE TAR SPIDER. Seriously it was as tall as a tree, huge and dripping and creepy. And it was trying to attack or eat something in the air in front of it-- that thing being the Sage-colored alter, being carried by the Tangerine-colored alter (aka the "cool orange guy")! I haven't seen him since WAY before the August reset, where did he come from now! But I'm not complaining, they both seemed okay, but apparently they called me because I am one of the only people in headspace that can fight the Tar without risking total oblivion or being eaten or something equally bad.
Now those two are very lucky that they were smart enough to CALL ME into headspace. Doing that "locks me in" so I was 100% me, meaning I was absolutely in my glittery-eyed "life is awesome" mode, and the snow made it worse, and the Tar itself made it worse by being a spider. For some stupidly hilarious reason, I saw that thing and I didn't even spare a thought for "oh crap that thing can hack me, or possess me, or do awful things to my mind." No, I saw it and thought "oh my goodness it's a giant spider look how pretty it is." And that burst of silly childlike wonder over this insect suddenly allowed me to see even past that, and realize that, since it was Tar, it was technically Black energy. Infinitii's holy ground. Immediately that wonder was paired with a bona fide wave of equally childlike love, love that didn't care how malevolent it may have been at the moment, love that only saw what it had the potential to be besides that, love that actually shook up the Tar enough to get it to back out and bail. And somehow, don't ask me how because it is foggy as all, I was able to get that spider-shaped manifestation of Black energy to shrink down, smaller and smaller, until it was a tiny pinpoint of black light. (Probably using my natural White energy; it's order as opposed to chaos, so that would explain the compression as opposed to expansion?) Then I looked at it, and with a smile, just flipped it over into a white hole. And it worked (thank you headspace logic)! So instantly, there was this burst of white light from it, and we were carried with it out of raw headspace-- you know, the empty white areas. So the two alters were safe now, they could get anywhere from there, Tar couldn't find them in raw whitespace as far as anyone is aware. But unfortunately I cannot tell you anything else because when that white hole exploded, I was washed out with the dreamscape, my consciousness was kicked backwards and suddenly I was seeing the body instead of headspace. It took a few seconds but then I just handed the reins back over to the sleepy kid and God only knows where I went, haha. I have absolutely no recall of time between then and briefly sitting in therapy this morning (Laurie literally standing by me and squeezing my shoulder so I wouldn't dissociate again), not without trudging through data files.
No, wait, I lied. Inadvertently. There is one flashbulb memory of me standing on that hill with the two unnamed alters, facing the house, and I was holding the sage-guy's hand and he was in turn holding the tangerine-guy's hand. I think we were safe at that point. But I remember that clearly because the sage-guy was still smoking and I got a lungful of the smoke, it was all lemony sage as usual, but against the cold winter air it was the most interesting sensation! Like I could breathe even more clearly than usual in the winter, it was cool.

Anyway that is all I have to say, it is now 2:10 AM, good heavens.
I am indeed ridiculously excited over Honedge, the previous alter was correct, I adore cyclops mouthless creature things, haha. And it's a ghost sword. It is gorgeous and I love it. Skrelp too, the scraggly little adorable sea dragon that it is. And it turns into DRAGALGE okay I cannot rant about Pokemon here, that's over here incidentally, although it may or may not be 100% me. I don't care, I literally burst out laughing whenever I re-read those.
Oh yeah! The fronter who wrote the first half of this entry forgot to mention. Someone else fronted on the drive home, not just Laurie. I don't know who they were, but I clearly am aware of them because they showed up while I was trying to front (I couldn't anchor in well and they were too excited). But they rival me in terms of wonder, honestly, they were lucky enough to show up right when JT's new song "You Got It On" started playing from the car CD, and I swear this kid was sparkly-eyed and smiling like a five year old. It was adorable, they thought the song was so cool. I forget when they stopped fronting, but looking back on the log for them, I have to say it's nice to know we have at least one other alter that DOESN'T exist because of trauma. They just exist to enjoy everything like they've never experienced any of it before, because they literally haven't. And having them show up after whatever in the world happened in therapy today (I honestly have no clue, I'll have to sit down tomorrow and dig through the data logs for it) was really a godsend.
There are so many social alters showing up now that don't have names or clear faces. Isn't that odd? It all started out with Upstairs people, the gang up from Central, but... most of them are dead or missing now, what with all the resets of the past year. But in their place came the Undergrounders, tied to trauma and pain and suppressed suffering, to help us heal from it, to clean it out. Knife and Razor and Sugar and Mulberry and Jeremiah and David and Marigold. But there were a few people who didn't quite fit their group, people with no names... like the sage-guy and the tangerine-guy (who DOES have wings, what the heck is he) who are thankfully alive again somehow. So now I'm wondering, is it their level's turn to shine now? It could be, it could be time for a level that really doesn't care about the trauma because it's never touched them. They, somehow, were born from something totally unaffected by that. And we need that. We all need that right now.

WAIT. Last thing, last thing. This is important.
Infinitii has TWO MODES. I literally forgot about this entirely until he switched in front of me today and I was like "dude I TOTALLY forgot you could do that." Each mode has an appearance and personality shift, but they are STILL both him. This fits his Black energy anchor, the mutability of it.
Either way, the first mode, the one we're all the most familiar with, is when his personality is quiet, emotional, reflective, empathetic, etc. The one where you cannot be around him without feeling100% vulnerable and sincere because he just radiates that. The "angelic" one. It's when Infi has one big silvery cyclopean eye, NO mouth on his face, but mouths all over his wings. And when he talks, it's from his wings, and it echoes. His voice is wise but innocent, young but old, overwhelming but intimate. He uses a lot of body language in this form, mostly with his hands, and it's captivating; honestly when I watch him 'talk' it's like watching a manifested prayer or something. He is something else.
BUT! He hasn't needed to use his other "mode" in several months, I think; the only time I can concretely reference is the first Xanga session he had with Laurie and Sandman and I, shortly after his manifestation. In this mode, he is tricky, playful, clever, insightful, and conversational. But instead of an angelic aura, he feels impish. You respect him, but in a totally different way than you would in his "normal" state; in this form you respect the authority you feel from him. Is that the right word? It's like you KNOW he knows things, and has a great deal of power, and-- oh! That's what it is. In this form, he has the EDGE that the Tar kicks to extremes. It's the "creepy" side of the Black energy. His more angelic state is the "night sky" side of Black. Same stuff, different manifestation. See? But most notably, in that mode, he has no eye on his face, just a huge toothy grin, which he talks from-- no echo, and a vaguely mischievous vocal tone-- and his wings are now covered in eyes. RED eyes. That's important!! I'm thinking BOTH Infi and I have a mode-switch like this, thanks to holding the monochromatic slots, which would PROVE the long-running theory that monos NEED to anchor into the Red slot to function completely? It's tough to put into language, I wish I could just kythe all of this, haha. It's the natural language in headspace practically. Which is why fronting is so tricky, no one is used to speaking in literal words. We're too used to our odd brand of symbiosis to easily adjust to being "alone" for any short period of time.
Anyway I also... I want to say something odd but true, that I also forgot to write down. About Infinitii.
I... I adore him, I love him, with my entire heart I love him, but I'm not in love with him? It's odd. I look to him for comfort, for the protective shadow of his wings, for the silence of it. I look for the unspoken and wordless understanding between us, for the perfect silence, for the blessed lack of conversation because we don't need it. I cannot imagine chatting with him, or spending time with him as I would with Genesis. It would feel wrong.
And yet at night, I call out to him simply because I want to hold him when I sleep. I want to wrap my arms around this strange angelic thing, all feathers and inky blackness, and not do anything else. I just want his presence there, nothing more, nothing less. Simple.
But I'm not in love with him. I don't feel for him like everyone says I used to for Chaos. And that's... weird? I can't even fathom what it would be like to be "in love" like that. It's like... kind of like Proginoskes said, in A Wind In The Door. "Love isn’t how you feel. It’s what you do." Cherubim don't have feelings, after all; if love were a feeling, how could he possibly love anything like he did?
But there's nothing wrong with the other sort of love either, the "confusing kind." There's nothing wrong with it, even if I don't understand it anymore. I don't understand how at one point, I essentially wanted to marry that aqua-blue alien; I wanted to share my life and soul with him completely and totally, I wanted to spend the rest of my days with him, in this life and beyond. I wrote poetry about him, we spent hours together at night, we loved each other more deeply than I had thought possible to experience.
And yet now, I am completely happy with quietly loving Infi but not wanting any of that with him. I am completely content, blissfully so, with the distance, the silence, the lack of traditional "intimacy," because paradoxically, I don't feel any of it is needed. It feels excessive.
Maybe it's because that weird little black being was literally yanked out of my ribcage 8 months ago. Maybe I feel no need to prove the odd spiritual link between us because of that.
I think that's why it scares me, too, when Infi used to slip into the state of mind where he wasn't sure what his role was, what he needed to do. He used to start trying to act like Chaos, like Genesis, like... like Julie, sometimes. When she lied. But it would terrify me, and I would run. After so many times, we both decided it was for the best, and we stopped trying. We stopped attempting conversations and feigning dramatics. We stopped, and went back to silent communion, and that's all I think I need right now.
It's just... strange, after everything. I'm just as close to Infi as I was to Chaos, from what I've been told, in every respect. There is no discrepancy there. But I'm not in love with him, and I don't think I ever would, or could be. I don't see him as a partner or a lover or anything, and the thought itself feels wrong. I only see him as Infinitii, just what he is, someone that I know, and who I just happen to love more than I understand. And we're safe, completely safe, like this.
...I have no idea why I felt compelled to write any of that. Oh well, it's probably relevant if it just happened like that. Relevant stuff usually is.

