The Romanticization of Alters
I'm tired of watching people romanticize being a system. That's what this post was originally going to be about. But then I realized it wasn't necessarily being a system that's romanticized, but having alters. So many singlets say "It would be fun to have friends in your head" and endogenic systems often only claim to experience the alters, but never the bad parts of them. Taking the traumagenic-endogenic debate out of it, alters still shouldn't be something someone /wants./ Being an alter isn't fun and games. It's traumatizing. Painful. Anxiety-inducing. Lonely. Not just when we're alone, just as us in the outerworld. But innerworld and within the system too.
Being an alter isn't always having friends in your head. It's also:
- Feeling ashamed that you couldn't handle the trauma. That you weren't strong enough to deal and cope on your own. Feeling bad that you had to have someone else help you that came from /you/ because no one else would. It's the feeling of not being good enough on your own. That you /needed/ someone else.
- Lonely as hell. Some systems have better communication, yes. But others don't. We have days to months to years of no internal communication. Sometimes no external, either. Specifically before discovering you're a system, because why would you leave notes or something if you don't think you need them? It's feeling alone, even if you aren't. It's not hearing others so you start to doubt. It's having no one there, or having them show up out of no where for seemingly no reason.
- Switching. Having amnesic barriers between switches. Not knowing if you'll ever come back to front. Not knowing what they're doing, not being able to stop what they're doing. Having to watch as they take control of your life. Not knowing when you'll come back. Not being sure if you really exist or not.
- Your life not being yours. It's all of yours. Not just one alter's, but everyone in the body's. You have little room to grow your own life out of the one previous hosts' or sometimes just the host has. It's pre-determined. It's something I just assumed. I didn't get a choice in it.
- Being unstable. Alters have different ideas of what they want to do as a career or what to study. We have different appearances and ways of dressing. We have different emotional ranges. Different medication responses. Different allergies. You know how hard it is to plan as a singlet? It's a lot harder as a system because you can't plan for triggers or switches. You can't always know who's going to front and when. I don't know if I'm going to exist as /me/ tomorrow, or in a few hours. I just don't know and it's so hard to imagine a future when you can't plan it. Sometimes, we don't even know who we are. We're a blur of different alters.
This isn't even an exhaustive list. There are so many things about alters that are horrible. There are a couple positives, as always. But there are so many negatives and you shouldn't want to have alters. We aren't a blessing. I wish I was a singlet. I wish I was normal, not trying to constantly survive or be in survival mode. Stop wanting just the alters. Even having alters isn't as fun as it seems.
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