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[granulesofsand]

Twice, I’ve found something I know we lost on campus. It’s probably more than that, but these two aren’t common objects. One is a metal cube, heavy, cut as opposed to melted into a mold. We lost that in winter a few months back, out of the coat we got from the college town, before that coat ever came to this house. The other is a stuffed rabbit, the one we bought with a friend. He was gone the week after we washed him, and we blamed one another for leaving him behind so carelessly. That was last month. They shouldn’t be here. I don’t know how they got here. I’m not sure I want to know.

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🗝️🏷️ mentions of denial, implied RAMCOA

I’m very proud of us for keeping track of time through all the switching. We’ve swinging from panicky expectation of impending doom and brain empty denial, but with the grace of unsecured fruit rolling around a the cargo of a semi. It’s painful, physically and mentally — we don’t try to balance through the ride anymore, but we do try to contain the chaos.

We’ve got every hour outerworld except when we should’ve been sleeping, from the time we left campus to now. Some uncomfortable truths have come to light, but we’re cooperating despite the turmoil. It’s steps in the right direction.

Still not everything is adding up, which is always foreboding. We’re prioritizing safety over answers right now. As much as the doubt clings to the air in this house, we have to suck it up to move on with getting out of here for good. No more scars, no more excursions (not even for playing hero), nothing but lying low.

We will be prodding our therapist to see what changed their mind about showing us evidence we got something wrong. It’s still not safe here, whether it’s really as bad as we remember or it ends up proved only daytime dysfunction. It’s almost over, and it won’t be because somebody died. Soon.

[granulesofsand]

🗝️🏷️ syscourse?

Still don’t understand why people have decided that one body = one self. That works for most folks, which is great. It works for a good chunk of people with complex dissociative structures, which is also great. But it doesn’t work for everybody, and I have yet to see the kind of evidence that would suggest forcing outliers into this model is acceptable.

This is part of why we’re comfortable around endos; we both belong to groups that everybody wants to stamp out despite nobody having a scientific explanation backing them up. I don’t even mean RAMCOA, but it’s a similar concept. We exist, and pretending otherwise hurts us all. One day we’ll be able to show tangible evidence we’re here, but, until then, we are going to believe people about their lived experience — you cannot do experience wrong.

I also disagree that debating an outsider’s internal identity is possible, and dislike naming this debate any kind of discourse. What you’re doing is invalidation, and deciding that is ever okay is the foundation of bullying. Talk to people, give your reasons, but don’t lash out from misunderstanding.

If you can’t tolerate people having differences, the ideal is taking yourself/ves out of that environment until you can tolerate it — not going off and seething in a corner with like-minded peers. That’s not just syscourse, that’s interpersonal communication, and those skills are required for you to be safe (and you, by definition, have to be safe to be considered mentally healthy). Experience is subjective, and that subjectivity is beautiful.

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I am closeted transrace on my main. I need to say that your post on transIDs diminishes the purpose on why the community exists. More often, we already blend ourselves and mask so our identities are not intruding on those who are bodily there. If anything, many of us are navigating our transistions so we are close enough to feel apart of our dysphoric IDs and be accepted while in that boundary. Trying to compare transharmed to our IDs is comparing apples to oranges, and telling us to find a respectable boundary dismisses why our community exists. You are ignorant and infantalizing to dysphorics like me. I would not sit with you with my troubles by the way you talk about transID alone.

That’s understandable. Your safety is more important than my words, so please do prioritize yourself (blocking, answering, anything).

I’m sorry. We spoke against transrace without getting to know the intricacies of the community, and our ignorance was at your expense. Our overgeneralization was based largely on assumptions, which I know are painful to be on the other end of. Your anger makes sense, including your desire to refrain from further conversation. It was our mistake.

Thank you for sharing this piece of your experience, for clarifying some of what transition means to you. I imagined your process as uncommon, yet here you are. I do hold respect for your story, as little of it as I’ve seen.

To reaffirm, I believe you know yourself best, that you are maintaining boundaries that work well for you, and that you do not need my opinion on your progression. We are not close, to my knowledge, and my opinion of you bears little weight as such. I apologize for weaponizing that weight to inflict any wound upon you.

You certainly don’t owe me communication. I’ve perpetrated against you now, and I retain that victims are entitled to respond however they are comfortable; however you are comfortable. We intend to be as safe a support as possible, so we would appreciate your opinion.

