Putting a positive spin on CDD language and comparing experiences
Plurals are people, CDDs have parts
Plurals add members, while pwCDDs break and divide
Shattered plates and broken mirrors have represented CDDs for far too long, and now that language has turned into something to be ashamed of, rather than a genuine attempt to convey something important and central
"But I'm more than just parts, I'm people"
"I don't feel like I lost anything so it must be addition, I don't break, I don't shatter, I don't know where they came from or why"
This language was never meant to be demeaning and it was never meant to have a single meaning, these are abstract concepts that can represent anything
Somewhere along the lines (we know when, I'm just tired of talking about it), the language was twisted, the words given a deeper, more concrete meaning that painted the entire medical establishment in a bad light
If you're on the side of psychiatry, you're not allowed to be people, if you're parts you can't be plural, you either divide or multiply
We compare ourselves over these concepts now
Do you feel like you split? Then you must be parts, you must have a CDD, you must have broken in some way and it had to be for a bad reason
People with CDDs don't split, divide, or add
We dissociate, and those pieces can become anything, people, fragments, parts, egos
If you dissociate, you probably aren't going to feel like you lost anything, if you're dissociating a new experience, no one lost anything
This is confusing and we harm the community when we do it, we harm young systems trying to figure out where they belong and what they need
There's zero reason for this divide, for the either/or of these words
We make people pick, we make them choose, we have to define every single origin and point in time and God forbid any of it be a negative
Alters RARELY come to front when they first form, they tend to take YEARS to finally settle into a name and identity
This divide makes people choose and choosing is going to harm young CDD systems that don't want to be seen as lesser or as pieces, or as a product of trauma, meanwhile trauma is just an old letter in my bottom drawer I haven't looked at in over a decade, and my most recent split was the product of an upset tummy
Just because I say split doesn't mean it's simply a fragment or part or that I divided
It's just a goddamn word trying to covey a very personal experience
And it wasn't the medical establishment that made us choose
Stop giving these words so much power over the experience, it doesn't need to be parts OR people, division OR addition, splitting OR multiplying, medicalized OR not
It can be all the things, all at the same time, it can be none of them, it can be something entirely new
And people with CDDs don't need to be broken plates, we can be sunflowers, siphonophores, a stack of plates, a quilt, the goddamn pythagorean theorem if you want
The community language around CDDs has put CDD systems in a tiny, uncomfortable box, that you must relate to at all stages
These words don't define how we actually work or the mechanisms, or what we're capable of, or what we're worth, or how we feel day to day, or how we feel within the system
In most cases they're not even accurate
And yet, CDDs have constantly gotten the shittier end of the stick, with the sole purpose of turning people OFF of the medical model
And I think it's time we just stop doing that
People with CDDs can add, we're people, we're beautiful parts of a constantly growing quilt, we're a field of sunflowers, we're communities working together, we're strong in numbers
None of these things are anti recovery
The words we use don't actually mean we work differently, we're just people trying to describe a colour, a concept, a feeling
Stop being so disgusted by CDD concepts and language that you have to create something better, something more positive, to represent you
It becomes a negative when you create the positive opposite, as in, I don't split, I add
Okay, cool story, go fuck yourself?
Listen, even if I, an alter, is split down the middle à la Terrifier style, it's still +1
YOU put the negative spin on it and decided you wanted to be more, and that it must be different, it must be one or the other
Meanwhile, anyone who has been through the system for a few good years is like, "who told you it meant THAT?"
I don't have a solution, or a point, I just want to remind people that no one owns these words and they don't HAVE to mean anything, they don't have to have a consistent definition, anyone can use them to describe themselves and it doesn't preclude you from being medicalized
These words don't have to put us in a box, we are allowed to use the positive versions, we're allowed to come up with new, positive versions
I want to tell people that a positive word or descriptor doesn't immediately belong to the plurals, and the negative of it belongs to pwCDDs
We have to stop doing that
We have to stop making people choose
We have to stop putting all the negatives on CDDs and medicalization and pretending it means we can't be more than that
When everything about plurality is positive, and everything about CDDs is a negative... obviously people will choose the non medicalized community and language, even if they really need to explore the CDD community
