the spectrum heart cathedral system

Jay here. It's been a long time since any of us updated and frankly I've lost my entire concept of time right about now-- ironically, as this is Celebi's month, but that's actually a big part of this too.

Our Spectrum, our System, has been "dead" for about… at least a week? Solidly since Friday. I say "dead" because the downstairs "System" took over entirely after Jackie nearly killed us with bingeing on Friday, and someone swore to "kill her" and Jewel took over 100% for the next four days.
…Or, at least, she tried to stay out 100%. As of today, she realized rather traumatically that even on her level, she's not alone. She loses time, however small, she switches out, she blurs.

Over the past few days of operating on this level, there have been a lot of threats to the Spectrum existence, including (as far as I'm aware):

- Trying to delete our LJ archive
- Trying to delete ALL our System Tumblr archives
- Trying to cancel all our future trans* medical appointments
- Trying to throw out our HRT
- Effectively trying to revert the body back to being as "purely feminine" as it allegedly was when we were 16 or so? I have no clue, but that was the motivation
- Trying to cancel ALL future therapy appointments (Jewel was on board with this as her younger self saw it all as "dumb," but thank God that the older Jewel (12-13, white clothes) decided "let's at least wait until Thursday." Well Thursday is going to be interesting now, to say the least.
- Trying to throw out all our System-relevant possessions (very few, used mostly for grounding or anchors or reminders)
- Trying to sell Chaos Zero's anchor plush (!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
- Trying to COMMIT SUICIDE
- and various other hyperreligious things tied to "restoring" the body back to how it was at an unknown earlier age, basically the "work persona" cranked up to eleven-- long hair, dresses and makeup, vanilla smile, and no sense of self other than serving others-- in their eyes, a "perfect holy godly woman." But such a "woman" has no self, and that to them is holy too… the problem is, they don't realize that the reason they don't exist away from other people is because they SWITCH. Life's fine living as a literal servant of humanity as long as you always have humanity to serve. Such a person is incapable of self-care, as evidenced by the horrifyingly abusive alters that ALWAYS take over instead the moment we are forced to "take care of ourself," and by the perfect-girl's total unawareness of such behavior occurring.

But yeah. That's been things lately.



Honestly we need to be in bed for midnight tonight because the body is sick, sick sick sick, we are terrified for our life right now and we need to rest, God have mercy we need to rest, seven hours is all we're getting right now but that's better than five.


Long story short: on the downstairs level, there are TWO girls who are abominably abusive eaters. The first is a manic, but it's NOT Jackie this time-- like I said, she was put on death row on Friday and as far as I know she's being murdered as we speak-- this alter is the "but I enjoy it!!" one who DOESN'T EXIST FOR THE CONSEQUENCES and so thinks she is totally immune to sickness and allergies and indigestion and pain and other things. So, she cannot comprehend that other people aren't so "immune"… let alone that she's sharing a body with such people. I apologize but thinking about her makes me very ill and makes me want to shake and cry.
The second abusive eater is the core alter for ALL abusive behavior: Jessica/Cecelia. She's the one who's halfway between brown and lime green and who is crushingly depressed to the point where she's also halfway between staggering apathy and agonizing despair. But her despair and self-hatred and shame and guilt is so potent that she cannot cope with it, and so she SHUTS DOWN and just eats and eats and eats because 1) it numbs everything and 2) it's highly abusive and might just kill her to end the pain.
So that's the deadly duo right there, but then we have alter #3, who we've been calling Overload, because apparently a huge sort of merging has occurred and ALL those fragmented furious alters had their roots/anchors fuse into ONE person, one wild brown-haired girl motivated by "perfect hatred" and violence and sheer blazing rage in the name of "murdering all evildoers for Christ's sake." She's dangerous, terribly dangerous, because although her heart is technically in the right place, she would love nothing more than to take Cecelia by the throat and smash her skull into concrete repeatedly until it's a bloody sickening pulp, screaming at her the whole time that she's a whore and God hates her and "is this what you want" and basically spitting every condemnation in hell at this fellow alter for her "brazen f*cking sinfulness" that she "deserves to die for."

…This is the situation we're in, currently.
I can't find the strength or time to write more about that tonight. That'll be for Thursday.


