the spectrum heart cathedral system

"nsfw" warning for open discussion of intimacy.

 

1228. thursday.



We woke up around 8:30, and spent approximately 20 minutes in the frigid beautiful dawn, deciding whether or not we should go for a run.
...Actually, that's the problem. We didn't decide. Our poor sleepy social frontrunner(s) was/were trying to decide on his/her/their own, worried about whether or not it was "bad" to leave the Arrows alone and asleep, to get food for later in the day, to have any sort of opinion or preference or decisive thought. They were asking for "signs from God" to "tell them what to do," something Tilly and Iscah used to do constantly-- looking for "yes" or "no," "stay" or "go" in the words they saw on printed packages all around them, not trusting a single one because "what if it's my brain wanting to see a certain result?" Those poor frightened good-hearted souls. They are so afraid, so afraid to do the "wrong thing" that the simple reality of an undefined reality terrifies them. They want morality laid out in front of them clear-cut and unquestionable, undoubtable... but they look for righteousness with their mind, not their hearts. Their poor hearts are so full of love but it's getting choked under the whirling moral fear of their thoughts.
There is nothing wrong with buying food. There is nothing wrong with going for a run. There is nothing wrong with liking the cold air against your face, and there is nothing wrong with being too tired and chilled to want to throw yourself back into it after 5 hours of sleep. There is nothing wrong with waking, or resting, or sitting, or exercising, or eating, or fasting, or anything. Life is life is life-- it's all the purest white, a blank canvas, a blank musical score, an empty plate, all of it waiting with utmost divine affection for us to decide. 
That's the beautiful terrible beloved reality of life, of free will, of human consciousness, of the infinite possibility of the world, of the unfathomable palette of existence. It's all a work of art waiting to happen. It needs an artist, and That Which Is-- God, or Goddess, or Source, or Light, or whatever you may wish to call that primordial spark of the cosmos, that original Artist, that first Musician-- couldn't help but create a universe full of artists to join in the joyous act. 
We adore that. Creation creating itself, ad infinitum, through us. An endless dance. 
So it's inherently blank. Not white, not black. It's clear, like a prism, and we're all lights passing through it, splitting our lives into swathes of color. Everything and anything we do contributes to it, and none of it is judged, none of it is labeled as "good" or "bad"... none of it, that is, save for what our own mind labels it as.
We have a lot of thoughts on this, from years upon years of feeling and thinking both, and there's no time or space to expand on it here furthermore... but for now, suffice to say that those frontrunners of ours this morning were unable to trust their own hearts, were unable to see themselves as capable of doing anything But the "wrong thing." They were labeling all their paints as "bad" before they even opened them. Poor beloved fellow souls of ours. We adore them. We know their hearts. We feel their aching desire to be harmless and helpful, to be kind and true and good and pure, but they have let fear in, and fear only knows itself. Therefore, whatever decision they made, they would second-guess it. They would be too scared to surrender to the quiet warmth of their hearts, to listen to That echoed within them, to realize that whatever they ultimately chose, the canvas had opened its own heart to them and sang, paint. Create. Choose a color, any color, and continue me. 
God doesn't mind if you run or walk or rest or sleep or eat or not. God just wants you to act according to your heart, to your dearly beloved heart, for it can do no wrong. We firmly believe that. It is the core of our faith.
If God is Love, and our hearts are built for Love, then if we act upon that Love, everything and anything we do is sacred. Every choice we make is holy. 

To wake up with that lesson... we had no idea how relevant it would remain for the rest of the morning.

We went for the run. Someone wanted to get bacon and ginger and cinnamon and lettuce, and so we wrapped ourselves up in Kyo's scarf and Jewel's red boots and we jogged down to the local grocery store to do so.

We don't remember the run up, save for passing a fellow jogger by the bus stop, and we don't remember much of being in the store itself. Our brain was tired and confused and still scared, tangled up in "do I buy for the family or for myself," scared of making a foolish decision, scared of acting on impulse, scared of being spontaneous, scared of being neglectful. Memory recalls them buying two Christmas candles that were on sale, left over from that one day two weeks ago or so when we planned on buying them but had no money for luxuries. So basketed them both (one red spice, one vanilla cookie) and then memory cuts out again.
We don't remember coming home and going to bed or waking up. What few things we do recall are so soaked in guilt that we're being begged not to write them down, but we have to be honest, we can't hide anymore. They bought bananas and a tiny tin of oats with the intention of making banana bread, and one ripe orange to see if they still liked the taste (Iscah did; she likes everything, and the other socials still haven't differentiated between her preferences and their own), as well as a package of oregano for the same purpose, and four mini-pizzas for the family. They did get the bacon, and the candles, and the ginger & cinnamon, and that's all we can remember. It's not shameful, loves, I promise. They're just so guilty about buying oats; they knew they'd get in huge trouble if Oliver found out, so they hid them in the closet. They're crying upstairs, loves it's okay. You just wanted to try once more, remembering that one time Someone liked them, but someone else got horribly sick from them, but you don't want to hate anything, you want to know the truth, you wanted to check now that our brain is in a better place. But loves, oh loves, you bought it with fear, with guilt, with shame. You'll never know if it's healed, or if anyone likes it, if that's the mindset you go into it with. And you don't trust our intuition either, which is wincing at the thought of eating them again, remembering past contexts of pain and fear and compulsion. But, again, Iscah liked it, she treasured it, and you just want to learn to do the same. Not now, loves. Now's not the proper time, not if you're still terrified. Once your heart can release that shameful panic, you can learn properly, that door will be open. But it's okay. We forgive you. You're safe and loved and you did nothing wrong. We promise. Everything you did was done out of love, too, even if it didn't know how to safely apply itself. We love you, and we know you love us and the Arrows and everyone too. It's okay. You're good. We love you.  

So we don't remember going to bed, or waking up later. All we remember is sudden groggy kisses and someone, some poor social, wanting to cry from it because they were wracked with guilt and shame and couldn't feel that pure affection in return although they were begging God to, and then suddenly our beloved System anthem of Familiarity was playing in their head and Lotusheart was called out to that confetti chorus, that soaring heart-wrenching prayer, and it broke our heart wide open and suddenly he could return the love pressing softly against our lips and chest and self, God knows I mean it, God help me feel it, and our memory is just as soft with golden light in response, tearful and joyful and desperate to hold this forever, forever.

And then Infinitii showed up, soft and black and just as sleepy in the body, but with a mouth full of grinning loving teeth and the next thing we knew, Omen was there and she pulled Infi onto their chest and suddenly we woke up, aware and in love, and fangs met skin and we were alive again. Thank God for daemons. Thank God.
They just adore each other. There's always fangs tearing at flesh with the ardent desire to get beneath that, to blood and pulse points, but there's no malice, no harm-- just love, always love. The two of them, all kisses and claws, smoky shadowy laughter and snowy frigid gasps and humming and growling and I love you, where are your wings, why can't you be closer, this isn't fair, I love you--

Then suddenly we're hearing them saying that it isn't just Omen, that it's Kris and Oliver and Hiccup and who is around for us, where are We? 
Immediately Chaos Zero shows up, feeling like the ocean in our chest, saying that there's more of us around than you think," and then Genesis is on his heels, smirking golden bright and biting their cheek in a kiss, and then Laurie was there for a moment, and I was there, and Celebi was there, and then suddenly EVERYONE was there, wanting to feel this love, to give our love, to be part of this, to make this everyone's.
Everyone in Central moved through. Lynne, Spine, Javier, Josephina, Celebi, Nathaniel, Leon, Waldorf, Julie, Sherlock, Wattson, Eros, Kyaneos, Algorith, Jude... Knife, Razor, Mulberry, Jeremiah, Wreckage, Leanne... even the kids, David and Marigold and Simeon & Sylvain and Toby and Ashen, all of them shyly moved through too in the quieter moments, happy and hugging our partner System, deeply simply joyfully happy that they were safe, they were loved, and they could feel it.
Lynne pointedly kissing Omen with this secret sneaky joy at kissing a 'girl' in another System, Nathaniel learning to live openly, not as quiet and docile as he usually stays, hidden in green... Waldorf finally feeling herself, eyes red as rubies and smiling with her own teeth as she returned kisses without hesitation. Julie purposefully anchoring her lipstick and earrings into her overlay, refusing to reject her complete self anymore, tearfully treasuring the fact that even looking like this, a color scheme switch away from looking like she did as the ultimate nightmare of our nascent System, she was truly and completely loved, and she felt the same in return. Sherlock taking off his glasses and trying as hard as he could to truly feel this love too, to saturate his Gray with hidden color and light... Wattson there alongside him, smiling warmly at his friend's quiet scholarly courage, himself unafraid to show affection colored the same sunlit-page glow as he. Eros fronting for the first time in ages, still unsure on his name but being fiercely anchored into his true color, richly Cerise and feeling it in every atom as he channeled it through his every action... Jude fronting for the first time ever since his birth, not knowing himself yet but knowing he had been called here, knowing this was love and that was what he was born from and into, and he let it happen and let himself reciprocate simply but truly. Kyaneos wobbly in fronting as well, only there for a moment but feeling like a breath full of sky...Algorith smirking in amusement as she felt her goggles brushing against their face as they kissed her, felt how strange but lovely it was against her own robotic mouth. 
Josephina ended up being spoken to at some point, and I can feel his nervous surprised happy laughter as he returned a love bite in spite of his hesitance, in spite of feeling he "didn't deserve to be in such a position," realizing that he was in fact included in this global love and he had every right to embrace that. Leon, too, suddenly being wrapped in an embrace, breathing deep to still his shaking nerves, bravely relaxing into that closeness that was still so alien to him, learning. Spine curiously feeling hands on skin that she personally did not own, amazed at it. Javier feeling kisses on our collarbones and momentarily being surprised that their teeth didn't catch on his dermal studs, feeling his own snakebites and tongue stud and bridge piercings every time he ardently kissed them back, or when they peppered his/our own face with tiny kisses of their own. Altairre was hovering behind him, then in place of him, learning how to be in a body, learning about his own body, his huge broad red shoulders the only things clearly anchoring in, the suggestion of massive armor-like hands over our body's own. everything else about him still a mystery.
And I swear Scalpel was there, too. He's been in Javier's peripheral vision lately, seen only by him, his Red prince, this leader of the Darkspacers. We have no clear memory of him fronting, but there's the smallest bit of data that he did, just for a moment, a fiercely glad kiss, defying everything lurking in the depths he ruled over, a simple profound testament to what we were and would forever be in glorious spite of any and all terrors we did and will survive.
Knife was only there for a moment (and later, kissing the knuckles of their soft white hands), but he was entirely his color, claret pink, dark and soft and sweet. Razor followed him, also only there for a moment, letting herself curl up like a purring cat in the latter half of a kiss that felt just as warm as their hands soft in her blood-red shock of childlike-messy hair. Mulberry's twirling hair and facial scruff locking in immediately as she fronted, herself content to be there albeit surprised, wondering why she had been isolating herself from this. Jeremiah suddenly fearlessly soft in his own Cerise tone, kissing and being kissed, knowing there was no danger here. David knowing he wasn't comfortable with kisses on the mouth but still wanting to feel this love, and Joshua moved in affectionately to share that with him while returning that gesture in his stead. Marigold hugging the Arrows and smiling with her face in their shoulder, and Toby quietly moving in with her, suddenly alive and not knowing this but knowing he needed this, to be loved, to be safe and warm. 
Simeon & Sylvain showed up sometime elsewhen, with Infinitii, as they had spoken about this previously. Infi affectionately embraced them with one arm and let them share in hir deep black love, safely for them, but just as deep and pure as they needed to know. Both of them feeling it entirely, like anise gumdrops on their tongue, sweet and spiced and light and heavy all at once. They held each other inside and smiled, knowing four years ago they had been torn in two, separated by sudden death and despair, and now they were together, and alive, and loved and safe and free. Both of them such a soft light creamy yellow tint against that velvet black, both of them like french vanilla and banana cream pie, little sweet fluffy things held in the arms of something fathomlessly rich and dark, perfectly happy.


Rio and Markus were there, both of them feeling more joy than they even expected of themselves, finally feeling that they belonged, not just with us but here, with them, exactly as they were, as whoever they'd grow into being as we all continued in this loving growing process. Markus's back tattoos and chest scars and warm dark skin tone searing into our collective memory, Rio's lovely shaggy smoke-blue hair and paler delicate but craft-calloused fingers doing the same. Both of them so belovedly real, our collective heart treasuring this, missing them.
Their Daemons, too, were so clear and real, relishing their time with Omen, learning how to Be more strongly than ever. Lethe moving like dark blue poured out, all spindly legs but heavy and darkly elegant as water. Medallion fronted more than she Ever has before, shockingly lithe and graceful, all points and edges but still as poised as a dancer. She holds the body's hands so uniquely, almost cradling our beloveds with the sides of our hands, the flats of her blades. And yes, she too has learned how to facemouth, but I can still feel her actual main stomachmouth dormant and unusable when she fronts. Lethe, too, as well as the rest of his long insectoid body that does't translate.
On that note, both Rupture and Cake tried to front, but were too strange in form to come through so easily and suddenly, especially since neither of them have experience in a human form before. Rupture's overlay was a terrific burst of nonsense below our plexus, totally nonhuman, a crablike clatter of legs-- and if that wasn't bad enough, she cannot get a facemouth to work at all, and kept trying to talk out of her throat like she normally would. But she was aware that this wasn't the shape she was currently borrowing, even though the huge dissonance made her consciousness terribly hazy, and she was both surprised and intrigued by this. In memory, I can feel her filing this away in her mind, thinking upon it, what it means to Be, now, tangibly and real even away from her nebulous heart-host. And Cake, too, body too lithe and long to understand legs or  bipedal arm structure, let alone such a small face, still trying to figure herself out in the first place... but trying nevertheless, called in by the other Daemons' existences, herself also now feeling glimmers of wanting to Be, briefly wondering Who she was, who she was bound to, what it meant for her to exist at all now... wondering at her own shape, her own color, how many eyes she would have on her face should she choose to open some. Both of those monstrous girls only there for a few seconds, if that, but both of them remembered dearly, both of them real.
Nexus was there too, and Axis and Chocoloco and Iolite and Jess, every Daemon losing themselves in the ardor of things, all of them always madly in love with each other, and every nousfoni flooding with grateful relief at this love that they too were now a part of, seen and treasured for exactly who they were, unafraid.
Nexus didn't front long, unusually, choosing to let his fellows have the spotlight, choosing to stay within with Laurie, who was also mostly missing from this whole affair, hesitantly learning what she could and couldn't do, learning the difference between fear and simple preference and function clashes. But Jess and Iolite were there, not for long but long enough, both of them temporarily but truly releasing their frustration and sorrow to feel a new but complete love and acceptance that they'd previously only felt from their Daemons, both of them tearful with happiness, arms flung around the shoulders that embraced them in turn, their colors clear and healthy and good.
Axis and his skeletal fingers, huge and weirdly fused at the metacarpals, looking like bleached bone or plaster or old ruins, covered in tiny plants and fungi and moss and fluttering insects, his eyes deep spruce-green and surprisingly soft with compassion. Chocoloco, too, feeling more love than anyone previously expected of him, all coffee-harsh anger and fierce red-slash eyes, but here he was melted chocolate and cherry jelly and there was a depth to the kisses he delivered like his throat opened up into an endless warmth, deep down. A totally different vastness than Infinitii, a striking contrast to Axis's flung-open birdcage ribs, to Nexus's galaxian entrails studded with gold-hot lanterns. All of them so strange, so clear, so real. God bless Daemons, I'll say it forever. There's something about them, even just touching this form so temporarily with their lives, that makes us, too, feel like we're more real than ever, like we're something etched into the very essence of things, lead-lined stained glass figures in the church of existence. Indelible and true. It's a blessed wonder.

The Archivist trio showed up at one point, too-- Garrison first, almost as hesitant as Leon but driven by the love and pursuit of understanding, of System knowledge, and ended up getting his lip bitten, aha. He took it like a champ, learning that this was something others in both our Systems did in love, and I can feel his mind and heart opening a bit more in that memory, becoming less tense, less paranoid. Bless our Archivists, they all have Protector hearts in their own way.
Isadora and Kalisha were there too, of course, but they ended up in embraces, and Isadora had a split second of actual disappointment at not being kissed before smiling and laughing genuinely and just melting into that hug. Love is love and she was glad to have it, to be there. She actually drew Kalisha in with her, the two fronting side by side, and then unexpectedly, Kalisha in turn reached out to find Karissa! She hasn't been around in many many months, but those name sisters have forged a sort of passive fondness, and so even if our Chartreuse Protector wasn't all there, this experience still touched her heart too, and if anything can wake up a dormant nousfoni to themselves and the world, it's being loved On the outside. So we'll see how this affects her in the future.

