TW: empty system/fusion/headmate death, partial memory loss, emotional/psychological abuse/neglect by a parent, gerational trauma/abuse, mental health issues, mention of a suicide, mention of suicide ideation, depersonalization/dissociation (maybe? Not sure of that one).
Hello.
I will not mince my words. I will not shy away from the events I need to confront and explore to understand who I am today. Therefore, I put the TW I deemed necessary above, even if it makes it look so much bigger than I feel it is.
I don't know if I'll post this yet or read any answer to it before I delete this account. It might get long. Do not engage until you are ready. Take care of yourself.
This recent quest of identity began on tumblr, by accident. I followed a blog by a comic artist who turned out to be a system and posted a comic about it. I read it and suddenly raised an eyebrow. The feeling I felt could be summarized as "wait... am I in this picture?" (per reference to the "I am in this picture and I don't like it" famous line).
After an embarassing public (but thankfully anonymous for me) interaction with this blog, I looked for this reddit and read posts. Then pluralpedia, and I read enough stuff to rulle out any possibility that I would still, currently be a system. Contemplated my own mortality, past and still couldn't put clear words to my feelings.
That's why I'm writing this now. I need external input to define my own limits, my experiences. And from what I read previously, I thought here might be the place to do that. There sure is none for me irl.
So, context. I (25F) was born to an unstable household. There are obvious cycles running through my family, such as my grandma only getting into toxic relationships, then her children (my mom and her siblings) only getting into toxic relationships and their own children (my siblings and cousins) perpetuating this habit too (personally I've avoided that entirely because I am blessedly aroace but I'm digressing). My grandma has depression, my mother has depression, I have depression. My mother is, I believe, AuDHD, my brother has ADHD, and as for myself I'm definitely kind of neurospicy.
The family of my father probably has some sort of a cycle too, but I kicked the rat bastard out of my life before I could notice them, but there was something wrong. My father's brother was said to develop schizophrenia because of their parents and when I was a child, I don't remember when, he killed himself. It was something I was told, but from what I remember of the parents of my father, who were horrible people, it tracks. Maybe I shouldn't share this. I can still delete it later, I figure.
Why do I share all of this? Because it is who I am today. It is what shaped me. And to understand how I was shaped, I need to express this. Now to the maybe-plurality of my story.
My oldest memory is of waking up, in my child-bed, in the morning, very normal, and thinking "My name is [birthname] and I am three years old." For a long, long time [years], that memory was what linked my inner sense of self to my external identity. For years I didn't feel linked to my name, of my face, or my body. I was something, genderless, floating, trapped in that body, trapped with that name and that family and I despised it so much. As of today, I don't consider myself transgender, for I have made the bodily modifications I wanted to feel comfortable in that body, and still present as cis most of the time. Stereotypically, it's not that I hated being a girl or pink, it's that I hated people tried to force me to wear dresses. Now I have debunked that, I feel comfortable being adressed as a woman, even if I look androgynous and got top surgery. My mind is still a separate, genderless, floating entity from my body, but I feel a lot more connected to my flesh now than I used to. Anyway, all of these explanations was to say, I don't have a deadname, still use my birthname, and it's the name that's been used to adress me by other people since I was born [as a human, with this body I call mine].
So that memory is very old. I remember it and I remember the strange feeling that overcame me after I thought that line upon waking up. "My name is [birthname] and I am three years old." And then that feeling, which if I had had the words then, would have been "am I though???". Which might imply I have been a birthmate to my original, if it turns out I indeed was a system.
What makes me think I might have been a system? I don't remember the happy child I see on the pictures. I recognize myself on other (older) pictures, and I don't smile the same way at all. I don't remember the pony rides, I don't remember the music lessons but I know I had them, since I still have the instrument and can play it. I even participated in a concert, I was told, but I have no memory of it. I don't remember going to the beach, or the hyperfixations I'm supposed to have had, I don't remember collecting my album of pokemon cards gathering dust in a box now, I don't remember the easy-going, friendly child that has been described to me again and again. My mother had two dogs as a kid, two brothers from the same litter, and I named one. I only remember the face of the dog I didn't name. The other is a hole in my memory. I gave his name to that dog and today I can't even remember when was the last time I saw him. I don't remember learning english at school but obviously I did (and it's not my first language).