Two more things.
First, for God knows what reason (and that's probably why), when Cecelia was binge-abusing on two bloody boxes of cereal (and God also only knows the amount of sheer panicked terror I feel upon realizing that went in OUR BODY), the grandmother walked in and told her that she needed to stop eating because "your Pokemon are in your room crying."
…
Yes, she said that. It's because we had retro Pokemon toys lined up on the floor to photograph for eBay, but… of all things to say, at all times. Of all things.
The instant we heard that, we instantly knew that it was Celebi who was sobbing her eyes out.
Cecelia couldn't cope with the immediate matching agony that Jewel felt about that, so her response was to shut down even further and force herself to eat even more for, as always, God knows what reason.

Infinitii told me it might be because Cecelia can't imagine living a life that's not wracked by pain. She has no comprehension of peace, or relief, or life outside of abuse. Her entire existence is defined by self-destruction, by the knowledge that she's a "horrible sinful wretched pile of filth" and so why treat herself any differently?
Another bit is still the potent catharsis of vomiting, which is also the ONLY way a lot of the most tortured alters can deal with their crippling trauma at all, now that the "safer" forms of self-abuse like biting and cutting are forbidden.
God, I don't care if it's forbidden. Please, I would rather have Gamboge's old scars marking our arms again than this 5+ hour ordeal of hell every evening. I would rather spend the 30 minutes bleeding into a tub drain, sobbing with the people I love than waking up after a whole day of three loveless alters trying to kill each other and not giving a shit who pays the toll in the long run.

I'm sorry. It just hurts a lot.
Celebi says it breaks her heart too because "they say they love her, but never act on it." She says it's all empty words but she KNOWS Jewel is "in there somewhere" and she doesn't know how to get her out or why she's trapped or what to do… you get the idea.
But that breaks my heart, too. Celebi has to play the role of Genesis, Laurie, Chaos Zero, and Infinitii for the downstairs level, which is really just Jewel (the other alters don't give a flying donut), but that's enough. Celebi is a literal lifesaver for them.
There are more than four alters on that level, I know that, they're all terrifically compartmentalized… all of them are brown eyed, long brown haired, teenage girls, and for the most part they all think they're alone in the body. Miss hyper-religious "I'll kill you for God's sake" knows she's not alone but she only knows that through outside evidence. She hears the floating voices too but she HATES them and actually that hatred of hers can be used for LIFE SAVING purposes if done right. This alter doesn't give a shit what screaming voices or trying-to-front other alters are forcing on her; she'll spit in their face and do the right thing instead. So she's interesting, and I'm glad she exists, but I just wish she wasn't so absolutely hellbent on murdering everything "bad" because often that ends with her TRYING to destroy our body just to "kill the demons in it."

She's the one that demanded we exercise for an hour at 11PM, both to try to heal from that awful binge session of the other girls, and also as "punishment" to push our weak and shaking and stressed body even further until it hopefully "collapsed."
That's a note… at night, unless our body is tired, hungry, and having trouble standing, we're afraid to sleep because we think something is wrong. Most of that is because feeling "full, content, and happy" is viewed with utter scandalized disgust, as such words are horribly sinful and hedonistic, and really indecent. So we live feeling like an icicle or a small green shoot, something thin and small and clear and raw and SAFE.

Anyway. We only got 45 minutes in because let's face it, the exercise bike is loud and people are trying to sleep, and also because I wanted to type something before going to bed.
I'm sharing the bed with Celebi this month as she needs the love (and also it is her official month), but she told me I could share the bed with Chaos Zero tonight if I wanted to, because let's face it, I love him with my entire heart and I miss him terribly and the downstairs people largely have no concept of love and they've been feeding our body the message that "we don't love anyone" lately and that's entirely false.
But he says I should share it with her, after today. That was my plan anyway.


