impulsively created, not likely to be very active. sideblog. for plurality / multiplicity stuff. unwilling to deal with discriminatory bullshit. dont expect much engagement, but replying with decency is fine. you dont get to decide shit for other people. hopefully you get the gist without me having to stick buzzwords in my bio.
As bio says: We made this on impulse. We were thinking about plural shit in terms of management, problem-solving, perspectives, different experiences, and generally just trying to understand and work smoothly together. Our main social network is chill with plurality but most folk there seem to barely have (or share about) in-system issues, let alone issues like ours, and there ain’t very much of some of the other shit we want. Decided to go here, despite all the flamewars. Blog seems to be turning a bit more into a “mental wellbeing with a plural focus” blog, rather than multiplicity-only as was intended.
Not mentally ill, just odd.
We care about experiences and management and support, not origins or divisive labels. Disordered vs non-disordered is a false binary, our experiences are far too ambiguous for that.
Link: This post isn’t ours but basically sums up our views on pathologisation of subjective experiences.
We don’t expect to be super interactive here.
Us:
We’re a bigger system. Seem to be a mix of parts and people. A part made this blog, but many of us use it. Stopped tracking members ages ago, and we don’t typically sign off here.
Pre-syscovery we had someone as primary front for a few years. They struggled to make decisions on what to do Now, so every night they would make a list in both great detail and in order in which they would do them (but no times! Times don't work, except for when there's a place to be at a specific time.)
They had to change it up in little ways regularly - if it stopped working, they'd switch from blue to black pen, or add highlighter, or switch to unlined or scrap paper. (We attributed this need for change to ADHD we didn't have. Occasionally we would have a few days to a couple of weeks where we needed something totally different, which we also attributed to ADHD that we didn't have.)
Anyway. They are no longer primary front and this method only works for them. Which means none of us are going to spend half an hour carefully writing a list just in case this person fronts tomorrow, 'cause no one else will follow the list. Which also means if they do front, they are stuck as hell and can't function.
Then you get the people who do better with whiteboards or other stuff on walls, the people who can keep most planning-related info in their head, I use a diary (planner), etc.
Pre-syscovery, this was so fucking annoying finding an organisational method that would stick and realising we always had to change it up. Post-syscovery, this was fucking annoying because it meant we would try to have multiple organisational methods running at once to ensure everyone was happy.
(Nowadays we rarely switch. Unfortunately one of the less-reliably-functional (me) fronts the most. Does mean i don't have to worry so much about organisation.)
And i think, similarly: the amount of mess people are happy with & can function with. W literally doesn't see moderate amounts of mess that irritate the hell out of me, which means if she fronts for a few days, things get messy and then if i come back, i have to tidy her mess before i can do anything else. She's a lot more functional & energetic than i am, and she kept the dishes washed much better than i did! She just. Didn't really notice Piles Of Items on the couch and floor.
The number of times that this has happened is absurd at this point. Things often seem to disappear the moment we need them, then reappear when someone else looks, usually after the last person gave up and bought a replacement because those objects were necessary. (The reality is that the object was moved by someone else a while ago, but we didn't notice the move until we needed the object again and checked its usual place.)
It's why we try to restock any missing supplies with the cheapest possible options if we suspect that there are still nicer supplies somewhere. If the nicer thing turns up, then we haven't lost a lot of money and can go back to using the nicer supplies. If nothing turns up, then we're covered until we can either track down the old supplies or confirm that they've actually vanished after a few more hours of frustrated searching.
There's a paradox in a lot of plural spaces. System kids are welcome, but only if they're Literal Children who stay in child-only soft boxes where they can be ignored. If a kid wants to have an adult conversation, then they're spoken over, pushed away, or otherwise discounted more often than not- and if they're accepted, then it's often at the cost of expecting them to have absolutely no childlike qualities to "prove" that they're mature enough to stay around. We even see this pattern within systems sometimes.