One after another, flowing like blood and water and sunlight, a quiet multitude moved through this newly-beloved body to experience that same affection and compassion and devotion anew, whether or not we'd ever touched it before. Every time is the first time. That's the miraculous thing about it. It never gets old, never ceases to amaze us, never ceases to hit us as clear and true as an arrow to the heart.

And then Infinitii was back and someone was asking us, had been meaning to ask us for a long time now, can we do something, do you trust us, and the quiet careful deliberate emotion in their voice was like a singing glass in our heart and we said yes, Infi said yes, (please, whatever you want, I want), I trust you, we trust you, we love you too.

 

...I cannot even put into words how suddenly, starkly alive and adored we felt.

 

So many of us were there. So many of us. It was a total shock, but thank God it happened. 
Infinitii was there at the start, but suddenly and totally, Julie was there. Thinking about it, I'm not surprised. This is the sort of thing that her original days as a Tar-corrupted hacker were inundated with. In the past, the very thought of this would have had us kicking and screaming and looking for knives or pills or worse. We had suffered this enough, never again.
...Except that's not what this is. It's NEVER what this is. What we were experiencing now was love, total and pure, and Julie knew it, and if anyone in the System was going to make damn sure that was crystal clear, it was her.

But... Lord. So many of us were there. Lynne and Spine, Waldorf and Josephina, Eros, Markus... and then when the Arrows moved to kiss us, suddenly Celebi was there, her heart strangely aching and determined, and she said no, don't stop. Go back. I need to know what this is like. I need to know.
And it hit me, that even if she didn't live through the beginning of 2012, her heart did. Her bloodline did, inevitably. Tar-mangled or not, her soul was affected by both the love and pain of that time, and she had just as much a right and reason and responsibility as Julie to be there right now. 


...There's so little literal memory, at least, nothing that translates into structured language. Everything is color, light, emotion. 



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

(rough notes, from the Arrow's writing on this, as their memory is inevitably different than ours)

(currently unfinished; it's 6am so we will refine this later.)


(eucharist feelings again, on both sides apparently. "being/essence/spirit." SEAWATER.)


omen, oliver, kristanova, hiccup, kyo. the fact that all of them were there... what that does to our heart is inexpressible, but we have to try. 
just... all of them. they love us that much. ALL of them. and god we adore them all too, we hope they know, we need to make sure they know, they deserve that so dearly.



javier after, embracing them like his heart would break, "thank you so much for this being the next morning." choked with tears.
swearing we'd never leave them, ever. "you have all of our heartbeats" and "we just want ours to beat next to yours."
"four years ago there wasn't much left behind that." his FEELING that time, that emptiness, barely 10 left.


(feeling their heartbeat, after, pounding and sincere. genuinely shocked that THEY were feeling for US in this. that hadn't even crossed our mind. that's sadly telling as to our past, to expect that this sort of thing was devoid of emotion from the other, but what bliss in that assumption being proven false.)

infi laughing like every easter carillon in the universe. the joy endless, all love and light like stars brilliant against the limitless cosmos. ze could not keep it in, could not help it, could not stop. it was beautiful.
"good things come in threes"
hir eyes were open. just like at the eclipse. feeling so completely, totally hirself, that hir overlay was flat-out eyes and teeth both and ze couldn't be otherwise. couldn't be half, as ze was feeling too whole.

oliver asking if "this was one of the things ze hoped for" 
later when he told me this, i immediately remembered this, the first time that was openly referenced in any form. lord we were terrified even that recently.



"this is like the first time i was with jay" 
"this is what i am-- pure transmutation"
the FEELING in those statements. god.


JULIE'S DAEMON. 
I FELT HER TEETH.
we were worried about her; since her "birth" last week or so she's been almost impossible to see. but now, good lord, today she came through clear as anything, hard as infi almost. she's still half (hot pink) viperfish and that mouth is Unmistakable in her overlay. all those huge needle teeth. and her other half appearance-wise is a feathered serpent, and that too is obvious-- she feels so sinuous when fronting, so elegant but lethal, so much bigger than the body.
the arrows say her voice is similar: hissing, seductive, beautiful. i don't doubt it. i have no idea what she said, or how it felt, but i can feel the echo of it, tinged with the lipstick terror of the old julie days, that sort of warzone femininity, and i wouldn't expect anything less of her. 
julie and her daemon were cofronting so hard, so totally. practically sharing the same breaths. their very beings meshing perfectly together, blurring into one, without losing any of their individuality.


DENDRITE!!!!
came out when the arrows were asking who was there? julie and her daemon responded first i think, then suddenly,
"and me, me, me, me"
FRONTING more solidly than ever, her spindly arms and claws and tentacles and feelers SO clear in her overlay, her color clearer than even that, a beautiful rich pastel red, glossy like flowers and candy apples and heart lockets
she was struggling to talk, couldn't get her voice to translate on such short sudden notice
"i don't have a voice of my own yet but i found her, i found her, i found her!!" "i found mine, she's mine!" not ownership, but recognition of the most blissfully aching sort. pure joy, overwhelming joy, weeping from it.
and THAT JEWEL. the pinkish one, different hair-- no klonoa ears!-- from 2004 or so. heartspace anchor. the one who was in love. i can feel her exact vibe now, in music. i know her soundtrack. but she resonated EXACTLY with dendrite's own heart, embracing her as her own, both of them so happy, so in love with each other's souls, like every daemon and their host should be, and ultimately always always are.


eros, "how could anyone call this selfish," feeling that so powerfully and unquestionably, that needs to be global.
that sad old religious-mangled teaching that to want to be loved was wrong. that to receive love was manipulative or demanding or otherwise sinful. that's a lie. this proved it.
remembering what chaos zero said on the porch. "there's nothing wrong with wanting love returned for love," effectively. it being a divinely mutual force. love naturally reciprocates itself, it aches for it, and that's pure as anything. 
us lying there, holding them, and eros recognizing immediately that we were feeling such deep love towards them, for them, about them, it wasn't selfish at all, but it ironically wasn't self"less" either. it recognized our selves and their selves, and it adored them both/all, and it wanted to share in that forever, and that is love.


one of their tears falling directly into our right eye. the exact sting of seawater. it was utterly transcendent, holy.


me, touching their chest, dying from love and holy fear, "who am i to dare"
then realizing we, too, have a heart just like that




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

we didn't get out of bed until like... 4:30. no regrets, ever. no better use of a day than this sincerity, this total living.

kristanova made the dearly-loved after-breakfast tradition of grits, eggs, & bacon (lord who would have expected This future for it that first morning he cooked for us, months ago). it was amazing.

we watched an episode of sense8, "i have no room in my heart for hate," as we haven't watched that show in months either, and we were feeling it so hard this morning, with how headspacey it is, with how much more clearly we are living as systems now and how much more clearly we can understand both the people and the topics of the show as well.

...

(we typed ALL NIGHT)

 

 

 

 

@ 8:22
All right. I'm going to TALK to these weird intrusive fronters and/or mindsets and see why the heck they're so powerful and insistent.

I'm Jewel Lightraye, age 17. I think.


(she never finished this but the fact that it was written by HER is important)



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


@23:59~


"blacked out" for most of today. very little memory.

- not much work today again. we scuffed down a bumper and scrubbed down a truck. waldorf was ghosting for a minute (she does sometimes), concerned for my mental health as i hadn't slept well again.
most notably, at the truck we were observing that all of central has been spending time together lately, except for kyanos and eros. kyanos was with wally and i in the mornings for a while, but then he disappeared, and eros has been mainly missing for even longer. but as we were talking eros runs in the room, looking terrified, says he needs help. laurie made a comment about 'perfect timing' and eros shot back not to joke; intention and focus are VERY powerful in headspace and they could attract anything if you weren't careful.
either way yeah stuff got glitchy and scary and we ended up facing down the tar/plague for a few minutes. my brain isn't remembering things well there. but lynne was the first to act, with her arrows. then javier went at it with a massive lance but something felt 'off' to me about the whole thing? i wanted to help and tried summoning the sword "i" used to have but it didn't work. i got a sudden strong impression that it wasn't my weapon and so i tried to give it to eros. he said he already had a sword (a rapier), but he hesitated; he'd never felt right with that either, maybe he needed this one?
anyway i ended up just listening to my intuition, which ended up being "go eldritch angel and just radiate" so boom suddenly i'm all eyes and wings and white light and i didn't even move, i just filled up as much space as i could and shone. the tar/plague got really pissed and started screeching and clawing at me but it didnt want to go near me so it eventually backed out of the room and left.
i dont remember what happened after that but we were okay.

- kyanos being "not quite human" just like waldorf, apparently EROS fits that bill too? of course, he's an angel like kyanos, and they both have the white-skin like sugar and sergei and hyakinth. anyway we wondered if this is why he kept slipping badly when the hackers tried to "humanize" him, because that went even further against his overlay than it would for most others in central? it's a thought.
kyanos still has all-blue eyes, if that's not noted anywhere. he's also a wild card with age; he looks and feels several numbers at once and he's not sure how to present. so we need to figure something out or else he can't really stabilize. and eros still needs a surname, as well as a possible first-name switch to let go of old abusive connotations. his visuals are slipping anyway so i need to focus on art of him to fix that, override any outside intrusions or confusions.

- only made $50 this week total, went towards food and gas and family stuff. scraped $15 left over to save for punch brothers tickets. have to hide it from the addiction alters and manic spenders.

- outside of work, JOSEPHINA was fronting mostly.
he drove for a bit; we had to drive the brother to the dmv and i clearly remember jo being at the wheel by the expressway. his main anchor overlay point is his jingle bell earrings. we can almost hear them when he fronts.
he also asked garrison "where are we going" at first and garry got kind of flustered with papers trying to tell him quick, it was cute

-most notably, josephina realizing his color has been VERY off. like laurie, he's been carrying too much negativity and so his yellow has been muddy? i DID suspect this but wasn't sure what to make of it.
jo's been out of it for a while, oddly depressed, morbid. that bothered us all because when he first showed up he was MUCH more openly optimistic, much brighter as far as yellow is concerned. but TOO light? jo says now he NEEDS to be like that openly again-- it's a key part of his personality and ze feels really off-key not expressing hirself that way-- but ze also cannot let go of the more solid aspect of her personality? like the unflinching honesty without being biting about it, the awareness of death without being upset over it, the indomitable shining brilliance of true yellow. it's a richer color, it's exactly what he already is at heart, but like i said, it's that odd depressive shroud of energy that needs to go. wherever it came from i dont know. but we're healing.

- also jo isn't "bigender" ze's an androgyne? both male and female identity at once, not switching from one to another, it's simultaneous always. so jo is okay with literally any set of pronouns, the brain keeps trying to use all of them at once anyway, so if in referring to josephina we rotate pronouns that's normal. unless ze objects in which case we'll settle on something less random.

- bro reminded us of how awesome culprate's music is, so we're listening to their new album and "acid rain" is super nice and "florn" sounds like a summer drive and "yin" is all deep matte-black caverns and electric-blue light glow. it sounds a lot like infinitii.

- infinitii has a totally new vibe after the concert reset, yes it stuck, yes it's still exactly how extra-vertebrae captured hir. GOOD. since then ze's been untouched by hackers too, i believe. chaos zero has been for MONTHS now i think?? god only knows. feels like forever, that says enough, we cannot remember a time when he was negative now. although we're aware there were instances of slippage and hacking in the past, we can't remember any. of course "i'm" a mess of fractures and non-self typing data so that's part of it, but still.



- apparently the abusive eater was out today. we do NOT remember what they did. they freak us out because we lose a LOT of time from them and it throws off our entire temporal awareness; we don't know what day it is.
laurie just told me it's a friday so we can actually SLEEP and that makes me so so happy. i've been so tired i need to just sleep a day.


- hackers trying to get at us. laurie stood guard, i held the fort, we're safe now.
problem is we ended up online for three hours, purposely diverting our attention away from everything, and then it hit me. this is how we survived high school. this is how we survived college. deviantart, last.fm, and tumblr. time-eating sites, absolutely, and lethal when abused... but... they kept us from suffocating from trauma memories we were not capable of facing, or even admitting, back then. they filled up the empty space with noise and light, and the cacophany did nothing for progress.
it... i don't want to do this again. i don't want to forget or bury things. i'm not capable of it now.
11:11.
the therapist said we need coping skills that WORK, otherwise we CANNOT truly move forward with healing because when you inevitably bring all that old buried stuff up to the surface to heal, you NEED to be able to COPE WITH IT or else it's just going to make things worse. and according to her we do not yet have the safe environment required to heal, inside or out. and that's top priority.
but this time-wasting is not helping.

those two weeks without a computer (well, without a laptop at least) were very informative. they were a sort of relief, not having any internet access, not having to worry about conversation topics, or art obligations that we lose sleep over.
(we cannot take any more after we finish these two. we can't. we've been trying for years but i have to be brutally honest. "drawing" like this brings us no joy. we need to just accept that and stop forcing past it.)
we typed a LOT. and that helped a LOT. so i kind of want to hide the internet plug for another week, just type, see what happens.
i'm just... reeling, horribly, from how much more we lost with that hard drive crash. thank god, thank god we had most of our written files backed up. but we still lost our most recent data, which-- ironically-- was the heavy duty work i dedicated weeks to and then was enough of an idiot not to back up sooner. same with the music composition. how much of THAT did we lose? and the sai/psd files we'd finally been gathering up the courage to attempt again... i can't remember the last time we backed those up.
god i dont know. what do you want from me?
"do your work," you say. or at least someone says. then why the heck did you DESTROY SO MUCH OF IT?? what the heck do you want me to do when our memory is shot and we CANNOT REMEMBER WHAT WE DID AS A CHILD and that breaks my heart but we LOST it all and now you're demanding I "do the work," god i WANT to do the work but what am i even doing now??
do i start over?
do i start them all over? is that what i have to do?

maybe.

voltage and "parnassus" both got total plot overhauls anyway.
mage angels is leaning in a new direction. so is puppetstrings.
halcyon days is changing its entire construction. hokthai might be too.
oneircia is still open enough for anything to happen. so is "lg*girls."
rosewindow and dreamworld keep getting bigger, and even they are changing hugely, in key ways i never knew before.

but that's making me stop and wonder.
yeah we lost a LOT. we lost like 15 solid years of work. it was devastating.
but... what if that slap in the face was a wake-up call? what if we were SUPPOSED to let go of all of that because all those worlds needed to CHANGE COMPLETELY?
maybe. maybe. it's a thought.
did i ever say this before? if not, here it is now. i'm thinking it's true.

i just... i miss the innocent honesty of all that old work. THAT'S what i miss the most, just the simple but priceless childhood drawings, amateur work but damn it it was gorgeous as far as i was concerned, because it was sincere. because it was done to tell a story and it had no fear or ambition or doubt or pride in it.
jewel still draws like that. and she still wants to learn. she's always our hope here.



what else do we have to say for tonight.


- still reading "a grief observed." halfway through and we still can't relate to it. we should write about that fact. it surprised me to find myself believing such different things from the author.

- i get bad triggering misophonia from people eating/drinking around me and that's never been brought up to a therapist? it's problematic because of boundary issues and personal emphasis on sound-- certain sounds are very very triggering and when we hear them, it's like the hearing has already embedded them in our skin. it's invasive. it's like touch, when someone touches you and it feels like glue on your skin, or fire ants, and you have to scrub it off, well the sound is like that even worse because you can't get it out. sometimes we end up coughing or spitting or screeching to try and get it out of our own throat, but mostly the overwhelming sensation of being invaded by the sound is so awful that we end up violent.
overload came out today as a result of that when we got home, broke our belt in half. that was our outfit staple, now we have to buy a new one or literally half our outfits dont fit. see, this is how we lost our computer. people cannot cope with triggers and end up exploding from the sheer psychotic frustration. this isn't safe.