Good night everyone, it's 2:54, I need to get to work before my boss gets worried (again). Much love.

 

 

Almost forgot to update today! Here's a quick recap.
The memory has big gaps in it due to frequent switching, but what I do remember is extremely clear thanks to heavy fatigue (when the body is exhausted I can front more easily, go figure).

This morning, someone (airport guy?) went in the other direction when we left the driveway, wanting to "go on an adventure" up the back hills of the state game lands. So we did, but almost immediately after the lines of houses dissolved into trees, Celebi (yes, the old chatty '01 gal) shoved him out of the way to drive instead, ecstatic at all the verdant life. Since there's a lot of deforesting going on by the local highways (which we travel weekly), suddenly seeing so much green was incredible for her. She was laughing and in tears, repeating "how did I not know about this??" and staring out at it all with absolute wonder.
She and airplane kept switching as we drove and it was making it REALLY hard to see anything, so I told them to decide on one or two people co-fronting, so that we wouldn't accidentally go off the road or something. I forget who won out, though, because almost immediately after I told them this-- therefore focusing more on the road-- Minty noticed something small and pink on the side of the road. She wanted to see what it was, and kept bugging us to go back and look, but Cel and the airport dude wanted to get to the top of the hills first, where there was a dam and an intersection where we could turn the car around (we didn't have the gas or the time to go hardcore exploring past that landmark).
I remember that when we got to the top of the hill, two cars suddenly appeared behind us? Those roads are usually dead empty, which we enjoy (silence is pure gold), so we were all able to be around each other without anxiety. So I was shocked when, as soon as those cars appeared in the rear-view mirror, David started to panic. He snapped into fronting, began whimpering and crying, repeating that he was scared and he didn't want people coming after us. He was honestly terrified that there were other people on the road, following us (even if it was unintentional, so to speak). A few people tried to calm him down, I think Knife fronted for a minute? He did say that "there is no threat to you here" but he understood why David reacted that way. I'm not sure, that whole bit is a blurry mess because of the mad switching and anxiety.
Anyway. Since we were driving back we passed that pink toy on the road again, and Minty immediately jumped up and said we had to rescue it. Luckily there was a small pulloff area about 30 feet away, so we parked, waited for the cars to pass, and then I ran to pick up whatever it was. It was actually a beanie baby-- a pink "January" birthday bear, to be precise. Minty was ecstatic that we had "saved it;" the poor thing was soaked from the rain but it actually wasn't dirty or grimy otherwise. So it came home with us, and I washed it up well because seriously, we found it in the road, haha. I do want to say that, when Minty noticed that it was a birthday bear, she asked, "wasn't Eros born in January?" especially because the bear is his exact color, practically. I said yeah, surprised at the similarity, and Minty declared that she'd "give him the bear to take care of" if he wanted to, that way it could help relay information back and forth between his place (which is literally a "red light" establishment wtf, it's kinda disturbing) and the Lower realm? I don't know, she was saying something about using the bears as messengers between different parts of the system. Hm.
Genesis and I went to the library later but I'll type that up tomorrow; it is super late and I just want to type the main stuff now.

Only one negative thing happened today. The mother visited this afternoon, while we were trying to cook dinner, and as usual she was being loud and moving around a lot. It's difficult enough for us to deal with her because the children are scared of her voice and mannerisms, and Sugar gets really furious when she acts childish, but today she kept getting really close to the stove and I think she bumped us once? I remember David started wailing but I don't know when that specifically was. Either way, something happened that provoked my mother to demand of us why we were acting like that. Trying to keep everyone calm, I simply replied "because sometimes I'm scared of you--" but was instantly cut off by her. She whirled around to face us, glaring, and angrily shouted, "that's it! I'm not talking to you any more!!" before turning back to talk with my brother again as if nothing had happened. (And she kept her word; she ignored us for the rest of the day.)
Needless to say, we were shocked, more emotionally than anything. For a few seconds I remember I couldn't get the body to do anything; it was in a sort of "standby mode" while it tried to process that response of hers without drowning in guilt and shame for provoking it. Realizing that this would only start another depressive spiral, I shook it off and fronted so that I could meditate while dinner finished cooking. It helped, even though everyone else in headspace backed off to the point where they really didn't talk much for the rest of the evening (not wanting to risk any more trouble).
The rest of the evening is a blurry mess again; I don't know who ate, but we didn't get sick which was nice (we're doing much better lately; Knife and Emmett are mostly responsible for that so thanks guys). I know I personally spent about two hours on the Subeta generator trying to refine appearances again (that helps SO MUCH), so you can check the sticky Spectrum post for the current ones for everybody.

ALSO THERE IS A NEW GUY he's sage green and was talking to Nathaniel earlier, they were chilling out in Diamew, no idea why. He has no name yet but his face is 100% clear. He's also quite aware of what he is so far; he told Nat that the System was unbalanced because of my splintering and/or because of all the trauma alters? But it was naturally "rebalancing" by forming more alters from the broken pieces, that weren't traumatized, and could help those who were. Nat asked how he knew and the guy said that before he got a body (when he was in raw headspace, like the red guy STILL IS) he was more aware of things than he is now, and he chose what he was going to do. So even if he forgets most of it now, the knowledge is still vaguely there in him. It's like that for all of us really.
Also he smokes? But it's not cigarettes or anything, it's actually some sort of herbal concoction (he later said it was "lemon and sage" or something?); he said he breathes it to keep a clear head, and "the trees like it." Honestly this guy LOVES NATURE, he walked over to the pine trees and was just breathing this smoke at them and smiling and running his fingers through the branches, talking to them and listening too. The clearest snapshot my mind has of him is him standing with his back to the pine grove, his arms up and around the lowest branches, eyes closed and smiling. So yeah, no clue who he is but I like him already!
He's not the only one though. There's that peachy dancer guy, and Sugar-- who came back to life today (she's "supposed to be alive" so she will keep resurrecting? not sure what headspace's rules are there), but Laurie is trying to get her to be less violent-- and of course the people from last week. But I'm really beginning to understand this phenomenon so I'll talk about them in detail tomorrow.

