amaristheowlcat

[amaristheowlcat]

Me : I haven't been able to sleep more than 5h in a row for the past two days, we might be on the start of a manic phase?

Also me : wants to cry for absolutely no reason while trying to go back to sleep

[amaristheowlcat]

We might be going to see this artist and band in a few weeks and we're so excited !

[amaristheowlcat]

So regarding that whole "other system" thing. This threw us for a loop for some time. We're definitely not done processing everything because its existence as it is made us remember things we'd honestly rather have remembered at a slower pace. Currently, since our fibro is directly linked to our mental state, it has been weakening us to a significant degree, heightened our pain levels and is giving us way more frequent pain flares. I honestly think this is part of the things that we had remembered back when we realized we are a system and forgot little by little making our life easier and easier.

The mind has its way of working through things, and it has once again obfuscated things until we had the mental space for them to be revealed to us again. I suppose it will happen again, we had forgotten about that. Time to try to speedrun recovery again ? We'll see how it goes.

In any case, seeing as this is really splitting our memory in two in ways that are really defined we need to start journaling again. So that's what we're going to do. Hopefully we remember to do that lmao

Also, here's the term we're going to use to describe this phenomenon : parallel systems. It is a synonym to sidesystem, which we not only do not like but also doesn't belong to us, however we couldn't find evidence that it is reserved for the community that uses the former word. Also, it explains really well what's happening and I can see many parallels between the concept of sidesystem and our situation.

[amaristheowlcat]

So we did that!

The ramekin of maple butter was just a sample for us to test out if we'd like it. Verdict : have we ever truly lived before this moment ?

It's not perfect though, we stirred for too long and it became too solid. Next one we'll make it less solid so it can be spread better.

In any case, both are very very good! And vegan ! I live again!

Okay, we'll try to go back to veganism fully. It's been so long since we've had to stop because of school and then fibromyalgia both leaving us with not enough time and energy to cook what we needed

It's also important to mention that, for us, food is extremely (and i mean EXTREMELY) important and vital to our mood and mental health. Like we've been eating an underwhelming (to us) raspberrt jam that's too sweet and that doesn't taste like raspberry very much because of it for maybe three weeks with breaks, and even though it's our favorite jam, one we've never been getting tired of, even eating it for months at a time every single day, we're currently desperately in need of something else. Thinking of eating this brings us tears and nausea. We can't fathom eating another kind of jam currently

So our decision now is to make our own lemon curd and try out maple butter (homemade as well, it's not something we have here, with the already limited and quite frankly subpar maple syrup we have at our disposal in France).

We'll see how it goes.

[amaristheowlcat]

Long post so I'll cut it here so it doesn't eat up your dashboard. It's about the search for a word for the phenomenon of having another system besides the first one.

Also there's a link to a bunch of vocabulary related to RAMCOA (Ritual Abuse Mind Control and Organised Abuse) at the end, which I encourage you to look at if you don't know what it is, I think it's a very important thing to know about.

Hi. So, since we understood this fact that we are two systems, we've been looking for a term for it. Why ? Because we seemed to remember that there was one but it that was related to RAMCOA survivors (Ritual Abuse Mind Control and Organised Abuse).

This is a very very heavy topic and is understandably a subset of the plurality community that needs to be taken seriously and with the care they deserve. I haven't gone through that shit, and what I got through was already fucking awful and broke me in many pieces. So of course I want to respect people who have such a specific and terrible experience. If this term is for them, then it's for them and that's it.

The term in question is "sidesystem". I went on pluralpedia and found that term again, read its page and it didn't mention RAMCOA, but I still had that hunch that we'd seen it being discussed in the context of RAMCOA so we combed through every single system type term on pluralpedia at the time. We found another one, and this one did mention RAMCOA. It was created specifically so that non-RAMCOA survivors could use it, referring to a similar concept but not "sidesystem" specifically.

The term never sit right with us though. Axissystem. It's not an axis, it's literally side by side. I ... cannot explain it correctly, it just... feels wrong. Very wrong. We didn't use to understand why people might want to create other words than those that exist if they expressed a concept right but had a name that didn't fit them. Well now we do. It really implies that the concept is not expressed right, actually. We wanted to use it but we really feel bad and like it's wrong when we do.

So today we looked for a term we had suddenly thought of, to see if it existed. "Parallel system". Ooh yeah that sounds exactly like what exists inside of us. Ah, but it does exist. And it is actually a synonym for sidesystem. So what do we do. No mention of RAMCOA, just like on the page for sidesystem. Is it then a synonym to the extent that it is also specific to the RAMCOA community? It would make sense and would be fair. It wouldn't be my place to criticize that, and I don't want to anyway. I just want a word. That we identify with.