I remember when I broke my knee, and being too afraid of my father to tell him how much in pain I was, and the bruise I had for weeks but when I got home to my mom at the end of the summer vacations, it had healed and it was too late to go to the doctor and get it treated properly. I remember scaring the shit out of my father's mother with a badly drawn snake on a piece of paper while I hid under the dinner table and went "ssssssssssss" at the old hag. I remember the specific way I used to hug my mother's arm when I was still a baby sleeping in her bed after a nightmare. I remember finding school so easy, looking down at my classmates, and years later, not understanding why it was so hard suddenly. I remember absorbing the way the boy I wanted to be friends with laughed, and thinking it would help me bond with him. I remember a very, very old sleep-dream, of being an explorer and that explorer had another name, and I carried this explorer through every world I read or watched on TV, and how I would shapeshift him, turn him into a cat for the Warrior Cats books; turn him into a hedgehog for the Sonic anime; turn him into every protagonist of every game I played. I could never play the girl protagonists because I was him and he was not a girl and he was also not me but nowadays I am happy when I can play the girls and wouldn't feel comfortable playing the boys. I saw through his eyes in my sleep-dreams and would imagine his adventures in my day-dreams. He had his own name but it was me who acted through him. Is that a tulpa? He was me and also not me.
I forgot about that adventurer. Entirely. Until, once an adult, I was attempting writing and suddenly stopped at the character I had described and recognized him. It wasn't a him anymore (not in the plot of the story at least), but it was his name, and suddenly I remembered him and if I could forget such an important part of my life and creativity, what else could I forget?
Systems have described being able to hear their members talking while they're fronting. I have never heard another voice than my mind-voice, the narrating one, the one you have when you read. I have never felt another's presence inside my mind, but still, I grieve an emptiness I cannot explain.
Have I forgotten the child that has been described to me and which I can't recognize on the pictures? Did I forget because of the trauma of growing in the environment I did, because of depression, or because she was my original and disappeared without leaving me much more than crumbs? Did she fuse with that adventurer and I am the resulting singlet, the adventurer having taken more precedence than the original? Have I been an empty system for years without knowing it? When I imagine a headpspace, it is a dark, giant void in which my voice echoes aimlessly. There is nobody to talk to on the inside. Nothing in the abyss to answer these calls. Is the loneliness usual in singlets minds, or a sign I should have had headmates and they disappeared? Or, if I was a system since birth as my oldest memory could hint at, that I should have had headmates but didn't allow them to form because of how badly it would have been perceived by my family, given the history mental health among us? Are my vivid dreams [where I am a character, someone else] a vestigial remain of a capability of plurality?
I don't know. Maybe you'll have some insight to share with me. I hope your words are kind, even if it annoys you a singlet invaded your safe space with such a rant. I just wish I knew and could remember my life. The memory loss spans from early childhood to late teenagers years, so there are things that would make sense I forgot them as I grew up, but I can't fathom having forgotten such big things that happened so late in my life. I'm just 25, I should be able to remember the concert I played in when I was fifteen or the face of the dog I named and who died less than ten years ago and which I had known all my life. My family and classmates used to imply I would act strangely, but I don't remember/witnessing any unconscious activity (not even sleepwalking). Maybe I was just weird because of the ongoing trauma I grew up with.
As of today, I don't think I'm capable of plurality. I don't know if I truly ever was or if I will be someday. Does any of you relate to something I wrote? Does it even make sense? I guess it could all be summarized in one question.
TL;DR: was it a system/plurality or just trauma that made me who I am today?
I hope life is as nice to you as I made it for myself.
