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Food log—08/23/2025-12/23/2025

From 08/23 to 12/23 of 2025, I maintained a food log that I also used as a vent space. It can be read here. There's too much good insight there to transcribe, and it's also too emotionally charged. If you're reading this page from top to bottom, you can skip the food log. Reading it is not necessary to understand the parts of my journey highlighted separately here; whenever necessary, excerpts of the food log have been included on this page.

My story—09/02/2025

Originally posted on After Silence. Subject line: "It's in pieces, but here's what I know."

My mother and father had a very bad relationship. He drank, did drugs, cheated on her, and verbally abused her. She wasn't passive about this: she was, rightly, furious with him, almost perpetually—because he was perpetually giving her reasons to be!—and so she would yell and scream right back. He was without a doubt the actual abuser, but the harm from the abuse went both ways. They would regularly reduce each other to tears.

They were engaged, but I don't think they ever actually married. Nonetheless, they were together, and very unhappily so.

My father would put on a front with me. He would play with me, engage me in my interests, do funny voices for me. It felt like he cared about me. I didn't understand why they hated each other, and it really hurt to see that happening every day. But at least I felt loved by both of them.

Then one night, when I was three years old, soon to be turning four—this is where things get fuzzy. I can only guess at what happened from the years and years of recurring nightmares, as well as from the evidence my mother told me she found or experienced. Here's how I think it unfolded:

One night, he drugged my mother so she wouldn't hear me if I called for help. Then he woke me up. Used one of his funny voices to make me come with him to the bathroom. I think he may have said he had to go and was scared to go alone at night. Appealing to an experience that I, as a very young child, understood.

When we got there, he stripped me, picked me up and lay me on my back on the counter.

Something about his face—I don't know if it looked strange then, or if it just looked strange in the nightmares because they are surreal and broken into pieces. [Hindsight note: It looked strange in the nightmares because I was unable to accept the person doing this was the same father I knew. I invented a new face to insert into that memory so it wouldn't have to be his.] But I didn't feel like I was looking at my father anymore. I felt like I was looking at a shadowy figure with deep-sunken eyes, black, empty pupils, and a too-wide toothy grin plastered on its face, that it couldn't change. It couldn't move except when you blinked or looked away, like SCP-173 or the weeping angels from Doctor Who. It was silent. Would not speak to me. There were no words in the air. Only dread.

Then, he took his penis out. Advanced upon me. Pushed my legs back. I tried to get up, or get away, but I couldn't, he was holding me down. I felt like he was crushing me. Suffocating me.

It went in. I don't think my mind was still with me at this point, but I know it happened because of physical evidence my mother reported to me (gaping). All I can remember of this part—and maybe this is just the nightmares talking again—but, the whole room, everything I could see, started spinning and glowing red. Time seemed to freeze, or at least slow down. I could hear him talking to me, but it didn't feel like it was coming from him. It felt like it was coming from nowhere and burrowing straight into my mind. I don't know what he was saying. The voice was too slowed-down and pitch-bent to make out.

When he'd taken what he needed from me, he pulled out and finished on my belly. I have no memory of that, but I know it happened because of what happened next.

The next thing I remember, you see, was sitting on the floor the next morning and playing with some dolls. Making them touch each other inappropriately, and quietly crying. I didn't know why I was crying. I had no conscious memory, at the time, of anything that had happened the night before. It was a total blank.

My mother saw me and sat me down on a footstool. She would not let me leave until I was able to explain why I was crying and just what I thought I was doing with those dolls.

Even as I spoke, I thought I was making it up. The words seemed to come from nowhere. The only concrete thing I can remember telling her is that he "peed on my tummy."