So we try to find information on it on the internet but ... lmao try looking up "parallel system" on the internet and see what you find. Of course it's not going to be plurality related. After using several other keywords (plurality, DID, RAMCOA, ritual abuse, OA, etc.), nothing really comes up that could lead me to a definitive conclusion on whether or not I can use the term "parallel system".

So I use my last resort : asking the community directly. Which doesn't really work at first. 3 answers from people who don't actually know much or anything about RAMCOA. They wanted to help, and out of the three, only one of them really had no reason to speak. The other two at least knew of the acronym and of the people it relates to. But I was really not asking them. One person responds to one of the answers, and gives everyone a much needed clear description of what a sisdesystem is and why it is really just related to RAMCOA. Relieving, useful, we finally recover from the dismay induced by having to defend that we are even asking our question to begin with because it becomes clear that we were right to be careful about it. It's funny it's almost like RAMCOA survivors are left out of the conversation to the extent that they are being talked over by other people with insufficient knowledge, and once they take the time and effort to speak up despite not feeling welcomed we realize how complex their experience actually is. And I'm not going to pretend like I knew. I didn't. I'm glad that that person took that time, because it was a phenomenal help.

We looked at their message and one thing in particular drew our attention. They signed "programmed system". Feeling dumb as rocks for not thinking before that that term would exist, we finally look that tag up on Tumblr and... wow, a community.

So, we didn't find our answer, but we found resources in that tag. And that's invaluable. Thank you stranger. And now I'm sharing one of these resources with you, a post detailing some of the vocabulary related to systems of RAMCOA survivors, and incite you to have a look at that tag because it is all so important to be aware of.

We've realized a few months ago that we have another system in our psyche, and it's been ... weird. Like any new discovery that we weren't prepared for, that we didn't know could exist beforehand, it was very disorienting.

One of the things that made us realize that it's so separate is that we couldn't access anything from the other system from the one there was someone fronting in. There's no co-consciousness, it's hard to remember who exists in the other system even from the newly discovered one (and we have a very detailed map of our Olde system (we called it Etëaia, the Otherworldly, a reference to our system name which we'll no share) so it's not like it would be hard to remember), it's almost impossible to share memories (only and barely done through our respective administrators or during a very few seconds buffer time after a system switch, and we have to put in so much effort, it fades even faster than after a switch within Etëaia). That's just a few of the structural differences and hints that it's separate.

Anyway maybe we'll add a new tag for our posts. Etëaia and Ëarimbë. The Otherworldly and the Universal Rift.

But more importantly, what we made this post for in the first place was to note how very strange it's been for us and how much of a hit on our functionality it's been. Our memory is fragmented in almost complete blackouts again. We'd made so much effort to change that within Ëtëaia ! And this time it doesn't look like it's going to go away.

To our followers, would it be nice for you to have a post presenting the alters who'd like to introduce themselves on here ?

[amaristheowlcat]

We've realized a few months ago that we have another system in our psyche, and it's been ... weird. Like any new discovery that we weren't prepared for, that we didn't know could exist beforehand, it was very disorienting.

One of the things that made us realize that it's so separate is that we couldn't access anything from the other system from the one there was someone fronting in. There's no co-consciousness, it's hard to remember who exists in the other system even from the newly discovered one (and we have a very detailed map of our Olde system (we called it Etëaia, the Otherworldly, a reference to our system name which we'll no share) so it's not like it would be hard to remember), it's almost impossible to share memories (only and barely done through our respective administrators or during a very few seconds buffer time after a system switch, and we have to put in so much effort, it fades even faster than after a switch within Etëaia). That's just a few of the structural differences and hints that it's separate.

Anyway maybe we'll add a new tag for our posts. Etëaia and Ëarimbë. The Otherworldly and the Universal Rift.

But more importantly, what we made this post for in the first place was to note how very strange it's been for us and how much of a hit on our functionality it's been. Our memory is fragmented in almost complete blackouts again. We'd made so much effort to change that within Ëtëaia ! And this time it doesn't look like it's going to go away.

To our followers, would it be nice for you to have a post presenting the alters who'd like to introduce themselves on here ?

[amaristheowlcat]

Okay, we'll try to go back to veganism fully. It's been so long since we've had to stop because of school and then fibromyalgia both leaving us with not enough time and energy to cook what we needed

It's also important to mention that, for us, food is extremely (and i mean EXTREMELY) important and vital to our mood and mental health. Like we've been eating an underwhelming (to us) raspberrt jam that's too sweet and that doesn't taste like raspberry very much because of it for maybe three weeks with breaks, and even though it's our favorite jam, one we've never been getting tired of, even eating it for months at a time every single day, we're currently desperately in need of something else. Thinking of eating this brings us tears and nausea. We can't fathom eating another kind of jam currently

So our decision now is to make our own lemon curd and try out maple butter (homemade as well, it's not something we have here, with the already limited and quite frankly subpar maple syrup we have at our disposal in France).

