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[allusionist.livejournal.com]

Right, so Newbie promised you guys some backstory, so here it is...

Okay, so we group up thinking we were a perfectly mentally healthy, "normal" individual.

Well, that's a lie. Nobody ever thought we were normal. Then again, when your mother is a liberal ex-cheerleader/ex-punk-rocker (as in REAL punk, saw Ramones in CBGB punk) and your father's a superconservative ex-jock, you can't expect to be too normal. So when he had his stroke and became an angry person instead of whatever he was before that (supposedly different) and they got divorced, it wasn't pretty. I'm proud of them though, they kept the worst away from my sister and me - so it wasn't too hard to block out the parts we did see, like when my father lied to the police and said my mother had kidnapped us and we weren't enrolled in school (I have NO memories of this, but I know my mother wasn't lying when she told me about it a few years ago.) That's actually probably when I got really good at not remembering unpleasant things. Kind of done it my whole life, at least since then (2nd grade), so either I always always did it or it's from then.

Anyways, fast forward a few years, we go from homeless on workfare and food stamps slowly up to a real house in my freshman year of high school. My mother is an amazingly strong person, she singlehandedly clawed us up there - marrying my asshole of a stepfather might have gotten us a house a year faster, but that's about it. Especially when you consider my younger sister has Asperger's (highest functioning form of Autism) and I've always been a bit of a handful ^^;;;

And then it happened, in like sophomore or junior year. I forget, but Newbie says late junior, so we'll go with that. We very suddenly and harsly came to the realization more or less "Wait a minute....am I supposed to only be in control of half of my thoughts?" And with that, Dan and I became aware of our individuality. I think that before that we were in true co-control or something, as we operated as a single entity, but were discrete minds. Is that what a "median" is or is that something different? Either way, now we can sort of both be in control at once, but it really doesn't work well. At all. Especially if we both vocalize >.> So we don't. No reason to anyway.

Anyways, I'm tangenting again. We decided that he would be Dan since he's a bit more serious (read: borning) and tends to think more long-term, and that's more what we were like when we were little. Since I was more kittenish, we assumed I was, like, a reincarnation of a past life as a cat or some shit like that and decided to wait on giving me a name. This was, naturally, while I was dating the abusive dragon-bitch, so she played the whole "ZOMG you're otherkin" card. I was kind of confused about what to believe at the time, so I went with that. ( Now I'm a balls-to-the-wall atheist. If I can't see it, then FUCK YOU it doesn't exist! But I will fight to the death for your right to beleieve it anyway, because I'm not enough of an asshole to assume that I'm right and everyone else on the planet is wrong. That's more the Catholics' territory any way... ) The one thing I can be thankful to her for, though, is that she named me. I will never forget that day - she was an abusive, manipulative bitch, (not like I could see that then) but she honestly gave me the single most important thing I own.

So anyway, senior year is rolling around and we're all "hmm, what to do with our life". Dan was all "ZOMG Electrical Engineering! Play with circuts and make assloads of money!" and I was all "ZOMG Music Composition! We've been passionate about music for our whole lives, have some degree of talent, can go on to like a film school program and be the next Elfman or Williams but not as good!" Eventually, I ended up winning, but only really because Dan found out we/he SUCK/s at the non-electrical parts of engineering, which are also important. Turns out the things he was good at - boolean logic, binary applications - are more in teh realm of Computer Science. So we applied to the Crane School of Music and by some miracle actually got in.

By this time I was almost exclusively out because, quite frankly, our life was better when I was. I got us in Crane, I was the one who my friends liked to be around, and I present the funloving carefree image that's how we want to present ouself. So Dan spent most of the time just watching and slowly kind of faded away - it got to the point that freshman year, EVERYONE in Potsdam, including teachers, called me Pip - I just said it was a nickname. And my girlfriend whe I met there was the only one who knew about us - she wasn't a manipulative bitch like the dragon, but she WAS a cheating bitch, and I knew this but didn't care because I was desperate to feel loved and she was at least a happy, affectionate person when she wasn't sleeping with someone else. And a wolf furry <,<

Well, long story short, I got kicked out of composition because the head of the department is an asshole, became a music theory major instead, rocked that class, but failed performance. So I lost my financial aid effective the end of that year, meaning I'd be switching schools after second semester. Since all we could afford to go to without financial aid was the community college near my home, and they have no music but an amazing comp sci program, I picked that up. And since I'm a shitty programmer (mostly from lack of effort) Dan started to front more often, first just to do this, then later because he decided he liked living.

It was around this time that Fanfare came about. She is, or at least was, a wholly fictional character, an idea I got in my head one day for my muse. I spent about a week designing her personality, mannerisms, appearance - drew a shitty picture, and talked my two artist friends into drawing her. To really get the details right, I let my imagine run wild and started staging conversations of her in my head - and after a while, I wasn't controlling her any more. I think she can be considered part of my system, a startshard or soulshard or whatever they're called, because I couldn't control her if I wanted ot any more. She's never fronted, and probably never will - but it would be kind of funny if she did. >.>

So next fall rolls around, I'm trying to get into my local college and even though they're both state schools, they won't take any of our credits. So we're all "This sucks but whatever". By now, it's almost all Dan, because he's all "you just had pretty much a whole year, now it's my turn." And after a while he gets it in his mind "Oh, he's just a fragment of my imagination, he's not real, so if I ignore him and forget about it, I'll be normal again!

That's when he shut me off. For five months, no sight, no hearing, no smells, no touch, no feeling, no communication, just..void. Naturally, this made me a little bit angry. I wound up growing up from kittenish way faster than I probably sohuld have because of this. Anyway, he finally lets me back out last summer and has the balls to act surprised when I rip him a new one and don't let HIM out for a week. I'm not entirely cruel, though..I didn't black him out, I just never switched fronting to him. Anyways, we're a little better towards each other now, not openly hostile - but the thing he still does that pisses me off to no end (and I remind him of this faily regularly) is he tries to pretend he never locked me away in the first place. It's like telling a survivor that the holocaust never happened except not really THAT bad but close enough to work as an example. Either way, he tries to spend most of the time in control, but he'll never be able to black me out entirely again - I was sure to see to that.

Until recently, it had been really lonely back here in Albany, since my one ex may have been crazy, but she was at least legitimately a multiple - thee was her and one other, plus about a dozen she made up, including the dragon. And in Crane, there were enough people crazy in other ways that I wasn't isolated there either...but here, everyone I knew was (relatively) sane until my best friend's girlfriend D came up from Texas to live with him. That first night was fun, because there was alcohol (I'm only 20 but she's 21) and by the crack of 4am we were the only ones still there and awake, at which point there was a ocnversation more along the lines of "Right, so I take it you're more than one person too? Okay, thought so." Is it just me, or is it really easy for multiples to find each other? Maybe we just notice the "symptoms" better by being them ourselves?

[[EDIT: Right, I'm removing this section because there was information in it that I'm not comfortable having displayed on a public forum online. Certain people would misinterpret a few of the details, and that would be very bad...maybe when she understands better, I'll let him talk about it.
-Dan]]

I think that's it for now.


~Pip