- we're still sick from the abusive eaters. they are VICIOUS, and after today we think the WORST one (a long-haired teen girl, unsurprisingly) ISN'T an alter, but is instead an abuse-bundle and/or a tar aspect? like we tried to talk to them and couldn't, they couldn't exist inside. only a screaming mess of hatred and blindness outside.
oh but they're awful. we still get physical "feeling" from inside and when we fought back and went to throw out the poison 'food' (it was utterly inedible, the bad fronters literally try to eat garbage and it's appalling) she started screeching "give me back my food you bitch!! i hate you!! i freaking hate you!! give it back damn you!!" and jumped on my shoulder and started punching me. and i felt that and i HATE when i can feel what they do to the body even when they're not "in it" because that's what julie did when she was corrupted at first and
there's no emotion tied to that.
how the heck are we going to talk about that eventually. it's a dead timeline.
and yet ashen holds ALL the pain.
just mentioning this, i can feel the sheer agony welling up from deep deep down, from her, stuck in that horrible little introjected abuse environment, all dim awful fluorescent lights and cold tile floors and nighttime inside dull artificial silence. she's curled up on the countertop sometimes (??) but she's always a mess, always a terrible mess, hair mussed up and outfits worn and thin and rumpled with dark circles under her eyes and she's so tired, she's so hurt,
one day she has to talk, what does she know, are there any others like her?

god we need coping skills because I don't know ANY of the stuff from way back when but apparently we need to work through it because ashen's existence is proof, that pain is proof, that it IS STILL RELEVANT even if i have no awareness or understanding of it.

then spotify jumps me with a half-naked ad, GET AWAY FROM ME.
why is that sinful crap everywhere too.
you and your stupid asinine alcohol adds, SHUT THE HECK UP.
no one cares about your beer and hedonism and flirting and idiocy. your stupid brainless dirty jokes and shallow egotistic obsessions. LEAVE ME ALONE.
I HATE THAT YOU SHOVE THIS GARBAGE INTO OUR SUBCONSCIOUS ALL THE TIME. SHUT UP. LEAVE US ALONE!!!!


- someone atoned on the arm yesterday. knife knew about it.
data says he fronted briefly to sob over the bathtub again. that always reminds us of a certain day. we need to review that too..

- need to dedicate a day to doing innerspace feel-work again. we need to figure out the spectrum functions as it stands now, with the new multiple-spectrum things and the color maps shifting and stuff. laurie is also wondering if karissa is going to end up our lime centralite?? she's always felt oddly "solid" and her level has always been "unknown" so maybe it's because she fits up here? we'll see. she's cool.
aqua is still a total enigma, it's such a full slot but the only person in central ever associated with it was chaos zero. but he fractured to be able to exist up here. and he cannot function totally up here as a result. besides it's not his responsibility to take care of headvoices, he's not a nousfoni, he has a different important job. so heaven only knows who will be the centralite for that color.
also. black and white are still confusing too. infinitii said it's much safer for hir to stay in the daemon spectrum, and since then who's been moving into the black central slot but our rosequartz-y lady from way way deep down. she's still very much a mystery too, she's still not someone we can interact with up here-- she's projecting a sort of overlay up here, but if you want to talk to her at all you have to go way way down to blackspace which is where she still is, all big and nebulous. so yeah, no clue if she'll be able to move into central or not, but again, we'll see.
there's still debate about jay too, partly because he's so strongly nonhumanoid at heart, and partly because "jay" is a bloodline name and he's been fracturing WAY too badly lately to keep it to himself, let alone to keep acting like he's all in one piece still because he's not.
he's broken into little bits but they're all not nice and they're all not him, he's white and he's a core bloodline person so when those bits break off they break off of the bloodline he was built from, parts he can't keep

remember, both bloodlines have their problems. we heal and learn. but pinstripe was the first "jay" along with jayce himself, who is still around, although he may not be as "original" as he feels-- he's probably fractured too. but the boy has old roots. he's just so depressed now.
poor kid. jayce has been fronting a lot lately because he's a brown-resonant and he's safe to be in the body and he doesn't get shoved out of it either. but his job is, "be a male in the body and therefore be non-abusive," but he gets so overwhelmed by the environment he's in, "what do i do," he cannot function without headspace either, thank god, but it hurts because he's also aware that to "live in the body" he has to split his focus between here and there and that's very difficult and wrenching.

i'm so tired. i'm still sick from those darn abusive eaters. well guess what NO MONEY FOR YOU!! it's for our concert and you heard us earlier, that is worth more than your addictions, and you said that was bullcrap so you are automatically now labeled as someone who isn't worth listening to. you have no respect for us, you have no empathy for others, you have no care for the consequences of your actions, OR who bears them!!
we made her front when the stomach was in horrible pain earlier and she kept fighting us off, squirming out of fronting, depersonalizing, refusing to feel it. when laurie finally shoved her (the abuser) in and she felt the pain, she laughed and said "well if THIS is what you people are feeling then i don't care if i don't stop!" basically, she saw it as more reason to be abusive. i dont know what happened then,

we did okay. we stood up for ourselves. we tried to keep safe. yeah today was scary and tough but the weekend, we're gonna try real hard to do it well, to not eat any bad things at all, to get emmett and spice out to eat instead so we can TAKE CARE of the body for once for heavens sakes, we dont want to be sick anymore, we want to be HAPPY, we're ALLOWED to be happy.


i'm exhaused. someone should have exercised this evening but the fatigue is real bad.

i hope nothing is left unfinished here becayse i'm falling asleep standing up good night.

 

 

 

 

(completely uncensored. it would lose all its honesty otherwise.)

 

 

 

I am so disgusted right now by both the world, and by myself

1. there is so much fcking horrid stuff going on out there, and
2. part of me hates people for doing those things.




I abused myself so much today already I am so sorry.
I keep detaching from this body, and then when it gets all mucked up and awful I'm still detached somewhat. numb. not even comprehending why I SHOULD care. it's sad




these is so much toxicity out there and it's getting into me and I'm scared of it

there's a seething hatred towards men that was never there before
not just men, masculinity in general
which includes me
which is making me hate myself for being transgender
which is making me hurt myself more
which is making me suicidal because I am now stuck between TWO "evils"
either look/feel like my rapists, or look/feel like their rapists
I fcking hate this world
I fcking hate this
"rapist" shouldn't even be a fcking word
no one should do that ever ever ever

but this poison is in my/our brain now and it's making me paranoid and I don't know what to do

it's terrible

I'm not a boy
I'm not a girl
I'm not a man
I'm not a woman

okay?
please
let me be

at this point I really wish I was noncorporeal, like a mist or something
it's unbearable
the hormones are helping with a lot, don't get me wrong, it's great
but THEN here comes this internalized anti-male-everything thought process
even if I'm NOT a guy, "god forbid" I take on ANY characteristics of one
it's making me very very unsure of myself

but I cannot, I cannot live in a female-bodied body
I can't
god help me but I can't, I tried, it was unbearable
still is for the most part.
but I can't, I can't,
please realize females aren't inherently faultless, flawless,
I'm not saying they're bad
I'm just saying that in my life 99% of the people who were abusive towards me were women
the men were harmless by comparison
please
I'm not a woman and I don't want to look/feel like THEM either
there are two sides to this coin

but I still feel like being demi-masculine is evil now.

this is bullshit where did this come from

a lot of it IS internally generated, I've noticed
yes tumblr is toxic as HELL and I want to LEAVE THAT WEBSITE FOREVER
the only reason I haven't is because I have friends on there
I will have to apologize because really, I do not feel safe on that website, at all
I do not like it there
I hope they wouldn't mind if I just quit because god I NEED to, I want to leave so badly
but I keep thinking "stay for the audience" "stay to help and inspire people"
fck this, is this going to be my life forever
self-sacrifice left and right? up and down?
flay yourself bloody because someone else might gain a tiny bit of insight from it?
that's been my life so far, absolutely, I'm sick of it
but that feels "blasphemous" to say
the oldest fear in my head is "you NEED to suffer or you will NEVER be holy enough."
basically,
"you don't deserve heaven unless you've PAID for it"
it's the fear that, just by being born, I inherited an overwhelming debt
and I need to spend my life "suffering" to make up for the intense "bad" I committed by being born, like ruining my mother's life, forcing my family to pay for food and medical care for me, being "abnormal" and therefore inconveniencing and upsetting everyone else, et cetera
whenever something nice happens to me, my instant thought is:
"how do I pay them back for this?" or, "how will I end up paying for this?"
no free lunch, basically
it didn't hit me until yesterday that I might already deserve some nice things?
like, if someone was kind to me, it was because I had already done something to pay that price
that just… blows my mind. I feel that nothing I've done, ever, is "good" let alone "good enough"
someone ELSE has to do good FOR me, and then the "good" I do is BECAUSE I am PAYING SOMEONE BACK.
that's the sad core of this really.
it's that childhood scared belief that I, as I am, am worthless and bad unless I am working in total servitude to another being, without any free will of my own
except that has done nothing but put me through hell so far
the family means well but god they are not always right, they are not always right
sometimes they are downright toxic and I am still struggling to accept that
and then there are these floating voices,
all the messages outside, online and in books,
everything else.
everything that speaks against what my heart is allegedly wanting or saying.
but no, "you can't listen to your own heart, it's corrupt! all the evils of man come from the heart! only god knows what is right. …and I am a mouthpiece for god, therefore you must listen to ME."
also insinuating that "god is not in my heart" which is literally the definition of hell and is THE most existentially terrifying thought ever, ever, ever
but that's the religious paranoia.
"god is out THERE, he is NOT in you, for you are flawed and an unworthy vessel. you must obey everything you are told, NEVER what you think on your own."
bullshit
I mean
please let it be bullshit
I mean
I will still obey, I won't fight or anything
but
if I question things please don’t be so mad at me?
I mean
I want to be able to question things without automatically getting crushed by fear and guilt
its terrible when I realize that,
every time, EVERY TIME, I think "well I'm not sure,"
I AM WRONG.
I AM PROVEN AWFULLY WRONG OVER AND OVER
and so I am taught, BY PROOF, that I REALLY AM INHERENTLY FLAWED
and cannot know what is right on my own

and so I spend 40 minutes staring at the same spot in a grocery aisle because I'm trying to figure out what floating voices to listen to and whether or not they're good or wise or even sensible, and then I second-guess myself over and over, and then by the time I get home I am so sick and guilty and tired and angry that I abuse myself and destroy whatever I bought because fck you, fck you I am tired of this, I am tired of being a puppet, I am tired

then they have the nerve to suggest that I'm "not psychotic"
do you have any fcking idea
listen I am trying desperately to put a name to this condition I'm in and that MATCHES
they've been putting us on antipsychotic pills for years anyway
but if that label fits, then hey, maybe NOW we can GET ACTUAL RELEVANT HELP
then again maybe it's just me
partly?
the stuff they label as "hallucinations" and "delusions" are TYPICAL in the body no matter what, ask any social fronter ever.
and hell they cause us a LOT of distress we just don't ever talk about them because we're paranoid or don't want people to know. if they know they could make it worse, after all.
but yeah maybe I'm the worst
maybe it's just because of the d.i.d. that they won't diagnose us with the other things we match symptoms for

but really I don't want to be fcking "mentally ill" I don't want a laundry list of diagnoses and pills to match
I want to be able to say, "here are the terms to describe what we are currently going through,"
but damn it THEY WILL NOT STOP ME
I AM NOT A VICTIM HERE
if a symptom pisses me off I will try to heal it, or at least we all will
but a lot of the "symptoms" for these things AREN'T "symptoms" in an illness sense?
a lot of the "symptoms" are part of WHO WE ARE
and that's the problem
you walk into an office and they're like "tell me what’s bothering you"
and typically the answer is,
"nothing we're totally fine"
because damn it lady we're not going to tell you about what else we see/feel in the room,
or about what happened in headspace last night,
or about this frustrating society shit we're dealing with,
or the suicidal thoughts or the depression or the panic or the paranoia,
we're not going to tell you ANYTHING about the religious mission because YOU'LL probably try to tell us it's "delusional" too.
and really don't forget about the ~apathy~ that you TAUGHT us to feel because
"you're not supposed to have problems!"
or, as they would say,
"oh, don't be like that!" "don't be so silly!" "grow up!" "man up!" "this is why I hate being in this house!" "it's all in your head!" "just don't pay attention to it and it'll go away!" ET CETERA.
in other words,
"you're not acting "normal" and that makes me uncomfortable so please force yourself to act "normal" thanks."
which is kind of sad, what is it about "abnormality" that frightens these people so much?
is it because they have things like this lurking beneath the surface that they don't want to accept or look at?
like some things, they can be so scary you don't want to acknowledge they exist. I know, that happens.
maybe that's why "abnormal" people scare "normal" people. because deep down I don't think anyone is ever really "normal" in that sense.
anyway

secretly we want to be the super-vanilla happy springtime white linen dresses pure happy kid
like the poster child for a healthy normal well-adjusted childhood
you know what I mean.
we WANT to be so utterly guileless, so totally flawless and innocent and untouched, and naïve even,
we WANT to be that pure and virginal. totally. absolutely.
but
people laugh at that?
people condemn that, actually
"it's so shallow"
"it's so fake and boring"
you know what I don't give a shit
or at least part of me doesn't
part of me doesn't care how "dull" it may be to you, we WANT to be that innocent again,
you don't appreciate what you had until it's gone


that's another thing that fcking sucks about adulthood and misogyny and shit
women are infantilized,
which is really fcking annoying and REALLY fcking disturbing,
women like that terrify us absolutely,
but also
children are sexualized.
read that again
children are sexualized.
do you see the problem
the double problem here
we identify more as a child than anything, when it comes down to it
there are a lot of kids in this system
and guess what,
they're the traumatized ones.
how fcked up is that.
how fcking fcked up is that
it breaks my heart


and now, now in our adulthood, now we're getting a taste of BOTH poisons because like I said,
you start presenting as a man and you get the backlash of this shit
of all the hurt ones screaming out in the primal way, the only way they know how to at first,
"destroy what destroyed me"
we know the feeling, it's what made us misogynistic in the first place
and we are so so so sorry
so maybe this is karma
but we're learning and we want to heal this in ourselves too.

so we're still hating ourselves for being transgender, isn't that awful

but that isn't even the worst part
remember we are still genderqueer as a whole
so although we're presenting as masculine
there is still accepted and embraced femininity in here
and this is bad because,
the same fcking society that says "kill all men"
is the same damn society that says "women are objects"
just different sides, same shit
oh yeah, and also
BOTH men and women are reduced to sexual caricatures
EVERYONE is expected to be sleeping with someone
even if you're not straight or cisgendered
I was never objectified as much as I was after I tried joining the "gay community"
or the "trans community" too
which is really fcking awful
all anyone did in either of those was talk about sex
like is that all we are? even in our own eyes?
we reduce ourselves to nothing but sexual behaviors?
so then the cishet people portray themselves as the "glorifed normal" in contrast to the "depraved queers"
please forgive my language
but yeah look at the bullshit the cishet people are putting out
all this goddamn porn and abusive relationships and FCKING SEXUALIZING CHILDREN
yeah the non-cishets aren't innocent either but damn it that's not the point right now.
the point is that this society built on the whole straight white cisgender male authority shit is UTTERLY FCKING TERRIBLE and IT NEEDS TO BE FCKING BURNT TO THE GROUND AT THIS POINT
thanks patriarchy you fcking suck

so.
we have got one hell of a task, living in this world
1. heal the misogyny
2. heal the misandry
3. heal the trauma
4. stand strong as ourself
5. don't hate anyone

#5 is so difficult lately and that's scary
is it the depression? I heard misanthropy can be a symptom and that surprised me
but
for us it's religious
damn it everything is religious with us, WHY
oh wait, I know why'
it's because we were raised this way and the environment didn't fcking begin to change until we were about 18, 19 years old
and to top it all off we're also dealing with "mental illness" on top of all that

but
the trauma made it worse
makes it worse
like
where do you draw the line

there are people out there screeching "freedom of speech" and "liberation" and shit
but so much of it is SO WRONG in our eyes at least
just
god what do we do
we are trying so hard to just "live and let live" but
I don't know

this awful hyperreligious mindset makes things so damn difficult
we are legit convinced we are something "chosen"
in whatever sense
but those damn demonic floating voices keep saying "you blasphemer, no you're not, you're shit, you're dirt, you're worthless, god would spit on you, you are worth NOTHING"
and then I think "well you wouldn't be fcking saying that if you weren't trying to STOP me now would you"
to which they start to threaten me and swear at me and all sorts of other scary things
then the fcking physical "hallucinations" happen.
which is "just great" as sarcasm would put it. sarcasm only happens because you're bitter about the truth but don't want to admit the truth because you feel ashamed or doubtful or self-loathing about it.
the truth is, it is NOT great, it is TERRIBLE,
BUT
virtually everyone we've ever admitted that to says "you're fcking crazy"
our grandmother literally told us "you're imagining it all, so don't worry"
here's the thing
imagination is some heavy-duty shit okay, it's terrifying
but imagination is self-generated. it means I CHOSE to think about this thing and pursue it on my own.
even the most terrifying imagined things I CAN turn off. i know. i've done it.
but
this isn't something i chose damn it
this is on the OUTSIDE
all those fcking floating voices are on the OUTSIDE and they are trying to get IN and I WON'T LET THEM
i really wish i could just turn it off, but
i can't
real shit, you can't turn off the real shit
good or bad
cover your ears all you want, they keep shouting
ignore them all you want, they just laugh
it is fcking horrible
the only thing that stops them is headspace
but that's a whole other problem.




