salutations.. (trigger warning)

the following will be bits and pieces of my life and as per the rules of this forum i am labling the following triggers as likely to pop up: defined roles, emotional trauma, thoughts of harm to others. because my writing style is rather stream of conscious im not fully sure if other trigger topics may come up later on but i will try to update as needed.



that being said...if you are alright with the above mentioned..then i invite you to stay a while and listen...






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here we go...





as a child growing up i was always a bit odd. a six year old doesnt understand how empathy works, they just see the result. for me it manifested as always being able to tell how people worked. admittedly my memory from that time is spotty but i remember feeling different. i looked at my friends from an odd perspective and because of that got used to hiding my point of view. at the age of eight or nine i suffered my trauma. it was emotional in nature but the details are less important. at that age in child psychology over generalization made up a large part of my overall psyche. everything was black and white..right and wrong. the first time i told my dad about how i saw things he told me it was odd and i shouldnt talk about it so i could seem normal and so i learned. i am abnormal. when i had my trauma i learned another simple lesson. no one can be trusted.

thats when i split. or fractured. at the time i did it on purpose. its why it took until about two years ago for me to get diagnosed. i studied psychology for years but always dismissed it because i had been aware if the whole event and in most cases it happened behind the scenes...but i knew what i was doing.

ive always been very introspective. content to play with my imagination and fiddle around in my head. when i got hurt i paniced and did the only thing i could think of. my world was on fire so i dug a deep hole and pushed everything into it. then i went through my mind and found anything even remotely flamable and through that in too. the chameleon defense is common among children at that age but i was a perfectionist. i wanted to make sure that it would never happen again. i created a puppet. someone to hold out to the world and interact for me so that no one would know there was a problem. to watch him i became a protector. silently watching behind the scenes and observing impartially. down in the hole was all the sadness and pain i thought i had left behind..but next to it i built what ended up setting me apart. i realized that being impartial is nice but cant deal with i coming emotions so i built a system that took in what i considered "useless" emotions like grief and sadness and turned it into something i could use as fuel...anger. the anger in turn allowed me to have the energy to get things done if only to spite others.

ive always been shy. it used to take a very long time for me to acclimate to others. when i was ten my parents moved and dumped me into a new school..in a new state. alone. i found a few friends..thankfully a small school was far more inviting then a public school would have been but it did little. by that point i had evolved past my initial defense and started building out further. hiding from what i considered the general public was easy but i realized that if i existed..others like me might too. so i continued working and adding..constantly tweaking myself and defenses not just against the masses but also against those like me.

when i was 12. i discovered a piece of the internet that had people who roleplayed. i found it fascinating because id never done anything like that before. the deeper i dove into it the more i began to pick up on patterns. the way people moved and thought..how they wrote and picked their words. that was where i met the first person like me. and many more followed. but every time i learned more about myself and them..the more i dug into my own defenses. completely and perfectly isolated.

at the age of 16 i was home alone one day from school..laying in bed and staring at the ceiling. i was home alone. i realized that my brain wasnt on...no one was around for me to parrot and so..i was in auto pilot. i sat up and asked myself a simple question.

what is my favorite color?

i didnt know.

that was the day i started undoing the damage. over the next two years i performed a variety of experiments on myself..probing and prodding at my mind..trying to determine a path up but ultimately i found an issue. i was an echo chamber. all of my ideas i could bounce around in my head but ultimately i was biased and part of me didnt seem to want to go along. at the time i didnt have a name for that feeling but it came later. for the time i decided a therapist would help give me an outside perspective but there i ran into a new problem.

i am very persuasive. people tell me i have a way with words. therapists rely on their patients to tell them the truth and i tried..i really did. but i came at therapy from a perspective of peers..not of patient to doctor. i bounced my ideas off of them to get their thoughts but anytime they contradicted me..part of me tended to just..void them out. again i had no idea..in fact there was a lot i was confusd about. i was diagnosed countless times..one of which was dysthymia. cyclical bipolar disorder that coincided with the school year. at the time i figured it was biological..why wouldnt it be? i thought that the system i created in my head was corrupted and that i had to rewrite it..but even that was too simplistic. the real answer didnt come for years.

when i moved out of my house to go to college i flailed. i hadnt realized how much i needed to be held accountable untl i was on my own. my mind classified things as either needed or not needed. the binary system. if something fell under not needed...it simply wasnt done. not unless someone made me do it...left to my own i lapsed into massive depression and dropped out.

