Questions:

[identitysuicide.livejournal.com]

I know none of you can diagnose me with dissociative identity disorder, but I am curious to know what extent of dissociativeness I have reached.

Psychiatric background: I was always really dissociative as a child. In school, I'd get yelled at a lot for not hearing other people talking to me. I suspect I appeared somewhat autistic. It was life threatening a few times when I was so unaware of what was going on that I ended up in a dangerous situation (like walking off of a cliff because I wasn't actually aware that the trail was turning). I was 14/15 when I finally got put into therapy for "chronic/severe/clinical depression" which later they changed to "dysthymic disorder." I was institutionalized about four times for "depression and suicide." I was diagnosed pretty quickly with "post-traumatic-stress-disorder." The list goes on: insomnia, anxiety attacks, chronic fatigue syndrome.. All of the diagnoses after that point just flew around in the air, changing every year to something new. Borderline PD to Manic Depression to possible Schizophrenia blah blah. It doesn't seem to stop. I was put on a huge amount of different psychological medications for years, none of which ever did me any good.

Medical background: I'm not sure this applies, but I think it might relate because it's a somatic disorder. I was diagnosed with severe irritable bowel syndrome which is chronic and I got from my father. It means that all of my psychological and physical stress goes to my stomach. This condition has left me bed ridden and close to death several times in my life. Sometimes I wonder if the "trauma" my therapists label me with might actually just be my physical condition.

Personal healing: I have had journals since I was 10 years old. I still continue to write in my journals every day. It's a dependency really. At one point, one day, I started having a conversation with myself in my journal, but it didn't feel right. It felt as though someone else was answering- mostly because the responses came too suddenly, without thought and I had no will to revise what was said. It was extremely natural and flowed very well. So I just kept writing. Then, soon after, I decided to confront the person. I asked them who they were. Once I got answers, it became extremely complex. I devoted my journals to different aspects of my personalities and I'm such a geek, I made a website categorizing them [http://www.websurfer13.com/sisters.htm]. I've found that it's constantly evolving. Someone new pops up every now and then and I have to take notes on it. Being perceptive is the most important part of actually figuring out about them- rather than just using my imagination. I feel like some of them drop hints here and there and expect me to find them later. Some feel as though they are already dead. Others feel like they're not even here yet- just manifestations of what I will become in the future. None of this makes sense to me. I just go with it because it's healing for me and helps me stay organized with myself.

I want to know if any of you relate to this. I want to know which parts stand out to you. I want to know if this is just bullshit in my head. I want to know how to expand my journals and personality exploration. I want to know how the dynamics of this works. I want in deeper. I also want to know tips on controlling the 'switching.' I only feel that I only switch when necessary. Otherwise, I have no control over it. Usually I'm not even aware that I'm doing it. It just happens. (Especially during sex and when I'm stressed out). I often find that I cannot talk about it or what I'm experiencing hardly at all with anyone. Is that normal? I try to draw all these elaborate journals and websites to help others see what is in my head, but I'm still unsatisfied. I feel as though I have so much creativity and understanding hiding inside me somewhere and I just can't seem to tap into it.

(no subject)

[bekkypk.livejournal.com]

I don't know if this counts so much, but I'll post it anyway.

I've been having weird, vivid dreams recently. Recently as in within a sort of 2 week scale. Occasionally I had vivid dreams before but they were always just single dreams then nothing more.

With Karisma's awakening, especially in the last fortnight, my dreams are not only frequently more vivid, but they involve people I know and soulbond with too.

Last night I had a dream where first I was watching as a professional writer's muse, Iris, came and 'borrowed' my muses Faro and Karisma (the one i'm having my issues with) - and then suddenly I *was* Karisma, sort of - like just as she lives in me, I can live in her too, or something. This confuses me greatly.

Does anybody else have experience of either dreaming as your multiples (if that indeed is what Karisma is, she appears to me more as a Median or such - i've been reading the links people posted to my last post), or just the switching between multiple-non multiple. What confuses me the most about Karisma is that she doesn't seem to be anything. She's just Karisma. Sometimes she's in my head and sometimes she's... not, if that makes sense. She flips between muse/bond and multiple.