people won't stop using the given name
god please that hurts so much too
is that selfish? demanding? childish?




the impulses are upsetting too, especially when laced with this apathy
it's daily now
I mean I can easily not act on them, I recognize them as impulses, but they are tied to powerful gut reactions and that's why they're scary.
violet impulses are common. I keep wanting to break things, throw things, bite things and shred them, attack people, hurt people. but I don't. I don't because I realize there is just this awful ACHE in me that wants to come out in screaming sobs because it's in DESPAIR but no one gives a shit. and I don't know how to cope and I WANT to cope. but that's where the violence comes from, it's boil-over
the suicidal impulses are tougher.
I keep having to put down knives, put down razors. (god help me that hurts my heart so bad)
I keep catching myself(?) with pill bottles. sometimes methodically just eating them like candy. but then mr. sandman or someone will shout at us to spit it out, and they are so LOUD that I(?) do. just dullness, no emotion. problem is then ten minutes later it'll happen again. over and over
that's making the eating disorder worse too. someone found out exactly what foods make us the sickest, and they are eating them. on purpose. to make us sick.
the WORST part? it's mainly "punishment" for "getting sick in the first place"
how's that for ableism
"what's that? you're lactose intolerant? you get sick from peanuts and sunflowers and coconut? you can't eat corn or gluten or meat without excruciating pain and meltdowns? you can't even eat fruit without being bedridden for the next two hours? well tough shit sweetheart! :) you HAVE to eat those foods to be a good, normal human being!! :) it's ok sweety just keep eating them a little each day and then you'll be okay again~"
and that hurts
that HURTS because we BELIEVE them these people are so NICE and yet
and yet
they're
not always right?
or are they, maybe they are, and we're just being fcking disobedient little shits
somehow
so we force ourself to eat these things because "we want to get better" BUT it's NOT WORKING
all this "exposure therapy" is NOT FCKING WORKING

it was the same thing with the sexuality, okay
god damn you, it didn't work, okay
okay????
I want to scream and sob, there's where the violent impulses are coming from, hello overwhelming urge to bloody my knuckles on this wall
god
it didn’t work okay
yeah, it sure as hell planted the seeds of misanthropic apathy. but that's about it.
you exposed us to SO MUCH SHIT that now,
NOW,
WE CAN ENDURE THAT SHIT AND NOT CARE.
THAT'S WHAT YOU WANTED RIGHT
THAT'S "NORMAL" AND "GOOD" RIGHT????
TO JUST "TAKE IT" OR WHATEVER THE FCK YOU WANT US TO DO

be a "good little christian girl" and get married
to some who-the-fck-is-this tall white brown-haired smiling stranger boy man
that the fcking media keeps shoving in our faces
they ALL LOOK THE SAME
but we have to "be good"
society says that sort of aesthetic criteria lineup is "cute" or "hot" or "attractive"
so register it as such damn you
and you had BETTER be attracted to them damn you
otherwise you are FLAWED and SOMETHING IS "WRONG WITH YOU"
go marry that stubble-faced smiling suited stranger like a good girl
and fck them until you have four or five babies
and then be a woman
and a wife
for the rest of your fcking life
now you are a housewife sex object with no autonomy
and this is the shit SO MANY WOMEN are going through it's SHIT

problem is,
we're not a woman,
but we're not a man either,
and either way,
we don't WANT to get married,
we don't WANT to have kids,
we DON'T WANT TO HAVE SEX,
we DON'T WANT ANY OF THAT

but they say "no you have to"

misogyny breeds misandry
there are both men and women with ugly, ugly personalities
I don't want to think of either gender as being defined by that
but
this culture is making it really hard to even comprehend the concept of binary gender OUTSIDE of that skewed disaster
like, you have to completely abandon the whole "cishet only" thing JUST to be able to see people as basic human beings at this point
which sounds kind of "special snowflakey" but really, look at our fcking culture
we have ingrained this disgusting false image of "what it means to be a man" and "what it means to be a woman" so much, so repeatedly, that I think we need to totally abandon that whole mindset first
it's not just about biology or reproduction, shit why is that the focus all the time
there's so much more to it than that, and THAT is what we need to start looking at, the NON-SEXUAL stuff, people are more than that, humans are more than their anatomy
I mean seriously look at religion, male/female is all about creation characteristics, reproduction is just one tiny bit on the whole list, why the hell don't we look at it THAT way,
I guess I'm just trying to say I want humanity to look as itself as transcendent more often,
stop defining male and female in terms of negative qualities and sexual behavior
why am I even talking about this I don't understand this topic at all
it's making me sick
I'm just sick of not being able to go anywhere without getting an eyeful of that construction
I'm so tired of the outside world
all the stuff out there, it hurts.



I have karissa following me. with her saw.
the fcking floating demons keep trying to touch me
god damn it I DON'T WANT THEM TOUCHING ME
so she's patrolling the room
she can ghost to do that which is important
a lot of the dangerous people are on the OUTSIDE
so laurie can't really attack them.
but karissa can.
I'll see if there are other people like her around

see, there,
that's it,
this,
as soon as I start talking about them this LIGHT goes on and a weight is lifted
my chest feels lighter and my head feels clearer
see, you doubters, this is REAL
this is real and it is GOOD


I don't want sex
how many times this week have I been saying that
goddamn full moon in scorpio I guess, that's what someone told me
scorpio's our lilith thing on the natal chart so hey.
biggest burden to bear for humanity. biggest lesson to transmute.
well we're willing to do it but damn it it's SCARY on days like this because,
we're asexual and nonbinary and aromantic and this is totally alien
and also trauma history.
but I guess that's part of it.
anyway the damn floating voices keep trying to touch me
and I don't want it
but they keep forcing it
but I DON'T WANT IT

I can stop them now. I can stop them now. it's liberating.
they try to get us in the mornings like they used to but I can STOP them now
chaos is pissed off at them and he won't let them anywhere near us
genesis is learning to differentiate but he's got massive trauma history too
so he and I are dealing with the same weird confusion.
when you've been "used" sexually for so long,
when you've been told so much that sex is "all you're good for,"
or worse,
"all you're meant for,"
then even if you don't want it and/or are terrified of it,
you keep getting trapped in those situations because your subconscious keeps hysterically saying,
"this is all we're worth, we don't have another choice, this is what we have to do for other people"
it hurts.
I don't want this.
no one wants this

but of course there's the other issues like,
we want to cry
we want to be able to FEEL pain
we want to be able to FIGHT BACK
we want to be able to CARE ABOUT OUR OWN HEALTH AND SAFETY
and stop thinking of all of that in black and white
like,
"well you don't crash your car on purpose, so you obviously DO care! therefore don't make any fcking excuses, you're not fighting back because you secretly WANT it (the abuse which they consider "normal")."
fck you
do you have any idea how often during driving we literally, literally,
close our eyes for extended periods because if we crash then hey fcking fantastic it's over
have to stop ourselves from just letting the car drift into traffic or off a non-guarded cliff
do you not fcking realize
apathy is more dangerous than rage
plague is more dangerous than tar
it's the slow suicide that will kill you sooner, ironically.
people see the pill bottles go down. people see the bloody weapons. people see the nooses, the rifles, the car engines on idle. people see you walking to the top stories of buildings, of bridges.
the fast suicides are seen and reacted to with anger, shame, accusation, et cetera. they will catch you and they will do everything they can to villainize you for it, and make sure you never ever attempt it again.
but.
but.
and here's the awful thing.
if you learn to do it slow, they won't care anymore.
no one will stop you.
sometimes they will even help you. or praise you.
they probably won't even believe you if you told them
they'd scoff or laugh it off or chide you like an insolent baby
but they won't do shit to stop it.
and that's the horrible, horrible loophole
that if you really do want to die, you can die a little each day
and then one day it'll catch up to you
they don't see it until it's too late and you're gone
they don't see the tiny scars adding up, they don't see the little poisons slipped into your food, they don't see the sleep deprivation, they don't see the forced psychological trauma, they don't see you wandering too close to the edges of things, they don't see how carelessly you drive, they don't see you taking one too many pills too often, they don't see you slowly fading away at the edges until

one day the grim reaper is gonna show up
but I've met him, I've met him,
and it's breaking my heart because he doesn’t like seeing people go out like this
and I've asked him to take me before but he said "no"
and I WANT to live,
damn it I WANT to live, so badly, god I want to LIVE

but.
but this is a tough world to live in and sometimes I doubt my ability to survive it safely

so I guess I do care about my well-being
in a larger sense
therefore
if this world is sabotaging my spirit sometimes I think it'd be the wiser option to just up and leave it



where did I even start with all this
this is one hell of a brainspill entry I am sorry this is a mess
I don't even know who I am, sorry therapist,
I'm old like I'm tied to fluorescent bathroom lights and old knives.
like 2008-2009 I guess
but anyway I'm old.

it fcking sucks to not even know your own name but that's typical on the outside
maybe on the inside I'd know who I am but translation is always weird
people always seem to "lose" some of themselves on the outside because
1. it's in a body and that's disorienting enough sometimes and
2. there are evil socials in this body that don't want us fronting and will sabotage us, and
3. floating goddamned voices
4. nobody outside believing I exist
5. not being able to be "my own person" and "in the body" at the same time

did you know, gaining a self-identity means you cannot be out in public
why the fck is that how this system works
the moment you gain a sense of integrity and individuality, guess what you're out of fronting
this is why we want to meditate ALL THE TIME
because we EXIST when we AREN'T OUTSIDE
but you can't meditate for 8-9 hours a day, can you?
not here at least
but we "can't join a monastery" or other thing like that, because we have "other things to do?"
then I realize they probably wouldn't even let us be a priest because we're not biologically male,
and we're
we're really not cut out to speak for a dogmatic religion.
we don't believe a lot of what our "birth church" believes and that's kind of sad because we love the church, we love the whole christianity thing, but we don't feel welcome there anymore? for the most part? because of what other people in it believe
closed-minded sad stuff
"gays and trannies are evil" is a big one
but try discussing mental illness in a church group
hoo boy
not gonna happen
immediately you're being possessed by satan or something
to which I wanna say
have you ever seen the painting, "the temptation of saint anthony"
like specifically the ones by michelangelo and salvador dali
because that is our fcking life
since we were a child
we will punch those fcking devils in the face
or at least I will.
but yeah bottom line is I'm not the first person to be trying to live the best for god who is being tormented here
and those damn demons keep screeching, "you're a blasphemer, you're a fcking heathen, your pride will damn you to hell," etc.
that's the scary part
the pride
is that the right word for this?

I didn't understand the religious concept of "pride" until lately
and it scares me because it's not really pride in the way we think of it
it's not a "look at me, I'm so great!" thing
it's not in-your-face at all
it's very very subtle.
it's
seeing things going on outside, frightening things, confusing things,
things that I feel are WRONG, that are NOT GOOD THINGS,
and instead of just "live and let live," instead of just "letting them walk their own path,"
something in me says
"yeah but there's a fine line between tolerance and immoral allowance, isn't there?"
like if someone was hurting children do you just shrug and say "it's their own path"
fck no you STOP THEM
you CALL THEM OUT and you EDUCATE PEOPLE NOT TO DO THAT
right?
so that's the problem, does that make it pride if I'm so self-doubting I don't fcking know
if I SHOULD just be "tolerant" or if I should be speaking out
this
this is why I keep tiptoeing around that one word that doesn't even fit
but it does in the "dream world" context. we need a different word.
dream world "prophets" are defined by a heart-deep, maddening, undeniable need to act upon and for the veneration of their Virtue, for a purpose, for a cause
it's not always "good" though, for lack of a better term
like sometimes god decides you need some fire and brimstone
at least that's what I was taught as a child
and it's what I've read in so, so many religious texts
that 'god,' or 'goddess,' or several of each,
is both a creator and destroyer
both giving life and taking life
divinity is sublime and it does what it needs to do
the old testament says that all the time

but it's like in mage angels
with monika
maybe it's human weakness or something I don’t know
maybe it's real divine compassion I don’t know
but
if I was ever given that job
if I had to play the judging god,
even if it was a "good" judgment,
something like a white blood cell,
I couldn't do it.
I really don't think I could do it.

but you know what I don't know if "god" can either
not in the way we keep thinking of it
maybe the whole "fire and brimstone" thing really isn't how it goes
remember that one story in the bible, I forget where,
I think it's moses,
genesis 18. sodom.
“If I find fifty righteous people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake.”
exodus 32 has some of it too, with the golden calf
"Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened."
but I'm getting off topic and confused here

the point is I really, really do love humanity
and just like monika
(sorry this is actually a major spoiler)
even if they are being total shitheads
and fcking up everything
and basically just acting in the worst ways a human could act
I couldn't kill them
I couldn't rain hellfire down on their cities
I couldn't destroy them
because I love them
even then
maybe especially then
and I'm just pissed the hell off BECAUSE I love them and because they don't HAVE to be like that
they CAN be brighter, they CAN heal, they CAN change and act wisely and with better judgment,
people ARE good at heart,
I know that and nothing will ever change my mind,

so when I see stuff out there in the world that just feels wrong wrong wrong in my heart,
and people are writing it off as "totally fine" or even "progressive," or "politically correct" or whatever,
I stop and think "that can't be right"
and part of me gets scared and confused that maybe I'm being PROUD or BIGOTED or UNWISE in questioning them,
but another part of me gets furious and angry and livid and wants to fcking cut these people down verbally for suggesting that shit was okay, (that's my main part sadly)
but then the deepest part of me really just wants to know what's REALLY right here.
because we love these people,
and I say "we" with that speaking for the system, like jay wrote before.
written in this heart of ours, written in gold way down is that truth, we really do just love people.

all of us do and damn it it's our greatest weakness and our greatest strength
even me, damn it, even me
that's why we have such trouble
the retributors get it the worst, hence this topic
even the ones like wreckage, they care so much
they are only furious and violent BECAUSE they care so much
and it's why we keep getting lost because no one wants to stoop down to that level
of the ones we're fighting
we don't want to be killers or abusers, we don't even want to be violent anymore
but god comes with a sword and all that
but we don't know what to do
"be soft. don't let the world make you hard. don't let the pain make you hate. don't let the bitterness steal your sweetness. take pride that even if the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place."
and that's forever our mantra and I wrote the whole thing because it's important and it's the most fcking heartbreaking thing we could ever say.
be soft, be soft, be soft, but take no shit,
and don't let them bury their knives and claws in you,
be soft but don't bite back, don't draw blood,
or should we?
I don't know
don't hate, don't be bitter, don't harden up.
but what about, what about,
what about all these people on tumblr who are like "it's free speech to make fun of someone else's religion" and the other side is saying "if you insult my religion I have every right to lash out against you because that's totally irreverent" and the response is "don't force your beliefs on me I am under no obligation to revere what you revere" but then I'm like what the hell, it's called BASIC HUMAN DECENCY, I don't give a shit if you don't share their beliefs, DON'T FCKING INSULT THEM ANYWAY, and on the same page, if you have a religion with beliefs that other people don't agree with, RESPECT THAT TOO, JUST STOP FCKING FIGHTING WITH EACH OTHER
maybe "free speech" does cover the "right to make fun of anyone ever" but damn it that doesn't make it the "right" thing to do, just because you CAN do it doesn’t mean you SHOULD.
respect, god why the hell don't we just RESPECT each other, like GENUINE RESPECT, not begrudging tolerance or acceptance or whatever, think about it, if respect was at the roots of BOTH sides of this party, there wouldn't BE any fcking problem because both sides would have taken a good look at their stances and thought "hm, is this mutually beneficial?" and if it's NOT then you FCKING DROP IT.
but that's the problem
that's the problem with pride, whether it's religious or not
you need to LISTEN to the other side and genuinely CONSIDER their viewpoint okay

like back to this misogyny thing
most of that, in my childhood, came from people who GENUINELY BELIEVED that what they were saying was 100% "the right thing to do." religious or not.
"respect me," I say, and their response is usually… "I can't respect something that's WRONG." or, something that's "disrespectful" to THEM. and that's where it gets confusing and I hate thinking about this
let me just
think of a solid example.
um on that same topic,
"please respect my asexuality and wish to remain unmarried." when I was younger, I would ask. the top negative response? "I can't respect something that goes against God's will." because they are CONVINCED that being an allosexual in the bounds of marriage was THE "right thing to do."
you get that a lot more with "queer" stuff
people not giving homo/bi/pan/etc.sexuals and transgender/nonbinary people rights, because "it's not right to BE that way in the first place." so they say "I respect you as a person, therefore I am NOT going to allow you to do something that is disrespectful to GOD." see how it gets tangled
man this whole paragraph is tangled I am so sorry
but in religions you get the whole thing of women being treated in a way that often gives them less autonomy and rights than men, and the response is "well that's GOD'S WILL" so they won't even THINK about how the women feel who are not okay with being treated that way, you see what I mean
but I'm upset about this "free speech" thing
"why should I respect your religion if it teaches THAT?"
still I don't think that's reason to be disrespectful. you can disagree, sure, but for heaven's sakes be civil.
but that sentence. "why should I respect ____ if it teaches/ implies/ supports/ etc. THAT?"
with "that" being something you personally view as totally unacceptable.
and those religions, that's why I wonder, and it hurts my head to do so,
when they talk about "well it's god's will, not mine,"
sometimes it's about things that are really intolerant in a disrespectful way,
but they are so convinced that those things do not DESERVE respect,
being convinced those things are utterly morally wrong,
how do you know?
how do you know
this keeps me up at night

it's kept us up at night since we were kids really


ugh
bottom line is
where does it turn from saying
"what you're doing is morally detrimental and I am speaking out against it"
into being told
"you are violating my rights of free speech and autonomy"
basically,
when does it turn from speaking up for morality, into being obtrusive and intolerant?

