#syspost

[inseparabiles]

It was so fun to laugh at everyone trying to learn Finnish for how we conjugate everything for shits and giggles all of the time, even names, words that should not be conjugated ever are conjugated ad nauseam forever

until we started trying to learn the basics of Latin and now I'm like can we not do this anymore

[couchie]

it's always such a delight when someone transes their gender after getting in here

[inseparabiles]

We're huge enthusiasts of dark Internet rabbit holes, but one of the most boring kind out there that evidently creeps out everyone regular so much are the threads where people discuss "the worst fates they can imagine", and it's just 300 people talking about dementia and Alzheimer's. And not because at the end, you forget how to swallow and breathe, but because of the forgetting of everything else that comes first.

I don't want to minimise the suffering of people who develop these disorders. They're terrifying. But like, I wake up every day expecting that I don't remember just about fucking anything. Everything is news to me all of the time. I'm going through life blind like, wow did that really happen? Yeah booger it happened to you, and I'm like, oh, did it? Ok, I can't remember.

I've been on a million vacations that I have one flash like a shaky polaroid photograph of in my mind, others I don't remember anything of, but have dates or factual awareness of that thing having happened based on what other people say and chronological evidence. It has been this way since I was a young child.

I leave behind me a trail of forgotten people, friendships I had for years, up to five years, who I just don't fucking remember. You might think it's normal to forget what exactly your friendship with your kindergarten best friend entailed, but think about a friendship you started at 19 and had at least until turning 25, and the only things you have remaining are a name you have to struggle to remember, no other associations, maybe a vague ghost of a face? That's years in your adulthood, and it's just gone.

Waking up at 5pm wondering why you're so fucking tired, only to start tracing your day back and finding out that you've been awake since at least 4am when you've left your first messages online that day, but have no idea what happened between then and now when you became aware of yourself.

Sometimes it's nicer; wishing you had coffee and finding out that there's already a pot behind your back because? There's nobody else in the house, so you probably did that yourself.

Sometimes it's less nice; "fuck, I was boiling potatoes", and it was 40 minutes ago. I have timers for everything and they're running all of the time but if my browser decides to snooze or my phone figures it's not that important to actually sound the alarm, I'll find out when the pot has turned red and started melting at the edges. Most of the time, it's "fuck, I meant to bake some bread", and the oven's been on for four hours.

The feeling of everything you ever go through being the first time. Sure, you can rewatch a movie and more often than most people, you can't remember what happens in it. Unfortunately, I tend to remember the end twists every time, so it's a pointless benefit to me. I'll forget everything else, though. Like literally everything else will be gone except for the conclusion. Thanks, brain.

But also, you're having symptoms, or you're feeling some kind of a way that is awful, and you can't figure out what's happening or why. And then your partner comes in and tells you, this is the fifth time this year this has happened. Trust me, I've been there every time you've had this crisis in the past eight months, and it's always new to you, and you've always survived it.

Passing through life feels so often like a half-remembered dream.

And it's just not scary to imagine more of that. Okay, one day I won't fucking remember who that person is in my house anymore, cool. That sucks but it's not novel or terrifying, it's just, oh my fucking god okay another thing gone then. Amnesia is fucking boring, is what it is. You just forget everything and everything goes away and you blink and you're dead.

When I was 13, I was so afraid of this that I didn't go anywhere without my camera. I literally carried an instant camera or another type of film camera everywhere, and then when things got digital, I never let go of that either. I don't know at what point I stopped but now it'll take a miracle for me to bother to dig out my phone for it. What's the point, there's a better picture online somewhere. Mine won't be any good and it won't mean anything to me in a week anyway. Everything just goes away.

And people talk about "childhood amnesia", which made me think I was normal, until I realised they're talking about something that ends sometime after you turn 5 or so. I can remember as much about being 15 as I can about being 25 or 5, which is to say, absolutely fuck nothing, unless something specific rattles loose a memory someplace. It won't be chronological, though. What was I doing when I was 14? I don't know. What was I doing when I was 18? I had the swine flu when I turned 18. Other than that, I have no recollection of anything else that happened that year. At 19, I evidently didn't exist at all. 27? I think I was playing Overwatch. No idea.