…I had massive amounts of synchronicity immediately upon coming back and fronting while we were exercising. I forget how that set me off. Maybe it was Punch Brothers. Jewel was listening to "Familiarity" (my "Black Light Machine," effectively) and feeling utterly distraught because she was scared and tired and in pain and was convinced that God wasn't listening to her, that He wouldn't deliver her from this terror because He hated her, because He "didn't know her," because "God didn't love her"… and then the chorus came on.
The instant that thought left her head, the song replied, "I love you, I mean it."
And she cried.
She cried, barely able to comprehend what had just happened, and she could barely front for the rest of the song, and then the next thing I'm aware of, I'm sitting on the bike listening to Beachshade and Lord, it's been four days, at the very least, do you have any idea what it's like to not exist for 96 hours in a row?? Or more?
But I was back.
And Relic sang Together by Mesita, and as I sadly sang along the outro suddenly punched me in the chest and I realized this is why I woke up, this is why I'm back now.
…And then out of the dark, Laurie laughed that no one's listened to a System song in weeks out of shame /hatred /disgust /embarrassment, and as I sadly smiled in response, it suddenly hit me that to the downstairs people she didn't exist either, she had NEVER existed, and yet here we were talking as the old friends we were as if we hadn't literally just awoken from the dead.
…


…The downstairs people don't get synchronicity, ever I think, which is heartbreaking. Why? Is it because they feel so isolated and alone, so cut off from each other and the world? Is it because they scoff at compassion? Is it because they turn away in shame from love?
I don't know.

All I know is that I'm glad to be back and I miss my daughter and my loves and my friends and even this blood family and even as I say all this, I feel the downstairs fronters laughing in scorn and spitting in disgust and snarling in hate and why, why why WHY are they like that, why do they still have so much POWER, how can we stop them?

…

We have work tomorrow. Dad got sick so we had two days off this week but no sleep as we still had to get up early for family work and errands, but no matter, it's good to help.

We do need to crack the heck down on taking care of ourself though which means that we need cash to buy healthy food, and we need Emmett and Aimee front-and-center tomorrow, God willing, we'll try.

It's a fight. It's an all-out war, minute by minute, Jewel at least recognized that. The fighting never stops, not with these horribly damaged and malevolent downstairs girls. It's exhausting, but there's nothing else we can do right now.

I'm Hope. I can't deny that. The word shines in my very bones. I need to live that.


It's 12:26AM, good Lord, let me post this and get our poor broken body to sleep.

We're still alive, everyone, God knows how, but I'm thankful for that. We still have a road to walk.

 

Quick daily update to get back into this habit.
It's hard to get back into a headspace mindset after coming home & working in the family mindset for a few hours, but like I said, practice always helps.



- Work today consisted of scuffpadding a really weirdly shaped fender piece, which had so many odd turns and curves and gaps that it took almost the full three hours to complete.

- Found out upon walking in the door to work that David Bowie passed away. Dad & mom both introduced me to his music as a kid so his influence has been a fixture in my audial history; even if I never became as big a fan as they were, I always appreciated his immense talent, prolific output, and unique creativity. So the news still hit heavy.

- Went shopping today, first time I can remember doing so in this new year. Since we just overcame our third sickness bout in the past year-- totally unheard of; normally we don't get sick ever-- we knew something was majorly up, and really the basic concern rounds down to the current internalized lie of "I only deserve to eat garbage." We're still not entirely sure how that began, let alone when, but it's probably just a consolidation of all the negative self-talk rolled into tangible treatment. Either way, we know how to heal it, which is patience and compassion and kindness... and courageous honor. So we went shopping and even our eating-disorder alters are cooperating now, having learned empathy and self-care well enough to want to get better, so they didn't go for any addictions or compulsions or desperate coping mis-mechanisms-- and even better, ALL THE DATA STUCK!! We used to have to keep meticulous food journals and receipt logs and things just to remember what we bought, what it tasted like, if it made us sick, how it made us sick, etc... but now that we're working WITH the alters who FEEL and EXPERIENCE those things... we no longer have to work so strenuously just to stay healthy, because their part of this data isn't locked out from us anymore. In short: those headvoices can tell us instantly what foods make us sick AND how, and because they're gaining inside roots, they are now unwilling to eat those things because they can feelthe bad consequences now AND don't want anyone else to feel them either.

