Learning to Be

ghost | 30y/o | Queer | Disabled | Alter in a DID system

[ghostgetsablog]

I guess I should make an intro.

My name is ghost.

I use they/them, it/itself, and he/him pronouns, unsure of my preference.

I made this blog to explore finding joy in being a system.

Above all else, I am anti-harassment and pro-curating your own experience. Don’t be an asshole, and we’ll get on just fine. 

More info under the cut, including our other blogs, feel free to ask us questions.

Other blogs for our system:

@safety-net-did - our alternate subgroup

@snd-answers-things - tag games and surveys

@snd-things-we-like - little space

@snd-remember-positivity - mental health reminders

@snd-arts - our art

@snd-spirituality - magic and spirituality stuff

@snd-craft-hoard - inspiration for crafts we do

Other info you might care about:

@ghostlearnstech - my journey into software development

@someday-vivarium - invertebrates, reptiles, plants, tanks, etc.

I'm an alter in a DID system.

I'm syscourse-neutral.

My system generally sees itself as traumagenic, but some of us (like myself) would like to explore other origins as a way of finding frameworks to understand our experiences better.

I don’t think I’ll be posting much in the way of “syscourse”, but if I do it’ll be tagged.

Our body age is 30

I don't mind if minors interact with me, as long as they are respectful and take responsibility for their own experience. That is to say, I'm an adult who is going to talk about adult things. I am going to assume, if you interact with me, that you're okay with interacting as an adult. If you do not want to read about adult things/expect me to remember which blogs are adults or not, you should block me.

Our body is both mentally and physically disabled, as well as white and Canadian.

I don’t believe in thought-crime. 

Pro feminism, pro trans women, pro abortion, transandrophobia and  antimasculism are real. 

Strictly anti-TERF/TEHM/Whatever the current “trans folks are bad so believe in our very myopic view of oppression is”

I am queer. I talk about the Queer community. If you don’t ID as queer, you’re not a part of my community and I’m not talking about you. If you think that queer is an unreclaimable slur, fuck off.

ACAB, anti-capitalist, solarpunk

I dunno, I think that covers most of the tumblr-controversial opinions I have? I’ll probably add things as I find things.

[saddest-cat-hours]

[amyofthemyscira]

Bacchino Malato (Caravaggio, 1593)

[starsappho]

My favourite thing about this post is that someone saw those photos of that cat and went “ah yes, I know exactly which 15th century Baroque painting this reminds me of”

[catchymemes]

[atlinmerrick]

(Will never not reblog this beauty. What genius.)

[killy-deactivated20241228]

Having memory issues and holding grudges is a funny combination. I don’t forgive but I DO forget

[reimeichan]

Memory problems suck but it is kinda fun to get to experience the joy of finding something you end up really enjoying over and over again, and letting the other alters in your system experience that for themselves.

[inkskinned]

red used to get me scratchies and we'd sit in his truck quietly working quarters over papers. we aren't biological - my parents are friends with him; i spent enough summer weekends at their cottage on the beach that it feels like family anyhow. he and his wife come to all the family big events like it's no big deal.

i get nervous around people a lot. like i am am intruding, somehow, just by existing. red has the kind of personality that feels calming - like, it's okay, you're supposed to be here. i often will bolt through any explanation of my life or passions - blurting it out in a series of seconds, worried i'll be cut off or it won't be interesting to the other person, desperate to get a sentence finished.

sometimes i wanna be a good friend like painting the sky yellow just 'cause it's your favorite color. like made your favorite dessert. a week ago i caught my finger in a food processor making a three-layer chocolate mousse. called my brother from the kitchen floor, holding paper towel around the cut. surrounded by blood and crushed oreos. after this - i'm okay - i still finished making the dessert.

i used to think if i could study love - in books, in tv, in magazines - i could figure out how to get comfy with it. to trust it. other people kept telling me life is a tightrope love is a net! and i'd flinch. a net is, at the end of the day, to catch things. i can't explain why that's scary.