I've edited this a thousand times by now which is funny but one more addition: the most amazing part of this all is that other people don't notice this. You're so used to not remembering that it just never really comes up, and because it's so pervasive and ever-present but you're not freaking out, people around you come to think about it as a quirk. Like oh yeah, this guy? They're just totally clueless and absent-minded. It's funny!

Because it is funny. Because you're so easily put into stupid situations, like where your friend is recounting this amazing story to you that they've read, and halfway through they have to stop and be like, I'm talking about the story you wrote. You wrote this thing. Do you not remember?

No, I do not.

Your mum starting every story about you with, "you probably don't remember this", and getting immensely peeved at you for not remembering the other 100 things either, but it's just because you're so aloof, you just can't keep it together. Nothing to see here.

seeing people my age talk about how scared they are of memory loss, which they only associate with old age, is so surreal to see as a 24 year old who has actively experienced memory loss for a long time now

there are causes for memory loss besides dementia and alzheimer’s, i hope y’all know that. dissociative disorders, trauma, brain injuries, thyroid problems, even just stress and lack of sleep can fuck up your ability to store, process, and access memory. and that’s just a few of the many causes i can think of off the top of my head right now.

please stop treating disabled people like some scary “other” that you might become only in the distant, decades-away future. we are your age, too. you may become one of us sooner than you know. stop acting like memory loss marks the end of a life, when so many of us have so much living left to do!

[inseparabiles]

A small thing of beauty:

Only about five years ago, I was in a place where I was so afraid of my own body that I slept with a beanie on and showered wearing gloves in the dark.

I'm sitting in a fully lit bus in the middle of the day today wearing some eyeliner, hair loose, no hat, doing the thing where leggings are pants if you believe enough.

I still shower in the dark because of sensories, but I haven't needed gloves in years.

[thecreepycrawlersss]

made some angry little user boxes >:)

feel free to use !! credit not necessary but appreciated

-malachite he/it/shi/lyr/they

[draxons-farm]

This kinda shit is exactly why we hate y’all. No you fucking can’t just “become a system” holy fucking shit

[haunted-children-didsys]

a llittle reminder for endos❤

the future is not plural

DiD is a TRAUMA based disorder

Your guys keep spreading miss information

The syspunk is not made for you

You can't be a system without trauma

[lemony-ink]

"demedicalizing" complex dissociative disorders caused by severe and repeated trauma is wild

[inseparabiles]

And that if I clean my house, I'll probably feel better for it - which I already knew, but tell that to the executive dysfunction.

If anyone remembers the old story about how male prisoners were found to be calmed when their cells were painted pink; (oft cited to prove that the color pink has a calming effect on men) apparently this research was replicated with other paint colors and it was found that any color of paint has the same effect, including painting the walls the same color that they were before. As it turns out, you have to clean in order to paint, and people are happier when their environment has been recently cleaned. The obvious takeway is that correlation does not equal causation, but the even MORE obvious takeaway is the many times proved but seldom acknowledged law that one should never attempt to extrapolate general principles out of studies done in a prison

[mutagenesys]

I've been learning the annoying, beautiful, painful truth about healing from complex dissociation:

The less you disassociate, the worse you'll feel.

Because you'll actually be feeling. Not just observing the feeling through a fog or reinforced aquarium glass. You'll feel the betrayal, shame, heartbreak, sorrow, and longing.

It fucking sucks.

Every time I feel an emotion strong enough to knock me on my ass, a part of me cries out to reject it and thrust it aside again.

But I force myself to hold myself through the waves. Because feelings are medicine. Feelings are teachers. Releasing the feelings teaches my body that I can let the trauma go. It happened a long time ago. We're safe now.