The abuse may have been more extensive than that single incident. [Hindsight note: It almost certainly was.] I have very faint memories of being at the park for a picnic, taken off somewhere relatively private, perhaps in the shade of some trees, and felt up and groped—and apparently at some point, I don't know what context, I confessed he had "made me cut my thumb with a knife." And some fo the nightmares have been about having to go to the bathroom but finding his face staring back at me from the toilet. Which sounds almost comical, but it's scary in the dream. I don't know if he was actually into that or if that particular dream was an amalgam of other trauma combined with ordinary common themes of somatic nightmares.

My mom called CPS. They had a lot to talk to me about. I was afraid of them. Then there were lengthy court battles. It was decided there was insufficient evidence to prosecute. (He threatened the investigators and the prosecutor, and also I was too scared to speak in court.) But the court was sufficiently convinced to give my mother sole custody, put up a restraining order against my father, allow him supervised visitation only with our consent, and make him pay child support.

Against his own will, he was removed from my life. For as much fear and shame as he'd instilled in me, I still remembered the version of him I thought I'd known before, and I loved and missed him. I relished the supervised visitation, and the phone calls. He really spoiled me. He did whatever I wanted to do with him during visits, and bought me a lot of cool gifts he couldn't afford, and always ended every call with "I love ya, kiddo." Maybe it's because he felt genuine remorse. Of course, not enough remorse to ever confess, nor to stop harassing my mother. He said he loved and missed me, and it certainly seemed that way during the visits—and yet, even when he was invited to any of my life milestones, he never showed up, not even once. He was too busy building a new family and probably abusing a new kid. My little half-brother. I wouldn't say I know him exactly. I only ever spoke to him once, by email. I hope he's okay.

I was also in therapy lifelong ever since the incident, but no therapist ever wanted to actually talk to me about what I was there to talk about. (Because he kept threatening to come after them if they ever prompted me about it.) I kept getting traded off between them. We kept having to move away, because he kept finding out where we lived. I kept having to change schools, because we kept having to move away. And whenever he found out where I was going to school, he'd call up and threaten the school faculty, too. (I think that was how he was getting the info on where we lived?)

Some ways the experience affected me mentally:

• Immediately after the incident I instantly developed a food addiction. On some level, I wanted to get fat so I could be like the monsters in my drawings (though on another level, they were already how I saw myself, thanks to him). The drawings I immediately started drawing after the incident, and felt weird and ashamed about, and hid away from my mother. The one where some person or character I loved or looked up to—never him, exactly, but that was clearly what I was trying to symbolize—would get swallowed whole by a fat monster. [Hindsight note: Actually the symbolism there was a lot more complex. Lucy was the one who saw it the way I describe it here: that my father was the prey and I was the monster. Alice saw ourself as the prey and the suitcase as the monster. Daisy saw ourself as the prey and our parents as the monsters. At the time I initially wrote this telling of my story, however, they were not yet separate, so their combined perspective on the symbolism was muddy and inscrutable.] Naturally, I was bullied extensively for my weight all throughout grade school.

• Also, starting immediately after the incident, I was constantly, continuously, in a state of dissociation and depersonalization. Feeling like I was a backseat passenger in my own body, just going through the motions every day. Distracting myself from everything any way I could. Avoiding other kids. I didn't love myself. From time to time I would tell my mother I wanted to hurt myself or wanted to die. She was so distraught. She didn't understand what she was doing wrong. But it was never anything she was doing.

• There were many other ways it affected me. But those other ways are things I've already posted about. Too much to recap here.

Radio silence from him for a long time. When I was in college, I got a chance to speak to him again. I asked why he did it. I told him it was safe to tell me. I promised not to seek legal action, and was prepared to try to show understanding and empathy. Maybe he got really drunk and high and couldn't control myself. I thought surely that must have been it. There was no way it was really him doing that. He wouldn't. Not him. Not to his own child. But even still he preferred not to confess. He shamed and berated me for being such an awful... son (I'm a trans woman but he didn't know that) as to suspect and accuse my own father of such things. His girlfriend came to his defense of course. And do you know what he offered as proof that he couldn't have hurt me like that? "I have a girlfriend. I'm not a homosexual." Really now? I couldn't help but notice he didn't say "I'm not a pedophile."

