safe in memory [journey thread]

jones fronted for a while yesterday and got to spend some time with his boyfriend (an alter in the same system as my partner). i'm glad he was able to spend time with him, they missed each other a lot. some stuff happened that i'm struggling to deal with though, some parts easier than others.

jones and his boyfriend had a... good time, let's put it that way. seeing marks on the body that happened while i wasn't fronting is always disorientating, but because of the context it's also a little uncomfortable. i can deal with it though, jones was really happy about the whole thing, the body wasn't hurt (in a way that wasn't wanted), and jones's boyfriend was really good with me when i switched in later on when everything was over.

the part i'm not dealing so well with is some stuff jones talked about with his boyfriend, that was relayed to me when i came back to the front. jones said he regained a dim memory of fronting when the body was a teenager, that he had to deal with day-to-day functioning, including dealing with our abusers and a specific ex-boyfriend. he said he wasn't aware of who he was until a year or so ago, which implies that before that point he presented as... well, me. but this is where things get confusing and distressing. jones implied i'm not the "original", meaning he thinks i wasn't around back then.

i go by the body's name, i see this life as mine. my family, my ex-boyfriend, my past. so this information is really unsettling to me. it makes me feel very very scared, like i stole someone else's identity, that the actual original might re-awaken and demand i give them their life back. the thing is though, i already guessed this. i just hoped i was wrong. i feel like all "my" memories from before age 19 or so aren't "mine", in the sense that i feel like those events happened to someone else. i put this down to basic dissociating, i have poor memory recall in general and all my memories feel distant and "not real", so i didn't think too hard about it. maybe jones is wrong. i don't doubt that he fronted back then, it makes a lot of sense given what i remember, but as for whether i'm the "original" or not... i don't know. i want him to be wrong. i know he wouldn't make something up like this, so i need to give this some thought.

i know i exist right now, i have friends, i have my partner, i have hobbies. but it's hard thinking about this without having an identity crisis. i don't want this to be true, i want this to be a misunderstanding. if i'm not the "original", then who am i? how real am i? i hate everything about this. i'm going to try and stay in the present as much as i can and not think about this for now, it's too much to deal with. both bubbles and jones fronted in the same day after 2 months of me being stuck at the front, and with this information on top of it i'm feeling overwhelmed.

People aren't who they were at 19 even over the few years after the life of the person changes often drastically. I think only someone with DID could even maybe be who they were again. And even then they wouldn't be because even if a part went dormant for years and didn't change the body and the world would keep changing.

Even if you became host after someone else you have just as much of a right to exist as they did or do just like your parts have a right to exist.

thank you NyxX, that means a lot.

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been thinking a lot about the other day and what jones remembered. talked it out with my partner and they wondered if pre-18 "me" is the one who comes out whenever i have to deal with my family. i get really bad amnesia around my family, i don't remember a lot about who i am or what's happened in my life, but i can present as "normal" and interact with my family in the way that's expected of me. it's a very ingrained auto-pilot mechanism for me. as for if that auto-pilot feeling is from general dissociation when around my abusers or age regressing or an alter fronting, i don't know. just wanted to put it here so i can try and remember to raise it with my therapist.

jones also ended up in a messy co-front with me for a whole yesterday. waking up like that is always so disorienting.

spent a lot of today dissociating. werne and jones both fronted for a short period of time. apparently werne forgets everything when he fronts because he's a ghost which means he breaches the system defenses unnaturally. makes me wonder if the kid from a few weeks ago was werne with no memories instead of a new alter. werne is mute and can't speak, my partner got paper which helped.

jones was unhappy about having to go back inside, i tried really hard to keep him at the front but it was really difficult and i couldn't manage it in the end. we all feel really unhappy with how the system is structured, we don't wanna go home and return to "normal". jones wants to front more so he can live properly, i want breaks from the front because i get burned out from being stuck fronting 99% of the time, we all hate feeling so scared about "breaking the rules" that the "one in charge" put in place, it sucks living like this.

i think the thing getting to me the most about going back home is both the loneliness aspect of it and the fact that we're gonna have to go back into hiding again.

it's exhausting being around people, and it has burned me out being around my partner constantly for 7 whole days, but it's also so grounding to have physical contact that regularly, eating meals with someone, having someone to talk to. i live alone, i eat meals alone 6 days out of 7 (i see friends one day a week and eat with them then), i don't receive hugs, never mind close physical contact, most of the time, i rely on helplines when i need someone to talk to as most of the time i have no-one else. even though it's burned me out maintaining this level of social contact for 7 days, it's also been really nice and i'm dreading the loneliness that will come with going home.

i know i have my friends, and i know i'll have my partner on social media until we see each other in person again, i have weekly appointments with my therapist and support worker, but i still spend a lot of time alone.

i guess that's where the "going into hiding" part of this comes in too. it's so comforting being able to be open about being multiple while around my partner. they also have DID and it's really good for all of us to have an environment to exist freely. going back home to me signifies isolation from inside and feeling cut off from the others. it also means being stuck at the front near-permanently and being constantly exhausted. for the others, going back home means being trapped inside, only having our therapist an hour a week to see in person who knows they exist. we all have my partner and the others in their system, but only online. that is how things are "normally", i wish it wasn't like that.