And we won't feel bad forever. No matter how excruciating the despair, it is temporary.

And I get to feel good, too. Really good. Not mildly pleased or faintly amused. I get to feel joyous, delighted, thrilled, ecstatic, elated, enraptured, euphoric, enchanted...

And so I keep practicing feeling things myself, rather than re-assigning them to a compartment within.

It's worth it. It's worth it. It's worth it.

[thedeathlilysystem]

Split doesn't exist without trauma or stress

There is no such stupidity such as "positive split" or "i split because yes"

SPLITS ARE NEGATIVELY INDUCED!! COMPANIONS ARE ALSO SPLITS!!!!!

[sillystrawbtism]

The second is the biggest part for us. We always think our amnesia isn't too bad until someone asks us about something we forgot or something happens to remind us it is that bad.

An example being we made a friend on discord back in january who we talked to for a while. They reached out last month and I had no clue who they were, nor could I remember much about talking to them or anyone else on discord outside of our usual circle. It was very jarring that we had forgotten so much.

Common things in DID that no one likes to talk about

- switches that feel like you’re turning into someone else rather than them taking control (non-possessive switching)

- being unable to recognize amnesia until something requires you to remember something you forgot

- staying in the front for weeks at a time

- being unable to communicate with alters internally (this is so common why does everyone act like this is weird?)

- feeling like you don’t have any problems because you feel disconnected from them

- constant denial

- rapid identity, label, and appearance changes

- comorbidities, particularly personality disorders, anxiety disorders, and the schizophrenia spectrum

- autism (there is science pointing towards autistic people being more susceptible to trauma)

- disliking your system

- wanting final fusion

[stxrsys]

Sometimes a caretaker is a loving older woman who cooks and bakes for everyone, loves tea, and takes care of you better than any mother.

And sometimes a caretaker is a 17 year old emo boy who throws water bottles at you and supervises teeth brushing time despite barely taking care of himself

And sometimes… you have both

[inseparabiles]

Still relearning how to wake up normally without a panic attack, but it's working. We do several things wrong, apparently.

First is waking up, which we do like regular people. After this it's all downhill, though. First awareness is remembering the fear, so we start paying attention to everything that could be wrong with the body. Does the stomach hurt? Is our heart racing? Is there pain?

Locating any of these things will the kick up the nervous system, and in comes the panic attack.

But even if we avoid that trap, then briefly after waking up, we'll start holding our breath. It can be something as simple as not breathing while stretching, which is regular enough, but that does something that puts us straight into panic mode. I think it's the not breathing for a second -> stretching getting the blood flowing -> heart rate increases -> panic attack. Alternative to this what we've noticed is that when we're just tense in general, even after we're up and about, we're constantly holding our breath while we do things in the morning. I think we're dragging around a freeze response because we're so accustomed to panic in the morning. We're essentially hiding from the signs of it, and by doing that, by trying to be quiet and invisible, cause the symptoms that bring it in.

So, since therapy last week, we've tried to wake up differently. Notice all of this that's happening and intervene appropriately. Remind self if the first thing we do is look for things that are wrong that the things are benign. Stomach pain is IBS because of how we've been eating, all of the everything of what we eat right now is outside the safe food zone because of system upheaval. Our stomach does not like anything that isn't in safe food zone, so it's always hurting. Back pain is just back pain, achy shoulders does not mean heart attack. Chest tightness and pain is anxiety, there's nothing wrong with our heart. Worst case scenario, that violent and unbearable 130 beats a minute that shakes the whole vision? Panic attack, nothing more.

If we avoid all of that, then the breathing. Being aware that we hitch all the time, intervene as soon as possible to breathe normally again, and make up with a long inhale and a long exhale to calm the body and brain stem. This is annoying because it goes on for at least the first half an hour before we move out of the morning is dangerous zone, but it's prevented hyperventilation and panic attacks from that since we started.

