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All right, I am posting this entry extremely late due to ridiculous time and schedule messes over the past week or so, so I apologize if anything doesn't flow well. I'm working from what memory I have but I will do my best to make this as accurate and true as possible.
Okay. First off!
Yesterday, Saturday, was basically spent typing. I ended up hitting some gorgeous language mindset around 1AM so I didn't want to sleep, but as I'd been up until 5 the night before (first all-nighter in months) I had no other choice but to check out.
However, when I went to sleep, I had the oddest feeling of Javier "ghosting" over me physically? So I checked up on him, and was surprised to find him sleeping, something I keep forgetting that headvoices do (mostly because Laurie virtually never does). I assumed that I had 'felt' his presence superimposed on mine because, not only was he tapping into the same raw dreaming energy that I was, but being the Red holder we have a stronger link than any other two Spectrum members do (save me and Infi of course). Nevertheless, seeing him asleep, I wondered if he was dreaming, and if so, of what. To be honest I hadn't been aware until recent weeks that headvoices could dream, and in fact only wondered about it once someone posed the question to us on Tumblr (we haven't responded yet, as I feel unable to do so yet). True, there had been references to it before-- Lynne has previously mentioned having dreams, and Julie has actually had one while fronting-- but it was always just glossed over, never given any attention to because it was taken for granted. Anyway I wanted to know more.
So, I asked the Spectrum how headvoices could dream on their own, if they weren't using the body to do so (which is possible, but rare-- I'm usually the one who uses it to sleep.) And what were their dreams like? In response, the Spectrum said they went 'into' Black headspace to do so-- headvoices didn't have literal dreams really, they connected back with the essence of what they were. It was more of a peaceful recharging so to speak, all observational instead of interacting. but there could definitely be sound and imagery, although it was like when I meditate; it doesn't always stick in literal memory. Also if that individual was shaken up or disturbed, that could reflect in their dreams too? The Spectrum said that's partly why Laurie doesn't like to dream. I swear I felt my heart break when I heard that; apparently all the things she protects other people from, all that pain in her own heart, could overwhelm her in her sleep if she wasn't careful. That explains why she will only sleep when we're all together as a group, having a really beautiful night. Also, the Spectrum said that a headvoice had to "choose" if they wanted to walk through the body's dreams? Otherwise they'd just go to blackspace. (Laurie and Lynne have notably referenced this before, but again, I didn't realize how it applied to the bigger picture). I guess the whitespace works with dream-walking more. (but yes I asked because this morning, javier said he had dreamt about mountain vistas or something? I found that surprising.)
Today was my monthly trans* group meeting, which we actually hesitated majorly before attending. After all, the last time we went, we had a week-long psychological mess-up period and I think Wreckage showed up that same night. So yeah, not something we wanted to repeat.
Therefore we decided a group discussion was in order. So on went the iPod, and we walked around for a solid hour and tried to figure out just what the heck we were going to do during this meeting, to prevent both dissociation and triggering.
Laurie, Knife, Javier, Garrison, Sherlock, and I all spoke, with me saying the least. Jayce also stopped in for a minute or three but he couldn't stabilize well in headspace (Downstairs voices often can't initially) so he faded back out.
Most notably though, at some point we ended up TALKING TO SPINE!! I think a song on the iPod randomly inspired me to speak to her, and then I suddenly realized that she is hugely important-- as the Brown core holder, she is a literal LINK between the body and Central, and not only that, but she has origins in PARNASSUS!! Vaguely, true-- she never had a life or body there-- but her roots in form were there even so! So I told her we needed her, I needed her, could we work together more? She said she'd love to; she looked really moved.
So yeah, that explains the lineup worries we had: Brown is still at the 'bottom' of the vertical Spectrum lineup, and Pink is at the 'top,' while Aqua is right in the center… because they are all the "MUTANT SLOTS" and they act almost as "frames" for the entire Spectrum? Like they exist to balance or harmonize it, like bookends or something. Very interesting, hard to put into words, but tangible as a fact.
Nevertheless, even once Spine joined us in talking and we all tried to figure out "who should front," "what do we do if there are triggers," "what is allowed for discussion," etc., we couldn't make any solid decisions, and I was still a bundle of nerves. Ultimately we all just decided to support each other, and deal with whatever happened as it happened. But it was a concern, that a 'positive environment' meeting like that (and with such fantastic people too) was causing me acute anxiety every time I had to attend. We figured it was either the stress of socializing or the threat of triggering topics, but again, nothing for sure. So we just spent the rest of our time before the meeting listening to music and chilling out the best we could, then Laurie pushed me out the door so I wouldn't chicken out, haha.
Thankfully, the meeting was rather uneventful. Nobody was talking much and I'm too content with silence (when I don't feel it's 'safe' to rock the boat, so to speak) to speak up wantonly. There was one major trigger immediately upon showing up that, thankfully, happened while we were out of the group's eye, because Wreckage pushed through to fronting and she was not happy. We had to take a minute to calm everyone down and at least get the AP running, but at least there were no meltdowns.