We have at least one more post about transID queued, I believe only positive, but we will remove them if you’d prefer (same with the post you are responding to, which I believe to be dated April 19th). This series of perspectives was half to form a systemwide standard, and we used this space to tolerate talking to one another. Having met that goal, we no longer need these posts publicly available. I am embarrassed, and I intend to remove my section if you have no preference.

The consensus we’ve reached is to think before speaking. I acted on big emotions without concern for others, and again, I am sorry. I wish you well, with safer interactions in your future. Thank you.

[granulesofsand]

🗝️🏷️ RAMCOA

Finally upgraded from hiding in the bathtub in the locked bathroom at midnight to balled up next to the sink in the locked bathroom at 1:30am. I want to be in the cabinet, but I won’t fit. I haven’t been able to fit under the sink since the old house. I can only express fear by shredding my skin or hiding, so I’m hiding. I hid when the minutes ticked past the worst of it.

I feel ridiculous. As if evasion means there was nothing to evade in the first place. It’s not over. Two hours more before I know I can leave. They probably know I’m in here. I thought I heard footsteps and the handle, but maybe I made it up. Maybe I made it all up.

Our therapist used to say they would tell us or ask questions if our story didn’t line up. Last time we asked, they said they wouldn’t. I don’t remember what they said about it, but I wonder if they finally got the evidence we got it wrong. If they already know and decided when they found out to keep playing along. I don’t know if I could recover from that.

There’s at least three of us today. There’s me, hiding and afraid and prey. There’s a personified stuffy who wants to unhide and go sit where we’re supposed to. And there’s our father if he were a decade or so younger, screaming and grabbing mad because I’m being a traitor. It’s hard to hold on, and I get uncertain about why I’m resisting. It’s our Deathday, we can’t run away. I should go apologize and take my punishment. There’s nothing wrong here, it’s for my own good.

———

This is becoming a pattern. We will not be apologizing, we might be leaving the bathroom, and I hope nobody noticed our little escape. The rituals are actually mostly late evening instead of early morning now, and the birthday thing is delayed to be closer to our brother’s. The moon isn’t right or something.

Yeah, I’m leaving. Might be washing my hands first, love coming to with literal blood on my hands. Probably ours, probably fine. Two days til the danger is real, possibly three. If we live, we’ll have outlasted a contract. After that, the plan is to finish our semester and book it. The semester is optional if the cost is our freedom, which would be easier to maintain if we didn’t keep coming back at the drop of a hat.

It smells like beans in here.

[granulesofsand]

🗝️🏷️ how we feel unwell

Feeling dirty is a possible indicator of trauma (particularly sexual/relational) that we tend to fall just short of. I’d say we feel unclean, but in the rotting, contaminated way. Like we’re biohazardous, infected. I wouldn’t describe it as feeling gross, because it’s not the disgust that characterizes the sensation. Same for feeling bad. It’s true, but it’s not the most correct. Sick? Wrong? I don’t know. But dirty doesn’t work for me.

[granulesofsand]

🗝️🏷️ RAMCOA, generational programming

We were programmed by the oldest woman in our maternal line, but we didn’t live with her full-time. When we were small, our programmer used us to teach our mother how to program. Eventually, our programmer died, and happened to do so before our system was finished. Our grandmother took her place as the new oldest, and our new programmer. It wasn’t a surprise to her, and she’d already been present for our training and maintenance, so she stepped easily into the role.

Currently, our handler is supposed to be our mother. Actually, our handler is her handler, our grandmother. Our grand-handler. It’s safer for us now that she’s moved away, and we don’t live with any family right now. I wish I didn’t miss being owned.

[granulesofsand]

Foam Facade

🗝️🏷️ child abuse, RAMCOA examples

Someone just told me about our last family therapist. She did not believe anything about what we said. She was insistent that “even parents make mistakes”.

Sure. Parents make mistakes like swearing or hitting their kid every so often when they lose their temper. Parents make mistakes like encouraging disordered eating. Parents make mistakes like trying to sweep extrafamiliar abuse under the rug.

Parents who ritually abuse and rape their children did not slip up. It’s not a whoopsie moment when you force a kid to survive being hunted through the woods for days straight. You can’t accidentally disembowel your kid’s friend in front of them.