- We did mess up a little, buying some foods that WOULD have been very good for us IF someone didn't absolutely choke them in cinnamon and Stevia. Apparently they tried this once BUT it was in a stressful home environment so no data stuck and they didn't experience it, and wanted to try again because "they thought it was good." Unfortunately they didn't check past data first, which clearly says that overuse of cinnamon causes EXTREME nausea instantly, as does those lentil chips they decided to buy (which no one actually likes, but it's that weird mindset of "we used to like lentils years ago, so we still should, right?" tied to family teachings that keeps us repeating this error in ignorance). So somebody junked it, which was 100% endorsed this time because we actually ended up vomiting from actual sickness instead of trauma fear.
Someone also got gluten-free pancake mix as another "data says this seemed good once and i'm not sure so i want to try again" compulsion, which wasn't too bad because that + a small coconut oil was only $2 at this store (talk about a deal right). The problem? They didn't check the food diary, which EXPLICITLY states that "pancakes are carbs+oil and ALWAYS make us vomit from heavy nausea; this has been tested extensively." Unfortunately whoever bought it didn't have that data and no one else had such clear access on hand? (I think Overload and her "sister" hold that rage knowledge but I'm not sure; we need to check) Anyway they weren't too bad, but 80% of them was still junked and they DID make us sick so that cannot happen again, it's a waste of time and money and health.

- Mom got really sick at work? Apparently she got the flu or something, but was so dehydrated from fluid loss that she almost passed out and had to go to the ER? I only got vague details during a storm of yelling when I got home so I don't know for sure, but that made us sick to our stomach with worry for a good part of the day (both the news and the shouting).

- When we got home from therapy the brother started another "you're a liar, you're a manipulator, you're all wearing masks and I want to 'playfully knock them off' for your own good" argument, laced with his reaction style of "i don't believe anything you tell me because all you do is lie to me and you all betray me and i can't trust any of you and you're all terrible people/ monsters/ etc." I don't know. He's unbearable lately, in a sad way. We try, but his vibe is SO NEGATIVE, he brings a storm cloud wherever he goes, no matter how patient and careful we are with him now.
Anyway I don't really remember the argument because we were trying to make pancakes at the time and angry alters are NOT allowed to talk to him anymore (so as not to exacerbate anything), so who ended up talking to him but JENNIFER, and she's such a sweetheart; her reaction to one of his harsh accusations was to ask him if he was okay, because his intent went totally over her head and she didn't realize it was meant to be offensive. Anyway she tried, Lord knows that dear girl tried her best to talk to him for the next ten minutes, but apparently it didn't work. All I'm aware of is that she kept saying "I do care, I keep telling you that, why do you keep saying I'm lying??" and his response was "because you are! All you do is lie to me! No one in this house cares!!" even though we ALL DO and tell him EVERY DAY that we do and SHOW HIM THAT on top of it. But he's blinding himself to it, I suppose.
Anyway it was a long conversation/argument and I could probably find data on it if I looked but the vibe is making me nauseous, and I'm just aware that it concluded with the brother giving us one last scathing remark and leaving in a boiling huff, while Jennifer actually started crying and asked Laurie why he was being so mean to her, and not listening when she tried to talk to him. She was really hurt by the fact that the brother outright refused to speak civilly to her. Laurie told her it wasn't her fault, she was as honest and kind as she could have possibly been, and she was proud of her-- but then Laurie told her to not let it get to her, and come back inside, so she could recover. So Jayce ended up finishing the pancakes and then Jess ended up eating them I think but around that switch-time is when our memory basically blacks out until about 8pm.

- All I know is that we must have been stressed or scared again because the next thing I remember, we're kneeling on the bedroom floor making inkblots. GOOD. They are the MOST RELAXING THING IN THE WORLD and are arguably our favorite form of art, period. So we made six of them, with one extra attempt not working, but the successful ones are lovely. I'm really so glad we're getting back into art.