What are systems without adult members supposed to do if the only place system kids can talk is in the Super Soft Safe Box? What about system kids who want to talk about theoretical physics or drugs or sex or a thousand other taboos? What about kids who function as adults? And what about system kids who are kids but don't want to live their lives in the Super Soft Safe Box like the world expects them to?
Acceptance of system kids as being wildly different from each other in mindset and ability is improving, but we still have a long way to go in treating system kids with a shred of respect and decency in wider plural spaces.
Not to mention... why is there so much intense focus on mental age as some universal concept in the first place? It feels like a lot of the plural community takes the concept of mental age as a given without considering where that idea comes from, how it affects how they treat others, and how it interacts with systemic discrimination and ableism. It can sometimes be a useful construct if approached critically, but I see so little critical thought about it.
If you want some reading on the topic, one of the articles cited is worth at least a skim- it's a fairly good surface overview of eugenics and its tie to IQ/mental age, immigration, racism, ableism, etc.
ID below the cut with the full quotes- sorry to alt texters, I fit as much as I could in there but the text limit is real.
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There's a subtle sort of discrimination to how a lot of plural spaces treat system kids/littles. Especially those in adult bodies, or with a particularly large gap from their body's age.
"Littles must always be supervised in online spaces or else they'll bother adults and be preyed upon." "There must be an adult in your system if you're bodily an adult- they should handle life while the kids go away to never be seen by adults again. Littles should only talk to other littles. Anything else is unsafe and sometimes pedophilic. Right?" "Littles shouldn't be in charge. They're supposed to be cared for by everyone else and kept out of sight." "You're welcome here! You just have to only ever talk in the Baby Zone that no adults ever visit to talk to you. Yeah, it's empty and no one will answer. But you want to talk, right?" "Sorry sweetie, the adults are talking and you can't be here. Even if you're capable of understanding, consenting, etc. You're not allowed to be here with us if you're not a real adult." "Littles can't take care of themselves or handle any adult responsibilities, ever!" "Is there an adult I can talk to?"
Blue, an anthro cat sitting down, looks angry at the above phrases.
What are adult-bodied systems with no "brain adults" supposed to do? Drawing of a family of stick figures, all of whom are either child-short or hunching to be shorter.
What about systems whose caretakers are their children? Systems where there is no older person to supervise? Systems finding ways to live an adult life when no one inside aligns with it? What are you supposed to do when a 5-year-old does your taxes and drives you home?
"Just grow up." Do I get a choice, or are you ripping that away from me too?
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Why is "mental age" the bar people are using to decide whether someone is worthy of autonomy and respect, anyway? Where does the concept of mental age come from in the first place, and why does it exist?
From Wilson, R. A. (2024). Eugenic Thinking and the Cognitive Sciences. In M. C. Frank & A. Majid (Eds.), Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science. MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.21428/e2759450.c9a5f080:
"Eugenic traits:
Prominent among the eugenic traits found in sterilization laws were those concerning cognitive ability and mental health. These traits, ordered in terms of their frequency in U.S. state and Canadian provincial sterilization laws, included feeble-mindedness, insanity, epilepsy, criminality, imbecility, idiocy, sexual perversion (or depravity), mental unfitness (or deficiency), and moral depravity (or degeneracy). As this listing suggests, these laws especially targeted those perceived to have some kind of cognitive limitation or psychiatric condition on the grounds that they were unfit and would propagate these eugenic traits to their children; approximately 70% of all eugenic traits mentioned in sexual sterilization laws in the United States and Canada concerned cognitive ability or mental health. Given this, there was a clear role for psychologists in programs of eugenic sterilization, given their expertise in psychological testing (Rose, 1985). Such testing and subsequent sterilization were conducted through emerging forms of institutionalization, such as “training schools for the feeble-minded,” especially as eugenics gained state-level backing (Miller et al., 2015).
