By Ilonaramona

Personal experiences of Ones Plurality

For years now we've considered ourselves a system, and this is a long post rambling about who we are, and why we are.

We're multiple, plural, a system, a collective, so many different terms we enjoy using interchangeably because they all feel they fit. We are multiple entities as much as we are parts of what is one whole in this world; internally we are many, externally we are one. We live one life, but each of us are pieces to living it, so we are plural. Our system formed from trauma, we were neglected and abused as a child, we've been around horrible people since we were little, our life has been unstable for a long time. There is no arguing that trauma is not part of why we're a system, or that it wasn't the catalyst for the dissociation that caused us to become parts; so we are a system with roots of a dissociative disorder. But we don't only exist because of it. We use the label adaptive, because that is the initial cause of us, to adapt to our life, our adversities, our trauma, our disorders... but we also use created as a label; we're mixed origin. Our system especially nowadays tends to linger in fragments, sometimes those fragments take upon their own identity. Sometimes we purposefully influence them, we create the alters we want, we need, out of their existence. We create within ourselves, we form naturally, and we split from our pain... so we are a mixed origin, adaptive and created, OSDD system. And that fits quite well for all we need it to. If it were up to some of us, we wouldn't bother with these labels at all, but for others within who we are these labels are a comfort; an easy telling that "this is me, this is who I am and I want to say it and be heard." We don't like -genic labels, they're narrow, and make you decide between having to identify with trauma itself or disregarding what part it could play even if it didn't form your system. For awhile we used them because it was all we really had, it was the easier option because people knew; but in the same breath it came with peoples assumptions that we hated having upon ourselves. We mentioned prior our initial origins, having a dissociative disorder. We don't particularly view our plurality or systemhood itself as disordered, we've plenty that affects us being multiple in negative ways though though... CPTSD, OCD, BPD, NPD, Various physical disabilities, Etc, They all make things harder. They are what disorders us, causes discord and pain. Our system makes it easier, better for us, at least nowadays. In the past, years ago, I think we would've said our systemhood is inherently disordered; it caused our host then stress, unbearably. it was a painful experience, scary, anxiety inducing for more reasons than one. But we've grown, we've changed, we've overcome a lot and our views have changed. I think it's fair to hope we'd have changed from when we were 13 years old... We've spoken before that the spaces we'd used to be in helped us all but none, when we were staunchly anti-endo because it was the "right" option (and the option that, at the time, made us feel safe while we were in the company of those who felt it right to harass people outside of those views.) We were scared of ourselves, scared of the people around us. Scared of being wrong. Existing wrong.

When the information we were given was that we were broken, we were so horribly abused (which, frankly, remains true in our case because we were), that we were broken by it. And if we hadn't been horribly broken, it was wrong to claim we were this way... which of course is hardly the truth. When we stepped out of that bubble, realizing how tired and awful it made us felt... how much worse and harder it made things for us. We began to get more information, we had people tell us we were wrong (and we hated it at first honestly), we had people who directed us to others who had resources. And we learned. And we learned more about ourselves because of it. We learned more about dissociative disorders, about plural history, about the experiences of others outside of it, about how other aspects of ourselves intertwine with the rest of it... We learned a lot of things we disregarded or didn't think was necessary to know prior. Because we thought we knew everything we needed to already, that it was a trauma disorder, and the only way to be this way was to be traumatized. And we were very quickly challenged in our at-the-time narrow views. Sometimes those old spaces still linger even as we've come to accept more views, more various systems and the way they exist too. Existing in spaces where others are so open, sometimes it still feels odd, and we feel isolated, the strange and weird one of the bunch because of how we simply are in our life. We don't understand or grasp the experiences of those with elaborate innerworlds, or who retain memories within them. We never had that. We don't understand the people who will openly text as various alters talking to one another, responding to each other. We've always been so internal with ourselves, that seeing communication in those ways felt... strange? Even down to people who make a big deal of new alters, who fuss and whine about even considering the idea of it. We don't get it.

It's hard sometimes not to think to ourselves "wow, that's cringe/stupid" or that "they should just roleplay" sometimes when presented with these sorts of situations. But we know that the way we think sometimes is cruel or overly mean and judgemental; and while we know it comes from a place of our own insecurity, and retaining some of the things from spaces we'd used to be in as a kid... it's still awful, and our place to challenge it when we think this way. These people don't hurt me. Their experiences do not change mine. I am still me. They are them. And that's okay. And that is what I will always remind myself of.

The various pieces of our story, the ones that made us, are exactly why we've landed on the labels we use now. They are what have made us syscourse neutral, an endo safe system, someone who wants to seek our more information and enjoys learning about this side of life.

I've been thinking about trauma and what may qualify, and I'm starting to realize that raising animals probably did contribute to the trauma we have.

(tw explicit animal death/killing, general gross/gore warning)

I remember watching a family friend crack open eggs that hadn't incubated fully to hatching when I was five or younger, and she explained that it's just the way things are on a farm sometimes as I watched those soggy underdeveloped chicks lay still on the straw.

When I was older one of my goats had a stillborn kid - but it had been dead long enough to rot in the womb, and its corpse was literally falling apart as we pulled it out.

I raised a couple batches of turkeys that I loved so, so much, even though I knew we'd butcher them. I named them and carried them around and spent so much time with them they were incredibly docile. One turkey from the second batch I raised got injured - I think he broke his wing or something? - and the bigger tom that was with him was doing what turkeys do and trying to bully him to death. He was in so much pain, and while I agreed to help my parents butcher him for meat, I asked that one of them kill him because I hate killing animals. Unfortunately, mom decided to wait until later in the day when it would be more convenient to butcher him. When I found him suffering in his pen hours after I thought my parents had put him down, I got my sharpest knife and sobbed as I pinned him down and slit his throat.

I have so, so many stories like those that I am starting to acknowledge qualify as traumatic for a tenderhearted kid, but I feel like I shouldn't be traumatized by them. It's the way things are on a farm, after all. It's what happens. It's how life goes. So many of my animals died because I owned a bunch of animals for a long time and it's the way things go. Was I really not strong enough to handle it? Surely I should have been able to. Surely it's just the way things are, am I really so weak as to let those facts of the circle of life hurt me?

This is what life is. Why did it break me?

My system when we're co-fronting

Singlets will think having headmates is this horrible thing or whatever but really the worst part is when you don't hear from them

Body is ftm.

Most headmates are cis men.

Watch as they get frustrated over living the trans experience simply because they don't identify as trans but are trans anyway.

It's an interesting experience, to me anyway.

Note: We're all queer in one way or another. Just not all of us can appreciate the trans experience the body has to go through so we can be ourselves.

Sunset on Loch Ness 🌅

scotland.co

*opens Discord*

*discovers “I” was sharing my poetry last night*

…..what.

Charlie started calling a group of us Boy’s Night when we all co-fronted for like a whole day, it was really fun. Shekel and Pitt are the most useful combo, but the Boy’s Night members (me/Jay, Charlie, Grey, and Seth) were such a good time xP

Me, Taranza, & Something are the fronting combo of all time bc its like Milo (Me): man we should watch spiderman again

Something: and get a cookie

Taranza: please quiet down my fellow gentlemen, for not only are we out of your "cookies," we have also watched every piece of spiderman media available to us.

If you don't know your order, find out here!

Sheepdogs enjoying the sunshine

by James Rebanks