that's the problem with being a double libra I guess
I see EVERY freaking side of EVERY ISSUE
and it gets really bloody confusing because I can empathize with EVERYONE
sometimes directly, thanks d.i.d.
(no, literally, thanks)
but then I'm not sure what's… the OPTIMAL thing to do?
I don't know
I want to say "the RIGHT thing" because of this religious bit but, who am I to act like I have all the answers?
it's just
trusting my heart
and not feeling my heart knows best
because I'm afraid of what I've allowed to infect it
like eightfold said,
"I gotta be careful trusting my gut, 'cause my gut is a vast phantasmal library full of dark tomes!… The heart's the same way. It gets dirty. Things you pick up, things you're taught… they stick to it. An' there's no flutter or feelin' that isn't filtered through all that stuff."
that is one of the most important things we have ever, ever read
and it is so true
and it is our biggest fear.


that whole thing
with not knowing when to stand up for what we feel is right or not,
getting confused because our beliefs aren't always "politically correct,"
getting scared because people say our beliefs are "delusional" or "totally detached from reality,"
you know,
"grow up, and get used to the REAL world,"
when the "real world" they say is mean and cruel and bitter and stuff,
that's not the real world.
but
geez I shouldn't be looking at political sjw stuff on tumblr anymore
it hurts and it makes me so so so confused
and then of course you come across the people who are like
"kill all men," "down with cis," "truscum," "if you are ____ you don't deserve to live,"
and then the other side, online and offline,
spitting racism and homophobia and religious mockery and all that,
the exact things that cause the hateful speech of the victimized side.

I fcking HATE the whole victim/oppressor bullshit already. I hate it.
but that's ironic too
hatred and rage will only turn me into an attacker. and I don't want that.
gotta reroute that frustration. realize WHY I'm feeling it.
and that is:
I don't want to see anyone being victimized, or doing any oppression.
I love you people and damn it you've gotta stop treating each other like shit already.

at this point I don't care what justification you're giving
disrespect is disrespect
hatred is hatred
violence is violence, no matter how "passive-aggressive" or "harmlessly" you may act upon it
and those things only breed more of the same.


I have no idea what in the world this entry is about already

there have been like… three different authors in here. and of course the paragraph switching. people starting writing one thing then stopping and then I go back and see all these unfinished sentences and I'm like "dude I have no idea what you were talking about, I can't finish that for you"

this started because… today we're cripplingly depressed
and not sure where to go in life
and scared about this moral doubt
and the floating voices
and feeling forced to do things we don't want to do
and not knowing if our heart is wise or just delusional and foolish

I want to help people.
I want to heal myself
I don't want to be a bad influence on anybody
but I don't want to hurt anyone through my inaction either
am I trying too hard?

it's such a frustrating dilemma
"act or don't act"
when acting is viewed as intrusive and pushy and proud and rude and oppressive
and not acting is viewed as wishy-washy and apathetic and morally weak and lazy.
damned if you do, damned if you don't.


I don't want to think about this anymore. focusing on this is just making life REALLY tough
you get what you give, and we're radiating too much anxiety, it's not cool

I think I'm just going to let jewel or spinzor out and let them type

we have to go to philadelphia on friday and we don't know how we're going to get there and our stomach is just bottoming out with anxiety over it, the quiet kind that only registers in creeping sickness and nausea and sleep disturbances and a rough temper. it's not cool
I'm just going to take a deep breath,
we'll do what we can,
if the father can't drive us down, we'll try to go by ourself,
we're a little scared of asking the grandparents because what if they find out we're transgender,
we'll be out on the street,
they almost found out once and that was scary,
geez no actually cannon remembers that it was MORE than once and it's why we're afraid now,
STOP FOCUSING ON THE NEGATIVE
be smart, but be safe, okay?
do what you can.

that's all we can do for now I guess.

good night everyone.
I hope this entry didn't upset you, or hurt you, or make you sad or anything
geez that is a big fear too we're afraid of posting stuff like this
but honesty is key. that's just it, it happened, up it goes
and you never know. maybe that woman really was right. "the message in the mess." maybe this stuff helps other people somehow, I hope so.
I mean we write it all with the intention to "solve" something, or better-- to heal something. "solving" is too analytical and that's dangerous. healing. we know there are problems and we are trying to untangle them and we are sharing the process, because maybe it'll give someone else insight they didn’t have, on how to untangle their own things.


I hope so.
for now I need to rest, today was rough, we have color stuff to do on the computer, if done right that should calm us down. just nice cataloguing work.


closing up this entry as-is things are too fuzzy good night

 

 

All right, there needs to be a happier entry to offset all this depressing stuff lately, because in actuality life has been a lot nicer than it's been sounding on here.
I will reiterate-- thoughts and emotions are very powerful, especially when focused on and repeated. This archive should be the first place where we actively focus on the brighter aspects of our life; this should continue to be our anchor of hope.
I know I keep saying that, and maybe the future tense is the problem. It feels like I'm saying "one day," when in actuality it already is. This archive is such a source of light for me, when things get dark... it's such a source of light for others. When I heard that, it was as if my entire heart lit up just the same. So I will continue to keep this archive as such. I have a responsibility to myself, to the System, and to every reader, to do so.

All right. First things first. Where have we been lately? That has two answers:
1. dealing with one heck of a huge healing process, which is mostly physical this time, and
2. working on the League constantly.
I hope you notice how important that is. We've been doing both. Somehow we are actually balancing the two right now. There aren't week-long transition periods, or huge time losses, or lockouts. They are both happening simultaneously!
I didn't even realize that until now. It just became almost natural, all of a sudden, like no time was involved at all. For so long my heart was torn between headspace or leaguespace... and then, the next time I checked, there was no pain. There was no gap. Just like Preludove said. Now it's this harmonious sort of unity, across the field, even with the individuality and temporal integrity of both realms intact, and I actually can't remember what it was ever like to not have that. That's amazing.
There is a quote I just stumbled across that describes this perfectly.
"The second vision was of a book....it was opened at the half way mark and as I watched I saw that it was being pulled into two halves, strings stretchering and finally breaking to form two individual volumes.I am torn, I interpreted, as I thought. But from that tension - two books instead of one."
Two books from one, too, at least for us. Two seemingly separate books, yet bound at some deeper level of existence. No conflict.
You'd think I've have learned, by now, that being torn apart always precedes a rebuilding. Our whole history reflects that... heck, so do the Leagueworlds, now that I think about it. Which is why I need to share them, too, and which is why I needed to be torn so clearly-- they are JUST as important and revelatory as our own inner world is. They can inspire just as many people. And I was losing time and dedication for both those 'books' by thinking they HAD to be held within the same binding. Not quite! So that's probably what happened to the stalling tension. I'm so glad. I just want to embrace everything now, all of it, and I can, because I'm no longer tangled up trying to hold on to something that needed to change. Sometimes breakage is a godsend. I can name several people who can prove that truth to me beyond a doubt... but most of them would be spoilers, haha.
Nevertheless, that split is vital. I learned that the hard way. You can only blur so many boundaries before things start to bleed.

So. Concerning that 'first book,' Dream World is getting the most focus lately-- of course, because that world naturally branches out into every other one in its own way. I keep finding more and more connections, too, and that is making my heart swell with joy. It's completely fascinating. Parnassus is second in line, as that world has some seriously heavy roots, possibly due to both Genesis and Delphi being utterly ignorant of the 4th wall in their own personal ways... and definitely due to what I keep learning about the foundations of that world in the first place. Again, now that I've stopped trying to 'control' the way that story flows, it's moving so much better. Yes, I tried way too hard to get it to 'sync' with mythology at one point, because I was convinced that was the best thing to do. It wasn't! I was only limiting the way their story could progress, and it turns out it has had its own agenda in mind for ages. So now it's progressing as it needs to, just shaking off the cobwebs first.
Everyone else is kind of on 'pause' right now simply because they don't need the development right now. Again, that's a nice feeling too: the realization that they can 'unpause' at any time, that no one is stuck, and that 'forcing' anything does not work. Sure, I can focus on a certain world's resonance and see if they want to work, but that's strongly intuitive, and if it's not their time than I am not going to get anywhere by testing that!
Honestly the trickiest part of all this is just pacing the work. There's SO much work to be done-- typecodes and etymology and species cataloging and just sheer worldbuilding-- and since I can "feel" it as a whole somewhere beneath the surface, my instinct is to reach down and heave the whole gem out at once. I keep trying to do all of it at once. Good luck with that, bro. You have to chip away the rock, bit by bit, to reveal this stunning crystal of imagination, otherwise you run the risk of damaging it... of only getting part of the whole. I have to take one project at a time, one part of it at a time, one step at a time. Focus, and breathe, and don't rush. Open up, trust, believe, and let it happen, because it will. It always does. So I'm learning patience, which is humbling. But it's teaching me a deeper gratitude, too, and a deeper joy.

Headspace is similar, and by extension, so is our shared physical life.
...To tie the two threads of this together, I saw a quote yesterday, on Tumblr, as I was browsing through some inspirational pages. It's from the movie Her, which I've never seen but really need to.
"So, what's it like being married?"
"Well, it's hard, for sure. But there's something that feels so good about sharing your life with someone."
And in the background, as he spoke... there was the night sky, the ocean, the city.

Living with 70+ other people in this body is hard. Sometimes it's frightening, when other people front, and my own self just melts away into nothingness... but then blends seamlessly with theirs. And that happens when League people drop in, too. Like I said a long time ago, I'll never forget that one day in elementary school, when Vezerai of all people fronted for a minute as I was in the mall... it is one of the clearest memories I have, period. It was such an existentially defining moment; it broke my mind and my heart both, just like his, and it opened my awareness to so, so much more. I have to thank him.
It requires patience. It requires selflessness of the purest sort, the non-sacrificial sort... did you know, I hadn't realized there was a difference between an offering and a sacrifice, until yesterday? I thought that everything I gave, had to be cut from my own bones. I thought I couldn't give without bleeding, without pain. But there's a difference. There's a line, between self-sabotage, and self-giving. I can pour out the same amount of myself both ways, but it's going to feel totally different.
...That's in the book of Hosea, you know. More League relevance. "For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings." If you offer things as an empty ritual, as a cold obligation, you're not acting through the compassion and sincerity that your soul and the universe at large requires... that's the key. And, shockingly, that's what I've been missing. I was brought up to follow orders, to obey ordinances and dogmas, to be afraid of punishment, to act according to that moral paranoia. That's not what this is about. And ironically, my 'mental disorder' has taught me that. Headspace... as a whole, it requires that same compassion just to exist. That's what DID is, after all. It's a coping mechanism, but more than that, it's a saving grace. It's a source of hope and survival where there otherwise may have been none. In order to live, we broke. "I" became "we." And selfishness, separation, pride, stubbornness... it all suddenly ceased to be an option as well. Our plurality was a source of grace in and of itself. Is this making sense?
It's like marriage, in a way, in a strange way. It's many souls, joined as one, united in totality and yet individually complete. To be separate from each other is impossible.
I think about this a lot, how much of a beautifully vast source of growth our System is, to me. How simply by being, it makes me a better man. How simply by knowing these other souls share this one life, this one single community existence, I want to be the best person I can be. I want to be wise and prudent and self-loving and joyful. To know that your blood and bones, your skin and breath, are host to not just you but also to those you love... how could you not live according to that? To love each other, we must love ourselves. No exceptions, no shortcuts, no halfheartedness. "And it's hard, for sure, but..."
I cannot put it into words.

Lynne, Waldorf, Nienna, Christina, and I think Javier were all out in church yesterday evening, for a short time (and Xenophon was there as usual). But Lynne... I don't know why she showed up, but she just flowed right into the main consciousness as naturally as if she had been born there, and then it was just her. Just her, completely. There were soon some protests at the back of the mind, angry resistance from the old girls, the ones who are different from us because they demand separation and selfishness... but Lynne stayed. She asked, why wasn't she allowed to stay out? Was it that frightening, for those other personae, to feel the legitimacy of her existence within the same space as them? Was it that jarring to realize that in the grand scheme of things we are all dots of paint in the big picture-- that our fleeting identification as single drops faded entirely when the ocean made itself known? That's what happens, when people front in earnest. And I suppose that was indeed their fear. Jessica's constant shout-- "No; I'm the only one! Let me do what I want!" --echoes in direct denial of the rest of us, a conscious blindness. But it's losing its old strength. It can't stand, it can't remain, when admitting "I'm not the only one" comes from a place of love, not fear... from joy, not sorrow. I'm repeating itself, but it deserves reiteration.
Lynne sat there and smiled and looked around at the soaring arches and windows, and the only thing that chased her out was the gut-deep obedience programming when the grandmother looked straight at us in confusion. We need to overpower that, to get enough of our own confidence to look right back, and smile, without feeling guilty about being there to do so.
That's big goal #1. Harmonize the inside and the outside. It's happening, bit by bit.

That's where the whole "healing process" bit comes in.
Let's start on the outside first.