One of the roles of psychologists was to develop ways to measure those who were cognitively or psychiatrically subnormal. Emerging intelligence tests were adapted to quantify and classify those deemed “feeble-minded”or “mentally deficient” (Thomson, 1998; Trent, 1994). Binet’s famous test of intelligence, for example, incorporated the more specific existing folk categories of “imbecile” and “idiot,” adapting these to designate developmentally delayed children with mental ages, respectively, of 3–7 and 2 years. Following the translation of Binet’s test from French into English by Henry Goddard in 1908, “moron” was coined in 1910 to pick out those in the general population with a putatively fixed mental age of 8–12 years. This resulted in a three-tiered schema of intellectual subnormality—moron, imbecile, idiot—that came to be widely used in the eugenics movement.
In the hands of the psychologist Lewis Terman, what became the Stanford-Binet test initially was deployed in selecting army recruits near the end of World War I (1914–1918) before being used on the general population. The three-tiered scheme was accordingly fed into the newly minted idea of an intelligence quotient (IQ) that remains with us 100 years on, with the fixed mental ages of moron, imbecile, and idiot mapped onto standard deviations from a normalized IQ of 100. From the 1920s, these tests were widely used to identify children who were candidates for eugenic sterilization, whether they were already housed in segregated institutions or within the regular school system or general community."
From Asilverm, & Asilverm. (n.d.). What’s My Age Again: Why Mental Age Theory Hurts People with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities. Retrieved May 31, 2026, from https://www.disabilitywisdom.com/2018/12/21/whats-my-age-again-why-mental-age-theory-hurts-people-with-intellectual-and-developmental-disabilities/:
The concept of “mental age” was first introduced by Alfred Binet, co-creator of the first IQ tests, in the early twentieth century. Generally, “mental age” has been measured by comparing an individual’s score on a standardized IQ test with the average performance of their same-age peers. For people with IDD, “mental age” may also be estimated by comparing the person’s demonstrated physical, speech, adaptive or cognitive skills against the average for various age groups.
Not surprisingly, “mental age” came about alongside the eugenics movement in the United States. Mental ages were used to classify various groups of “feebleminded” individuals by severity: Adults with a mental age of 9-12 years were classified as “morons”; those with a mental age of 6-8 years were classified as “imbeciles”; and those with a mental age of 2-5 were classified as “idiots.” Individuals from any of these groups were thought unfit to reproduce."
A drawing of Blue looks annoyed and concerned. It's labelled, "TFW it's eugenics again. :("
Oh yeah. Why is it always eugenics?
To be clear: I'm not saying anyone is ableist or practicing eugenics for having a sense of their own internal age. I am pointing out how systemic ableism affects how system kids are treated, how the concept of mental age stems from ableism in the first place, and how terribly many cultures treat children and deemed-children to begin with: how children and disabled people are often regarded as objects, burdens, or annoyances who don't know enough to have a say about their own needs. Is this really how we want to assume all system kids should be treated? How anyone should be treated?
How much of how system kids are treated ties back to some form of ableism, in the end? I wonder about this a lot and I feel like I never see people talk about it.
"'[A]ttention-seekers' have often been framed as a stigmatised outgroup and contrasted with those who self-harm 'for genuine reasons' (Chandler, 2016, 2018; Crouch & Wright, 2004; Steggals et al., 2020). Crouch and Wright (2004) reported adolescent self-harmers' vitriol towards a stigmatised outgroup of perceived 'attention-seekers', leading to competition to be perceived as more authentic.
Similar finings were reported in pro-anorexia ('pro-ana') communities, where the pejorative label 'wannarexic' expresses doubt over someone's credibility as genuinely anorexic (Boero & Pascoe, 2012). These attitudes frame disordered identity as a matter of group conformity, where the boundaries of these groups are protected through accusing others of 'faking' (Boero & Pascoe, 2012).
This type of stigma, if left unchallenged, could have serious implications on public mental health. In particular, fears of being labelled an 'attention-seeker' can create significant barriers to help-seeking."