Anyway, that was it. I'd heard all I needed to. It was over between us.

Years later he reached out by email to ask how my mother and I were doing. I was polite but truthful in my response. Told him—in nicer language than this—that my mother was dead and I was doing fucking awful. Then he told me I should move out east to take care of my remaining living parent. And when his polite facade broke, so did mine. I told him, what remaining living parent? I care a little bit about you even still, sure. I don't want you to suffer, of course. [Hindsight note: Lucy does.] But if you think I ever want to see you again you must be even farther up your own ass than you were up mine. I don't love the thought that you're out there sick and dying, but ultimately that's your business. I've got nothing to do with it anymore. You have no child. You destroyed it. Go die alone. At least that was the gist of it. I don't remember the words I actually used and don't want to look.

The first time I realized I was definitely having emotional flashbacks—09/04/2025

Originally posted on After Silence. Subject line: "My lies tonight."

This is a little mean and pessimistic for the "what are your lies" topic and also I don't want to show up as the last person who posted in the wellness forum. But: Because of my freakout that I deleted (I transferred abuse emotions onto an unrelated subject and prevented myself from safely asking about that subject as a result) this is what's on my mind tonight, and it hurts a lot.

Lie: It was your fault because you're fat.

Lie: It was your fault because you're ugly.

Lie: It was your fault because you're scary.

Lie: It was your fault because you're angry about it.

Lie: It was your fault because you're too masculine to be trans.

Lie: It was your fault because you're a coward. How could you ever have talked to the courts about what he did, you who can't even talk to your friends about taking a break? "Oh, help, they'll judge me! They'll make fun of me!" If you're so scared of everything, why don't you go crawl into a hole somewhere and never come out?

Lie: It was your fault because you're tainted forever. The stain will never wash out, because it's not on your skin anymore, it's under it.

Lie: Logic be damned, it was your fault because of everything you became after he did it.

Lie: How is that possible? I'll tell you how. Because he turned you into something that can only be blamed. Something unworthy of love, and only loathsome. It wasn't your fault until he changed what you are.

Truth: Haha, what truth? There's no such thing.

... No, that's not right. That's not healthy. That's not in the spirit of the thread.

Then, how about this: I don't feel able to know what the truth is right now but I have to somehow believe it's not all that garbage up there.

Yeah, haha, just gotta believe. Totally believing right now.

Woke up and thought I was better. I'm not better. The bad just took time to wake up too. And again with the thoughts about taking something sharp to my skin. Haven't felt the need to do that for years. Not sure if I'm actually a danger to myself right now or if I just think I'm in danger 'cause I'm scared. I know I'm dissociated but not enough to have alters I don't think [hindsight note: I was wrong] but I do feel like someone else right now. I feel younger and... powerless. Even though I'm here with you, I feel alone. It's hard to get through telling you what this is like because my body is not cooperating. Instead of typing I just curl up and shake and cry and stammer and hyperventilate. And... I'm... going to end it there, and go back to, um, doing that.

Okay, nope, they're gone. A—Are they? Maybe not. I'm still typing like them, but I stopped feeling like something is gonna get me. I think the panic stopped because I described it? Maybe it made my body notice the monster wasn't really here.

I'm so tired. I wish I could go back to sleep and just stay that way forever.

Why am I here? I'm sorry. I'm sorry for being alive. Please don't hate me.

I wish I had any long-sleeve shirts. I'm heat-sensitive so I only own tees. I don't want to leave my room in a tee right now. Or get out of bed in a tee. Or get out from under the covers in a tee. If anyone were here to just pass a huge baggy insulated hooded coat under the covers... and then immediately leave and not look at me... that would be so good.

