a paradox emblazoned with stars

vesper / 20s / they

[starlitparadox]

—— if it lights up my eyes, i won't get lost ✨

— about

hi! it took me a minute to find i name that i like for this sideblog, but you can call me vesper. i'm in my mid-20s. they/them is fine; please don't use you& for me.

i use this blog to talk about my DID (and other stuff), which i've been in treatment for for about a year and a half, as well as thoughts i have surrounding the community and such. i have another blog that i made for the same purpose but logging in and out is a PITA so i'm using this instead. i want to face and be honest about my experiences.

despite most of my alters being strongly elaborated and me not hiding this fact, i do not consider myself to be plural. please respect that i have not opted into that label for myself. thank you!

also, please understand that i am quite firm with my boundaries, as the community has not been the healthiest for me in the past but i don't want to shut myself out of it completely as the isolation sucks. i'm genuinely not trying to be rude, i just want to keep myself safe.

— house rules

my stance on the 'course is that i refuse to engage with it. period. i sank the better part of a decade into that cesspool and i am not going back. i am here to talk about my disorder.

i am not an educator. i cannot overstate the extent to which i am not an here to educate. i am learning about and living with this but that doesn't mean i can teach.

how i talk about my subjective experience is my business. i promise you, i am aware that we aren't literally separate people, but my parts are strongly elaborated and at this current stage of therapy a degree of differentiation is helpful for me. the balance between "this is me" and "this feels not-me" is one i've learned to strike with my therapist.

— tags

🌠 ves is yapping . — op tag

👥 i am, we are . — DID stuff

🧠 brain stuff . — mental health + nd stuff

🦴 body stuff . — physical health stuff

emote w/o label . — sign-off. no you do not need specific alter info and no we will not play ourselves up for you.

— other stuff

i sometimes talk about stuff besides DID here, like my Blackness, my queerness, my physical shit (HSD, working diagnosis of POTS [awaiting formal confirmation]), and my other mental shit (autism, ADHD, OCD, ARFID).

mob psycho 100 and project sekai are my fucking jams and i enjoy reading kageyama shigeo through a lens of multiplicity. i really like vocaloid music in general and have since before playing pjsk. stream eyelid by nulut, fuel by utsu-p (and also all of his discography) and regulus by yuuyu now.

ffxiv, super mario sunshine, undertale, deltarune, and doki doki literature club are my beloveds. pizza tower, slay the princess, cooking companions, dead cells, the other 3d marios, tomodachi life, rhythm heaven, and other games i'm probably missing are awesome and cool too.

[mindnagerie]

A Drop in the Bucket.

[deathless-dreams]

Thank you for your partecipation.

[starlitparadox]

yes your joke about how morally neutral thing you know i and others you know and regularly talk to in this space enjoy and find value in is meaningless and bad and impossible to enjoy is just as funny as it was the first 87 times milord

[starlitparadox]

no milord it doesn't put me off at all that i make an active effort to respect that you like things that i don't and not put those things down while you don't spare me the same effort

[starlitparadox]

yes milord i do feel safe talking to you when you openly admit to gossiping about people no matter how petty the reason

[starlitparadox]

yes your joke about how morally neutral thing you know i and others you know and regularly talk to in this space enjoy and find value in is meaningless and bad and impossible to enjoy is just as funny as it was the first 87 times milord

[starlitparadox]

no milord it doesn't put me off at all that i make an active effort to respect that you like things that i don't and not put those things down while you don't spare me the same effort

[starlitparadox]

yes your joke about how morally neutral thing you know i and others you know and regularly talk to in this space enjoy and find value in is meaningless and bad and impossible to enjoy is just as funny as it was the first 87 times milord

[strangerconnection]

you know, i don't remember

[shihkas]

30 Days of DID, non parts-focused

It's been eleven years (wow) since the original 30 Days of DID ask meme was created, and there Still isn't one that is not largely parts-focused. So I made my own.

Some questions still pertain to parts but they are much more few and far between than the original ask meme. Answer what you want to, skip over what you don't like. This is all in the name of getting to know yourself better and sharing only what you feel comfortable sharing.