Source: ‘Faking it’: Exploring adolescent perceptions of depression (in)authenticity and ‘attention seeking’
Just read a very interesting fMRI study on non-disordered plurality. It's a peer-reviewed study that was published in 2019 to the scientific journal Medical Hypotheses, and worked on by 11 different researchers.
They scanned a small sample of people who, despite not having trauma or any mental health condition, developed distinct multiple identities during meditation. The brain scans showed activation patterns in some of the same areas of the brain that are also seen in DID as well as the dissociative symptoms of PTSD.
This supports the hypothesis that plurality exists on a continuum from healthy to disordered!
I'm super excited to see more studies like this in the future. It will be invaluable in deepening our understanding of plurality, dissociation, and the brain.
Here's a link to the study. From the abstract:
"In this study we report on five very uncommon 'hypnotic virtuosos' (HVs) free from any psychiatric disorder, spontaneously undergoing the emergence of multiple identities during neutral hypnosis; this allowed us to check the relationship between their experience and fMRI data.
During hypnosis the subjects underwent spontaneous non-intrusive experiences of other selves which were not recalled after the end of the session, due to post-hypnotic amnesia. [...]
Our results and their contrast with the available data on fMRI in DIDs allows us to draw the hypothesis of a continuum between the healthy mind – where multiple identities may coexist at unconscious level and may sometimes emerge to the consciousness – and DIDs[.]"
I thought I'd write a bit about Dr. Beahrs paper from 1983 on co-consciousness, which was his own term for what many of us now call non-disordered plurality or healthy multiplicity.
"We can look upon the human mind as like a symphony orchestra. It is a complex whole, constituted of multiple part-selves with their own ongoing experience, each doing what it does best under the organizing leadership of an executive, the conductor. This is functional co-consciousness, and does not require adherence to any one particular psychodynamic model" (p. 104).
It's cool to see how plurality was explored and distinguished from complex dissociative disorders back then. Dr. Beahrs's ideas are very similar to ego state theory...specifically the concept that the human mind is naturally made up of multiple parts. This is a common idea. A lot of modern theories and treatments operate on this idea, like structural dissociation theory and internal family systems therapy.
Some people see the "parts" of self in more metaphorical or abstract ways. Like, simply a label of organization. But in this paper they're acknowledged as conscious entities.
"By co-consciousness, I refer to the existence within a single human organism of more than one consciously experiencing psychological entity, each with some sense of its own identity or selfhood, relatively separate and discrete from other similar entities, and with separate conscious experiences occurring simultaneously with one another within this human organism" (p. 100).
Dr. Beahrs suggests that the parts of the self share a sense of unity, cohesion, and continuity no matter which part is in control. Severe dissociation can impair this, which is what we see in dissociative disorders like DID. Information can't be exchanged between the parts continuously. Parts may be unaware of each other. There's little cooperation and lots of conflict. Life is chaotic.
The plurality isn't the problem...the dissociation is.
"The pathology in a multiple personality is not the multiplicity per se, then, but the impairment of this organizing executive function" (p. 105).
If you believe that plurality is the natural state of the mind, than the logical conclusion is that trying to make someone "get rid of" their system would be extremely harmful (and probably impossible). Dr. Beahrs emphasizes that treating CDDs should focus on lessening dissociation and amnesiac barriers. It should be about bringing harmony to the system, not erasing them.
Another thing he brings up in the paper is that people who don't have CDDs may also struggle with similar issues with plurality and dissociation. Dr. Beahrs notes that much of the same therapeutic techniques can be used to help them.
Overall, the paper is terribly dated in how it talks about DID, but I personally found its descriptions of plurality to be rather meaningful and humanizing. You can read the paper here if you're interested.
That's interesting. It does seem to suggest that nondisordered plurality must be individuals united underneath one host/core which we strongly disagree with though.
Somewhat, but you'd be surprised! If you haven't read the paper, you should take a look. He actually explores the idea. You can tell the gears in his head are turning and he's trying to get away from the "one real personality" BS. I'm not totally satisfied with how he does it, but it's a take on it that I haven't seen before. I'm pleasantly surprised considering this is a paper from 1983.