One of the worst traits of the piss ass disease truly is that it just invents new things to be afraid of in circumstances you didn't have coping skills for, so you never get over it. Fuck panic disorder so much.

[inseparabiles]

So, TMI, but my dog died six days ago. A perfectly natural thing, he was 13 and had been on the downward swing for a year - we actually got a year more with him than initially expected, he was so poorly last year for no obvious reason that I was 100% expecting him to pass before fall. But he perked up again, had another good almost-a-year left in him. Even now, it wasn't a surprise in the slightest when he went; he'd started having accidents in the house to the point where I'd feed him on the porch so he had easy access to the lawn instead of having to feel embarrassed about pooping indoors, and just a couple days before his passing, he hit the "one last good day" and I just knew. The night he got sick, I actually woke up to him shaking away an itch and coughing and something in me just knew that was it for him, as if these two perfectly normal things weren't perfectly normal that night.

Alas, it was rough a rough one for me anyway. After spending his last 20 hours on a mattress on the floor with him, we had a vet visit at home to put him to sleep, and he was never in any significant pain or afraid, just tired. It was a good end for the goodest of boys.

After, I had a short cry, felt better and had a magnificent time going to the store and getting some fresh air, then had a HORRIBLE night sobbing ugly on the floor, after which I slept for nine hours like a baby. The next morning, I was fine, then wasn't, then was again, then wasn't, went to the store and felt like a bag of bricks. The next morning, didn't get out of bed for six hours, because everything was so fucking pointless and there's nothing to get up for anyway. I drank about one fifth of the amount I should have during this time and the idea of having fluids made me feel ill.

Now, for the past two days, I've been feeling perfectly fine. I keep jolting to some awareness of, god, where's the dog, did I forget him outside? Oh... right. But aside from that, I haven't felt any significant urge to fall off my feet and cry on the floor until I'm gagging. However, I'm now apparently unable to sleep entirely. Back to my old insomniac ways of not having more than 4 hours of sleep a night. As a bonus, my body has no idea whether it's supposed to be sleeping at night or in the morning. Prior to last Friday, my sleep cycle was around "sleep at 10 in the night", and now it's "sleep at 6 in the morning but still wake up as if I went to bed at 10 in the night". I have no idea how to fix this and frankly, I don't care enough to, I'm too tired, I'm too struggling to adjust to my new normal to bother with something as destined to fail as trying to negotiate with my sleep issues.

But it's very "convenient" that this hit exactly when I stopped showing symptoms emotionally. It's very interesting that this hit exactly when I started showing symptoms of dissociation - thinking I just "forgot" the dog, or "lost" the dog, when I can't see him in the house. Very curious, very interesting indeed. And very interesting that all of the above happened right when I gained access to my usual methods of coping with distress, which is video games; the past couple weeks, I've been nearly entirely gameless due to a broken video card.

Funny how these things "coincide".

In all seriousness, though, I'm proud of the grief work done in this house while we had access to it. We're long-time users of the Calm app, and it has been amazing during this time. Not only that, but despite being generally aversed to emotions, particularly strong emotions, and especially grief, guilt, and anger - we've truly felt all of these things very profoundly and allowed it to happen.

So, maybe when the feelings come back from the war, they'll be at least half-handled already.

Btw, if you have not had tragedy dropped on you before, grief does fuck you up in unexpected and physical ways. If you can’t sleep or sleep more than expected or have more or reduced appetite, or energy goes weird— your brain just had a bunch of emotions dropped on it and sometimes it reacts by hitting every button in your brain. It will pass. Just try to not get too frustrated with yourself.

It’s also fine if you feel normal. Grief literally hits everybody differently, and some people are made to be able to to keep the farm going the day after a death, and some of us turn into sleepless gargoyles and get really into trying to help, and some of us are just unspeakably sad. Grief is weird. Be kind to yourself.

[pluraljoyis]

A space to share our love for our headmates and the joy we find in being plural!! Asks, submissions and tags are all very welcome, we hope to spread positivity for any system who may need it.

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