- Lately, at home, we've not been tapping into headspace because of family stress BUT when we're not in a low vibe state, our main "fronter" is tending to be that one "individual" who has no face or name or even solid self, but who gets the GUIDES as "voices" and who talk to her(?) constantly while she works/ acts/ etc.? They said that "we can't do what headspace can and they can't do what we can" so no one's losing out, it's just different needs in different contexts and times. So that's good.
But these voices are NICE and VERY HELPFUL and EXTREMELY INTUITIVE and they never do us wrong, they actually do some shockingly helpful/ synchronistic things when we actually listen, which is something that fronter does absolutely as they HAVE no "self" to clash with motives and doubts and things.
We're wondering if said "fronter" holds the theoretical CLEAR slot in the Spectrum, which is something we're wondering if we can integrate for the sake of Spectrumizing the faceless/nameless ones who nevertheless work with us for our benefit? Like an "embryonic" Color, notsomuch a placeholder as a transitional status? Like a flight layover, is the feeling I get. It's somewhere they need to be right now, but it's not their final destination IF they're meant for a "destination," which would be Headspace, and which may not be "meant" for many of the Clears, especially not this one, as Headspace is very personal-growth oriented internally BUT this specific fronter deals with a sort of "personal" growth that feels more broad? Like it's "global;" it's helping the entire System eventually as it's dealing with baseline roots of behavior and tendencies, overcoming selfishness and doubt and the "old girls" habits... but it's, again, more passive. Her existence is literally just listening to the guide-voices and obeying; it's fine and it's very beneficial in the big picture BUT it has a "soft and foggy" feeling like a rainy spring haze, this fronter CANNOT exist apart from those voices, she CAN'T make her own choices or hold a color as her existence is PASSIVE. Does that make sense?
Anyway I'm very glad that alter/ voice/ whatever they count as exists. They have a very good heart and having someone like that SO strongly tied to not just the body but also the physical existence at large, gives us massive hope for our physical future at large as well. We always feared the only body-locked alters were abusive, but this Clear person is an absolute beacon of light pointing at a beautiful negation of that fear. There is an alternative and they are living proof.

- We cleaned up a bit of our room as stress has been making us too tired/depressed to really tidy things, and that's feeding the negative loop. So we put every book back on a shelf that belongs there, organized our miscellany drawer (which literally contains just Power Gear, toothpaste, soap, fingerless gloves, old hard drives, bell spheres, a Celebi plate, crisis hotline cards, and a handful of ancient virtual pets), organized the top of our shared-with-grandmother dresser (mostly religious papers there), and dusted off the top of our workspace with all the candles on it. So things look much nicer now and that helps us feel nicer! The next big project is to do the work in the three current piles on our desk (1. Dream World design work, 2. read a copy each of Psychology Today and Smithsonian that we borrowed and need to return Thursday, and 3. a big pile of dream journal entries and other misc notes that need to be typed in) so that can be put away at last. The only "perma-mess" at the moment is our painting space, which is currently half covered in paint bottles and half covered in stuff we're trying to sell on eBay. So. One thing at a time, really.


- Therapy today was interesting because we didn't discuss much, but a lot happened? We finished reading dec 30's entry last Thursday, but Jackie walked in to therapy and when we got her out we had to explain that she's our "default social person" as she's a "publically acceptable extrovert" and doesn't have bad moods, BUT she still counts as a manic even if she's learning to be nice and cooperative, which basically just means that she can't really grasp "bluer emotions" in herself or others. SO, having her front for the morning was probably a "defense instinct" since we didn't have open time to cope with/ untangle the stress & anxiety from that morning (mom sick, family shouting, brother yelling in general), and couldn't carry that with us in public as we wouldn't be able to think/ function/ reason properly. So now that we were in therapy, we had to switch to introverted people, who may not hold ANY memory of what Jackie did, and maybe even only came out in therapy-like environments.
Jay came out first, of course, but this was brief, and he handed her a printout of the second half of jan 3rd's entry, somewhat edited for relevance.
And our memory of that is very fuzzy becase halfway down the first page, KNIFE CAME OUT to listen instead of anyone else. I'm really not sure why? Something caught his attention and he decided why not be there, so he was. His overlay is INCREDIBLY SOLID which is amazing, and keeps him in so much that he can even talk to people AND LOOK AT THEM. Very few people in our System can do that because it often causes instinctive overlay destruction (the knee-jerk "become that person instead of yourself" programming), but Knife apparently is untouched by that. So he stayed out, his fangs and hair and coat crystal clear in memory, and he was listening to our therapist read Jay's words about the Tar-based alters seeing love as shameful and Knife just started crying. Silently, and with marked suppression-- he couldn't weep outright in the office, that's still something we don't feel is proper-- but other than that, he was not hiding his emotional response, and THANK GOD FOR THIS GUY. His presence alone, his actions alone there, probably helped melt a great deal of that lingering emotional numbing on that level for ALL of us.
So Knife stayed for at least ten solid minutes which is amazing, talking as well as he could (he keeps picking up a vaguely British accent-- which fits as it softens the sounds of words and Knife absolutely does not speak with an American accent anyway) and making eye contact and everything; really I'm ecstatically shocked by all that.
So then Jay came out because it was almost time to leave and I think the topic changed, but he came out in his "rainbow-drip" state, a.k.a. the side that's always grinning and flirty and confident and super-bright, BUT who also runs the risk of being that too much and hitting Plague danger. Anyway he talks a lot because he's so enthusiastic and interested in everything, and he was just joyously talking about how he could feel Knife's overlay residue and he "holds himself like a bookcase" and he was summarizing how full of love and amazement he was about feeling the "richness of Headspace" in the physical again, like we did for basically all of 2014 in therapy, with learning new things like handwriting and finding so many hidden alters/voices in the process. But it was lovely, it really was.