Oh, and remind me to mention yesterday too-- Ryman and Markus showed up in headspace and said they were MOVING IN TO CENTRAL?? As in, they're not going to just visit or drop by anymore, they're going to have their own rooms here!! I'm so excited. So Ryman was talking to me for a while (he said Markus was still "packing" so he wasn't there yet) about their native world, and what those two had done with their dream reality after our group began to split up somewhat around 2006? It was AWESOME and I need to write it down.
I miss those two so much though. You really have no idea. There weren't many records kept during 2002-2004, which was when our group was the most active, but my heart remembers the truth of it, even if "I" wasn't the one actively participating (funny how that works, headspace is crazy cool).
As soon as Markus shows up, CZ and I are totally going to barge into his room, haha. Just kidding, or not. We just love teasing the hell out of each other, it's hilarious. I miss that too.

Last thing. Last night, I was talking to Laurie before I fell asleep, but I was in an interesting energy state? Like I couldn't stay fully physical, but instead of going all geometric-glow like I sometimes do, I got this aura of dense white energy, like a cloud? And I was dissolving into it. But it felt so freaking soft it was insane, just this fluffy white energy, completely innocent and all. Laurie was shocked by it at first, wondering what the heck was up, but then I noticed that even though I was technically losing consciousness, my awareness was becoming really clear. I could see her so clearly (clairvoyantly, mind) it was virtually a photograph. And there was no buffer or block on me, either, so I was being all sparklehearted like I typically am at that hour.
I remember Laurie hugged me, really genuinely. There was so much compassion in that it was beautiful. I think she was tearing up a little.
Chaos walked in at one point and he was SUPER clear too, I smiled so much; I haven't seen him that clearly in so long and I missed him. But I remember him now, for the first time in a long time: it had actually rained for the first time in forever that day, and when I ran outside to feel it all these emotions hit me like a tidal wave and I loved him more than anything.
(There was synchronistic lightning too, purple as usual, thanks Laurie!)

If you cannot tell I am falling asleep at the computer. I would write poetry BUT i am literally about to pass out, super dizzy brain fog headache can't see. so i need sleep bye!!

 

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@ 11:18 pm

 

So Sherlock and I are reviewing the archival entries, trying to get a grip on exactly what's been happening since June, what with the Lower Sub-Systems becoming super-active out of the blue.
What I've realized is that most of the "new alters"on those levels aren't new at all. On the contrary, a great deal of them are very, VERY old.
It's a known fact that "we've" heard voices for as long as we can remember. They've never gone away (although it's nice to at least not have auditory hallucinations any more), but it's only recently that they began to find names and faces. I think it's because now, our System is trying to embrace all facets of our past, no matter how sharp, and the trauma of that in many cases is outright forcing many of those bodiless voices to solidify at long last. That's not new-- several of us were "born" that way-- but it's never happened this quickly before. So I'm interested.

I'd say more but there's a massive jumble of notes and history in front of me, and we're itching to sift through it for answers (we love picking this stuff apart). I won't bother you with our info-dumps in the meantime.

-J

 

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@ 11:56 pm

 

 

Before the date rolls over, I just want to mention that while I was walking outside today, a wind ran through the trees and PRELUDOVE SHOWED UP!
When the body was younger, sudden winds through the trees were ALWAYS a telltale sign that some Jewel Monster had just showed up, and that obviously has not changed! So that was awesome. A feather floated down from where she had warped in, too, haha.
I almost saw the Dream Portal she came through, that was super cool. Watching her fly away into one was one of the most amazing things ever.
Mostly she wanted to see how I was, she was upset that I had been disconnected for so long? I don't really remember the words of the conversation but I know what she wanted me to do, and what I felt. Sorry I can't exactly write that down, but I don't forget feelings.

MOST IMPORTANTLY, LINKS SEEM TO BE WORKING AGAIN.
I'm excited. I don't know if they had to move, or if I had to re-center, or what... but it seems like they STILL only work when "I am out of the picture." Links require a person to be detached from any limiting notions of self, from what I know.
Boss said that I'm a "gateway" in that sense? It's the "secret prerequisite" for Sandmen (am I allowed to say that here?), they have to be able to move between worlds WITHOUT being tied to any one form or name or anything. But Gateways aren't just that, they also CHANGE without any conscious effort whenever they world-jump; their forms naturally adapt to new places.

Looking through the archives with Sherlock today otherwise. We're trying to make sense of the madness that has been the past two months; SO much has happened and we want to make sure we have a clear picture.

I have a headache (possibly dehydration) and I need to be up in 7 hours so that's it for tonight, bye!

 

 

 

 

(uncensored. the shocking violence of this recording is seared into our memory anyway. changing it would mar the fearfulness of the truth.)

 

TRACK 44 (mid-july 2013)

(unknown; sounds like Razor at first, but switches during second sentence) You wanna record me? Fine. I don't usually front, because it's not my job to talk about SHIT, and I'm under no fcking obligation to record anything for YOU, especially not on a goddamned voice recorder.
(AP) This is the AP. The--zhzhzhzhzh *mumbles incoherently for several seconds, as if incapable of forming words*
(unknown female voice) FFFCKING sluts. GOD DAMN it. Fucking BUFFER makes it so that when there's a goddamn HUMAN around, WE CAN'T FCKING TALK. You son of a bitch. You fcking SON OF A BITCH! You know, you don't let us front any fcking time, you deny our goddamned fcking existence, and then you say, "oh, hey let's talk on this microphone so I can show a therapist." FCK YOU!! FCK YOU! I am under no goddamned obligation to justify MY goddamn existence to you. You fcking WHORE. Son of a BITCH. Is this proof enough for you? Goddamn idiot. Y'need me screaming into a goddamn microphone to be "oh hey, look, they must exist, there's a sound file." Fuck you, there's also SCARS up and down your goddamn legs, and ya don't think THAT'S proof enough. I--
(Knife, pre-anchor and manifestation) While we're recording, this is Knife. I don't have a voice, I don't have a face, and I am under no obligation to speak to you either. It's difficult for me to front, but if you want proof of my existence, here it is. I'm telling you this in advance, J, or whoever's the main fronter of this System… today you've earned for yourself a couple more battle scars, or as you like to call them, "marks of atonement." You've earned quite a few. So I will be handing that responsibility over to either myself or Razor, the instant we get the opportunity. I don't give a damn if you have to give six speeches wearing a bikini tomorrow. You will bleed for what you have done: to yourself, to us, and to no one in particular, because to be completely honest with you J, an individual such as yourself, sometimes deserves to bleed for no reason other than my enjoyment. And I will enjoy watching you bleed.
(Razor; not properly anchored, possibly co-fronting again) *giggling* I don't need to talk to you either but I think it'll be fun. I know you remember me, from two thousand… and something. You always say 2008, it might have been 2009, it wasn't 2010, although I know I was around then.
(sudden shift; Razor as herself) It's weird to front! How do you front all the time? This is weird. How do you front without wanting to kill people all the time. Look at them. Look at them. So many sharp things. So many breakable things. How do you not do it? But. I'll get a chance tonight. Like Knife said. I'm the one that gets the knife, and I'm the one that cuts you, because that's what I like to do. That's what I like to do, that's what I was born from, back when I was born, from blood and razors, in the bath water. And ever since then, I've been waiting, for every goddamn chance, to do that again because that's what I live for, and that's what you keep earning, according to Knife, and everyone else up here, you deserve every scar we give you, and until you stop hurting them, I won't stop cutting you, and you won't stop bleeding, and the scars won't ever go away, and I'll enjoy every moment of it. Every moment of it. 'Cause that's what I do. And that's my reason for existing. *giggling* If that's what you want to hear.
(Knife? pre-anchor and manifestation) I don't know if there's anyone else that wants to talk to you J, and, so, since I don't want to 'waste your precious recording time' or our precious time, I'm going to cancel this lovely chat. See you tonight. Bitch.