However. That slipup, and the way we had to carefully front afterwards, indicated rather sharply the problem we have with fronting vs. social programming. Both Javier and I tried to stay anchored in, but it was difficult as hell to do so, because we kept getting overridden by the "you aren't socially acceptable, we must behave in a safe and average way for our own survival" instinct. And after two hours of that being in the forefront of our consciousness, the moment I stepped into the car and was hit with the sudden global relief of being able to acknowledge everyone else's worry and feelings... well, I realized that that was really our biggest problem here.
The spiritual "starvation" is back, and I've pinpointed that it's because I'VE BEEN IGNORING HEADSPACE.
I love them so much, and they are such an intrinsic part of "my" being, that I cannot possibly lie to myself by omitting them from my daily life, even just through silence and/or ignorance.
The last time I had it this bad was in SLC, no surprise… I had moved out there with the specific intention to have a life where I didn't have to hide them-- my soul, the collective other half of my very being-- and ended up having to stay quiet most of the time anyway, for multiple reasons. That's why the times with Laurie and Chaos coming through were so blissfully powerful-- my heart recognized, in them, the truest thing it had ever wanted or yearned for in life, and it embraced their reality with ardent devotion. That is why I am so thankful I had so much time alone in SLC… just walking around town with Genesis, or hanging around the apartment with CZ, saved my life really. I needed the close company of headspace then more than ever before, if I couldn't actively live with them in my daily life with others. But now we're at that point again, and there's no one in this house who I can talk to openly about them, let alone hope for a channel with… and it hurts, so much.
Saturday morning was weird for that reason. I keep getting that spiritual ache in my ribs, but not where my Heart Jewel would be, so to speak-- not in that center where I can reach out in love to others. No, this awful pain is further back within, and a little bit lower… if you reached two hands up underneath the edge of my ribcage, and grabbed hold of what was there, that's what you'd catch… the exact same strange place where Infinitii was taken out of me.
…It's maddening, in a way words utterly fail to express, the feelings I get about that. It's not a "want." That implies an option, implies the ability to simply say 'no.' It's not a "need" either-- that suggests something almost obligatory, maybe even begrudgingly so, like how we have to eat or we run the risk of blacking out. Yes, a "need" will pull at you, but it's in an almost neutral way, untied to emotion, sometimes even robotic. No, this pull at my heart is a literal yearning. It drives me to tears. The only person who's ever described it is Philip Pullman, in the process of describing the sensation one gets when their very soul is being torn away from them. I can't help but feel this is the exact same thing. It's not a want, not a need, but a tangible pain, something like a broken bone or an open wound, and you swear you would give anything just to heal it.
Infinitii is currently the only thing in the world that can assuage this ache, even a little. Other people say that makes perfect sense, since ze is what was taken out of my ribs, presumably leaving some sort of hollow space, some sort of gap… it's only natural that ze'd fit it. Mind you, it’s much different than with CZ. He feels like a total complement: something not part of me, yet something that perfectly matches my own self as its own thing. Infinitii feels like part of me, despite being hir own person as well. Sherlock says that's basically true, really. He was explaining how Black and White energy work together today, and repeated that if the two colors did not interact or harmonize, they'd become stark colorless things-- essentially the Tar and Plague. But when the two colors did allow themselves to flow together as one greater 'color,' so to speak, it also allowed for that natural open iridescence they both naturally held to shine, connecting that basic essence to every other color in the Spectrum. Again, I've know that for months, I don't know why I'm speaking in such a convoluted way. I guess the statement that I can feel that means a lot more than saying I simply 'know' it intellectually. It's a totally different thing.
I'm sorry. I talked about this on the 3rd. It just keeps resurfacing. It's just tough to talk about it, so I apologize for the overly dramatic words and constant repeating of myself. I'll just leave that paragraph as-is.
Anyway. Saturday morning. I woke up and couldn't get out of bed because I felt like sobbing from frustration; I felt off-color, messed-up, out-of-tune. It was like there was this grime over my soul, or like it was tied down by strings, it was terrible. And that damned ache was practically tearing me apart, as if something had literally scraped out the blood and muscle in my chest, in a ragged half-sphere, leaving it raw and so wrongly empty. So of course I reached out for Infi, and ze reacted as if ze was feeling it too-- although I didn't ask, I've never asked, I really should-- and as ze buried hir head in my chest, wrapping hirself around me, I could have sobbed for hours from how the peace and the pain were interplaying within my bones.
(cz was there, I called him in out of 'obligation' (CAREFUL). he just watched really, remember his expression. it bothered me that I had no desire to be with him at all, it just didn't feel right… but, HE CANNOT GIVE ME WHAT I NEED in a lot of situations. like right then. infi honestly had to almost eat my heart to get the pain to go away, I DID NOT REALIZE THE SYMBOLIC SIGNIFICANCE OF THAT NEED UNTIL JUST NOW-- the things ze eats become PURIFIED AND HEALED.)
(entry draft ended here; got too emotionally sick to continue. i apologize for any messiness in the structure but i cannot rightly go back and edit it so long after the initial date)