He hypothesizes that parts are united by an overall concept of self that transcends them. Sure, that concept could be something like "John the singlet" but who's to say it couldn't also be something like "John, Bob, & Amy the system"? Who's to say that concept can't be plural, too?
Plurality, as conceptualized in peer-reviewed research:
Plurality, often also called multiplicity, is "having more than one self in the mind and body" (Eve & Parry, 2021).
Plurality "is not a diagnosis" (Eve, et al., 2023) and is "a broader concept than DID" (Christensen, 2022).
Plurality is "a broad term, which encompasses a range of experiences" because "people have individual conceptualizations of what it means to be ‘more than one’" (Eve, et al., 2023).
Plurality is "a term coined to be more inclusive than only that of traumagenic multiplicity" (Christensen, 2022).
Not all people who experience plurality will identify as a 'plural' or 'multiple.' Plurality is a useful umbrella term for the experience of more-than-oneness "but not necessarily a term reflective of one's identity or self-expression" (Christensen, 2022).
"[N]ot everyone who identifies as multiple will want or require mental health intervention for the condition they experience" (Eve, et al., 2023).
The concept of non-traumagenic plurality does not hurt DID research. "[T]he research confirming DID as a trauma-based disorder is doing just that: confirming traumagenic DID, the disorder, not Plurality, the identity . . . Distinguishing between the two does not need to invalidate either" (Christensen, 2022).
The idea that plurality is inherently disordered is a product of Western culture. "Within Western linear frameworks . . . there has been an emphasis on the ‘healthy self’ being integrated and whole" (Eve & Parry, 2021). "In indigenous cultures, esp. shamanic societies, a polypsychism (i.e. many selves) prevails" (Scharfetter, 2008).
Fakeclaiming and anti-endo / anti-plural rhetoric is traumatizing. "[H]aving a condition such as multiplicity that is not generally validated and recognised in a community can be, in itself, traumatic. Even if trauma does not precede the development of multiplicity, trauma-informed care would still be appropriate for many young people who seek help for multiplicity" (Parry, et al., 2021).
(MY BLOG IS NEUTRAL AND I AM COMMENTING IN GOOD FAITH)
adding additional information: the (Eve & Parry, 2021) source is a Youth & Policy article. Youth & Policy is a peer-reviewed nonprofit focused on boosting the voices of young people. (source: the "about us" page)
criticisms:
the (Eve & Parry, 2021) source mischaracterizes at least one cited source: (Parry, Lloyd & Simpson, 2018) does not claim that "many people first experience multiplicity in their adolescence." this is not one of the central claims of that article, and even if it was, that study is a qualitative study with 5 participants and is therefore not generalizable. while i did not check every source cited from the Eve & Parry article, this does unfortunately call into question the validity and rigor of the article as a whole
the (Parry, et al., 2021) source is based on self-report, which is inherently a less reliable form of gathering information. it's still valuable, but it really could be better.
if you're interested in further reading regarding the second to last point, i highly recommend "Critiquing the Requirement of Oneness over Multiplicity: An Examination of Dissociative Identity (Disorder) in Five Clinical Texts" (Clayton, 2005)!
Thank you for your additional information and good faith comment!
In response to your first criticism, I want to politely point out that I think you've misunderstood something. Here is the full quote you are referring to:
"Additionally, qualitative research with people with lived experience has indicated that many people first experience multiplicity in their adolescence (e.g. Parry, Lloyd & Simpson, 2018), highlighting the need for further research with young people who experience themselves as multiple."
This quote is not claiming that people in the general population experience multiplicity in their adolescence. It is claiming that many people with lived experience (who are already multiple/plural) first experience their multiplicity/plurality in adolescence.
Secondly, the authors are not claiming that Parry, Loyd, & Simpson made this claim. The "e.g." stands for "for example" because it is something that is experienced by the participants in Parry, Loyd & Simpson's study.