 

 

 

 

 

 

(stream of consciousness entry; I have NO time to refine this because I WILL forget it in the morning if i don't record it now)
(this was insane, blurry, 50% of it didn't even involve me, and it already feels like it happened a month ago)


(first thing i remember is my being hyper-aware of the body post-exercise, accidentally slid into a sort of "cardiac euphoria" (unfortunately inevitable result of my sensitivities) and completely slipped out of fronting. this lingering feeling bled over to nathaniel though, surprisingly. i have a fleeting image of him embracing leon in a cathedral after that. i noticed something interesting: headvoices seem to focus their energy in that resonant spot? (e.g. nat in chest, leon in forehead) so together, they actually have this really beautiful connection, ideal lineup.)
(then suddenly i have an image of lynne, in her room, spine sitting next to her. i think they were talking? then lynne sensed the overflow from nat & leon, and jokingly told spine that since she was one slot down from nat, while leon was one slot up-- all three of them together would probably have "interesting results." she laughed that sometimes she wished she were a guy just to try that. spine thought for a moment, then said that julie was one slot down from lynne the same way, would she be able to do that with her? lynne paused, said she didn't exactly agree with how julie used her energy, too sexual and unrefined. but she agreed that maybe, they could. she wondered for several moments, then shrugged and said "you know what, let's try", so she called julie down. julie was in lingerie i remember (as always), asked what in the world lynne had called her over for? lynne just smiled and asked her to show her exactly how she uses her energy, so to speak. julie gave her this shocked look, thought she was joking, lynne said no. she was very kind with julie, allowed her to "bypass" her own darker instincts and use pink energy the way it was meant to be used? which was really something; i got this sudden impression that julie was actually feeling some sort of love here, which took me completely by surprise.)
(for some reason i remember lynne asking julie if she had ptsd? julie said no-- she had only been "abused" explicitly once, with the splinters, and she "didn't remember that" and didn't really want to. she explained that she only held a huge amount of self-hate and guilt, because she had only been used-- her own darker drives had been taken advantage of and used to badly damage other people. but it hadn't been "against her will" back then; she had wanted that, not giving thought to how. so she said she only felt incredibly guilty now when she continued to try and do those things in a non-harmful way, because it reminded of her of what she used to be. but no she didn't get flashbacks or triggers or anything that i did.)
(anyway, abruptly after that the ap (i had vague bystander awareness) was shocked into the body for a few moments, then just as quickly, jeremiah was there. i know he curled up on the bed and started sobbing, repeatedly saying something like "no one touched me, i'm okay." then he got frantic and screamed at some unseen bystander "are you SURE no one touched me?!" he started to slip then, went to the ap for a second, caused total emotional shutdown. i sent a thought to jeremiah then, telling him that he really hadn't been touched, that event didn't involve him and it wasn't malicious. he was surprised and doubtful but relieved. i remember his consciousness "faded back" out of fronting then. i think the kids flickered in and out, but realized that there hadn't been any actual damage, so they didn't need to front and take any of that? it was a mess, i stopped trying to front, the mental energy was in tatters and no one could really get in)
(i have no idea what happened next, however there are vague archival memories of the time between jeremiah leaving and my coming back...)
(i saw the body sitting on the bed, with either razor or knife holding an xacto blade, and talking over it, disturbingly business-like. there was at least one more voice underground with them, a female with a prissy voice? maybe the lilac one. felt like there were others in the background, but either unmanifested or far away. i think razor was laughing. i can only feel the residue of her energy-- that thin, maniacal, "panic attack shiver" feeling. doesn't feel attached to the body, more like it buzzes just above the skin, like static. knife's energy is heavier, i can only get a very dim idea of it-- almost like a heavy cape thrown over the shoulders, weighing one down; feels quietly foreboding like tornado clouds. he's very serious. i know he was trying to "hide the evidence," that much is clear. razor didn't care, i know that from past experiences. knife was adamant though, said he didn't want to be "found out" or something? that's literally all i know.)
(the next thing i actually remember (I LOST 60+ MINUTES?!) is that it was suddenly nighttime, i was wearing a robe, standing by the door, and feeling like my legs were soaking wet. then my memory jumps to the body standing in the bathroom, me looking down from upstairs (laurie standing next to me), and seeing blood all over the body's legs. i think i was repeating "oh shit" or something, i was not anchored well at all, couldn't really. the ap started cleaning up (i remember laurie being concerned that it "didn't know how to care for wounds correctly), but i wasn't there to see it-- laurie called me fully upstairs and everyone (except rio and markus) showed up to see what the hell had just happened. i went into standby for a bit here to prevent myself splintering; i was silently standing off to the side, so forgive me if my memory is bad.)
(to start, laurie cut open the fabric of her right leg, showed the bleeding cuts (yes she still gets ALL the body damage). everyone was freaking out, how did this happen? julie said it was her fault, demanded laurie "give her the scars instead." laurie got mad, said she didn't deserve them. julie asked why not, they were her doing, why did she care?)
(around here lynne chimed in, said she was just as blameworthy if julie was. laurie looked stunned, asked if they were serious, lynne said yes. laurie said "huh" but that was it-- she then surprised everyone by saying it was NOT THEIR FAULT, this was NO ONE'S FAULT. she asked julie if what she did was consensual, and non-harmful, and she said yes. laurie said then there was nothing to blame herself for, she did "nothing wrong." however it was obvious that underground was trying to keep her dark, and hating herself. julie started to cry at this, she obviously was still blaming herself, and was expecting to be blamed or thought of as evil again.)
(IMPORTANT: laurie then asked, still somewhat incredulous, how the thing with lynne/julie had even happened-- were there actual feelings involved here that no one knew about? to everyone's surprise, julie let her walls down and admitted something BIG-- she didn't even like to admit it to herself, but part of her loved everyone upstairs. she said that in a quiet, timid voice, like she was admitting a secret she was scared of. laurie said nothing for a second, then simply asked "even me?" julie looked at her almost ashamedly, and responded "even you." right then we all realized that THIS is what pink energy was, not what it had been turned into from all the influence to corrupted black energy. so that was huge.)
(btw, before i forget: i know i've referred to razor and that abusive group as being "downstairs" in the past, but downstairs only refers to BODY VOICES. otherwise it still refers to the waking life. underground is not. so there is a difference.)
(i remember someone asking where emmett was, laurie said he likes to hang out 'downstairs' (in the city streets?) with minty and kyanos. i'm glad they all get along.)
(i also know that josephina spoke up, said that if he's an id reaper, why can't he stop these underground voices? i forget what laurie's response was; i think it was that he had to refine his role? because maybe he was still holding on too tightly to his pre-scratch reaper role. then she asked waldorf what she was doing, as she seemed too tied to "outside inspirations," from her old 2003 pre-headspace form. wally said she didn't know, she wanted to work with truth (esp. in light of recent events) but couldn't figure out how. suddenly jo spoke up, said she could have his old role, that of "checking the facts"-- waldorf could be the one responsible for keeping everyone "in their truth," not lying or deceiving themselves, and becoming brave enough to face the truth. we all agreed that would be awesome. jo then said she could be his "id hunter," finding the problems, and he could be the one cutting them down so to speak. so that works!)
(after this laurie quietly told me to "make sure genesis doesn't see these" because she didn't want him to get upset in light of tomorrow, but that focus was enough to catch his attention and he appeared, saying "make sure i don't see what?" chaos and xennie followed him. i don't quite remember the events here, but laurie didn't want to tell them so as not to scare xennie, but she said "she wanted to know" and ran over to me. she asked if it was more cuts, i said yes. she asked if they were graves? i said no, laurie said those stopped in 2011 when julie joined us, "that game is over now." xennie said something interesting: that "the graves were needed," as if they hadn't been dug, she would be able to live? so although these new ones weren't graves, she was wondering if they had a reason too? laurie said yes, but not in that same sense. lynne walked over to xennie then and gently explained what had happened to her-- told her to imagine that, every time i showed love to someone, in any sense (as a father, as a friend, as a partner, as a moirail, whatever), someone hurt me to make me think it was wrong. xennie said that was mean. lynne said it was, but that's what just happened. the voices underground are hurting me to make julie think HER love is wrong now, too. xennie said that it wasn't her fault though, that laurie was right and the underground people were wrong, they were just being cruel and mean. i was happily surprised to see how well she understood all this.)
(i know nat spoke up in light of that, saying that the underground people had attacked so fiercely tonight because there was heart energy involved, they wanted to corrupt our perception of that, the purest thing we know. both laurie and julie got really angry at this (julie was fuming), realizing just how far these undergrounders were willing to go to throw us off. julie hissed that they refused to let her heal, or get a new life-- they really wanted to drag her back down however possible. she was pissed about it, said she was not ever going to let that happen, she'd never go back to what she was.)