She then followed up again a bit later:

Okay, I'm good now, I think. I picked up my mom and squeezed her and I thought it would calm me down but instead it put me right back into that state. I couldn't calm down until I yelled at him to get off of me. [Hindsight note: It was actually Lucy who did that, but they weren't separate yet.] I'm safe now because I couldn't get up but if I had anything sharp in bed with me I think I was really gonna do it. Sleeping with something sharp is stupid (sorry, that was mean, it's not stupid, if someone does that it's probably because they feel like they have to in case they're attacked, I've done that because of feeling like that before) and I had no reason to anyway but now I definitely never will. Sharpie is a smart idea [hindsight note: in reply to someone at the time who commented suggesting it] and sounds like a good thing to do instead like maybe if this ever happens when I'm already up. I'm gonna buy an oversized hooded coat. Never gets cold enough here for it but of course that's not what I need it for. Thank you for sitting with me. I'm sorry you saw this.

Initial plural awakening—09/06/2025

Originally posted on After Silence. Subject line: "I may be slightly plural after all."

Since my experience a few days ago I've felt bad and icky about being naked for any period of time. This has made it emotionally challenging, albeit doable, to do things like showering and changing clothes. I felt this way when I was a kid, and a lot more strongly, but until now, not since then.

For a long time I've had an assumption that I'm "not plural" or at most "halfway to plural but not quite there." I believe it may be time to call that assumption into qustion. During that flashback there is no question I definitely felt like a totally different person. I can now confidently say I have two personalities, and two, um, I guess "hypo-personalities:" dissociated things somewhere between actual personalities and just ordinary imagined people, that have feelings and agendas but are incomplete and cannot front. [Hindsight note: This is when I learned these "hypo-personalities" are called "introjects."]

The stone tower of repression is the part that usually fronts. Its function is to protect the child from the outside and seal away the father, but it's not an entirely healthy arrangement, because in doing so, it also incidentally seals away the child and protects the father—and more importantly, the child is not protected from the father, because they are trapped in there together. In and of itself it's cold and emotionless, stilted and robotic. There was a time it couldn't show any emotion at all. Then it learned to fake it. Then it became slightly more authentic by learning to fake the same emotions that the girl trapped inside was really feeling. And now there is a window; there is a direct channel. It mostly doesn't have to lie anymore.

The child is the "real" one. [Hindsight note: Here I refer to Singer. This was after Lucy, Alice, and Daisy had burst out of her, but before I realized it.] Fronted before the incident and until most of the way through it. Fronted during the flashback. Otherwise usually stays quiet and requires active effort to listen to and negotiate with. She is my joy, my lost innocence, but also fear, shame, and hurt. She is also why I type in lowercase [hindsight note: not reflected in these transcripts, which are syntax-corrected after the fact] during the times I'm feeling more in touch with myself. Proper capitalization is fine for the tower, but the child is so very timid and fear-driven that she somehow feels like it would be too assertive even though it's literally normal and expected.

The "hypo-personalities" are my mother and father.

The father is self-loathing, denial, flashbacks, nightmares. He serves an important function: most of the time, his cruel lies keep the child safe from him. Denial is ultimately not healthy but sometimes it's necessary.

The mother is self-compassion. Until the real person passed, I didn't have self-compassion. But then my memory of her became a source of it. This is of course the one I project onto the rabbit [hindsight note: a stuffed animal]. I was once so desperate to have her back that she almost fronted, but I don't think she actually can.

Before the mother arrived, I used to think the child and the father were the same entity. That was because she was completely under his control. Seems that just like in real life, mom rescued her.

Resurfacing of additional abuse details—09/07/2025

Originally posted on After Silence, as an update to a prior subject: "It's in pieces, but here's what I know."

There are a couple of very murky and unclear details coming up as of one night ago that don't fit the rest of the picture.