- Jay switched back to the "normal" Jay after we left as he was getting too bright, and that only took a second or three but Laurie's eyes widened and she immediately exclaimed "dude your hair just reversed direction." So apparently, saturated-Jay has the old-style Celebi hairstyle, while iridescent-Jay has the fluffy-in-front hair that's closer to the Jayce bloodline style? Hair is always a tricky thing as it's so hair-trigger specific, pun fully intended, but that was almost a tangible shift so that's at least one huge good tell-apart for the Cores.

- Interestingly and very noteworthily, when we got out to the car, I guess we still needed to de-manic ourself and who decided to come out and do that but KYANOS?? And he SPOKE!!! He has NEVER spoken before, and Laurie immediately told him to at least introduce himself on the voice recorder, so he did. His voice is high-pitched and notably breathy, but it's not scary or sighing, it's quite pretty actually. However, voice style doesn't change voice tone, and the body voice still sounds too much like the manic girls, so that jarred Kyanos out of fronting. Laurie took over quickly as she's got a voice that's not too jarring in the body, and her overlay is MUCH more solid than Kyanos's... but even she got shaken up after about 20 seconds, and then to everyone's surprise, JAVIER took over. And he had NO PROBLEM TALKING. His voice-style isn't too different from the body but it feels different? It has a tighter pronunciation? Like it feels more "narrow" in shape, although it's the same range, and he speaks words with more sharpness or crispness or something. It's cool. But he was able to stay out and drive for at least five minutes, until we had to run a store errand and he ended up switching out (he can't do publicity yet) and Genesis helped whoever was fronting then (if anyone solid).
Memory from then to the pancake incident is almost completely gone, but I do know that at some point on the way home, we were listening to Burial by Seinabo Sey again (we adore it) and, since Genesis doesn't like Ruby singing as she turns everything too manic/ performative and therefore disrespects the song, who ended up coming out to sing but ZWEI.
WE HAVEN'T SEEN HER IN SEVERAL MONTHS. We actually were worrying that she as dead. But no, she came right out with her cute trademark voice and she sang that song better than Ruby can, haha.
Einsatz followed her out and by then I know we were almost home because he had a bit of trouble getting an overlay in, and he was running music through himself as usual but he gets so into it that he was having trouble with the car and we had to have him switch out.
(BTW Nienna only sings in formal environments (mostly church), Jay only sings if he can make it something very personal and non-performative (or at church if Xenophon asks him to), Ruby sings for manic fun/performance, Zwei sings just for the playful fun of it, and then there's STILL that one rare guy who sings like Ruby but is a bit of a diva, and then one of our male church fronters also sings I think. Anyway there are many of us.)
(LATER EDIT I checked records and apparently our memory got weird around the grocery shopping bit because GARRISON FRONTED to talk into the voice recorder for several minutes??? Apparently his voice works even better than Javier's does in the body, so he took full advantage of that both to keep us grounded in headspace and to give a proper, knowledgeable full recap of therapy when no one else could. So that's very noteworthy and I'm proud of him because he tends to get nervous but apparently he has NO NERVES about fronting in public which is HUGE; a lot of people freak out and hide back inside.)


Now we're listening to David Bowie's two most recent (technically two last) albums for the sake of his memory, and considering taking a break to maybe get back into digital art a bit in a few minutes. A bit at a time, like I said.

Good night, everyone.