We'll see how it goes.

[amaristheowlcat]

Me : I'm not sure if I'm still disabled enough

Also me : *tries to help my partner lift a piece of furniture and barely succeeds while being in pain, whole body crying for a break in under 30 seconds, panting and getting close to fainting afterwards, needing rest while having a pain flare once resting*

Guess I'm cured, actually

[amaristheowlcat]

Ah, great, it is now the time of the year for "is this an insect crawling on me or is it a hallucination" again.

I hope this time I won't have the "burrowing under my skin" variant as well.

[amaristheowlcat]

wanted to do something cute for TDOV, so here’s a trans fox :) happy trans day of visibility!

[amaristheowlcat]

Not venting but I find it really funny how little people have a grasp over what our life looks like because of fibromyalgia and DID sometimes

Friend : hey, how goes ? Me : I'm good ! Tired Friend : ah, maybe you should go rest ? Go to bed ? Me, who woke up an hour ago : ah, yeah maybe I ... no wait I just woke up and had 10 hours of sleep Friend: ah maybe you overslept ? Me : no that's my normal amount of sleep,,,

Also

Friend : ah you woke up ! Can you go on your PC real quick ? Me : no ?? I cant move until at least 20 minutes after I woke up, what do you mean ??

And

Friend : hey, remember this thing ? Me : no ? What are you talking about ? Also hi, it's been some time since we talked ! Friend : what do you mean we talked about this two days ago Me : ah,,,, well, actually it reminds me about this thing that happened the other day [talks about something that happened a year and a half ago]

[amaristheowlcat]

Providing more examples of things that could go wrong: what happens when our medication intake gets monitored more closely ? When we're ostracized and banned from jobs or places because we're disabled or worse : because we're "mentally unstable" or just too slow at processing things ? When accommodations are "just too expensive and unreasonable to cater to", when addictions get you banned from housing ? When disability prevents you entirely from getting loans or insurance, which they already do ? All of these things already are rooted in society and only await making them open discussion in the public eye. Let us be the out-group, the reason why society's going wrong for even one minute on TV and that's a done deal.

And what I said in the previous reblog about hormones being banned, that would be a health concern for the many people who are without reproductive organs, like trans people who've gotten surgery or are intersex by the way. These hormones are vital.

We try to avoid thinking about these things too much because it's... a lot. And also partially because turning your eyes away from a problem and pretending like it doesn't exist is a very human thing but it's been hard to avoid lately.

We're already skirting the line with fascism here, in France. We're a few steps away from it. And I can't help but wonder ... When the people will turn on each other, report minorities, when the neighbors will start to watch you to see if you're a proper citizen, one of the good ones, and my friends and loved ones and I don't fit in anymore, what will happen then ?

Sure, it will start with "arabs", and we'll need to be there. Actually we need to be there right now. It's been years that the climate has been worsening here for them, and you can't just wait for it to be too late to act.

But once things are properly underway, and this is why we need to help poc already, it'll be us. The queer, the disabled, the mad. Of which I am all three.

And I think about that. And see myself doing nothing. I'm back at where this post started : looking away if I can. And when I'm not doing that I try to ask myself what can I do ? But the answer is just as demoralizing : I'm tired. I'm barely able to maintain the efforts to cook for my partner so that they have food everyday of the week.

Still we're doing so much better than before, so we're still questioning ourselves. Are we making excuses for ourselves ? Is there really nothing we can do ? And the thing is... We don't have any answer to that.

We've been down today. It's hard to realize you're still in depression after a while I suppose. It's just been harder on us today. To the point of having a moment that drew us very near to psychosis. Turns out chatting about people standing there in a room, who shouldn't be there, while in near darkness isn't good for you, who'd have thought. We're still kind of upset at the idea and low-key fear there are unknown entities in the flat. Maybe my current dosage of medication isn't enough anymore.

[amaristheowlcat]

We need to organize. To rebuild support groups locally. Associations with headquarters are great but what happens when our hormones get banned ? Thankfully groups that provide them already exist and their access is guarded by only being known by word of mouth and being introduced to by other queers, but this is just an example.

Organizing locally is the best way for us as a society to get back on track politically. That's the only way we're going to survive, and push through. The only way we can try to shift the balance and change the course of a political landscape that's steering further and further right.

We try to avoid thinking about these things too much because it's... a lot. And also partially because turning your eyes away from a problem and pretending like it doesn't exist is a very human thing but it's been hard to avoid lately.

We're already skirting the line with fascism here, in France. We're a few steps away from it. And I can't help but wonder ... When the people will turn on each other, report minorities, when the neighbors will start to watch you to see if you're a proper citizen, one of the good ones, and my friends and loved ones and I don't fit in anymore, what will happen then ?

