(no subject)

[exiled-redeemer.livejournal.com]

Okay...I have a slight delema...i could use advice...anything really.

It's pretty much this, today I was thinking about my past, I was thinking how I have no memory from age 0 to 11...I've no idea what could cause that, and certainly never even considered what came to me today.

What if I'm not who I've been lead to believe? What if I'm not Hosting this body? I never thought of it like this, but it would make beyond perfect sense, I can't remember anything at all for that 11 year time period, I've always felt that my body was too small, aching as if cramped into a box. Felt like something was wrong with me being where I am...It would explain why I've always been able to adapt to any situation...what if it's all true and I'm really just a being brought in or created because the real mind of this body couldn't handle it? It's a terrifying thought, because my friends love me, knowing who I am and those who know about the others as well, but what if they find out...I'm really not...well....me? I wish I could explain it better...I just don't want to be left alone if people find out I'm just a creation, and I feel like that is the only that can make sense, when Eichii tells me that he and Joselyn haver been here longer than me...

I've been aware of my others for the last three years, learning something new just about everyday, If it is this way and there really is no 'real' mind anymore, than I'm afraid of being erased completely. Being pulled into that darkness within our innerworld where The Council brings everything I'm afraid of and use it against me.

My question is, has anyone ever been lead to believe they were the first, only to find out they were recruited to be front runner? Whether they be brought in or made so the dominant mind didn't have to deal with it anymore? I'm just so confused......
Signed,
-Kira


-Sistema di Raziel

Comments

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

You ARE *you* - however you came to be *you*, it's okay. You're obviously not 'just a creation' because if you were, the thought wouldn't worry you. Obviously you have a 'real mind', or you wouldn't be capable of writing. It doesn't matter who was first, or who's Hosting or whatever; you are a person whether you remember your childhood or you don't.

Take some deep breaths and calm down; there's absolutely no benefit to be gained from freaking yourself out over mere speculation like this. You don't actually know what happened - there could be any number of alternate explanations that "would make perfect sense" - and even if you did know, it wouldn't matter, because nothing's actually changed. You're still the same person you were yesterday; your friends are still your friends; your identity isn't going to be erased just because you happened to think of something that had never occurred to you before.

[cacopheny.livejournal.com]

I can't offer any multiple experience, but I can say that, depending on how old one is, even a singleton might not remember anything from so young. Or it could be blocked out for one reason or another :: shrugs :: Negative evidence proves nothing, after all.

And as has been said before, no matter how you came about, you're still you. No one's going to abandon you or suddenly dislike you just because you found out your "birthday" is a little different than expected, or something.

[cirquels.livejournal.com]

wow. i dont believe ive ever been in that situation, mainly because my other is a male and i am clearly a female. but that it very very utterly interesting.

i would say you might be right about it all.

[pengke.livejournal.com]

So because you're female like the body that means it's more yours? Why? Gender has nothing to do with who came first. For that matter, how do you know that you started out female? Maybe you only view yourself as female because you've spent a lot of time using a female body?

[cirquels.livejournal.com]

honestly jules doesnt like my body. thats why i know more so. when hes around, we shift more and scratch where we dont have anything. its all very complicated, but we both have it undercontroll. im the one that can say 'go away' or 'stop doing that' and becuase it is my body, he respects that (most of the time heh).

i guess its just one of those things you know. when you question yourself, thats when youre not sure.

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

I've lost count of the number of times I've seen people with that exact attitude, including singlet friends -- but also some other plurals -- who assume that not only does there have to be a "main one" or a "first one", that person has to match the body's gender.

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

There may be other posts about this under Memories: fronting (http://www.livejournal.com/tools/memories.bml?user=multiplicity&keyword=fronting&filter=all).

Our experience and that of many of the people who write to us is that it rarely matters who was the firstborn, been there the longest, who is the original or dominant mind, etc. Where it is important, it's because the group's operating system depends on having a stable "story", so to speak, something they can tell themselves and outsiders to make sense of the system and their history.

If I'm reading your post right, the history part is what sounds like it concerns you the most. It sounds like you have some politics going on in your own world. It's almost like one of those stories where a man lived his whole life with the belief that he was the first-born son and would inherit the position of family leadership on his father's death, only to find that he was adopted and the father had had to make it so that everything actually passed on to a younger brother. That can be pretty disconcerting, not just to the House, but to the people who deal with them on a daily basis. Like "Okay, we'd been led to believe this but it isn't so; what else have we been told that isn't true?"

But it doesn't mean that there is no "real mind". I don't buy that. Each of you has a real mind. See a few posts back for some thoughts on the idea of "the real one".

[pengke.livejournal.com]

I don't understand people who react the way you are. It seems to us that it's less a problem about who you are and more about you losing the "real" label that you've been holding over everyone else's head to assert your superiority.

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

Hmm-- so basically you're saying your self-definition has been upset. Or that it might be, if some of the things you suspect are true turn out to be true.

In my opinion, labels make the process of changing your idea of 'who you are' much scarier and more intimidating than they need to be. This is one of the things that bothers me about diagnostic labels. I have seen friends who were managing their own problems, and coping with difficulties on their own, completely fall apart and become afraid to do anything without the intervention of a therapist as soon as they were labeled with a particular 'disorder.' They had gone from seeing it as a matter of themselves coping with their own idiosyncratic problems to suddenly becoming one of a category of people whose characteristics, tendencies, and weaknesses had already been judged and sketched out for them, and it didn't always match up with who they thought they were. (I have also seen people basically transform themselves into walking stereotypes, and throw away a lot of their ability to act and think for themselves, in attempts to fit the profile of a certain 'disorder,' because they thought they had to once they'd been tagged with it.)

I find it easiest to think of it this way: Labels are tools that people try to use to distract you from the fact that you are You. This holds true whether you're in a system or not. But I've noticed there is a tendency for people to label themselves as having roles within the system-- this can be valid as long as you don't allow your role to define the entirety of who you are. Because the past models for multiplicity have impressed the idea that there needs to be a 'real person,' a firstborn original person who is somehow more valid than others, the issue of who holds that position and who 'just' came later becomes a big issue in some systems when I really don't think it should be.

For the record, we don't seem to have a firstborn, or if we did, others came along so early that we don't remember the time when there was just one.


-Berkeley

[exiled-redeemer.livejournal.com]

Ooh...for somereason this makes the most sense, even after my bout of nightmares at 01:30. Thinking about it I really didn't mean to make it sound like I was more important that the others, because I happen to appreciate the majority very much and would be devistated without them, I've always just been afraid of losing control, and the would sound sort of demeaning to the others...and I guess it just came sort of a shock...like waking up and realizing the reason your cat hasn't moved out of the chair is because it's dead or something.

...bad analogy, sorry.

Anyways, thank you :/ that was really helpful...Doesn't make me feel so freaked out now.

Much appreciated,
-Kira


-Sistema di Raziel

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

No problem. Good luck to you.


-Berke