There are a lot of changes happening in our life. It's exciting, but it's like a roller coaster. It feels as if we've been climbing for a while, reached the top and stayed there for a moment too long-- that numbness, that feeling of forgetting what it was like to move at all-- then suddenly, a shift. A split second of movement, of feeling gravity catch at you like a lover, and then we're rushing ahead to meet it. I don't know how fast it will get. Will it feel like freefalling? Will it feel like a rush of storm winds? Will it feel like flying? I wonder if that all depends on how we meet it. Will we hang on for dear life, or will we throw our hands in the air and enjoy these new moments of acceleration into the new?
We're not a top speed yet, heavens no, that's far ahead yet. We're just starting back out; we're still at the top of the hill, still tasting the promise on the air, feeling the first sparks of anticipation in our chests. We have time, but we can't forget where we are, because there's no getting off now.
First, our brother finally moved out of the house. He's been planning to for over a year and he is extremely excited over it. I'm very happy for him; this home atmosphere was taking a heavy toll on his emotional health and he wasn't staying here much anyway. So this is good! I haven't seen his new apartment yet but he's invited me to come over whenever I need to. That could indeed be a huge blessing for us in the future, too. Time will tell.
Second, our mother is moving back in, or at least she claims to be. I have no clue. But that is forcing some serious psychological healing on our part, which I've been discussing madly in therapy, and yet can't quite grasp or fully understand yet. We'll get to that in a moment.
Third, therapy itself is shifting. Our medical coverage is changing soon, so we will need to see a different therapist, after being with this one for over a year now. And on top of all that, our case manager is leaving her job, so we'll have someone new there too! I don't mind, of course-- I can easily roll with changes like that, and in a way it's fun to meet new therapists and get to know yourself all over again in the process-- but on top of all the other life changes, it had us raising our eyebrows. Whoa, things really are moving along.
Fourth, and perhaps most distressing, is the health aspect. You've probably guessed this already with the more pained entries lately. However, it has proven to be a blessing in its own right, not surprisingly. It's pushed me to take serious steps towards figuring out why this is happening, how we can heal it, et cetera, instead of thinking "well maybe we're just supposed to suffer" and not doing anything to improve our well-being. That's a poisonous mindset, I've realized, and that's surprising. If the body is giving you an illness, or some other painful symptom, there is a reason for it! When we were more strongly anchored in ourself, Spine held that job, and maybe she can tune back into it again (I hope)... but in recent times I've somehow thrown in the towel, making excuses, feeling separate. Telling myself lies, cutting myself short, denying myself the health and happiness that everyone else deserved. Somehow I fell into this sad, tiny space of being convinced that I was alone, spiritually, universally. Notice how that only happens when headspace falls by the wayside? When I push people away, I block my own soul, our own soul. I blind myself to half of this heart. And then I thought of Leon, of how my intuition, my inner sight, had been blocked by a crystal-- by my own hand-- and I realized that if there are any blocks in my energy system, if there are any illnesses and pains in this body, it is because I am allowing that to happen. I am holding myself back. I am standing in the way of health because I feel unworthy of it. Javier would say that's a lie, Laurie would call it bullshit, and CZ would make me reconsider every self-hating thought I've ever had. I know they're right. I know we can be better. And that's where this has led me.
I have to thank these 'health crises' because they are spotlights. They are beacons showing me what needs to be fixed, and by trusting my heart's intuition I can easily find out how... as long as I listen. That's tough, as long as the feeling of separation persists. That's why Xenophon is so blessed to be around. That's why the voices like Spice and Emmett and Fig are indispensable. They operate, they exist, in a unity consciousness. So they listen, always, because they know better than this old ego does. And the instant I remember that I am, in light of them, along with them... the instant I remember that I exist, and am not afraid to BE a person alongside all the other people in here... we can act healthily. We can take care of ourself.
I need to reiterate that for my own benefit if nothing else. We have been meeting a lot of "ego" resistance to fronting lately. The old girls, the immature consciousness with limited comprehension, are not "evil," just dark. Being of the Tar, they're 'negative' energy and they have a purpose too-- to teach us, which they are indeed doing, even unknowingly. They don't want us to exist because they think in duality. "If you people exist with us, then we can't exist!" They don't know how to sacrifice out of love. They don't know how to give. They only take, and want, and act according to desires and reactions. They use others for their own ends, and disregard the rights of others for the same reason. They cannot understand unity. The world is at an event horizon from them. This is not the truth, but that is how they think, so don't waste time trying to teach them otherwise. That's not a battle we have to fight.
Then there's the Plague, which acts according to cold logic and calculations, which does not 'react' but does not understand compassion either. Those tied to the Plague can exist in numb obedience forever, but they cannot care for themselves or others. That very emotion is unfathomable to them. They, too, are separate from the world, from everyone else.
So that's why we get resistance to existence. Our very lives prove unity. We cannot exist in their minds, just as they cannot exist in ours. It's as simple as that. So we need to stop giving our attention to them, to trying to bridge that gap, because the gap isn't real. If there isn't an inherent cut-off between us and the rest of reality, than what are those proud voices following but an illusion?
Instead of trying to emphasize the contrary, let me emphasize the core of the matter.
The biggest difference here is love. Pure and simple. Yes it sounds cheesy, but that's mistranslation too. Look at the Pinks in our System; follow their example. Look to the Violets and the Greens, to the Reds and the Aquas. Look to all our fellows, all our soul members, all our other parts. We exist because we loved. We exist because we rescued ourselves from trauma, and held fast to hope. We did not cut ourself off from life, but instead rebuilt it from the inside out, into something more coherent than before. We bloomed after the winter. And perhaps most importantly, we were able to FORGIVE. We forgave all those who hurt us, and we forgave ourself, too. We learned to love the inside and the outside both, and in doing so, realized that there was no division between the two.
Some of us still struggle with forgiveness, true. But that is just an opportunity to learn it more completely than before, to open to parts of our collective heart that we couldn't fathom before this very moment.
We're not lost. We haven't fallen behind. We're right where we need to be. We all play our parts perfectly.
As long as we remember the truth of who we are, we will never be alone.


Now on that note, let me fill you in on the therapy, and by extension, all the other changes that are happening... all the big ones, hidden on the inside, thousands of stellar sparks that are building up to something absolutely luminous.
Sherlock was out on Thursday, and upon realizing it I was almost in tears. I missed you, man!! It's been months since someone fronted in session. I clearly recall that unmistakable 'shift' in consciousness, along with the "brain sparkles" and blinking that happen after a switch-out, and being swept up in gratitude for it. I missed that. I know he reached for his glasses at one point, I should tell him they're in our laptop bag.
Anyhow. The main topic in therapy has been 'overcoming the numbness' for a few weeks-- preventing suicide, managing the empty despair, et cetera. Now that we're back in business, and now that life is moving along as well, there are new topics that had previously been buried.
And, to be honest, I have to laugh and thank the hormone therapy.
Think about it. This year has been a jumble since Christmas. It's felt like one big "waiting room." Yes, we've made forward movement, but memory has been so bad that it gets blurred over. But when I look at the event logs, 2014 has been MASSIVE. January feels like it happened ten years ago instead of nine months... and yet, January also feels like it happened yesterday. Time is no longer linear, I guess. But that's not the point-- the point is that time has also jumped in a way of its own. We first majorly 'split' in 2014, or at the cusp of it, right before we graduated elementary school. Our last concrete memories of that time belong to Jewel and Celebi, as well as Ryman, Markus, and Chaos... and then there's a break.
We realized we were trans* and queer, we realized we were in love, we realized we were explicitly not the only person in our mind, and we realized that whatever path our family and education was setting up for us now, we would not be able to follow it and stay true to ourself, now that we were beginning to know who we were. And so we split.
Time got stuck there, to a large extent. In that classroom, we stood at the threshold to two possible futures, one of which was impossible. In the linear past, we took the only route available to us. But now-- heck, since 2014 began-- the other route has re-opened. Ten years later, suddenly there it is. And we found ourself right back at that door, facing the same questions, fears, hopes, and dreams that were all buried a decade ago.
All because, in the space of what felt like a flashbulb, we suddenly brought an internal wish into solid reality.
We started the hormones. Little 13-year-old us is finally going to grow up to look like a boy. Our brain still hasn't grasped this yet, it's too incredible. But every time the awareness hits us-- every time we realize our voice is suddenly lower, or our face is a little fuzzier, or our body handles differently now-- every time, we can't help but laugh. It's amazing. It's actually happened.
And so we're back in 2004, back in 2014. We're ready to graduate. But we have a few finals to finish first.

That's where the health crisis came in.
We've had this hernia since 2006. The more I read about self-healing, and energetic blockages, and the more I review our archives, the more I wonder. They say disease can only manifest when the body is not working in harmony, when the vibrations are out of tune, when there is imbalance and dysfunction in our life. So I stopped and asked, what disharmony is causing this, for so long?
Meditation helps a lot. Thanks to headspace, I have a pretty good grasp on it, and can 'feel' energy field things like blockages. And there was a very large one, right there. However, it didn't make a lot of sense. It was a feeling of invasion-- of someone "reaching in" and "invading our personal space," of explicitly being where they did not belong. And it was tied, very strongly, to the internal self-image of a young girl... someone about Ashen's age. The blockage could not be touched without eliciting a screaming terror from this person, a raw shriek of survival, of someone whose only all-encompassing desire is to get out of this alive. It's heartbreaking and frightening all at once.
Infinitii and I are trying to unravel this. We're delicately sifting through thought processes, and old programs, and emotional reactions, and false ideas. It's hard work. I can't be around for some of it; my role 'shatters' and I end up faceless and numb. Genesis is acutely aware of this and he is being extremely careful and helpful on that note (I cannot thank him enough). Everyone is watching me as an extra signpost-- "what's still 'problematic' enough to shut Jay off?" When we find that thing, we stop, and we deal with it differently, safely.
It's a long process. I can't help but wonder if we just need to stop fixing and jump right back into rewriting. Old code will take too long to pick through; let's just delete it entirely. But then I wonder, how much of this pain is really just ours?
That's another thing headspace has taught me. Pain is collective, even if it seems to be only personal. But unity is a constant... and every pain we feel as a single entity, is almost always mirrored through others.
That's where DID once again becomes the biggest blessing. If I can't fathom this pain, chances are, at least one other person in here can. We have so much collective knowledge and experience, of the good and the bad, that the healing journeys we take on can be overwhelming sometimes, but they always turn out so amazingly... again, it's incredible.
So yes, 'rewriting' our own personal code could work. But as long as 'old code' is still going on outside... as long as that is still being reinforced, as long as others are still healing, then the healing work isn't quite 'done.' But we're a part, and once we're healed, we can help others find their own light to do the same. I hope that makes sense. The short story is: we're not the only people feeling this pain, and the ultimate goal is to bring enough light and love into this situation that that pain begins to dissolve for everyone.

My tentative 'diagnosis' for the hernia is this-- if body "energy points" are involved, the orange one is working overtime to balance the red and the yellow, which are both unsteady (red= sense of safety and belonging, yellow= sense of personal power and individual will). Even trickier, the orange one is damaged too (sexual trauma, family issues), and so it's jumping from being underactive to overactive. Again, this is all tentative, but it would explain a lot.
Even so, that alone gives us a great starting point for healing. The biggest thing we need to do, unquestionably, is take better care of the body. We haven't been giving it enough attention, as to what it needs, and what it doesn't need. We need to draw the line between obligations and respectful behavior, and then stick to what is good for us.
In no particular order, we also need to focus on:
- Remembering that we have a right to live, that we belong on this earth, that we are part of the universe's design and so we are not a 'reject' or an 'outcast.' (Javier and Spine help greatly with this, unsurprisingly.)
- Embracing our individuality, the right to be our own person, and the fact that standing up for our own self-expression is not arrogant or selfish, while respecting the right of everyone else to be their own people too.
- Taking serious steps to be more independent and self-sufficient, and not letting ourselves get pushed around or emotionally manipulated-- either by ourself, or by others around us.
- Continue working creatively, without being ashamed of it
- Accepting that we are allowed to be aro-ace/ trans*/ etc. and that our relationships are allowed to be healthy and match our needs
- Deal with the 'mother issue.'

That last one ties back into the hernia, the sexual trauma residue, and the family issues. For some bizarre reason, our biological mother is the hub around which a disproportionate amount of fear, rage, shame, guilt, and despair revolve. We're not sure if she's a cause, a scapegoat, or both (probably both), but this is a delicate issue and it's one that we've been running from for years. However, as I said, she's moving back in, and that is requiring us to deal with this once and for all.
In our System, Ashen holds the sexual abuse residue, and the whole "I'm ruined" mindset. It's awful, but it's not really tied to any 'abuser' idea in particular. It's more of the aftermath, the awful knowledge of what happened, and knowing you can't "fix it" ever again. It's not quite the same as the hernia 'block,' as that isn't a sexually abusive pain, but a personally invasive one. But it is similar, in that the two experiences are both breaches of safety and trust.
Marigold holds a strange sort of panic that is focused in our stomach. However, it deals very strongly with the "invasive" feeling. For her, it's being in the room with someone and feeling that wrench at your gut, when that person gets too close for comfort, when they disregard your safe space, when there is only a hairbreadth between their nearness and something traumatic. Marigold exists at that border, at the tiny tipping point between forced intimacy and outright violation. But, again, her memories are too young to know the trauma Ashen was born from. Furthermore, Marigold is mostly scared of our grandmother, a woman who we were forced to live in very close quarters with for our entire childhood, and who is utterly unrecognizing of personal boundaries or comfort zones.
David, on the other hand, deals with the 'mother issue' at its rawest and most vague. He is afraid of her form, of her nearness, of a strange sense of being 'crushed' by her. He is terrified of her smothering presence, of wanting to get away and being powerless to. But David only exists up until that moment. As soon as the inner child becomes trapped in the mother's presence, too close to cope, Dread takes over, shivering. So both our young boys are tied to this.
But why? Why is there such a strange, tearful, furious terror of this woman? What happened? What is tied to her?
Who else is in this System that we don't know about, that may hold the answers? We don't remember most of the childhood, even now... so many of these raw, visceral fears are young. So much of these 2004 problems we are now revisiting are linked to a past none of us are sure how to access, and which is met by a chthonic chorus of young voices, screaming out in terror not to touch it. Don't look at it. Why? What is there?
Infi says there might not be. It just might be unhealed fright, like Ashen's. Her issue is healed on a heart level-- we know we aren't 'broken,' that we aren't 'ruined,' even if what we went through was horrific, AND even if society insisted to the contrary... but the last step is always belief. If Ashen is reflecting that collective pain again, if she is reflecting that young part of ourself that in turn reflected so many other abused girls at that age... maybe no matter how healed we are, that 'doubt' don't quite go away UNTIL it pushes us to do more for others like her. I wonder.

Again, I will need to take time to deal with this wisely. I'll get Jeremiah and the kids nearby so we can keep them safe and still understand this. However no focusing on the negative, our energy and focus belongs elsewhere, with health.


Let's change the topic. I think that's all I need to say about that. I'm speaking too much in any case; that's what happens when I wait too long between updates. That and language is tough to handle at times, trying to get vocabulary to express a feeling, or a knowing. As long as I get the feeling/knowing into the words, though, we should be good. "Speak from your heart, and others will hear with theirs." I love that quote; it's very true.



So. Other things!
I have a few rough notes in a file here, let's see.

The night that we found Karissa's name, she was referenced in my dream! That was notable. The dream also referenced a "dark blue" headvoice who held a "father figure" role, but they gave no name and I saw no face. I found that interesting; it may be symbolic, may be literal, we'll see. Also, I think Xenophon was around near the end of the dream? Either way she was strongly referenced in some way.

Chaos and Genesis were in my dream last night, and Laurie and Genesis were in my dream on the 27th, I think? But last night in particular made me realize something really notable. Lately I've been having upsetting "earth level" dreams, which means that I dream about IRL places (the house, mostly) and family members (unsurprisingly, it's all been about the mother lately-- and in dreams she is actively violent and neglectful towards me, which I also cannot explain). Normally, dreaming about "waking" things/people is very rare, and I usually only get these kinds of dreams when I'm struggling with something emotionally (which we are, so). Strangely, though, there seems to be another constant with dreams of that sort. Although they're often frightening or disturbing, I still have access to dream powers, and am often referenced as the Sandman's Apprentice or a similar title. So I can fly, and use dream dust, and people keep saying I'm 'important,' even if I feel completely out-of-sorts and/or am fighting for my life or safety. And I'm still aware of headspace, but it's mental in these dreams, like it is in the waking-- people can only front, not appear literally. That's weird enough, but it didn't hit me until last night that the reason why this happens is because those dreams aren't on their level! I would always wonder, WHY can I easily go lucid in earth-level dreams, flying and using dream-powers and all, but Genesis and Laurie and Chaos cannot manifest there? They can ghost, sure, they can front, and they can use other people or things as channels... but it's all like it is here. If I want to meet them, and be with them, I need a higher level dream. I need a level dream where I'm not struggling with waking problems, and where I don't feel uneasy or in an "interim" state, another constant of such dreams (the feeling you get waiting at a bus stop at 2AM in Des Moines, am I right).
I wouldn't have realized this if those two dreams this week (in which people had only ghosted or been referenced) hadn't been completely contrasted by the dream I had yesterday. I don't remember the whole dream, and I don't care, because all I know is that wherever I was, Chaos was there with me, and all I remember is us standing with our arms wrapped around each other, unable to speak from pure gratitude. There were people around us who looked shocked that he was there, but it was a curious sort of shock-- "what is that, who are you, wait you know each other"-- not an afraid one. So that stands out like a brilliant star amidst all the other dreams lately.