Sure, it will start with "arabs", and we'll need to be there. Actually we need to be there right now. It's been years that the climate has been worsening here for them, and you can't just wait for it to be too late to act.

But once things are properly underway, and this is why we need to help poc already, it'll be us. The queer, the disabled, the mad. Of which I am all three.

And I think about that. And see myself doing nothing. I'm back at where this post started : looking away if I can. And when I'm not doing that I try to ask myself what can I do ? But the answer is just as demoralizing : I'm tired. I'm barely able to maintain the efforts to cook for my partner so that they have food everyday of the week.

Still we're doing so much better than before, so we're still questioning ourselves. Are we making excuses for ourselves ? Is there really nothing we can do ? And the thing is... We don't have any answer to that.

We've been down today. It's hard to realize you're still in depression after a while I suppose. It's just been harder on us today. To the point of having a moment that drew us very near to psychosis. Turns out chatting about people standing there in a room, who shouldn't be there, while in near darkness isn't good for you, who'd have thought. We're still kind of upset at the idea and low-key fear there are unknown entities in the flat. Maybe my current dosage of medication isn't enough anymore.

[amaristheowlcat]

Wow, turns out we have useful things to say to people and can help sometimes A.

I'm being sarcastic and a bit self deprecating here but it's actually genuinely nice. I'm glad we have the knowledge and power to do that, and hope we can make people's lives better sometimes. J.

Edit : to add to that and explain better, we do find a lot in being able to help others on things we've gone or are still going through. It means we've not suffered for nothing. That's why we're being a bit sour at the beginning of this post, it's unexpected that we can find opportunities where our experience helps. A.

[amaristheowlcat]

Re-reading and updating our pinned post, I realized that we described ourselves as grey-ace. And we'll keep it that way, but we've come to understand things a bit better in the last year.

It's not grey when you literally do not desire sex, do not want to get sexual pleasure for yourself or can just say "nah, don't want that" when you're supposedly aroused. Hell, it's super hard for us to Be aroused. We've passed on several occasions for threesomes just because we weren't into it when it was happening right under our nose.

But we'll leave our pinned post like that because we don't feel like explaining all of that in our pinned post that also states "sexually sapphic" literally right next to it. It's just our sexual orientation for being interested in having sex at all.

We get very passionate about sex, truly, and derive a lot of pleasure from playing with our sexual partners in that way. Mental pleasure, sure, but still pleasure. And yes, we love the physical aspect as well. But it's the sensory aspect of like... touch, and all that can be experienced physically through this.

People say that "well sex is all about the physical, sensual, sensory aspect of it". No. It's also the mindset. The need for physical pleasure. For me it's that I really like to experiment with, and experience the variety of things my senses can do. All things that the community has already stated as being perfectly normal and still entirely in the range of the asexual experience. Because it's just body feels nice. Who doesn't like their body to feel nice ?

So here, our current thoughts on our asexuality. More complete than before, and with what has already been said perfectly by others digested through personal experience and soul-searching.

[amaristheowlcat]

We try to avoid thinking about these things too much because it's... a lot. And also partially because turning your eyes away from a problem and pretending like it doesn't exist is a very human thing but it's been hard to avoid lately.

We're already skirting the line with fascism here, in France. We're a few steps away from it. And I can't help but wonder ... When the people will turn on each other, report minorities, when the neighbors will start to watch you to see if you're a proper citizen, one of the good ones, and my friends and loved ones and I don't fit in anymore, what will happen then ?

Sure, it will start with "arabs", and we'll need to be there. Actually we need to be there right now. It's been years that the climate has been worsening here for them, and you can't just wait for it to be too late to act.

But once things are properly underway, and this is why we need to help poc already, it'll be us. The queer, the disabled, the mad. Of which I am all three.

And I think about that. And see myself doing nothing. I'm back at where this post started : looking away if I can. And when I'm not doing that I try to ask myself what can I do ? But the answer is just as demoralizing : I'm tired. I'm barely able to maintain the efforts to cook for my partner so that they have food everyday of the week.

Still we're doing so much better than before, so we're still questioning ourselves. Are we making excuses for ourselves ? Is there really nothing we can do ? And the thing is... We don't have any answer to that.

We've been down today. It's hard to realize you're still in depression after a while I suppose. It's just been harder on us today. To the point of having a moment that drew us very near to psychosis. Turns out chatting about people standing there in a room, who shouldn't be there, while in near darkness isn't good for you, who'd have thought. We're still kind of upset at the idea and low-key fear there are unknown entities in the flat. Maybe my current dosage of medication isn't enough anymore.

[amaristheowlcat]

I love...

Love

💜