To be clear, if your parents did just fuck up, from slight neglect to remorse for abuse, you don’t have to forgive them or make up. You can, if you want to. Or you can cut them off, or be angry with them from a periphery, or decide to ignore the trauma to salvage the rest. You are an acting member of that relationship, and you have choices.

There have been times where we considered trying to fix our family. We call that a fantasy. It would be nice to start over and do it better, but we can’t do that until our family actually separates from the group. They have to deprogram, too, but they definitely can’t be reprogramming or plain programming anyone.

We couldn’t tell that therapist most of our real reasoning. What we did tell should have been enough. That was another log on the fire of our shame, because we have always been the problem. Fawning abusers are still abusers, and no one owes forgiveness.

I don’t think our family will be getting better anytime soon, but we didn’t need her trying to touch up the foam facade. It’s not real, no matter how badly we all want it to be.

Sometimes abusers have reputations, or are pretty, or make a lot of money. None of those things make them safe people, and no amount of genuine safety makes it the victim’s responsibility to tend to their perpetrator. Mistake or not, we deserve better than a painted face.

[granulesofsand]

I want someone to love me like a dog. It strikes me, the dog motif, but it’s never been a good thing. The closest I’ve gotten to crying was reading about Laika as a space grim. I feel like that; a dog nobody wanted, given on last purpose that is my death. I want to be loyal, and sweet, and cuddle up and be loved. I want to be someone’s good dog

[granulesofsand]

Median facets remind me of sequins. We have median subgroups, and we generally prefer the crystal imagery that goes with it, but my brain says facet = sequin. No thoughts, just shiny

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They should have killed me when they had the chance (/shame) vs they should have killed me when they had the chance (/spite)

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🗝️🏷️ holidays, RAMCOA, violence

We have two prominent flashbacks around Easter. One of them is scary and awful and makes sense, it involves gore and cannibalism, very obvious bad vibes. And the other one is baked beans. Just the smell, and some pure unbridled terror. Usually it’s eggs, but why not? Not like anybody takes our trauma seriously anyway.

[granulesofsand]

TransID from Another Perspective

🗝️🏷️ transID and radqueer discourse, mentions of disordered eating and self-injury.

I’m not the same alter who had the first transID post on this account. I can’t speak to their opinions, and I’m not going to try. I speak for myself.

I don’t think transID is safe as it is now. There are a select few that could be, a select few that never are, but I see most of them as an in-between along the lines of ED and SH communities. I see them as dysphoric, and accept that experience as valid because it is subjective and emotional, but I don’t believe they benefit from remaining under this label.

There is no component of harm you can claim without claiming the cis version of that identity. Some people hang around this area because they cannot progress in this aspect of healing, cannot accept some level of their own lived experience. The label itself doesn’t go with dysphoria in the traditional sense, doesn’t fit with the trans- prefix. It’s not a bad place to exist, but it is inherently not the same as other trans/cis dynamics.

It’s a fine line between what it means to use this label and what it means to exist with this identity. You are not bad for the identity. The harm is inserting yourselves into survivor circles to talk about experiences you do not have. You can speak about the dysphoria, about how you got to this point and why you’re staying or leaving. But you do not belong in communities of survivors because survivorship is not a construct. If x, then y. If not y, then not x.

Transgender people have the experience of a gender not assigned to them. Transrace/ability might have community ties, which differ from those most associated with the label more similarly to transgender vs cisgender. Transharmed/harmful is like transrace/ability in that there are reasons to fall on the border, but no concrete transition will make you any more or less what you are.

Identity is complicated. I don’t want to talk about where transgender and intersex meet because I’m not sure which experience I can claim. Probably I’m both (we’re both), but I can’t prove that. Transgender people tend to have either no markers associated with particular genders or some markers of the opposite sex. Being trans is not the same as being cis, nor is it quite a fit for the evolution of the intersex community.

The lack of safety is when you claim experiences you know you do not have. We were not raised male. We were not raised Chinese. We can demonstrate markers of both. TransID allows for markers of only the assigned identity to choose a marginalized identity without holding the responsibility those of that group do, which prevents those members from gaining that experience.

Another label and more pressure to uphold aligned values might integrate the transID community into the broader category of the group you ID as. Currently, transharmed/harmful and transrace/ability speak over and damage the groups you try to fit. You want to be here, but not the way we are. You do not try to progress our rights and acceptance, just dig holes to plant yourselves in. You are not the same as the cis version, even if you are not worse. Coexistence is not what we have now.