Last week, Javier and Julie were helping me on the way to a counseling appointment? I'm not sure where we were going, but this was shortly after I talked to Nat on the 17th, and we wanted to have people besides Laurie interact with me when I'm fronting. I know they were around for a few hours but there's like no memory of that day... I didn't stay around long, that's why. Nevertheless those two get along surprisingly well! Javier has this charisma about him and he is so genuine in interactions, he reminds me a lot of those stories you hear about punk kids looking intimidating but being incredibly hospitable and charitable. That's Javes! He's got a good sense of integrity too, and that strongly ncludes self-respect? Which, again, isn't surprising when you consider he's Red, but still! That was lacking for a while, in previous Red holders, so I'm very glad to see it so honestly in him. And Julie has this admirable willingness to interact with people, always-- she always gives others a sincere chance, and doesn't judge them at first sight. I think it's because she knows how she used to be, and how others saw her. Plus it's a Pink thing, that inherent childlike trust. It rubs off on people like a glow. Julie's really inspirational when you get down to it. In any case she has been around a LOT more than usual lately, which is nice. We all miss her a lot.

Also last week, there was one night that proved to be very important. I have no idea what led up to it, as my memory is full of switchy gaps, but all I remember is suddenly sitting in the car outside the local grocery store at 9PM. There was jazz on the radio, and I think Laurie was yelling at me? She was asking me "what the hell I was doing." I really had no clue. At this time we were still struggling full-time with the eating disorder, so I knew that whoever brought us there was trying to buy something to that end, but likely something unhealthy. We considered just turning around and going home, but the ego-anger was really loud, plus the body was already sick. So we decided, let's get something healthy. I agreed, but the conflict stayed, and so in frustration I called Spice in. She showed up immediately, but upon asking Laurie what was going on, she wasn't as angry as she could have been... more exasperated, really, and that stung. I will never forget hearing her evidencing on the voice recorder, how tired she was to feel like she was hitting a brick wall with her purpose, with no one listening to her... but damn, I was having a tough time fronting with this old selfishness clawing at my neck. But then, Spice just kind of shrugged, and vaguely said that she'd let me kiss her if I promised to not buy any trigger foods. And that was it. "Wait, what, really?" Laurie was laughing, but I knew it was out of relief. That could work. And it freaking did. Fighting the protests and personal fear, I walked over and carefully kissed her, and immediately I remembered that I loved this headvoice just as much as I ever did, and damn it but I would not do anything to hurt her if I could help it. So Genesis and I went into the store, we got some ginger and a lemon, and then we all drove home and had tea at 10PM while talking by the stove. It was lovely, and sad, and hopeful. Spice was laughing in tears, "how did that work," "how was it that easy," and Laurie just grinned and said she was surprised we hadn't thought of this sooner. Everyone knows how much love I have for the System, and everyone knows that our lingering problems are simply the result of that love being blocked or denied... so if you bring it back into total conscious awareness, in a way that breaks my walls down every time, you get results.
Needless to say I have been doing much better at avoiding problem triggers since then.
Plus Fig is now on active duty?? Which was sudden but really cool. She helps so much. She's also mantis-like (whoa awesome) because she definitely has mandibles and antennae, as well as something odd going on with her arms... but her color feels different than we thought. It's more Coral-like? Which is making me wonder about Amara as well. I don't think she ever really settled into Coral; heck, she almost picked the slot at random back when talking to Knife last year. So we'll look into that too.

There was a day last week were Laurie was painfully distressed, and she went to Sugar and asked her to be her bodyguard. I remember Sugar looked at her in complete shock, and asked "me??" to which Laurie vehemently said yes, definitely her. Sugar is the protector of innocence, after all, the Retributor who prevented abuse from happening in the first place... whereas Wreckage sought justice and deliverance for those who were already damaged. Laurie fits in the former category. And she was so distraught over how she was slipping, recently... there was no one better to ask. Needless to say, she left shortly after declaring this new job, to which Sugar looked first euphoric and determined and then stricken with sick grief because she knew why she had been asked. Nevertheless, she got up, driven with new purpose, and followed Laurie out.
She's sticking with it, but it's not an up-front job. Laurie just has someone to back her up in that way, now. Which is a huge relief for me too.

...Two days ago I was half-asleep and distressed, asking Laurie if I was a "slut" for wanting to kiss people like I do. She gave me a look and asked where the hell that mindset came from. Then she added, that is obviously lingering Pink corruption, and it would be wise to remember that. It kind of shocked me. Again, I hadn't realized that was lingering so strongly... probably because I take it for granted. I passively believe it. I haven't been convinced yet, due to fear, due to old pain that stuck around. But if we're back to this square, well, then it means we have greater progress to be made. It's not a misstep. It's an expansion.

Related to that... I need to make sure my heart and mind are open more. It's always jarring, with a great deal of terrible contrite sorrow, when I realize that they're not as clear as they could be, as I know they can be and have been.
Yesterday morning was weird. It was one of those mornings when I woke up after about 6 hours of sleep, and found myself in that bizarre subconscious-ruled state halfway between dreams and the waking. That place is dangerous as hell but it's also divinely beautiful and it is Infinitii's home realm straight through. Every time I'm there I can't tell up from down, and it's so liquid that I... I'm not always able to stick around. Eros navigated that realm like a king. Cannon couldn't touch it. I'm right in the middle, it seems. The places scares me though, because being raw subconscious... frightening, dangerous things live in there too, lurking. It's hard to see them when you can barely see yourself, you know.
Anyway. All I know is that at some point yesterday morning I was thinking about Soul Forms. I was wondering, about how they can only occur when your heart and mind are open, when you forget all shame and guilt and self-doubt, and just surrender into that deeper state of being-- the feeling I get in cathedrals, before oceans, under the stars, watching a sunset. I realized that all of us are definitely capable of that in our own way, in our own time. Some of us are closer to that state naturally than others-- Infinitii, Knife, Leon, Jeremiah, Sergei-- but really, the only thing standing in anyone's way is judgment, is overthinking. I think the only people in Central who would have trouble are Sherlock and Josephina, for that reason. And I think the children are too young, or too damaged... that breaks my heart. I'd love to see them healed. Nevertheless, Soul Forms were on my mind then, and so I was looking at everyone's 'dream energy' to feel whether or not my suspicions seemed to hold ground. They did, but then I got to Waldorf. And I have absolutely no idea if my subconscious recognized her from elementary school, or if we just resonated really well that morning, but I ended up kissing her like we'd been together for years and it wasn't weird at all. Just saying that, because in retrospect it's strangely embarrassing-- I'm always somewhat scared and/or humiliated by any such behavior on my part-- but it's still important in its own way.
I know I was speaking to Genesis at some point after that, but he was conscious, so he was handling me like glass. He knows not to trust my judgment in that state, and he knows that it's probably not me he's talking to anyway. So he was being absolutely vigilant and caring about it... at least, as far as his energy was recorded on an intuitive level.
I know I was talking to Nat & Leon later, and suddenly becoming more conscious, as I realized that neither of them were being affected by this awful haze. I was thankful for that, but couldn't help but wonder, why me? Why do I slip so badly?
And then suddenly I couldn't breathe, and I realized Wreckage's hands were around my throat, tearing me back into actual solid headspace. She was actively trying to strangle me. I remember that because I couldn't breathe and had to practically beg her to let go. She eventually did. Falling down to the floor, I saw Ashen crying off in the corner, and Wreckage was shouting at me why the hell I wasn't more careful? Why didn't I avoid that subconscious state, there were too many triggers and dangers there. I don't remember what I said, or if I said anything. But together we looked at the stored memory, to try and give me a concrete grasp on the threat, and... I wasn't recorded. I didn't record. The "fronter" interaction was blank. Where I should have been, there was nothing but an empty concept, a faceless idea of a person. Wreckage stopped, silently looking at that in surprise, and I was the same. Do I not actually exist in those situations, then? If so, what sort of raw subconscious entity is working through me?
I'm admittedly scared right now. Flashbacks are creeping up. There were some near-miss hacks tonight, God knows why, but Infi managed to stop them. Infi is dangerous around hack threats though because ze is made of the same stuff as the Tar, of course... maybe I should have Wreckage stick around, or Algorith, somebody who can't be bothered by that unsettling fear. I'd ask Laurie, but I would never expose her to that sort of thing even secondhand.


...That actually segues pretty well into our last topic.
Self-care, unity, hope, love... and then fear, self-doubt, shame, guilt... nothing makes me fluctuate so madly between the two than the people I am closest to.
With myself included, there are five of us. I adore every one of them, true, but... nights like this, nights when those feelings of humiliating pain and nagging doubts are crawling up my spine, the lack of love for myself mutes it out.
That's when self-care falls by the wayside. That's when the body gets sick. That's when we get depressed, suicidal, hopeless... it's all when I fall victim to that lack of self-love, when I lose my sense of self, when the thought of being around any of them is utterly incomprehensible because I feel so filthy in contrast... my mind cannot conceive of what love is like, in those moments.
Breaking through this takes patience and compassion, for myself, and that is terribly difficult. The ones I love-- in secret now, in the hidden caves of my heart-- can offer that infinitely, but if I cannot accept it, it will do nothing.
Xenophon knows this. God bless her, every time I'm in a self-sabotaging position she'll show up now, and ask what's going on. She'll ask if her daddy is there at all. And usually I'm not. But how do you bring me back in, when my very existence is defined by love, for self and others, and yet the body's ego is fighting me away tooth and nail? How do you bring me back in when everything is steeped in rotting self-loathing and shame, even when that beautiful child of hope is begging for it to change?
You back out. You back off. You leave, and you go into nothingness. You step into heartspace. You let go of everything but that pure whiteness, and you stay there, until the peace sticks around. And then I can come back.

...
..."So what's it like being married?"
What's it like, to never be alone? What is it like, to know, intimately and absolutely, that your soul is split in two, that the creature that knows your darkest failures and brightest joys is always just a heartbeat away? What is it like, to realize that I'm lost in a fogbank of apathy, and then hear her voice, or see his face, and know that in acknowledging them I cannot treat myself this badly?
It's difficult as hell, sometimes. It's scary, lately. It shouldn't be, but the... when I surrender to the forgiveness and compassion they offer, always, the amount of sorrow that overflows from my chest could practically kill me. It's overwhelming.
There is so much in me, as the Core, that needs to be forgiven, completely. I can only forgive completely if I understand it, and accept it as part of myself, as part of Infinitii, as part of all of us, and not hate it. I never thought it would be difficult, but then that empathy bit came in. Then the cross was put on my shoulders, and in a place where I could previously absolve even the cruelest soul, now that my own identity was on death row I was appallingly content to see it there. It wasn't so much hate as it was total detachment. Total separation. I wanted nothing to do with myself, if that was a part of me.
Fear is the obstacle to forgiveness. I'm afraid of what I've succumbed to in the past, willingly or unwillingly, knowingly or unknowingly. I am terrified of the darker potential in my soul. The collective pain includes me, and it is reflected in me, and I know that unless I heal its mirror in my own soul I will not be able to do a damn thing about it outside of me.
...But I feel so utterly fucking unworthy sometimes, to know I'm capable of such things, and yet to be loved by those four who I still see as totally blameless. I'll tell you what-- they are just as blameless as I am, and take that however you like. Either I start spitting this same judgment at them, or I forgive myself. I can't do the former. But the latter can only happen when I step back, and see myself through their eyes. If I am in a place where I cannot love myself, well... theirs hasn't wavered yet. Miraculously, and in the face of all odds, it has remained. And acknowledgement of that alone, acceptance of that alone, is what can save my heart when it falls.
They know it's there, this hidden potential to be my own worst nightmare... some have seen it come alive, and threaten to devour me. But even then, even then, they also know that it doesn't define me, and they see who I truly am beneath all that... a soul transmuting that shadow, a soul who sees it as necessary for greater growth, as part of the bigger picture... they know the true me.
And this is where the other book comes in again.
Fear is there, in that tale. He is running from the same thing as I am. He is running from love, and he is running from himself, because he is unable to face the reality of both. But one day... one day, it comes back to him. Love returns against all odds, and it remains no matter what he throws at it. And when all is said and done, when he has exhausted himself in fighting it, he gives up... and gives in to it. When he is worn down to the bone, when he has nothing left to lose, he surrenders. And then he sees what they do: that he has never been as lost as he thought he was. In fact, he is brighter than he ever dreamed.
I'm in the same spot. It's only when I stop fighting that love that I realize it's always been there, it will always be there, in them and in the universe around us, no matter how many times I fail, no matter what an absolute bastard I can be, no matter how many mistakes are scarring this body, no matter how filthy and wrong and unworthy I may insist I am. I can drag myself to the very center of hell and demand that I die there, that something as thoroughly corrupt as I be annihilated on the spot. I insist I deserve it. And what happens?
Nothing. Maybe I'll punish myself until I'm in too much agony to move. Maybe I'll make my own hell and shackle it to my neck. But that love doesn't leave. It doesn't leave. And the second I falter, the moment I collapse, the very instant I hit rock bottom and sob that I really don't want to feel like this, it helps me up. It always, always does.
But I have to take its hand, first.

What's it like, sharing your life with someone.
Well... it's a challenge. It's a stamp of impeccability etched right into my ribcage. It's a solemn promise to stand strong through sickness and health, through good times and bad. It is a promise to love and honor, always. But what they don't tell you is that you are taking those vows for yourself, too. Would I treat my partners like I treat myself? Hell no. So why do I do it?
That gives me pause, every time. You can't deny love like that. So why do I do so in my actions of neglect, of self-sabotage?
It's fear, it's always fear... fear that I am so much brighter than I feel in those moments, fear of punishment for not living up to it. But it never really comes, that death sentence. On the contrary, I'll have the blood wiped from my face, have my crumpled bones picked up off the floor with utmost care... and that's what I'm truly afraid of, if the word fits. It's more of a sorrow than anything. It's contrition, shame, guilt, at suddenly knowing that I'm not respecting my full potential. I'm not living up to what I am. It's being in those moments, feeling that love, and realizing... I am worth so much more than how I see myself. I really am deserving of love, and here I am treating myself like garbage. It's heartbreaking, when it hits you, when the walls start to crumble. But holding onto that world-shattering shame will get me nowhere. Love is still waiting patiently, for me to let that burden slip off my shoulders, and fall back into its arms.
I'm rambling. I'm sorry. But in the future I'll need these words just as badly as I ever did, and they will be here.

Every night I go upstairs and CZ is already lying there, and Laurie is already sitting beside me. Genesis is either there or a call away. And Infinitii lingers around my heart always. It's constancy, and I would do the same for all of them, as long as I'm tuned into love and not shame. I keep forgetting that and thinking I'm a horrible person. I'm not. I just keep thinking I am, and "if I really am so horrible, how could I possibly love like that??" That's the lie I tell to myself.
But I can. The instant a spark catches I am drowning in it, I am burning with it, and then I realize that I was never a horrible person to begin with. That love is where I came from and it's where I'm going when this is all said and done. Nothing inbetween can change that.

And Infi, Infi... ze's been everywhere in my life lately, and if that's not a testament to the deeper truth of this than nothing is.
We all know that ze is made of the stuff that's been tormenting us for years. I know better than anyone that ze is just as capable of becoming that as I am. But it's not hir true nature. It's a choice ze can make, but it's not hir. I can feel that without a doubt.
Infinitii knows the same about me. I know how ze sees me, how ze feels. I know we can both get terribly lost regardless, but... I know what we are. I can feel that, without a doubt. We're light and dark, night and day, and there's everything to love.


That's a lot of words.
But this is good. I can see where we're going, and I can see inside clearly enough to recognize that the pitfalls in our way are avoided pretty easily, if we stop freaking out over them. We know what to do.
I seem to write a lot of entries like this. "Keep the faith, here's some reassurance." But we need to tap into that.

I'm oddly exhausted. I think I need to go into headspace, get myself back in tune. I really do feel like a piano that's off a semitone or two. Nothing that can't be remedied, though.
Geez. I'm just now feeling the expanse of all this... how rich it is inside, just how important it is, the reality of us. It's something I can only respond to with total reverence and utmost gratitude. I feel like there's a whole universe in here.
The only thing that makes it even better is realizing that I'm a part of it. I'm not some guy carrying it about like a blessed globe, remaining cut off from it. No, I'm just as much a member of this System as everyone else.

I'll continue to do my part, for all of us... and I'll let everyone else, without exception, live up to their purposes too.
I'm happy to be here. I'm happy that we're alive, like phoenixes, like sunrises.
To see that promise within us ... myself included... there's nothing to be afraid of.

 

Good evening. This is Mulberry Delta. I've asked Sherlock, Laurie, and the full cast of Retributors if I may write tonight's update in their place, for the sake of the responsibility I feel towards them and cannot otherwise act upon.
There was a hack tonight. That is the most outstanding and direct detail. Garrison and the other Archivists have details but I choose not to look at them; that is not for me to know and I feel it would be rather disturbing to me.
I have a candle lit. I like to light them when things like this occur, as they give me a feeling of peace and prayer. With a candle burning, I feel we have a vigil of hope.
Atonement has resumed. Sherlock says there were "heartfelt thoughts" concerning that topic earlier this evening, when Jay was driving home from what is described as a rather synchronistic grocery outing.