To be clear because unfortunately I have to be, this ask meme is for those with a complex dissociative disorder (so not just DID!) whose experiences with parts are inherently disordered.

When and how did you find out you have DID?

How do you experience DID? Do you find your symptoms manifest more physically, emotionally, mentally, etc?

What does healing look like for you?

Do you have a specific type of therapy that is your favourite and that works best for you? What types of therapy haven't worked in the past?

Have you shared your diagnosis with anyone outside of your care team? If so, who and why?

Are you, as a whole, in a relationship? How does romantic partnership work for you?

How long have you been in treatment for DID?

When did you first learn/hear about DID, if it was prior to your diagnosis?

What misinformation about DID irks you the most?

What are some ways that depersonalization and derealization appear in your day to day life?

Do you have a favourite model of dissociation (eg. BASK, ToSD, 4D model)? Why?

How do you keep track of your symptoms and experiences?

What was your last therapy session like?

What is your favourite sense to ground yourself with? Olfactory, tactile, auditory, etc?

What are some ways that memory gaps appear in your day to day life?

Prior to your DID diagnosis, had you been misdiagnosed with other conditions?

Do you have a favourite movie, TV show, book, or video game that has a character with DID, or one that you believe has DID?

How do you experience emotions in relation to your DID? For you, how are emotions affected by dissociation?

How much internal communication do you have with parts? How do you, as a whole, prefer to communicate?

What are some ways that identity confusion appears in your day to day life?

What songs or specific lyrics do you relate to your experience with DID?

Are you diagnosed with other conditions? How do those conditions affect your DID, and vice versa?

Where is the safest place you can imagine for yourself as a whole?

How do you experience passive influence? How are you able to identify passive influence now, vs. when you first discovered your DID?

Have you read books on DID? If so, what are some of your favourites? What are some books you would like to read in the future?

How do you experience denial in relation to your DID? How do you deal with it?

Do you experience variation in skill correlating to levels of dissociation? If so, what skills stand out as most affected by dissociation?

In your experience, what are the hardest things about having DID in your day to day life?

Do you have a common trait amongst parts, such as a trauma response (or if you want to be less personal, hobbies or interests, etc)?

What is something you feel should be written about that was not asked here?

[starlitparadox]

me: wow. my rule outs are done. based on that active stand test too there's a near 100% likelihood that i have pots. that's fucking crazy man but surely I don't actually have pots haha that'd be wild

evil and intimidating washing out my water bottle making my heart rate jump to 140:

[starlitparadox]

active stand test is a torture method it's been four hours and i still feel like ass oh my god <- needed to get some data for my cardiologist

[orchardsys]

Always happy to see people change but sometimes it makes me go “hmm they’re so normal now I must’ve made everything in the past all up!”

[weedpoop]

made a comic about #howitfeels

[wheelie-sick]

link

[starlitparadox]

idk on one hand i want to be ✨ happy, relieved, and thankful ✨ bc i'm finally close to getting an additional answer surrounding something that's been troubling me for as long as i can remember.

but on the other hand, sincerely, why the fuck should i be. all i can remember is trying so fucking hard. trying to exercise, walking to and from school every day (~30-40 minutes both ways). feeling sick, achy, like there was led in every fiber of my being and i'd exerted everything i had on going to school, being at school, and going home. and basically just giving up because i wasn't getting used to it so clearly i wasn't doing enough. i just needed to stick it out, but i literally could not. i was weak. a failure of a patient.

except it turns out no!! it's just that my heart rate is constantly high and spikes every time i stand up and that's on top of my joints being fucked up and evil and that this is normal actually! it turns out i wasn't just a failure that wasn't trying hard enough i was just chronically ill ^_^

like how the fuck am i supposed to be happy. how am i supposed to feel like "phew" about being fucking gaslit for the better part of a decade. idk. i feel like shit and while i understand why people are like "i'm happy you're figuring stuff out!!" i just feel angry. i feel so fucking mad and hurt and i just can't feel happy even though instinct tells me i "should" because that's whay i was taught. that i should be happy that it's being figured out. that that's the right thing to say.

idk man this sucks.