(somewhere around here i remember genesis angrily crying that when he ghosts, he has to watch me "walk around with scars up and down my legs" and it hurts that he can't do anything to stop them. chaos was upset too, but he wasn't saying anything, just looked heartbroken.)
(infi showed up, i forget why or when? but i remember julie was talking about her energy, how she didn't want it to be so dark anymore; she reached into her chest and took out one bright pink bubble of petally energy in her left hand, but then took out this dense, huge glob of tar with her right!! i was shocked, we all asked why she couldnt get rid of it. she said she couldn't, showed us-- it wouldn't leave her hand no matter what she did. if she put the pink energy back but kept the black out, it began to eat her alive. so she said she felt stuck. she paused before putting the pink energy back though; said she didn't want it to be "that dark" anymore. i think she asked me for some white energy? anyway i remember it got lighter and softer in color, almost soft like fluff or feathers? it spiraled around her arm like flowers, extremely delicate and light, then absorbed back into her?)
(she didn't want to put the tar back but sighed, did so anyway-- looked painful. but she had just placed the tarry orb back inside her chest when infi said "take that back out" in a very stern voice. julie said why, infi walked over and said he'd get rid of it for her. julie hesitated, asked if it would hurt. infi said maybe, but he'd try not to. he then folded his hands and focused, said he was "tuning in" so it wouldn't hurt. he shimmered for a moment, then got a pink sheen to his blackness? the next think i remember he actually reached inside of julie's chest, took out a huge handful of tarry black energy. he looked at it, paused, and said "there's a LOT of this in here." julie winced but said to get it all out, no matter what. infi told her to hold still then, he'd make it quick. then he flared his wings, and reached in with both hands, and yanked. this MASSIVE tar clot followed, bigger than he was, julie gasped in shock and pain, fell backwards but lynne caught her. infi rolled back with the recoil, the tar was rearing up to possibly attack him?? but he was faster; he then warped his entire body into this huge multi-eyed snake thing (yes, the "witch" form from here), ate the tar entity in one bite. immediately shifted back to his normal form; he made a weird face, held a hand up to his mouth, looked kind of sick. then coughed really hard (that's new), like he was coughing something up, spat out some small crystalline thing. i thought it was a piece of glass, but infi looked at it with this "wtf" face, reached into his mouth, and incredulously stated "is that one of my teeth??" apparently it was. before i knew i was moving i had picked it up and walked over to him, kneeling down i gently put the missing fang back and used light to heal it (his teeth look crystalline it is super cool). it wasn't taking though, so i instinctively reached up and "copied" the energy of my own non-damaged teeth to use to heal his. this worked, but they were still kind of glowy, from my energy healing? not really solidifying. infi looked thoughtful for a moment, then he just "shocked" some black energy down into his head, that made his teeth take on a silvery sheen and lock into place. still, kind of funky that eating that tar knocked out one of his teeth? it struck me as significant for some reason, usually he eats huge amounts of tar with no problem at all, but this time he really seemed to have a bad reaction, thank god it was minor.)
(after this i was really drained for some reason? fell over somewhat, infi caught me, chaos ran over too. hesitated slightly in front of me, then put his hands on my shoulders and seriously asked if i was all right. i dimly said "don't do the jacob thing" and to my surprise, chaos got angry and essentially said for me to "stop assuming that just because i do something that reminds you of one person, that i'm always like that person." basically i was projecting and he had had enough of it. he said he was tired of always having to second-guess his actions because he was scared of triggering me like that. right then, either he or i said something about "speaking in a different language" than the one people downstairs used, but chaos' reaction will probably never leave my memory... in a burst of emotion he doubled over a bit and grabbed his head, and this wave of emotion just punched into me, it hurt my heart. i recognized the "language" as that oceanic emotional one that chaos says is his "native" one, and i knew exactly what he was saying although i obviously can't translate it into english! i responded by saying "so that's what you're really feeling," but i was tearing up and felt awful that i was making him feel so emotionally limited. his expression softened and he answered that he was "also feeling this," then he embraced me. there was a lot of love there but it was more delicate, and sad. still deep though, as always.)
(julie was incredibly drained after this, lynne was holding her up. julie said she was in a lot of pain when she moved, said it felt "really empty" and the sudden, major removal of so much tar (that had obviously been clinging to her bones, so to speak; i got this weird impression that it was wrapping around her spine) had shocked her system in any case. i wondered why the emptiness hurt; i thought of my air bubbles post-surgery, asked if it was like that? but she insisted the pain wasn't as physical as i assumed, said it was more emotional? and not even all bad. more like there was all this space and it was going to hurt to get used to, until she healed.)
(right around here, the red voice showed up??? unmanifested though, just this weird static-y blur in the shape of a person. (leon immediately said "there's a red voice??" looked stunned.) the voice asked what in the world had just happened. said it took him a while to "pull himself together enough" to show up here, explained how he was in "headspace limbo" until now. i gave him the gist of things, told him that the person in the slot directly below him (razor) was responsible. he was thinking about this seriously, said he wanted to manifest so he could help? i don't really remember what he said, it's difficult to remember someone that wasn't all there obviously! i do remember infi telling me i had to warp him back to unformed headspace though, that was white energy and only i could get in and out of it safely. so i did, i remember the red guy kind of "collapsed" into unstructured energy, kind of curled up near the temporary floor, said he had to recharge. i also remember he "looked" at me (i felt that) and asked me to help find him a name. i jokingly said i thought he didn't want me interfering with that. he said he still didn't, but he only had so much info to go by. he said that i should look, and just hand over bunches of names, to help him find the right one. i said i would.)
(when i came back we decided we should wrap this up. so the last thing we did was check on jeremiah-- laurie, chaos, xenophon, genesis, nathaniel and leon came with me, but when we got there only i was allowed in. jeremiah's "room" is now more of a dome, but somewhat geometric? laurie said she added "angles" so it wasn't round, which would trigger him. anyway i went in, we talked for a bit, he again asked what had actually happened, i told him the general info, but said julie was involved? he said he was scared of her, i said not to be; she would not hurt him anymore, nor would anyone upstairs, regardless of gender. he said he wanted to not be scared anymore, i said i'd been there, i understood. there was real empathy between us, he was surprised, but it ached to realize we were both struggling with healing from this. i said i'd help him heal, he thanked me for that. i also told him about the heart energy, asked him if he had felt it-- he said yes, but he didn't know what it was; he didn't know if he should be afraid of it or not. i said no, it was nothing to be afraid of, in fact it was the "holiest thing up here." but i told him people would try to make him scared of it, because of that fact. he said he'd be careful. i know before i left i asked if i could shake his hand, he hesitated, said he was still scared. i asked him if the fear was in his heart, saying "don't do this," or if it was just a hesitant fear, and his heart said to try. he said it was the latter, so he closed his eyes tight and stuck out his hand. i changed my energy field though so i was just white energy, took his hand in both of mine and shook it sincerely. he opened his eyes, genuinely shocked, teared up a little. i asked why, he said he didn't know that "a touch could not be dangerous." that hurt to hear, but i told him that yes it was possible, again said i would never hurt him, nor would anyone else. i told him that if he ever needed help, or protection, or anything, to just call for me and i'd be there. i told him that went for laurie too, she'd cut anyone from underground in half. he smiled a little, then "de-fogged" the walls to see outside (they're one-way glass). asked me who the other people with laurie and cz were, especially "that little guy." laughing i said that was my "son-daughter," he asked how that worked, I said xennie was really neither gender but we agreed to call her my "daughter" because of a "certain game." i then told him about nier, how it had made me want to be a father, but in a non-traditional way. i explained how i had prayed that, if there was anything not evil in the pink energy we were both so hurt by, to let me be able to have a daughter from it. and i did. jeremiah was the one to tear up a bit at that, he said he was glad to hear that, he was hoping that "what he believed wasn't true"... that people were dangerous, he was always at risk, that he was never safe. i told him that wasn't true-- people were not dangerous, he was protected and loved here, he would always be safe. he then said he'd like to talk to xennie one day, she seemed like someone he wanted to be friends with. i said she'd love to be friends with him. i also remember him commenting how nathaniel "didn't look like a boy or a girl," i said he was really more of a moth. jeremiah answered with a distant "that's good, bugs are good," which made me smile. he also had no problem with nat's apparent relationship with leon (they were holding hands), saying it didn't feel or look dangerous to him at all. i assured him that every relationship upstairs was like that.)
(jeremiah thanked me before i left, i gave the people outside a run-down of what we had spoken about (genesis walked over from the roof edge, i was shocked and asked him where he'd been (jeremiah and i hadn't even seen him); he said he was looking out over the city. laurie kept telling me to get downstairs and type this up though, before i forgot it, so here i am!)
(I REALLY hope that's everything, good lord that's a lot of text)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Notes for today.