Changes need to be made. Smaller, more specialized groups to come forward and let the cis group decide whether you belong in each circumstance you would like to. Some people will always say no, others always yes. Find the people who will tell you why.

I am only okay with people identifying with my trauma ‘for fun’ if there is an underlying cause. I accept internal experience as inherently true, but hold also that it may yet be harmful. I will sit with people with exotrauma, pseudomemories, shame for another experience, confusion over borders. You are here, your existence is neutral, but you must learn to respect boundaries and find commonalities if you are to claim any piece of this identity.

We are not so different, but we are not the same. Variety is beautiful. Let it be.

[granulesofsand]

Conditionals

We learned in symbolic logic that if-then statements only go one way.

They’re symbolized like this:

A ➡️ C

If (antecedent), then (consequent).

These are conditionals, funky little statements that can only be false if the antecedent is true and the consequent is false. This is weird because a false antecedent yields a true statement, but that’s not the point.

The point is that the ➡️ arrow only goes one way. For example, we could say “if there is fire, then there is light”, written F ➡️ L. Assuming that’s true, we still can’t decide, well, “if there is light, then there is fire”, written L ➡️ F. This is because fire provides light, but it isn’t the only thing that provides light. There might be light because someone snapped a glow stick, or because it is daytime.

When the relationship goes both ways, it’s symbolized like this:

A ↔️ C

If, and only if, (antecedent), then (consequent)

That would be a biconditional, where both sides imply the other. For example, “if, and only if, the sun is out, there is daylight”, written S ↔️ D. You will never see the sun is out without daylight.

We could say “if humans are sea creatures, then the ground is chocolate” or “if you see a unicorn, then it will have one horn”, and both of those would be true, because the antecedent is false.

We only need a true consequent if we have a true antecedent. The statement must be true for the argument to be valid. A statement with a false antecedent is unsound. If the statement is both valid and sound, we can use it.

Notice how this is about neutral examples in a specific framework? Wonderful. You’re free to go.

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I need music like this (https://youtu.be/_I_-jAwJpok?si=ofBaSiSIVsuq8spV). This plays in our brain almost constantly, someone picked it up trying to describe what it felt like to grieve with the only available emotion being hysteria and just never put it down. Forget the battle chants, give me Muppet mourning (/srs).

[granulesofsand]

Still a Person, Still Persons

I’m kicking up dust again because I saw another social media piece about elaborated alters being invalidated. Before I start, I want to acknowledge that elaboration is not required for self. Self is not required to be treated well, whatever that entails for you. A state can be very elaborated without a self, and a self can be a single unelaborated state. You do you.

We have many elaborated selves. I, and many of my systemmates, am a whole person. I know I am a whole person because I know I am as much a person as any singlet. It’s been my prerogative that I am more of a person than the typical, integrated singlet. I have deepset beliefs and values, experiences and interpretations, quirks and physical indicators. I have never read a description of soul or person that I do not fit unless that description is phrased with an experiential absolute (like “all people have seen an elephant”).

I am more than a little creature’s brain trying to save itself. I have added that depth through hard work and gaining an understanding of myself and others. My emotions are not simulated any more than a singlet’s, my thoughts no more strict, my connection no less relational.

I made myself all of this. It was a hard road to walk, and I did it injured. Self is not a road that ends until ego death.

I’m not requiring all alters in all systems exist this way, or even that you accept my existence as factual, just that you don’t argue my identity by your subjective experience. Tell me all about how there are factors I’ve forgotten or studies that disagree. Make up your own argument with the evidence you have (/srs). But “nuh-uh, I don’t like it” is neither a valid nor sound argument.

You always have permission to keep yourself safe. If you are not able to process my existence right now, and you cannot coexist in the same space as me, block us. I will keep arguing for my right to be.

[granulesofsand]

Today was such a whirlwind. We have heavy ‘amnesia’ (which I still don’t consider amnesia) that requires good record-keeping, and we messed up once and found out two events were cancelled. It increases our dissociation when the schedule we have doesn’t match what’s happening, which is kinda shitty of the event planners. We have a disorder about it, they are allergic to signs and emails (multiple people who refuse to accommodate our disorder). We need the stability, but we won’t be getting it.