it nearly drove me insane. so i tried again..and again. each time with the same result. id do excellent the first half of the year...falter in the middle..and be agoraphobic by finals. eventually i moved back home..and things started improving. i made a logical leap that i needed to live with someone else..so i found a girl friend..got my own place...

and within a few years i was horribly over weight..confused..and massively depressed again. turns out we were both similar for the wrong reasons..enabled each other..we are still friendly to this day..sort of. but it never should have gone on as long as it did. i had been up north with my dad and ended up having to go back to my moms..that was three years ago.

a year with my mom was..helpful. got my weight under control. had a job. things were going well. but whenever things go well..i self destruct. i started a stupid lie which snow balled...common practice for me by then. i lie to buy myself time to fix a problem but then never fix it because the real problem was something i couldnt see..until the lie grew to big and blew up.

i was at the end of my rope. my therapist was perplexed. i started looking at programs to check myself into...mental hospitals with cute or ironic names. i went back to my therapist one last time to try and explain what i was feeling..how i knew a program wouldnt help because my brain was working against me. i ignored all outside help. everytime i solved one issue it adapted to get back around me. i couldnt fight against it because it could read my thoughts...and she looked at me and asked me a few questions...

did i ever look in the mirror and feel like the person i saw wasnt me?

did i walk into rooms often and forget why i did?

did i ever find myself doing sething but not remember why or when i started?

by this time id been researching enough to know where she was going so i asked her out right...her face was one of..perplexing horror and sadness. i didnt understand it at first but the longer i thought about it the more it made sense. it would figure i had one of the few disorders that even the psychology community as a whole had trouble acknowledging. but as soon as i looked at it from that light everything snapped into place. hell i had even scored two oppsing personality from the meyers briggs..the signs were there.

there was a doctor. i wont mention their name but they are apparently one of the best in this field. wrote a few books even. found out that they had an office not just in my state but literally ten minutes from my house. i spent about 6 months with her and over that time i learned an enormous amount about myself and those like me. i have four sides that i know recognize and the names we have were mostly assignef by me though one did pick himself. i go by protector. i love to write..always have and so im the author of this little exposition. sitting here next to me is puppet. his strings are long gone but his demeanor is set in stone. always happy to see you and a gentle ear to listen to your problems... down in the hole we dug so long ago rests the child who was hurt so long ago. he lives in a box that only he can open. puppet and i talk with an odd form of broken communication. who ever is out front will think a question and the other will answer..but not with words. its sort of like..if you were in a room with someone on the phone. you only hear one half of the conversation but the other half exists..

thats how i see it anyway. i ask. they answer. i ask or comment..and so on.

the child hardly uses words..he communicates mostly with emotional bursts. i used to hust supress them until i found out its how he speaks..now i try to let him out when i can..let him drip the poison out...it hurts him to be out in the open but i do what i can for him..until he can learn to grow..

the last piece of my known puzzle is the only one of us with a bame he picked and he goes by spider. spider is my anger converter..or at least thats how he started. spiders role is a seemingly rare one in that he compiles and categorizes all of the knowledge i take in. when i was young i found that trying to keep track of all the data i had to pull from people while talking to them and interacting was too distracting so i made it more automatic. pushed it down to my subconscious..to spider. he is also in charge of my long term memory..and though his categorization system is odd..it works to an amazing degree. you just have to know what the file was put under and i can recall instances from years ago like they just happened. spider hoards our anger and occasionally has outbursts but now that we can all talk its a bit easier to work with him rather then try to simply shove him away everytime he wants to hurt people. spider harbors a deep and intense hatred of the world not because of what it did..but because of what he sees as its blindness. living how we do we see the worst and best in people..but better or worse we cant live with ignorant bliss. we saw the world deeper then most and understand how people move and act and in doing so..cant go back to pretend like we cant. his greatest sadistic wish is to have someone live like us for a day...just one day..then put them back into their lives..to know what it was like to see beyond their limitations..then try to live with the knowledge...

but everytime he gets the chance to hurt someone...he wont.

in the end if i could...id make it so no one else would ever have to go through what i did..or those like me..and so i studied it..learned what i could..to help myself and those like me. whether or not i ever will be able to finish my psych degree matters less to me right now then the fact my current work makes people happy and might end up help people learn more about thinking critically and not just drifting through life mindless and close minded.

but there it is..a brief and fragmented autobiography. if anything comes of it..all the better

sincerely,

the four of us...

First off, welcome to the site! I hope you enjoy your time here. Wow, it's amazing how much I can relate to a lot of what you said. The trigger warning you put in the title I think will suffice to cover any trigger that might be in what you wrote, but I think you covered it pretty well.