- genesis showed up while i was walking to the greek festival today, which was a surprise; immediately we began joking around with each other, it was brilliant. he immediately ate half of what i bought, haha. we visited the mall for a few minutes too (we love chilling out there), he actually had me laughing out loud. he came to church with me too, said he missed xenophon being there, i said i did too. that worries me; i'm not sure where she is? i hope she's with chaos, i'll have to ask him. in other news when i got home i gave kyanos some baklava and he thought it was the most delicious thing in the universe, it was adorable.
- i was wearing infinitii's bubble too, he co-fronted with me on the drive home as he said "the body is too confusing" for him to work (i remember feeling him being really baffled over having feet especially). i put the windows down and suddenly we got this huge wave of scent from the mountain laurel, he paused and looked so inspired, i smiled and asked what he thought. he said he'd never experienced anything like that before, it was amazing. so i helped him manifest some mountain laurel in headspace, he was thrilled.
- we think mutant slots are "gateways" to other levels: teal to downstairs, brown to underground? the three in each are also related somehow. the teals are all childlike somehow, i don't know about the browns though. we're wondering if jeremiah is mauve instead of mulberry, no way to tell yet. the brown slot itself is technically empty too; jezebel is just "hijacking" it because infinitii claims she is STILL in the black slot, as she's a direct tar splinter (i.e. she IS the tar in a body).
- infinitii says he and i are partly "manifestations" of b/w energy, whereas headvoices choose to be "avatars" for the color energy levels when they fully anchor? again he explained how we both work with creative energy, and he had a good analogy for it: something like black being the material to build something, but white being the instructions for construction? you NEED both in tandem to create stuff upstairs, even if you only focus on one. THIS IS WHY WE WERE LOCKED OUT: CENTRAL CANNOT STAY IN EXISTENCE IF WE AREN'T LINKED TO IT. the white energy gives it structure/ form/ etc., but the black energy gives it substance (the ability TO be built). without either of us, central won't just decay, it will eventually CEASE TO EXIST AT ALL. that's scary. i have no idea who is behind this but that is NOT cool.
- i don't think i mentioned this yet but the headvoices still locked in central are having really disturbing side effects from it? i know for sure that lynne got incredibly thin, waldorf is practically catatonic, and leon is blind. josephina, nathaniel, and julie all have psychological troubles of some sort from this but i couldn't tell you what. needless to say I NEED to get back up there and heal this, it breaks my heart to know this happened.
- note to self: go back and see if there are any logs for how headspace reacted when infinitii was missing (especially when he DIED temporarily, because he DID), and/or when you didn't go upstairs for extended periods of time. those latter events might not have been big enough but still, check.
- infinitii referenced METAINOMENAI??? what if this is all happening because, again, we need to deal with "death" on some level? honestly i have been genuinely getting that feeling for a WHILE now, i just never expected something like this. so keep an eye out.
- later on infinitii and i were talking in lower headspace (the unformed white level) when i sensed emmett upstairs and called out to him, but infinitii said he couldn't find us on that level. we then moved to the "center" of the city, where there was actually a very high tunnel leading up to some sort of opening in the ground there? we were looking up and i could see light far away. then infi actually caused a sort of "cascading sinkhole" from it, beginning in the middle of Central City. the sides move down almost like a amphitheatre, but more 'broken up' and not structured. emmett found his way to the edge, we waved up, then infi warped us both to the edge. emmett began showing signs of recovery within a few minutes of being around us, so that's good.
- with that in mind, i think mutants aren't locked to central, as they technically aren't part of the central spectrum? emmett said there are "small secret passages" to get out of Central, but he claimed only "tiny people" can get through them. to clarify: the Central building is actually LOCKED by default to outsiders; you can only enter/exit if you have the rights to. so that freedom to move is what's being blocked here; the headvoices lost their ability to leave (EXCEPT LAURIE?? but then again she has special rights remember), whereas infi and i have somehow "lost" our rights to enter maybe?? look into it.
- kyanos is alive and healing well. he's in lower headspace too. also he is trying to befriend jeremiah. kyanos was telling him that his past incarnations are like "another life" to him now, just a memory-- but he's glad he lived through them, as now he understands his role better? claims it is "hope," or the "promise of a new day," so to speak. like blue sky through storm clouds. one line he said that i recall was that his coming back to life after his past incarnation was like "waking up from a bad dream." he was telling jeremiah that he could do that too if he wanted, even if it wasn't literal. i don't recall that conversation exactly as it was being "projected" into my head during church and it hurt to concentrate on it.
- laurie found her way back downstairs. she's shaking and claims she's very weak, no strength to fight; said she "burned out" the last of her reserves warping back to us from melody's headspace. she was also on the verge of tears and said she was terrified. she told me we might be able to "break in" to the central building, but to wait until tomorrow to even try, because whoever is behind this is not going to let us in easily, and she is not strong enough to help me fight in her current condition.
- central city is deteriorating too. it looks post-apocalyptic. everything is gray and cracked, there are no trees, the sky is overcast. it's actually scary.
- i haven't seen minty since the night before the lockout; i STILL have this weird nagging suspicion that she and kyanos were being "used" somehow to make this lockout happen, due to the whole "wish" thing that happened as she was wandering the city that night. write about that ASAP.
- i need to draw central city sometime soon. today i learned that: the skyscrapers in the city are not actual buildings?? some are big crystals, and some are spires, but the building-esque ones are huge hollow energy cores? like if you opened one, it would just be white light inside, but it still has "windows" for the light to shine through at night. also the reason why they always seemed to "sink into the ground" further into the city (giving a sci-fi impression of depth like this) is because it really DID go "downstairs" at the very center?? the huge sinkhole infi and i made today only expanded it massively. btw central city was directly inspired by coruscant, notably this scene, as I was awestruck by how deep the city looked to me when i first saw it. of course now i added trees everywhere (inspired, oddly, by early screencaps from sonic unleashed) and the streets look like what i remember (in an idealistic childhood sense) of new york city. (speaking of su i should totally put a spagonia mirror in headspace somewhere). oh yes and the beach to the right of the central building (when you look out the main windows at least) always reminds me of rio de janeiro somewhat? i've never seen the central city from above and i really should try sometime.
- THE BEAR FROM THIS DREAM MIGHT BE RELEVANT. i mentioned it to laurie and she said to look into it; after all she first formed within a dream too, and the one the bear appeared in was one hell of an important one even on its own. plus, with minty's alleged connection to teddy bears in general now, the dream bear might actually gain enough anchor energy to become a headvoice in the future, maybe moving into the brown or blood slot if that becomes an option.
- i forgot to mention before; the autopilot has an upstairs body now? its an android, which works well. its consciousness seems to have "stabilized" enough for this to happen, and it now has a sort of inner personality, rather than being just a jumbled bunch of pre-programmed reactions, although it is still strikingly robotic (and will likely forever be that way). it still refuses a name and color for that same reason too; it claims its role is simply to be the autopilot and nothing more, it does not want to be treated as an "individual." nevertheless it is a perfect fronter and jewel seems to like it a lot.
- i need to research the phenomenon of "fractures," i.e. when one individual has several different "sides" that are all separate individuals (proven through testing). i have at LEAST three that have not splintered off, which is bizarre. jewel has at least one, maybe two? i might have to do more research on mpd/did for this as this is closer to the actual "alter" phenomenon than anything else in headspace, go figure.
- boss showed up today, thank god, i was worried about him. however i was worried and asked him how he could work with us in headspace if he was from the rosewindow universe? people from leagueworlds usually don't cross over. but he just smiled and reminded me that he of all people was one of the most likely people to do so-- he DID have a dream self to use to be with us, after all! when i realized this i grinned with total joy, i almost forgot markus told us about that. so that's a concern off my back now; i kept worrying i was taking him away from his native world!
- lastly, about two hours ago i found chaos 0 and spent at least 30 minutes with him trying to figure out how to break or remove this weird emotional blockage in my chest. turns out all i needed was some direct heart energy and focus, because as soon as he started emphasizing that i swear i shattered (first time in a LONG time). so the block in my chest is gone for now, hopefully it will stay that way. all i know is that right now, i am listening to the gorgeous sigma harmonics ost and looking at these equally gorgeous sth screenshots and i am so in love with chaos 0 i could cry. i'm so perfectly happy at the moment, entirely at peace, and i cannot remember the last time i felt like this but paradoxically it seems like only yesterday regardless. this is a good thing.