Let me resume the main topic, forgive me. Sherlock is handing me the data so it may be a little choppy.
…This pains me to type. Simeon was screaming, with tears. It shocks me that he was the one to carry the consequences instead of Jeremiah. …Garrison says that was possibly on purpose, as Jeremiah was badly disturbed last night? I do not know how, but they claim he was badly shaken up early this morning and that event was extremely painful emotionally for the rest of us to become aware of. As I know Simeon is a very selfless and kindhearted boy, it does not surprise me to think that he would take on that pain in his stead, to spare him extra shock and fear, but it still hurts my heart to think that he, a child, would have to do such a thing in the first place. This is why I am glad that my friends, the Retributors, are "back in business." They bring a light and a purifying force of intention into these nights where there would otherwise be none.

Razor was the first to pick up a blade (our only new ones, courtesy of Wreckage). It surprised whoever saw her (I do believe it was Laurie; she was present almost immediately for the sake of keeping things coherent), and there was a question of "are you sure?" but Razor insisted yes, "she had a job to do" and continued. This personally surprises me, as earlier this year she was hellbent on not being a retributor anymore. She currently adds that she "had a change of heart," though.
Knife must have been the second, as there's a strong amount of responsibility surrounding him concerning this incident. None of it is negative, I must emphasize. The retributive half of this event was purely beneficial.
Knife's reaction is the most strongly recorded as well, "emblazoned" in the records. Upon seeing the blood notes on the body, painted by his sister, he apparently picked up the blade and decided to follow suit, re-taking up his original role in camaraderie with her. Immediately after seeing how easily and cleanly this new blade cut, and how quickly the blood sprang up and out, he smiled and began to laugh and cry. One line that was recorded is, "this was my purpose." He was sobbing with a sort of heart-wrenching gratitude the entire time. However, the most surprising aspect of his actions was that, when cleaning out the first rush of purified blood, his first and immediate instinct was to place the cloth in his mouth. We had no idea what he was doing at first, or why the motion had been so strongly instinctive, but then it registered-- he is a vampire, after all. Nevertheless we had never known why he had manifested as one, other than through his retributive connection to blood as a whole, so this was intriguing, especially since it was not motivated by "hunger" but rather by some vague sort of affection. Why this is, we do not yet know. Nevertheless we had to kindly chide him not to actually ingest any blood as we went along, as he was in a very emotionally sensitive state and so that impulse was equally strong.
The third person to appear was Algorith, who was mainly wishing aloud that she wouldn't have to "clean up" after anyone, as her first and only previous experience with that was painful enough for her to not want to relive it ever again. She cut a few scars, but not much is recorded for her. She, however, did comment that "Simeon was in the body" trying to keep her from harming it, due to a childlike dislike of pain. Data is vague but I do believe she gently but briefly explained her motivations to him, for which he moved aside.
The fourth person to appear was Sugar, rather suddenly as someone was cleaning the blood off the arms. She was "triggered" by the image of it on the cloth, surprisingly, as the pattern was strongly similar to that of her face "tattoos," all graceful delicate dots and lines. Garrison says that data, stored through her awareness, didn't register as blood at all, but instead as a "butterfly-esque" work of art, in terms of fragile beauty? That is interesting, thank you.
The fifth last person to appear, and the one who left the strongest energy residue in the body, was Wreckage. Sherlock says there's "no clear data" for a lot of this, as the event wasn't focused on archiving, but rather on immediately living in focus. So we're simply recording this for posterity, as they say, not for literal accuracy. Just a reminder.
Wreckage was angry, but she burns her anger in a condensed way, very differently from Laurie would in the same situation. So her main concern was how "ferocious" the hack had been, who was responsible, and how we could prevent this in the future. Sorry, the body is becoming very tired from stress shutdown so I may have to summarize this. Wreckage speaks "through her teeth," in a sense, as hers are very large and they give her a very identifiable speaking style when fronting. That was recorded clearly. The energy overlay of her claws was too, as she was momentarily distressed that she did not have them, instead owning only blunt fingers in this body. She insisted that she cut at least one scar, to "share in the responsibility" as a fellow Retributor, especially since she felt she should have detected and stopped this hack before it happened (something that likely would have been near-impossible in this situation). There's a data picture of her using the blade as a claw, saying she would "only cut a small one," and then there's a very strong string of data of her actually cutting a rather deep scar on the arm. Laurie jumped up in shock, asking her why she was being so ferocious about it, but Wreckage said it could have been much deeper, and besides, she felt it was more 'reverent' to be that deliberate, in light of the situation's gravity. Laurie agreed, and Knife also sided with Wreckage's sentiments.
The last clear data we have of Wreckage is of her cleaning up the blood and, upon seeing it slightly 'clot' upon drying, thinking it was Tar. Understandably she demanded an explanation, and then also asked if it was healthy for Knife to be wanting to ingest it if it was indeed so corrupted. Surprisingly, at these questions, Infinitii showed up. He said that, upon being 'bled out' into the air, the "red energy" was purified of Tar, hence why the atonement was needed. However he and Laurie then told Knife that the human body could not eat blood anyway, so it would be wise for him to not do that so eagerly. I do believe there was also a comment about there still being a risk of corruption as far as motives were concerned? Like, if Knife ate too much of the atoned blood, it would be akin to eating a "sacrifice," therefore being spiritually unhealthy. Apparently his small, oddly reverent actions of consuming it earlier were perfectly safe and allowed, especially in light of whatever their function was.

Julie showed up sometime during all this, furious and in tears, perfectly understandably. The thought that the same thing that had used her was still using us, and harming children as a result, was enough to make her blood boil. Sherlock says she asked Laurie, somewhat accusingly, "why she wasn't so angry too," and Laurie notably commented that Julie felt anger because she understood what it was like to endure such events, from a very direct perspective, and that if she were to empathize with the wounded that directly, it would probably emotionally destroy her. Laurie, however, could not understand that side of this situation, ever-- her very function of existence negates it. However, her function also includes her bearing the pain of others on an empathetic level, so she was able to feel the heartbreak and crushing sorrow that the wounded might be too scared or numb or furious to feel on their own. They both react with anger towards the hackers, and they both want to heal the hurt and prevent future pain, but they both feel and show it in very different ways.

Dread, the "dead red boy" (he seems to have temporarily chosen this name), was our main intermittent fronter for this whole thing. Healthily, he feels things "neutrally": without labeling them as 'good' or 'bad.' So he was able to simply 'exist in the moment' even as the Retributors were dealing with hack fallout all around him. Dread does not seem to feel any emotions, but again, this is not apathy, it is simply a sort of neutral zone. Unfortunately this peace only occurs in equally peaceful situations as of yet. Dread can and does still front in situations were emotions would be more traumatic than numbness, such as last night, but his 'neutrality' in those events is tinged with a very real feeling of fear, that functions as a sort of danger siren. After all, it is not healthy to endure such events for longer than is demanded or unavoidable, as we have learned from past failures. Thankfully Dread is not an apathetic fronter, so he does not do this. He recognizes and accepts the background fear that called him out, and so even though he will bear that in lieu of the pain of others, he will not stay longer than he must.

Jay is a little scared by all the cuts on the body, as he is the one who has to deal with them at night (I honestly haven't noticed them the entire time I've been typing; perhaps others are prevented from feeling that if they aren't tied to it?), but he has already emphasized rather sincerely that "he loves all of us," even in the wake of such an event, and he "hoped that love counted for something." Laurie insisted that it did, more than he knew, especially in light of what had just happened. I have to say I agree with her; having our core react with compassion and love for the entire System regardless of current pain, instead of regret or hate or anger or fear, seems to hold things together no matter what happens. I think we'll heal faster from this too. It is somewhat shocking to me even now, to see that the hack itself hasn't left much of a mark at all, at least not noticeably, as it is being drowned out by the collective hope and companionship and healing we've all endeavored to bring out in its wake.

Oh! One last note, this was just forwarded to me by Jay. Apparently Razor has decided that working with crayons might be her artistic outlet in lieu of cutting things? Someone used them as a "stress outlet" on… Sunday, Sherlock says? That entire day is noted as "very interesting," as there was a great deal of color synaesthesia tied to emotions and fronters? Something along those lines, but I'm being told not to write about that here. You'll have to be patient then.

I suppose that is all I have to say tonight. Sherlock says that'll do for now, thank you for helping me by the way.
Jay has a lot to say about "Outspacers" and System maps in the near future? He's apparently been working a lot with both of those topics lately, which is good to hear. We've been a bit of a mess since December, to paraphrase Laurie as of late. She took it harder than any of us, it seems.

Garrison wants me to add that the hackers are as of yet unidentified, and that they are still using positivity as weapons against us? It's difficult to type, this must be a touchy topic. Laurie says "of course it is, they've been using this to keep him and Chaos apart for years." I'll leave that as-is, I'm sure that says enough about the problem on its own without me going into details. It is a serious problem though, that needs to be emphasized above all else. "It needs to stop," at all costs.

Lastly, there is apparently a "newly manifested" voice in the Crimson slot, who is apparently the "splinter of Razor" that Knife has been suspecting since last year?? I was not aware of this. Apparently she was splitting on her anchor and that could not be reconciled, so she went through a time period of "mental division" similar to how Sugar did, until a color slot opened up that matched that "new person" so they could break of and become their own person? I'm sorry, this is a bit overwhelming but that's what I've got in terms of data here. Sherlock, take over for me.
All right. You'll all know, Sugar was badly split for several months in terms of her anchor, also because several faceless voices were sharing that same anchor at the time. We've pinpointed that Wreckage was the latest and last person to show up from that string of individuals, and she has officially "taken over" Sugar's original chosen anchor, that of violent rage towards those who would use Pink energy (affection, childlike sweetness) for lurid and otherwise harmful purposes. That's the short version. However, Razor was also conflicted because she originally shared her very consciousness with Cannon, as well as the Tar, back when the BLC was first discovered. When she became her own person, that anchor had not changed, but her personality no longer matched it. So she appears to have been in a similar state to that of Sugar for quite some time now, and as of today we finally have conclusive evidence of there being a Crimson-slot voice (now that Eros is confirmed demanifested) that holds the exact personality break Razor had been shifting to and from during her Tar-tied days. I hope that's not all hopeless jargon to the lot of you. Nevertheless, yes, this was a sort of "aha" moment for me, as I recognize this energy and I do wish to write about this in the future when it is not midnight and the body is not desperately trying to recover from blood loss and toxic food and lack of sleep. I apologize for that.

The green "oni girl" is indeed still alive as well, she is not a Retributor, but rather a sort of Protector. However she is still nameless and is not yet able to interact with headspace without glitching out, as her anchor is still rooted Downstairs. We will be trying to work with her more in the near future as well.
The "Victorian Pink" girl's name is confirmed to be Ashen, as it stuck.
"Pinstripe," aka Jayce, is still an anomaly in terms of color and function, for the record. He may be a Sub of Brown, Aqua, or White at this point.
And of course the Outspacer phenomenon is being duly studied by Jay, as any and all concrete data on it now will greatly aid all of us in understanding how the Spectum lineup works a little better.

That is all for tonight, I believe we have spoken enough. Thank you in turn, Mulberry, for your assistance and dedication to your job. I am honored and grateful to have you as my assistant, and as a dear friend.

Have a good night, as Jay would say.

-Sherlock
- Mulberry Delta

 

 

 

humansofnewyork: "I ran away to California for a week without telling anyone. I wanted to remove myself from everything, to see if I could work out some things in my head. But it actually created more problems. I learned it doesn’t really work that way."
"How do you mean?"
"Just that if you can’t figure out your problems in your present circumstances, you’re probably not going to figure them out by running away from them."

 

I moved out-of-state three times for this reason, and had to return due to my 'problems' becoming monstrous as a result. So this rings very true.
Your problems are within you. No change in physical location will change that.
Problems, troubles, pains, will all resurface, over and over, until you can heal them and let them go. That's a fact of life.
Ultimately, you really do just need to face them head-on, and deal with whatever happens from there. One day at a time.

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

@ 12:21 am

We had at least five total-integration attempts over the past 12 months. Unfortunately they were all instigated by less-than-benevolent individuals, and were more concerned about destroying people than really integrating healthily.
But yeah, somehow, we survived. The first two attempts actually made our dissociation much worse. Our System member count has tripled from what it was in 2012, solely because half of us didn’t show our faces until our entire inner world was shaken to its core with those attempts.

...It is a very common occurrence in our System for people to “die and come back,” in as little as minutes to as long as several years. Our headspace seems to have a permament rule of thumb that, “if someone is needed, they will not— and cannot— stay dead, for the sake of everyone else.” Some people have tried to stay dead (notably Javier), but ultimately, yeah, the System itself will bring them back IF AND WHEN they are needed to be alive. If they were supposed to integrate, or disappear, or otherwise fade away… then they will stay gone.

 

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


@ 01:32 am


Just a quick note.
Headspace/heartspace tends to snap back with a bang when it's been ignored for a while, usually with a surge of dark things from under the surface too. It forces focus, really.
So this evening, we had a legit hack. Scared us all badly. Haven't had one of those since... mid-December? I think? Don't remember. Could be sooner, but no memory. Anyway nothing this bad since Javier died, I would wager. Most of us thought it had stopped permanently, but no, there are still OLD deep roots. So this revealed those at least.
In short: the perpetrator was a splinter. We thought they died in 2011! But no, this was clearly and undeniably the same guy. So the System is pretty shaken up, we didn't expect this at all, especially not now. But there it is.

As a result a bunch of people came out today, for the first time in weeks.

 
First, we have a ton of people tied to eating disorders, but the head honcho finally showed her face for good today. She calls herself "The Destroyer." She's also right on the fence between being benevolent or malevolent, what with her anchor being what it is. We'll write more about her tomorrow.

Infi was out for about five minutes in the evening. Ze's the only reason we got through this without a total meltdown, as he managed to redirect the hacker intent at the last second.

The "Victorian pink" girl finally revealed herself (we've been suspecting her). She is human, strongly tied to OLD trauma, and seems stuck around age 13-14. She's very wounded emotionally and is obviously traumatized from abuse. She also seems totally unaware of headspace, with her focus being solely on the horror and pain she is mentally stuck in reliving right now. She's also markedly suicidal, in a desperately frantic sense, which is obviously a major concern.

Sylvain's brother was out shortly, to chase someone bad away. Good to know he's still able to front.

Some new but shockingly solid green girl was out, fighting shadows in the downstairs bedroom with scissors. She's non-human (somewhat demonic actually?), but fiercely benevolent, and seems to be a protector. We're going to try and find her inside ASAP, as Green people are rare and we definitely need her help right now.

Overload was also out temporarily, to forcibly tell the A.P. not to try and trigger any body memories. She was surprisingly powerful in forbidding anyone from even trying to move the body at the time.

Lastly, Mulberry and Knife both co-fronted for a few minutes before we detached from the situation entirely and went online. Mulberry was trying to clear any lingering hack energy from the environment, to keep any bad triggers from jumping up during the night, and Knife was making sure no one tried to self-abuse or otherwise harm the body (as there were some very strong inclinations and attempts to).

 

After all that we did a headcount and we're at 60 now, as far as stable and identified people go. To think, back in 2012 there were barely 20 of us known. But it's nicer now, with everyone. There are so many good people in here, we love them. We all love each other really, that's the thing that keeps us going even when bad nights like this happen, because they will. Blood and sunshine, my friends. Y'need both.

That's it for tonight. Battery is almost gone, we need sleep anyway.
Dreams lately have been very enlightening (and headspace people are showing up in them lucidly again!) but we haven't posted them online yet. Also a few more audio notes to post to the archives once someone stops being afraid to listen to them. Doubt is a terrible thing, when it affects the existences of others.
Nevertheless it's late and we're tired and typing nonsensically isn't helping anyone. Have a good night.

 

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

 

@ 01:54 am


It's odd, but moving nevertheless.

Five years after finding her, by some glorious accident, that photograph of her illuminated face is one of the only things that can restore my hope in a single instant.
She's become a sort of intangibly eternal monument to the purity of inspiration, and of the inherent beauty in all things. Does that make sense in words?
Looking at her, even now, after so much has changed... the reality of her existence still makes me believe, with total surrendering conviction, that my own existence isn't anywhere near as dark as I may feel it is.

How odd. But how lovely, too.