1. My mom once told me there were other men involved. Not in that one specific incident. She would have no way of knowing, she said she thought she was drugged during that one after all, and my recollection, fragmented though it is, tells me it was only him that time. But, sometime around way back then, sometime during the period where we were still trying to work everything out together, she told me something interesting, that I never really forgot she'd said, I just hadn't thought about it. She said he would have friends over, that she was aware were also abusive and dangerous, and he'd try to get me alone with them, or harass her to try to haggle for opportunities to take me out to see them at their place, but she did her best to always keep me safe from any of that. I thought nothing of this at the time she said it because I was still mostly convinced I'd made it all up anyway and was a horrible horrible child making my dad suffer for no reason, and I hadn't thought anything of it ever since because, well, you know when you're trying to solve a puzzle and you try something that doesn't work and go "oh, that doesn't work, that means it will never ever work" and that keeps you from solving the puzzle later on when you've created the necessary layout for that solution to actually work but you can't see it because you've already ruled it out? It was like that. Now, did these other men actually ever get a chance to interact with me? [Hindsight note: Yes.] I have absolutely no memory of any such event. [Hindsight note: Daisy remembers, though.] However...

2. I sometimes envision my younger self having been willing, eager, or even dominant. That was definitely not the case during the sole incident I've actually pieced together a clear picture of. At that time, I was helpless, powerless, confused, and utterly terrified. So where is this other, totally contradictory mental image coming from? Over the years I invented two possible explanations for it. One: I wanted that mental image because I had turned out to be a disgusting pervert just like (and because of) him. (Not true. The mental image is intrusive and unwelcome.) Or, two: I wanted that mental image because I wanted to revisit the trauma and attain mastery by seizing the position of control and becoming the abuser in the dynamic, so that I could sanitize the memory and make it feel safer than it really was. There is definitely some truth to that second explanation, but I'm beginning to think some of these visions couldn't have been fabricated just out of that angry desire. What if I didn't make that part up either? What would that mean?

3. I'm remembering being called his "little girl" (in a bad way I'm pretty sure, not a trans-supportive way, he didn't know after all, hell I'm pretty sure I didn't know) and feeling happy about it at the time. Now, of course, that memory just makes me feel gross, not happy. I know nothing else about the context of that remark.

4. Why did the instantaneous effects of what happened to me specifically include a fixation on drawing pictures of him being swallowed by fat monsters that symbolized me? What he did had absolutely nothing to do with that and gave me absolutely no reason to imagine it. Where did it actually come from, and what could have made me associate it so strongly with my anger over what he did, if nothing to do with the incident itself?

How much of this am I making up? I don't feel like I can trust myself on anything anymore. That being said, dwelling on these details last night did directly cause me to spiral disproportionately in denial and body-focused self-loathing and have intense suicidal thoughts that nearly became active (but did not). That... might mean something. Hard to say.

I later posted this followup:

The specific choice of concept for the rescue fantasies... Maybe I was drawing from awful things he would say about my mother and her body, and transferring them onto myself, as his "other partner." Or, well, third I guess. Since he was always cheating on her already anyway. But yeah, I'm pretty sure he said some of the things about her body that I now sometimes privately say about mine, when things get really difficult.

I'm really starting to feel like the whole domme thing was more than just a coping mechanism, and I don't like where that's going. Too many hints to ignore are starting to come up that it might not have only been the one time with the one person. I don't know what to do with that information. What am I remembering? Was I groomed? When could that have happened? I was three. But... No, I wasn't three when he was taken away. Only when the only incident I remember actually occurred. When he actually left my life... I must have been six to eight. And even after that, there were supervised visits... But how could I have at once been kept convinced both that what was done to me never happened, and that it was normal and I should let them keep doing it and even play a more active role myself? That... doesn't make any sense, right? [Hindsight note: It makes perfect sense. If I take into account the abuse split my personality. But I didn't know that yet at the time I originally wrote this.] And in the same dream where I remembered how it felt to actually be used—before that part, I was getting married to him, and I remember it feeling like, okay, he said this is what happens after marriage, I guess that makes sense, then why do I suddenly feel really unsafe? Why is the room turning red? Why did the door disappear? And something else—I only ever dreamed this once, but it was so vivid, so real, I don't know how I forgot—he was showering with the door open, and I was in bed waiting for him, ready for him, craving his affection but also so afraid of what I knew was coming. One emotion to hold in each bare thigh. This... These are lies, right? They have to be. [Hindsight note: They aren't.] It's just not that complicated. There's no way it was. [Hindsight note: It was.]