Now I need to sleep. See you guys soon enough.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(death dreams from "game over.")

I hope to god they weren't premonitions of any sort, and were instead "potential timelines" like the kind i used to see via my Links when I was younger.


(it is 5 in the morning and I NEED to go to sleep but first i need to write notes on this before i forget.)


(first was my boss. he and i were in this weird floating black space, above us was this red digital countdown timer, the same kind from the dream i met him in, except this time it was counting down the last few minutes of his life. obviously i was panicking. boss was oddly calm though, he knew this had to happen. it was scary though because he was lying in all this blood, i didn't know why, he didn't seem in terrible pain.)
(the most painful part of this was our dialogue. for some reason the idea of him dying was unbearable. i was sobbing and begging him not to go, even though i knew i had to. boss got just as emotional after a little while; although he wasn't expressing it as dramatically as i was, it came through clearly in his words.)
(i clearly remember him thanking me for the time we spent together as death was standing right behind him; he was genuinely crying, it broke my heart)
(the WORST part was that he GAVE ME HIS NIGHTCAP. that was the nail in the coffin, it meant that now I was Mr. Sandman; he had to move on. i think he put it on me when i couldn't manage, the look he gave me then was this mix of pride and gratitude and love and this awful sorrow coloring it all, with having to say goodbye forever right when we had finally reached this goal. i was a total wreck at this point.)
(instead of "dying" he walked away with death towards the blackness in the distance; he couldn't look back, but he did pause and meaningfully lift a hand in final farewell before he disappeared)
(apparently in order for an apprentice to take over for a master in that world, the master has to DIE. this is something mr. sandman never told me but i suspected it for a long time. he apologized today when i mentioned this dream again-- his learning of that truth (when he was an apprentice himself) was difficult enough, and he didn't know how to break it to me. guess i just saved him the pain, which is good.)
(speaking of, he said that death was new to masterhood when he came to retrieve mr. sandman's master; death apprentices have it the worst because they have to be the one leading their master out of this world! no one else can do the job.)

(even worse, in a way, was the second 'dream.' this time it was laurie.)
(for about 70% of this one i was in shock. it started off in the middle of the tar room, it was warped and tilted somehow, tar was splattered in huge spikes and strands everywhere but it seemed dead. there was a lot of blood too. laurie had been impaled but i couldn't heal her for some reason, she was bleeding like mad, it was all over my hands.)
(god i'm sorry i really can't write this down very well. i remember she was having trouble talking, kept smiling though, sadly. she knew what was happening, but the reality of the situation didn't hit me until she started choking up blood, then i absolutely shattered. i could not stop sobbing, the emotional pain was unbearable. i was begging her not to leave me, she just smiled up at me apologetically, still bleeding, not saying anything.)
(she said that it was okay if she died now; i had made even the worst moments of her life worth suffering through. she ALWAYS says stuff like that when she thinks she's going to die irl; it absolutely kills me, but god i love her for it.)
(my brain is actually trying to delete this one like it does to trauma because of how difficult it was to "experience")

(when i woke up i went running for them both, took a few seconds to really realize that they were alive, that this was real, not what i had just seen.)

 

 

 

fatigue

Twilight, deep and heavy as the ocean, collapsed upon the barren land. A lone violet shadow rippled across waves of stone, parched white monuments that had not tasted rain in years.
Tiny pinpoints of blood marked his footprints like dying stars as his eyes desperately swept the heavens for familiar constellations. He found nothing but blue-- terrible, gasping depths of blue, flooding his eyes and lungs with smoke-thick shade.
The only spark of life for miles trudged on through the suffocating night. He imagined the thick clouds cracking open, pouring sweet light and water down upon his dusty face, but the air was silent as a tomb.
Morning would come again, eventually.
Another step. Another. Once more...
The landscape of bone shimmered wet with rubies.

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flailing

2AM. A dying yellow cathode buzzed above my head. The sick light slid down into the grimy bathroom mirror and sputtered backwards to catch in my hair like spiderwebs, painting my skin the color of last week’s obituaries.
I stood perfectly still. The mirror couldn’t see what my hands gripped desperately, shaking and white-knuckled, below the rim of the cracked ceramic sink, and although I would never admit it I was glad to not see it staring back at me.
My heart was flailing like a dying insect. I mentally told it to shut up, to stop making me sicker than I already was, but its frantic throes persisted.
The buzzing light was swallowing even the silence. It felt as if time had keeled over sideways. What was my name again? Did it even matter?
Cold metal shivered between my fingers. I closed my eyes.

----------------------------------------------

grasped

Reams of paper crashed onto the floor in sun-bleached waves as I struggled to swim through the thoughts that roared around me. A burble of strangled speech reached my ears but I was preoccupied with clutching my sandbar of a pen, praying that I could pull myself to shore. But the tide, the unrelenting tide, swept over my shaking hands and spilled incomprehensibly onto the shore, leaving great black stains that threatened to swallow what little I had left to hold on to.
The pen slipped from my fingers and I dived madly at it, choking on the saltwater that had suddenly slammed into my lungs, when I was suddenly yanked from the waves and tossed onto warm sand. I looked up, dazed, and met eyes like seashells.
“Why must you always overwhelm yourself with work like this?”
I wiped the ink from my shivering hands.
“It’s either that or drown.”

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returned

Seven days have passed since that fateful moment, seven aeon-long days, and my bones still ache with echoes of a lifetime scratched and forgotten.
True, those eternal hours had given me a new life, but they had first ended another, and the truth was that I had planned to die with it. Yet I had been snatched from the tar-blackened fingers of oblivion by aged hands touched with gold, begging me to breathe, to live. I had demanded that he let go, to let me fall into nothingness, but he refused, insisting that I understood neither the repercussions of what I had just wrought, nor the consequences that would splinter from my planned clockwork suicide. He insisted, in a voice painted silver, that I return.
I had sand in my eyes, snow in my hair, blood on my shirt. Time hung ragged and broken before me like a record snapped in two, like a velvet curtain tossed into a fireplace, dripping red notes that pooled around my bruised feet.
But I took his hand, and his smile shone with the promise of a future.