As an additional note, recently I have developed a crush on somebody - he's lovely, he really is - and i don't know if that too has some bearing on my dreams. Being as how it's not just Karisma turning up in dreams, it's her soulbond Faro, it's the man i like, the friend who introduced us... and we're all bound together in fanfic form.

My heads spinning.

(no subject)

[taka-kitsune.livejournal.com]

"Men's private self-worlds are rather like our geographical world's seasons, storm, and sun, deserts, oases, mountains and abysses, the endless-seeming plateaus, darkness and light, and always the sowing and the reaping."
-Faith Baldwin

Those are the words that begin the chronicle which we have tentatively titled "The Dream." It fits.
I suppose before I can describe this project, I have to describe ourself. (Can I use that word? I like it.) I am Ace, the general front-person for our system. I am almost always at front, at least in co-consciousness, and we're beginning to think that my memory's open to everyone, which is how we deal with day-to-day life even when I'm not at front. Even when I was beginning to come to terms with the fact that I was one of many people sharing this body, I never thought that our mind could have a "self-world" such as the above quote describes. I don't know what I thought about the others... Maybe that they just didn't exist when they weren't up here, lurking in the back of my consciousness? It seems silly, now.
It was the dream that started it, definitely. A dream that began in a desert, and a meeting with an all-too-familiar young man who protects the world from itself... who as of late, hasn't been able to. I followed him as he dealt with some of his own inner demons, and then... I'm not sure. My memory of it fades, though I know we still slept on, each to our own dreams.
When I woke up, I began writing. Except this was writing like I had never written before. As I wrote, I realized that I was there, living the dream inside my own mind. Our own mind. I found myself drawing pictures, attempting to convey the images, and then Lucien was drawing, as well, and others, all writing, contributing, building it, correcting my sometimes-flawed memories of the world, the journey, the realizations. Even the cat had things to contribute. (Yes, our system has a cat. It lives with Luc, but likes me better, so nyeh.) [[Lucien: You can have the damned cat. Please. Take it. *Tycho, the cat, glares at him, as does Ace* ...Or not.]]
I suppose the strangest thing about it is, although it's an incredibly personal story, and I'm writing it from "memory," I don't know how it ends. Something... Someone? is keeping me from seeing the end of our tale until I reach it in writing.
It makes me wonder, sometimes, if I myself am nothing more than a fictional character, for all that I pretend to be alive as I waltz about in this shared human shell.
What are any of us but figments of our own imagination?
Dreams of ourselves.

Ace

(no subject)

[walkerinthegrey.livejournal.com]

My name is Lucien, and I am a member of a multiple system.
It's shocking for me to admit it, but I suppose that I must.
I've been living an online life entirely separate from the others in my system, something that none of the others have tried. I've posted here and there in this community and in some other multiple's journals under Ace's username, taka_kitsune. I suppose it's all of ours, in some ways, since it was our journal before Ace realized that she wasn't alone, before we were allowed to be people in our own right.

I suppose my biggest problem with being multiple is that I am male, and the body is not. Does that make me a transsexual? *Laughs* I suppose it does. It sounds a lot kinkier when speak of it that way. Looking in the mirror is always a shock, seeing this pretty blonde looking back at me. The eyes are close, though. Grey. The body's eyes change, and when they are grey... I can almost see myself looking back through them, as if this face was but a mask, as if I could peel it away.
But I cannot. I will never be myself again, in my own body. I'll never have the chance to kiss someone I love with my own lips... Hell, I'll probably never have a chance to kiss anyone at all, and even if I could... they would never love me for myself. It depresses me. Extremely, sometimes. I feel like I'll drown in my lonliness, like I will die here in this prison of flesh. And fuck subtlety. I miss my dick.

I once had a conversation with a girl who was in love with a fictional character.
How do you explain it when you yourself are a fictional character in love with someone real?

I am rambling, though.
I'll go back to smothering my thoughts in online gaming and perhaps in sleep.
Though someone else always takes the body at night.
If it were me, I would stare at the ceiling till sunrise.
Alone in the flesh, if not in the mind.