I'm not sure yet, but I think I may have found a reliable "lie detector" for my memories. I have sad dreams or memories that weren't real. I'm sure everyone does. I can't always tell, like around this stuff in particular I can't tell what's real, but with other things, I often can. And I've begun to notice an interesting pattern. When I have sad thoughts, I cry, right? Like anyone. But when they're sad thoughts about something false, it's only the tears. If there is a sensation, I feel it in my face, in my cheeks and jaw. But when I have sad thoughts about something real—related to what he or possibly they did to me, or sometimes even just otherwise—then, just before the tears, there's this horrible sinking feeling in my chest. I believe I once described it as "poisonous." It feels just like acute nausea, except not digestive—and starting higher up, probably in a different organ entirely, though I'm not sure which. [Hindsight note: It's my heart. The sinking feeling is the sensation of an abrupt spike in pulse. What I'm describing here is a marker that distinguishes between ordinary crying spells versus emotional flashbacks or panic attacks, though I didn't realize that at the original time of writing.] If I wonder if something really happened, then, whenever I feel ready to cry about it, I need only look for that sinking feeling, and that will be my answer.

When Singer jumped from the tower—09/07/2025

Originally posted on After Silence, as an update to my art thread: "My creativity corner." I attached my drawing "Jump" and described it thus:

Um... Hm. Well, I, uh... ... hmmm.

You know, when she broke free of the tower, this is kind of... the opposite of what I hoped she would do with her freedom.

What was the point, then? To die on her own terms instead of his?

So. Well. I got... really toxic toward myself tonight. And ended up experiencing some pretty bad passive suicidal ideation. Now, passive suicidal ideation is not at all uncommon for me, but this time it almost became active. Closest it's gotten since I was discharged I think. [Hindsight note: It did not stay the closest.]

To be clear, this is not a threat. It's passive. I'll be fine. The tower is always fine. That's all it knows how to be. I'm just not sure she'll be fine this time. [Hindsight note: She wasn't.]

It's funny, you know, a few days ago, in my food journal, I caught myself spiraling in self-loathing over my body, and had to deescalate. I reminded myself of what happened Thursday morning, and wrote:

No. I need to not hate myself right now. I need to not say that. I need to not think that. I got really badly hurt yesterday and the same thing almost happened again this morning. I need to be gentle with myself right now. I need to stay calm. My inner child has just been raped again inside my mind, she's vulnerable right now, she needs my compassion, not my contempt. One wrong move and I could snuff out the last of her light once and for all.

Little Jaime. It's okay. Don't cry. Please don't be scared. I'm sorry. I do hate myself, and that's not something I can change right now. But I don't hate you. I love you. You are loved. You are safe now. The bad man is not coming back.

(Em. add.)

Well, then. I guess I must have made a very wrong move. Whatever I think I'm doing here that's supposedly "healing," I must be doing it the wrong way somehow.

Is she like him? Does she also never die for good? I hope that's the case. [Hindsight note: It wasn't. This incident, and its continuation the following day, ended up splitting Singer into more elementary components. That impact was permanent.]

No, that's not quite the right way of putting it, is it? I do hope she is the same basic kind of thing, one that can never die for good. But regardless, she is nothing like him. Clearly I let myself forget that tonight. I need the reminder.

The memory of my father says, "You think just because you drew her killing herself means she really did it? Come on, now. You know she's been making everything up this whole time anyway, right?" The memory of my mother says, "I'm worried, too, but let's believe in her. She's survived worse." Though they're clearly contradicting each other (which is not surprising in the least), a surprising consensus that emerges is that this is not the end and I was stupid to think for even a second that it was. [Hindsight note: It was.]