The reason they're using "e.g." is because there are numerous studies that involve people who first started experiencing their multiplicity/plurality in adolescence, several of which are cited in Parry, Loyd & Simpson's paper too.
Furthermore, Parry is an author of both articles. I'm making an assumption here but I think it's likely that she used one of her former studies as an example because it involves participants and data that she has personally worked with and feels confident applies in this context.
its so weird coming out as plural bc singlets always seem to act like i'm the one who's never met them. like up until this moment it was purely the singletsona. like hate to break it to you that guy doesn't even exist. i've been here the whole time.
like i like the people i like but i truly dont believe anyone when they say they really will like and accept every alter. especially if they say they'll like us all equally. honestly to me, im not sure id even like it if that were the case — in any group of people its natural that youre opinions on them would vary. but at the same time, the alternative isnt better, i certainly dont want to feel like the one that isnt liked (i mean, maybe i personally wouldnt care as much, but ive seen it happen to others, ive seen it tear them apart). its just hard to connect with any one in any way that feels real.
i dont think of myself as liking or disliking any of the particular members of any of my friends systems either, so in a way even saying this is hypocritical. maybe its just something i tell myself so i dont feel it when someone so clearly wishes it were anyone else speaking. anyone but me.
I wonder if your feelings are more like, "it's ok for them to like us all (equally), but there is no way to know in advance that they will, so promising to like us all strikes me as not really understanding that we are different people"?
I could be biased by that being my feelings on the topic, but that's kind of what it sounds like to me?
i certainly dont want to feel like the one that isnt liked (i mean, maybe i personally wouldnt care as much, but ive seen it happen to others, ive seen it tear them apart).
I think very few people are comfortable with being disliked, let alone being told they are disliked.
I know with a couple of old friend's systems there were some members i liked and some i didn't really, but i certainly didn't tell those members i didn't like them, and i would be polite and friendly toward them in exactly the same way i would be polite and friendly and not make my dislike known to a singlet i disliked, because i don't want to be hurtful.
this is very brave of me because it's very scary to put myself out there like this, but i've been journalling! and i wanted to share my thoughts and feelings with all of you! maybe my experiences will make some of you feel seen! maybe for others, it will help you understand your system friends better! being part of a system is really tricky. it makes me sad sometimes. but i'm so happy to be here!! (^:
I just gave a really really long reply to a singlet in r/plural.
Here's hoping it was worth it and they won't ask annoying "gotcha" questions, because my answer requires them adjusting their current, very culturally-ingrained, most likely very American, understanding of cultural values, perspectives, and behaviours.
can we like. honestly talk about how difficult it is to live as a system in a singlets' world. like as a separate thing from the challenges of dealing with trauma or internal conflicts like. specifically the pain of hiding your multiplicity from others.
i cannot go to work and say "hey guys, it's rogue today" and then just be rogue. i cannot say to my mom "hey, sophie wants you to pick up something from the store." i cannot say "hey, can you give me a second, i have to deal with something internally real quick" and then turn my attention in to the headspace.
our child alters cannot be children except online and around maybe 2 people irl. if a child alter fronts around our family or at work they have to just be an adult until an adult alter comes back.
we cannot use our own names. we cannot speak with our own voices. our loved ones do not know us. our distinct individualities and experiences of life are flattened down into the amalgamated person we are forced to pretend to be.
i implore singlets to just fucking think about if you could tolerate living that way.
One thing you might have, in place of or alongside amnesia, is distance. The day started with Ichigo leaping out of bed because he slept through our alarm by 15 minutes, and in the 8 hours since he worked a full shift, with lunch and some chores in the middle. I cruised into the front near the end of that, and I remember all of it, but it feels like it happened yesterday. It's not that I don't know how the laundry got done or what Ichigo had for breakfast, because I do, but the distance feels wrong.