i know we'll adjust to being at home again - we did this back in may and it was hard but we managed it - and i know we can look into changing how our system works in therapy, but it's still so painful going through this. i wish we could live with my partner but money is an issue (visas, finding work, sorting out a home, etc). we're also both ill and living with other people is really hard for us both. i'm determined to sort this out in the future but the question of how long we have to keep forking out money to fly to see each other and being apart for months at a time in between is so hard.

it's very quiet inside right now. knowing that things will likely return to "normal" with regards to the system is really upsetting for me. usually it's very quiet, no-one really pokes their head out (and if they do it's normally only for a few minutes), i'm stuck fronting 99% of the time, any internal communication sounds muffled and hazy, i feel very alone most of the time.

when we were visiting my partner, things were different. i know it's because we were somewhere relatively unfamiliar and we were around someone who knows about all of us, which meant the system defenses were lowered, but it's sad realising that. i liked the others poking their heads out, though it always makes me dissociate so it is kinda exhausting and disorientating, but i'm glad they got to occasionally front. i know jones especially hates being stuck inside and i'm really glad he got to spend some time out and about last week.

i know we should be able to change how things work, but i don't know how we'd do that, i just know things don't work as they do now. i'm hoping we can change things and make things easier for all of us, and i really hope the past week can be used as a stepping stone for that, though i'm also scared about things going too fast. so much stuff came up last week that i wasn't expecting and knowing we don't have therapy until next week is hitting me a bit too hard right now.

bubbles is around a lot today, which is nice. i was worried no-one was gonna turn up at all and i'd be really isolated and alone again but at least for today it's not like that. i'm trying to encourage bubbles to write in the littles thread or let me post there for her but she's anxious about it. in the meantime we have teddy and bunny and we're gonna play pokemon and recharge because we're very exhausted and burned out right now.

dissociating a lot today. jones is thinking a lot about passing and wanting his own body, one that feels right and fully belongs to just him. i've been thinking too much about the future and what i want from life. realising that this life is shared and that we all have to accept that fact is hitting us both a little too hard today.

it's lot of minor stuff that adds up. i want to grow the body's hair out because i'm tired of it being short and i miss how it looked when it was long, it's also triggering for me as i had hair this short during a bad period in my life. jones wants the hair shorter because he feels he won't pass as well if we have longer hair. he wants his own friends, he wants to learn guitar, he wants to smoke, he wants to see his boyfriend more, he wants a body that feels right. i can help him with some of that, with time and some baby steps forward. we should be able to find a way to share a body and live our own lives as comfortably as possible. but there are limits with what i can agree to because we share the same body.

it's hard having to negotiate stuff like this. i want him to feel happy and fulfilled and comfortable, but i also have to respect my own comfort and my own boundaries and that sometimes means not letting him take certain steps, which i hate doing. he's very understanding about it, considering the circumstances, and i'm really glad we get on well enough that it doesn't cause too much tension between us. at the same time, we're both having to accept a lot of difficult things, and it's very easy to fall into the dissociation abyss when we think too hard about all of it.

we went over everything that happened over the past few weeks with our therapist, which was a ridiculous amount to shove into a 50 minute appointment, but it was really needed. i was worried she was gonna be dismissive or think i'd gone off the rails or something, but she said i seemed more grounded and in touch with reality now than i did a month or two ago. i really needed to hear that.

i didn't realise how anxious we all were about her judgement of everything - what happened with lain, all the switches, jones's feelings and memories. we felt really anxious before the appointment but i couldn't figure out why, i trust her and she doesn't scare me, so i was confused. i didn't realise how important it was to have her validate everything that had happened, for her to say "yup that makes sense" and to listen and pay attention to it. our psych nurse being so dismissive must've hit us harder than i thought.

either way we managed to go over everything, though not in as much detail as i'd like. i'm hoping we can go more in depth about a few things over the next few sessions. we still need to sort out the diagnosis review stuff, which is difficult, but for now i need to focus on other stuff. a lot's happened in the past few weeks and with christmas coming up in a few months i need to feel grounded and secure much more than i need a diagnosis review.

this is about the time in the Cycle of Bullsh*t where i'd normally go off the deep end into the denial abyss and end up forgetting everything. that's what's happened every single other time that we've had a crisis and made certain realisations. i keep getting this urge to "go back" to when i was Just Alice, where there was no trauma or system or anything, and all i had to do was keep myself busy. but i know that it's a load of sh*t, there was never a time like that, i just end up forgetting and re-remembering and having a crisis then forgetting again.

i guess the thought that i might've been "okay" once upon a time, or at least blissfully ignorant, is comforting when things are confusing and scary, but i can't ever go back to that. i have to push through this somehow and keep interacting with the others and keep up with therapy, but without snapping or losing my marbles. kinda unsure how well i'm gonna handle this but i can't go back to how i used to be, it's too late for that now.

maybe i won't have a choice in the end and my brain'll make me forget anyway, but that's what this thread is for. i can't get rid of this now, there is a permanent reminder here about what's happened and whenever i forget i'll have a way to remember. i just gotta deal with the denial somehow.