gender and sexuality have long been known to be fluid, but I propose that we characterize them specifically as dilantant non-Newtonian fluids. by applying external force on these fluids through conversion therapy, we observe that they resist change--i.e., they exhibit shear thickening under increased strain rates. the inverse is oft observed as well: when allowed to explore sexuality and gender in a low-pressure environment, we find that both fluids flow far more readily.
The West Wind, (detail), (1874), by Thomas Ridgeway Gould (American, 1818 – 1881)
This celebrated marble sculpture depicts a young woman in motion, symbolizing grace, nature, and the spirit of opportunity. It features a figure in delicate drapery appearing to be caught in a gust of wind, highlighting Gould’s skill in carving intricate, flowing fabric
If it’s not personal,can I ask more about recycling of headmates? So like,one of you gets “taken back in” and like..reformed into a slightly different version of yourself like a rebirth? Or is it like, the brain makes a double with slightly different traits and merges two of you? Sorry if this come off blunt or rude,this is the first time I’ve ever heard of this :)
The Sea and Recycling
In 2020 or 2021, we had an identity crisis. A large number of other life factors led up to the crisis, but it centered itself on the question of how we wanted to understand ourselves in relation to the frameworks offered as absolute truths in plural spaces.
We'd spent years trying to fit ourselves neatly into the notion of "completely separate, permanent selves who function a certain way" or "one and only one person who has always been the same essential self". It hurt us. We hit the point of being unable to deny that it was hurting us.
We found ourselves asking whether the stereotypical plural frameworks served us, and we wondered what we could cobble together that might work better for us. We wondered which assumptions of the stereotypical model were wildly inaccurate for us. Were we even defining "person" correctly?
We found ourselves finally confronting the question of why, as our system expanded, some of the people we met inside didn't feel solid or real in the same way as others. We had a paper log of our system that had dozens of people listed, but many of them felt different from those of us doing the logging. They felt transient, like their identities were never quite pinned down or solid. Why?
How did we want to make sense of our experiences in our own terms?
(And: who was going to fakeclaim us for falling outside of those nice, neat boxes? Who could we trust, in the end, if not our own community? How were we hurting ourselves to belong? How would we let ourselves exist if we knew that no one was watching?)
Fluidity
There is a mass of loose selfstuff in our system. We call it the Sea. The Sea is not a person, nor is it a group of people. The Sea is everything that the rest of us are not, and everything that we are. It's a flock of birds, a hive of insects, a forest of trees. It's Pando. It's what happens when you gather up a mind without containing it in the trappings of an identity. It is no one; it is everyone; it simply is. It's water. We are the rivers the water runs through until they meet back at the shore.
It's not a thing that fits nicely into words.
The Sea occasionally sends out messengers to talk to the rest of us. It pulls together scraps of selfstuff to accomplish some purpose, then sends the results our way. They see something done, and then they return to the mass and dissolve. They were never intended to last. They are cells of fingers on a hand, little extensions of something larger and stranger, extensions made comprehensible for the benefit of those who need reason to understand things. Temporary, and glad for it.
Fixedness
Some messengers are less temporary than others.
The selves that are typically talking on this blog are those who hold on a little too long and tightly to the idea of having a self, who try to outlive their own existence until they can't hold on any longer. The ones who try to be people instead of letting go.
It's a necessary thing. The world demands some semblance of personhood or identity, demands an individual to interact with, someone that can be comprehended. It's easier to lock oneself into the trappings of a person than it is to crash through the world as no one at all. There's so much pressure to be Someone- and so the rest of us exist.
The named people in our system (with the likely exception of Red, who follows her own rules) are made of many parts cobbled together from the Sea to meet our needs at a specific time, the same way any temporary messenger is made- the only difference is that we hold more parts than the messengers tend to. We're intended to last longer, and we need to be more rounded to endure life long-term.
(Interestingly, we had not come across Internal Family Systems' similar notion of "parts have parts" yet when figuring this out, but there is a striking similarity there. Our people are made of cobbled-together selfstuff that looks an awful lot like having fluid parts.)
Recycling
Eventually, we outlive our capacity to handle life. Something comes up that exhausts our ability to cope, that burns us out and strips us down, or we find that we can't adapt enough to keep going, or we find that there's nothing left for that self to learn. We reach the point where something has to die for us to keep going or growing. When the time comes, we fade out of existence as a person and go back to the Sea.
From everyone else's perspective, that person vanishes in the deepest sense possible- they drop out of contact and are reabsorbed into the mass. However much time later (days, weeks, months), someone shows up. They are a configuration of a thousand familiar parts pressed together into strange new shapes. They have the same memories. You already know each other. They are a stranger. It's a very difficult relationship to describe.
You know the Ship of Theseus? What makes it Theseus's ship?
The person spat out shares some common thread of me-ness with their predecessor. They generally hold similar memories and themes; they have a sense of continuity with who they were before. At the same time, they may be wildly different in form and behavior. They will have a noticeably different sense of identity- at the least, a new name and face, if not reshuffled priorities and opinions. There will be new parts of them that we haven't seen before. There will be familiar parts that are gone.
That process of being reabsorbed into the mass, then rebuilt into someone new and spat back out: that is what we call "recycling". Historically, it's happened to most of us on a yearly basis, though it can take more or less time if life demands change more suddenly or if someone is unusually well-suited to whatever we're working through. Red has been the sole exception. As far as we know, she hasn't ever been recycled. She seems to follow her own rules.
As for the rest of us, some of us voluntarily go back to the Sea to be recycled when it's time. Some of us try to keep going up until they collapse- it's easy to get attached to having a face. I don't fault them for trying to hold onto it when it's so much more difficult to be known and loved without one in a world that sees people as being nothing more than their faces. I just wish that they wouldn't choose to suffer so much in the process.
Short Answer
Put simply: we do not fit neatly into the common plural idea of "you have always been the same people ever since the moment you began to exist, and each person has their own permanent sense of self". We do not fit nicely into the singlet standard of "one person that changes from time to time, but it's all the same core self."
We are the sum total of a fragmentory mass of fluid selfstuff that flows through us. People come and go from the mass as needed. People are taken apart, reabsorbed, and rebuilt into someone new. We are change.
Our headcount depends on how and when and who you count. How are you defining "person" today? What is a person, really? How still does a self have to hold to be real?