It's not the same as "I blinked and a whole day went by". I know the day went by, and I can think back on what he did if I feel like it. But the act of switching does some fucky time dilation shit to our brain. I know that was just hours ago but also how was it not yesterday??
When we answer a question about ourselves, we are either going to answer collectively or individually. We often answer collectively because that is simply the path of least resistance, especially when communicating irl with friends that we don't see often enough to get to know on an individual basis. For instance, "we" like spicy food. "We" enjoy electronica. "We" draw/write. "We" enjoy crochet, "we" dislike eating fish. This may or may not be true for the individual speaking. Some of us have a low spice tolerance, some of us prefer classical, folk, metal, rock, etc, some of us don't have a creative bone in their body and would rather be doing something else. Our body has an aversion to fish, our brain and muscle memory means all of us can crochet or draw even if we have no desire to. But it's much easier to explain our hobbies like that to people who won't 'get it'.
However, we desire to be seen as individuals with our own attributes and not just a mass of collective identity. It's very easy to ignore us as individuals and in essence see us as a quirky singular person when we are collectivized like that.
However. There is another factor with answering collectively that we are often hesitant to talk about: filling in the blanks.
You don't really think about this as a singlet, especially if you have a good memory, but autobiographical information is not generally difficult to recall. Your mother had a maiden name you likely know; you remember your first pet, you probably remember the books or movies or video games you loved most growing up. You have downtime in your everyday life. When someone asks you what you have been up to, you can probably answer that easily, and have something of substance to say. You have a cohesive life to recall from, but most of us do not.
There is the obvious problem: we are generally speaking fronting once every few months if we're lucky, sometimes once every few years, and most of the time in between we are either asleep, puttering around our headspace or have lives on our gateway world whose details we can't recall on demand when we are here, for the most part. Our everyday lives are full of holes, but so are our early lives. We may or may not have memories of our lives before we came here, and those memories will be patchwork at best and extremely light on the detail at worst, being able to be summed up in a mere sentence. Recalling details is difficult and emotionally fraught. Imagine for a moment you could not remember an autobiographical detail as simple as the names of your parents or your birthday. Frightening too are the holes we have in our personalities. You don't know what your favorite genre of music is. You don't know what types of things you like to do in your spare time. But you know with certainty that you DID know at one time, that you could recall this information and now it's just been taken from you.
This type of draining self work is so hard because it exposes gaps in our personhood. We used to be different. We used to be a whole person, but not everything was carried over when we came here and now we have to figure it out and what if it's wrong? what if you're just making things up? That's not how autobiographical memory is supposed to work! That's not how people work! So what does that make you?
And as fraught as that is to interrogate within ourselves among people who understand the nature of our situation, being asked for these details--or even someone just trying to get to know you more at a deeper level--by anyone outside is all at once embarrassing and terrifying. I don't know what my hobbies are, I haven't had an opportunity to explore my options. I don't know when my birthday is, I don't know the details of my childhood, I don't remember what my parents were like. I know I have a job in-world but I don't remember the specifics. These are details I should know, because these are details other people know about themselves. Even this minor scrutiny has turned us into paper dolls with pieces haphazardly cut out.
At once: I am a fraud of a person.
And: They can see straight through me.
So answering collectively smooths things over. It fills in the holes so it's not as jarring when we don't know something we should. It's much easier to interface with people who can access their own autobiographical memory even if it means lying about our own, or at least prioritizing the least confusing version of the truth. But to be honest: we hate it.
In our panic to cover up the "I don't remember"s we lose the opportunity to say "Can we chat about it and maybe I'll figure it out?". We lose the opportunity to have a true moment of connection. We may never be able to fully remember the details of our pasts or our lives on our Gateway world, but does that make us less of people? We can build new lives here, too, but by avoiding thinking about the gaps and filling them in with the path of least resistance, even when we are self-examining, aren't we robbing ourselves of an opportunity to grow and become our own people?
-Nicole (she/her)
im not fucked off, i just sound that way @multiplydifficult - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