----------------------------------------------

bagel

“So I just learned that, I’ve got this extended cousin I never knew about, an’ everyone calls him “Bagel.” She laughed, running tiny candlestick fingers through her cotton candy hair, flashing a silver-studded smile. “An’ I said, if his name really is “Bagel,” why the hell haven’t we been introduced yet? Gotta be an interesting guy with a name like that.” She giggled again, like a kid at a birthday party, and shifted her perpetually shoeless legs. “Seriously! Who names their kid after breakfast food?”

----------------------------------------------

 

I've been in jester mode virtually ALL DAY and it has been PERFECT, this fits me way too well.
Really I was giggling like a madman for my entire trip to and from school, and Genesis obviously fits the bill so he joined in, it was great. You'd think the guy was hopped up on butterscotch candy!
I have decided that the "jester mode theme" is Dogheater by Jem Godfrey because I cannot listen to that song without downright cackling. It is too funny. Therefore, instant jester mode. SUCCESS!

Chasey updated today and LOOK AT THE FIRST PIC OMFG.
Just... dude. I find Chaos' fangs attractive enough but pair them with that kind of crazy grin and dear heavens. Instant nosebleed, to perpetuate that old injoke.
Really I know Chasey's a diff dude but I swear I still want to kiss the heck out of him, dead serious, even though I can't say that without laughing. I'd seriously grab him by the lapels of that fancy suit and snog him silly, haha. But let's put it this way: Chasey's the version of CZ I'd swap awful pickup lines and petnames with, as well as jester-grade insanity because god of destruction ftw. Also you know we'd both fanboy over fashion and interior design because that stuff is boss, don't you sass me. But yeah, he's the flirty one. The Chaos I've known since '03 is the one that gets the legit hardcore snogfests, to say the very least... unless one of them speaks up to change up the gameplan, in which case I will gladly comply, heheh. I just freaking adore that guy.
As for Chaz, he's not into that sort of romance last I checked, so we will just be platonic bros forever, haha!
On that note I need to just kick my "art depression" in the teeth with these garishly colorful jester boots and draw Chaos tomorrow... any incarnation of him, honestly it does not matter; I just need to draw him more. I've been saying that for far too long without any action, and it is high time to change that.
I did visit Chaos upstairs last night for a little bit once I was able to temporarily form-stabilize enough to do so. Unfortunately I could only stick around for about two, three minutes tops, but it was worth it. Words can't do justice to the look on his face when he realized that it actually was me for once.
Oh darling, if I'm ever blue, it's cause I'm thinking of when I didn't know you... how ironically bittersweet, seriously.
Maybe I do need lots of pills at this point, haha. And we do both need to just chill after this entire fiasco. But you know what the deal is with rainbows and waterfalls, you gorgeous creature. I'm not leaving you, I swear. I just tend to get stuck in typhoons every now and then.
Je t'adore, je t'aime, et mon coeur est à toi pour toujours. Come and find me in our dreams tonight, I swear I miss you more than I can take.

Life's been absolutely nuts for a few months now but something tells me that when I overcome this bloody corrupted-metainomen nonsense of mine (honestly we didn't even think that COULD happen but I guess when your mind thinks a negative deviation IS a "repentance" for the alleged sin of your previous title, then stuff gets toxic real quick son), things will fall together better than I can imagine.
Gotta find a new title that reverses this shift. Not that hard for me, what with all my funky form-morphing tendencies. I've got like four solid titles already for different shifts and if I can scratch this one then so be it!
Also speaking of form changes I think my hair has actually darkened upstairs?? It's been either red or white for ages now, but today it was my natural earthly color and that actually felt a-okay. So that's new and interesting. I shall investigate this turn of events tomorrow, right now it's late duder and I need sleep because my dreams lately have been wicked cool. Too bad waking up for class at 6AM- tends to mangle my recall, gotta fix that somehow.
Man I'm just glad I can update though! I've been out of whack for way too long. Thank goodness for jester mode, hahaha!

I do have to thank Laurie for her incredible courage in actually playing along with my literally "bloody" side yesterday morning, because all that collective love she managed to bring together in spite of my sudden psychopathic rampage really helped me gain enough strength to take back the steering wheel.
I have no idea what happened at the end of yesterday's session but Laurie is okay, thank God.

Also. This evening I had some minor slippage as my grandparents are under a lot of stress as usual so they've been rather verbally violent and loud lately (plus my grandmother is still radiating that painful negativity and my bro Lightning can feel it too), but I was smart enough to go isolate myself and try to recenter when stuff started to get threatening. Then because I was still pretty sugarhigh I moved to the mirror and was experimenting with jester-like facepaint (of course I'm sticking with red), except about five minutes in I abandoned that train of thought and immediately got out the man makeup, haha. To explain: every once in a while I will actually use makeup to modify my facial aesthetics to match my upstairs manifestation more accurately, as it kills dysphoria and is a bona fide "base zero" reset action as well. Now I haven't done that in months, and since I've been so "OOC" as of late, looking in the mirror and actually seeing myself was really incredible. Well, at least face-wise, but as long as that matches I can actually nullify the body dysphoria, like I said, which is awesome.
To elaborate on that, which is the important bit... as long as I can see myself in my own face, everything seems to just 'fix itself' (and it's 2:22 right now, love you too universe). Depression melts away, hacks are neutralized, everything just clicks. I feel incredibly grounded and really honestly happy. Not the sparkle-rainbow happy that jester mode puts me into, but the sort of 'happy' that's more of a quiet serenity. It's the sort of emotion that blooms without warning when you're watching the snow fall or sitting in a forest in the spring. Just a smile from your heart that can't stay hidden, and suddenly everything is glowing. That sort of happy.
But the strangest thing is that it somehow makes me feel... I dunno. "Holy" is the closest word I can find, oddly enough. It's like crystal and sunlight.
Anyway as soon as I felt that I realized, "whoa, I think I can actually bypass all my blocks and tap into my headspace energy here." So I tried it, and... well, it was as if l had suddenly reached into a supernova. I cannot remember the last time I was able to physically FEEL that stuff. It was actually shocking.
So of course there was only one thing I could do.
I went upstairs and found Laurie.
My mind is still in shock over Tuesday. I can barely comprehend that it happened, although I REMEMBER it clear as day and have no emotions attached to it (as I was in "stone cold do not care murder mode" the entire time)... even so I do want to atone for what 'I' did. And the first thing I felt I needed to do was give Laurie her stars back.
Well, my choosing to do that while in such a synced-up state this evening resulted in probably the second most intense connection I have EVER had (the 23rd being the first). It was INSANE, not just because of how much sheer light I was able to give her, but also because I FELT it in the physical, AND it somehow felt so freaking sacred that I swear if Jezebel had so much as looked at me then she would have burst into flames. I do not doubt that it was because I was 'in tune' in physical reality for once when I did that, it probably had some seriously benevolent effect.
I am going to have to anchor myself more strongly over the next few days, and stay in jester mode because that's actually helping to burn away all the lingering tar, so that by February 1st I'll be in a state of mind 'worthy enough' (for lack of a better term) to face what is unavoidably going to go down that day.

So yes. Life is good.
I have closed an entry with those exact words before, did you get deja vu? I did! It was pretty funny actually.
Now as much as I'd like to stay here and be all sugarhappy, I do need sleep and I do have a lot of homework to finish (because school is silly like that) so punching in to work for the night is probably my best option.
Oh!! Just want to mention that my boss (Mr. Sandman) has been an ANGEL lately, really he is incredible. I need to devote an entire entry to him or something at this point, I do not give him the attention he deserves.
Speaking of... it's 2:51 in the morning. I think I should go say hello to another special someone before I sleep.

Good night, everyone.