red says the truck only runs because he asks it nicely. it should have died 23 years back, if anybody is counting. it was quiet in their cabin. the quiet used to make me uneasy. i was waiting for something bad, certain it would happen eventually.

sometimes i think i have to make up for all the ways i'm a bad person and for all the ways that bad things have happened to me by being the nicest, kindest, most beautifully-charming person who will ever be. i think i have to make everyone laugh and clap and leave smiling. if i am very good, they will love me. i still think the love will wear off when they look away. that it comes temporary. so i have to keep it up. i have to keep up being perfect, always, and maybe one of them will keep me.

red once greeted me for the summer by waving me over to a small freezer in the garage. he was secretly stashing all the popsicles with our favorite flavor. truth be told, i think he probably showed my siblings, too - and all the adults definitely knew. but it felt good to pinky-promise that this was just-between-us-two.

i think maybe sometimes the way we learn how to love is just osmosis. like - i wasn't always raised right. i learned love is thin. that it flakes off easy, butterfly wing material. that you have to scrape by with what you get. that you have to earn it. that you have to be funny, cool, full of exciting interests.

if you're lucky, though. i think the quiet ways people can love us work just the same. the simple, gentle hush of a summer holiday. the way the hydrangeas got tall and bushy. what i'm saying is that... if i'm good - really good - if i believe in love, i mean.

i only believe in it because of the way those few kind people showed me. in all the rest of it. their gentle image - eventual reprieve.

[inkskinned]

in recent years, there's been a push in therapeutic circles to shift the language from "attention-seeking" to "connection-seeking" behavior.

i was an attention-seeker. i was the textbook example of an attention-seeker. i was a troublemaker. i would self-harm. i destroyed my own relationships. i was uncontrolled, dramatic, sensitive. i took everything personally. i had "nothing" to be depressed "about," but made a big show of how sad i was nonetheless. i was really unsafe about myself in a lot of ways.

the strange thing about that is: it meant others could ignore me. the prevailing wisdom behind knowing something is "attention seeking" is to say: well, since you want it that bad, you're not getting any. it meant i was lower-on-the-list of concern. it meant an eye-roll.

the belief was that: since i was obviously doing these things on purpose, it would be bad behavioral training if i was "rewarded" for it. it would "teach me" that i simply had to make enough fuss, and i'd finally get all that missing attention and love. no, it was better to ignore that stuff.

i was suffering. and it felt like - oh, it doesn't matter how loudly i am in pain, nobody gives a shit about if i'm living or dying.

awhile ago, i went through my journals from that time. a lot of them read the same thing. in them, i am convinced i am invisible. that nobody wants to hear me, to see me. that i could die or vanish and nobody would even notice. i didn't even want attention - not really - because it was always dismissive, mocking. nothing i ever did would be good enough to get someone to actually-worry about me.

that's a terrifying thing for me to read as an adult. that is a child who fully has no problem committing. that is a child who has no concept of feeling loved. the most basic human instinct is missing from her life.

i needed help. i didn't know how to ask for it. i was a kid. i was a kid in a bad home, and whenever i thought things couldn't get worse there - they almost always did.

and the ways i showed that - the ways i tried to deal with that - they made others dismiss me. i wasn't suffering prettily. after all, if i was really in trouble, why wouldn't i just march into the first counselor's office and ask someone to help me? i had the opportunities, right? what did i think would happen, exactly? that someone would finally stand up and do something? who even wants that kind of responsibility?

i heard connection-seeking for the first time about three months ago. my therapist mentioned it when we were talking about my history. it rang some kind of horrible bell, deep inside me. i don't know what she said in the rest of her sentence. i just started... crying.

"oh no", i said to her. "i think i just realized: i have no idea how to forgive them for minimizing the ways i was hurting."

how many other kids, though. how many other kids were out there drowning, snatching around for a lifevest, some kind of rope - how many were straight-up ignored.

how many of those kids aren't gonna get old.

