to appreciate us in all our complexity, the first word to learn is Plural:
an inclusive label for anyone who shares their body with at least one other
person; in other words, anyone who isn’t a singlet — alone in their body
as for the ampersand affixed to our name — this shorthand denotes
our Plurality; a reminder for others, an affirmation for ourselves
in our community, turning around is becoming aware of your
Plurality — the first step toward embracing non-singlet identities
to us, a system is something to resist — so, while a plethora
of Plurals call themselves systems, we are a collective: numerous
individuals working together to live our best lives in a shared body
our headspace, or inner-world, is the vast, animate expanse within
our mind, infinitely customizable & dynamic — taking form as a void,
a spaceship, now a theater: complete with a green room, dressing
rooms, & monitors enabling instantaneous inner-world check-ins
in this space is the gateway, a two-way portal to special-interest
fictional realms, where i escaped an overwhelming outer-world
& where later, characters crossed over to “visit” our headspace —
while unconventional, it steadied me through traumatic decades
& led us to creative writing through uncannily-in-character fanfiction
what professionals call “alters”, we call headmates: autonomous
individuals like any other, with distinct names, voices, genders,
pronouns, sexualities, birthdays, birth charts, personalities,
skills, interests, hobbies, vices; co-residents in our headspace,
not “alternate” versions of myself or any “core” personality
these headmates arose through splits: a stress-spawned
series of severances & fractures yielding unique persons,
each able to act alone & conceal memories from the rest
some of our splits birthed protectors, whose first duty
was to safeguard all of us from a patchwork of perils:
our father’s signature cocktail of sky-high expectations
& neglect; cisheteronormativity; & first the concept,
then the inevitability of death — to name just a few
one or two protectors morphed into persecutors — inner
manifestations of those threats they originally deflected;
like protectors, they can grow, change, recognize the inner-
& outer-world damage they’ve done — but some never will
some headmates stop aging, sometimes forever, by trauma
or choice; our most terrifying persecutor was a Middle, stuck
at age thirteen, while our youngest protector, a Little, prefers
to stay nine years old forever, safeguarding our younger Littles
right now, i’m fronting, on stage & interfacing with the meatspace; the front
is the only section of our headspace partially visible to the outer-world
when fronting, i’m typically co-conscious: on stage with a headmate
or three, whether they’re observing, commentating, answering
questions, supporting, supervising, or co-fronting — in other words,
influencing our words & actions, sometimes using their own voice
we still experience amnesia every so often, & we’ve developed
methods to accommodate this dissociative reality: we now have
a buddy system, wherein at least two headmates share
responsibility for remembering anything we can’t afford to forget
however, our amnesia doesn’t qualify us for a diagnosis. in the decade
before we turned around, professionals doled out a dozen erroneous
or incomplete diagnoses; only one nearly recognized us as separate
individuals, & even she didn’t diagnose dissociative identity disorder.
and after years of healing, our Plural existence is not pathological
at age sixteen, our persecutor threatened pregnancy, then suicide,
rendering us unreliable narrators & delay our plans to come out;
when we persisted, she tried to follow through, take all of us out
with her, but couldn’t do it alone; years later, we gifted her
the strength to die — in the headspace, limiting her damage
to shortness of breath as she suffocated & a lifetime of “what if”s
her threats landed us in hospitals, facing medical transphobia
& quickly learning to fake a realistic recovery, getting out without
running; we spent years dreading, avoiding, expecting to be locked
up again — all while developing dozens of signs of chronic illness,
dismissed by doctors using hysteria’s diagnostic descendants
once we turned around & our persecutor departed, we pursued
our first gender-affirming surgery, a hysterectomy with removal
of our ovaries — also in a hospital, this time in Seattle; this exercise
in autonomy, this voluntary sterilization, ensures that, even if we
lose ourselves again, no one can try to baby-trap us from within
many professionals promote final fusion, becoming a singlet,
as the ideal outcome for Plurals; to us, it’s a nightmare, another
type of conversion therapy entailing the fundamental loss
of separate, functional identities as we would merge into
an “original” self, a singlet who none of us remember being
for us, integration entails lowering dissociative barriers, establishing free,
continuous communication amongst headmates, sharing memories,
thoughts, & emotions at will — without surrendering our ability
to engage dissociative barriers as needed, because this world
often proves unsafe for people like us; our Plurality is an adaptation
to a hostile reality, a lifeline we’d never give up without a fight.