[spoonie-isms]

oh no

[gallusrostromegalus]

Today's aesthetic is people who get turned into monsters after a slow boil of suffering they cannot escape until it comes to a head and someone or something tries to kill them and the killing blow is the catalyst for the transformation into something beyond the natural. They eventually return not a human form but the scar from the killing blow never heals right- instead of scar tissue never turns human again, and is forever a slice of that monstrous form, whether they decide to return to it or not.

A girl whose throat was cut but the scar on her neck is a second mouth that speaks the truth of what happened to her by it's mere existence. A boy who is the victim of a war in the ancient world and when the soldier's spears pierce his back, it's where he sprouts the first of dozens of angelic wings. A victim of a fire whose burn scars are forever the writhing void of the shadow-creature they became.

A story where the characters meet them as humans first, then see the scar, and there's an element of horror trying to guess what kind of monster they became and why from that sliver of information alone. Like trying to divine the specific cause of hanahaki by researching the symbolic meaning of the flowers, except the flowers might be extremely dangerous.

[gallusrostromegalus]

Tags from: i-got-fluff-in-your-grimdark

#... Monstrous#Perhaps#But not wicked.#A second mouth that speaks not only her own truth#But that of other victims#Of all sorts#She knows the pain of enforced silence#And shall not allow others to suffer as she has.#The boy's wings enfold those innocents who always suffer in war.#He spirits them away#To a place where they may be safe#Flying them far from violence as he wishes someone had him#An angelic deliverer for those who paying the price of a cruel ruler's greed.#A shadow-creature who seeks out fire#Consumes it#... Or - no#I don't think that's right.#Someone made of shadows because they wished to disappear#Granted that wish in the worst possible way#As everything that made up their life turned to ash.#So now#Whatever it is they do#They seek to let others hide away without having everything that makes them themself devoured by hungry flame.

YOU

YOU UNDERSTAND ME.

[funnytwittertweets]

[lion-punk]

[ID: a tweet by user clay (@_claypot) that reads: its fucked up how video games are generally considered the lowest form of art (if some people even classify them as art) when they are literally the amalgamation of almost every known artform with the added addition of direct input from the player /end ID]

[fresh-bag-of-ham]

real people being partially closeted or ambiguous about their own sexuality while making Gay Art is not queerbaiting

[princeofsparkles]

Real people figuring out they’re queer through the process of making gay art is not queerbaiting either

[lady-writes]

#real people not telling you everything about themselves is allowed

[wenellyb]

[berniesrevolution]

[zanmor]

these ones

[lavendermanna]

oh we can get even more specific than just a list of billionaires:

here are all of the scum who control oil, coal, and natural gas

here are the ones who run the factories

and here are the ones who extract the raw resources that the others need to make it all work

[libertarian-therapist]

23,000 people are reblogging a hit list

[bogleech]

Good.

[queeranarchism]

355,296 people are reblogging a hit list

<3

[thedysfunctionjunction]

[queersatanic]

“kink belongs at pride” - tired, desiccated, queerphobic discourse

“make the golf course a public sex forest” - thriving, vibrant, moves the conversation forward

[leonardcohenofficial]

you can read the pamphlet this comes from on the anarchist library (it’s a great read)

[sideflorfauna]

It’s a great read

[thenib]

Everyone guessed Rosa was gay even before she figured it out. So when is the right time to come out? 

[writing-and-nutmeg]

I think, therefore I am (exhausted)

[depsidase]

[greenflamestherabbit]

My funniest ventriloquism story starts with the fact that I was obsessed with ventriloquism from a young age. I used to obsessively practice speaking without moving my lips, practicing the different tongue and air tricks and everything. Then I got sick with Bell’s Palsy, and it hit both sides of my face at the same time. Bell’s Palsy is like a headcold that hits your facial nerves. Anyway- This meant my entire face was paralyzed. I couldn’t speak using my lips. The doctor stared at me, dumbfounded that I was able to speak very fluently without my face moving at all.

[cantankerouscanuck]

[neofooturism]

the doctor

[vfevermillion]

Tumblr user greenflamestherabbit

[tonysopranobignaturals-deactiva]

sorry I forgot i'm alive Can you please repeat the question.