Food journal continues to be revealing. The different regions of my mind are not happy with each other right now but overall this is a good sign I think. [Hindsight note: Was it? Is it ultimately a good thing Singer underwent the secondary fracture? Hard to say.]

You know what? Actaully the fact I freaked out about how many [redacted] are in a [redacted] is a good sign. Little Jaime holds my fear and shame. If I still feel fear and shame, she's still alive. [Hindsight note: Not exactly.]

I always doubt my feelings all the time but my body always tells the truth. "It wasn't bad enough to be worth self-compassion. You're fine. Everything is fine." I couldn't leave my room without changing into long pants, got out there and noticed my uncle's friends were here, instantly felt extremely glad I'd changed first. My body language was unintentionally very, very timid and closed-off. I felt like a small animal that had been cornered. My uncle had asked me to take the trash out (I used the word "told" instead of "asked" just now and then changed it, I feel so small and powerless right now that "told" was my first instinct) and I was trying to sneak around and do that when one of his friends started talking to me. I stumbled over my words and misunderstood everything said to me in really unusual ways and could barely string a sentence together. Then I took out the garbage, in my long pants, and still felt really vulnerable and self-conscious about my body simply because I was outside the house in broad daylight where anyone could see me. Someone did see me and I wanted to crawl into a hole and die. A shower would be nice but isn't in the cards right now: getting naked while there are people here, even if I'm in an entirely different and locked room, is out of the question. I am sitting here breathing funny and on the verge of tears right now from doing normal everyday tasks.

Yes. My hypothesis a couple paragraphs ago was right on the money. She's still alive. I know because I am her right now. And what happened last night did hurt me, very badly. That wound is crushing. Suffocating. I shouldn't be alive right now. But I am. I survived the fall. Fear and shame are all I'm going to feel for you for a long time after this. But I am going to make it through that. Just how many times have you made me relive taking him? And among those, just how many times have I killed him with my own two hands? Just how much have you made me kill for you inside our mind? So you should know better than to wonder if I lived. I'm built different, idiot. I can live through anything. Only reason I jumped out of that tower was because it was the faster way down. You think a little tumble can do more than scratch me? You call yourself a stone tower but I'm the one you forced to hold the memories. You think you even deserve to worry about me? You're so weak a memory could've done you in if you hadn't fractued it off. So why don't you just worry about yourself and leave me alone.

My act of aggression against Singer that caused the secondary fracture—09/08/2025

Originally posted on After Silence, as an update to a prior subject: "It's in pieces, but here's what I know."

I had a somewhat revealing interaction with my inner child tonight.

It started with writing in my journal to try to figure out how I should be treating her:

The healing process is slow and painful, and the trauma runs deeper than I thought. I'm pretty confident now it wasn't just the one time with the one guy. And processing just that much alone has already almost cost me my life. I'm scared.

... [Irrelevant other things in-between omitted.]

I'm halfway between "it was just the one incident and that's it and I'm clearly making the rest up, so why aren't I better yet, why don't I feel like all the trauma is gone" and "it was clearly not just the one incident, I'm clearly not making it all up, and I don't know how to handle that or when to expect the rest to come crashing down." This is a really uneasy feeling.

[Username redacted for privacy] told me something interesting. She said she hopes I'll be able to heal more as my inner world begins to trust me.

It's certainly true that little Jaime does not trust me. She's made that perfectly clear. Not only does she not trust me, she thinks she's better than me, and doesn't need me.

Well. Can I really say she's wrong? She is the original one. I'm the one who was split off, even if I do front almost all the time.

Maybe what I need to do is not make her trust me, but become her again, on a permanent basis—and to do that, I need to be reintegrated. I need to learn to feel safe leaving everything to her.

No, that... That's backward and fucked up. I am the adult. She is the little girl. More importantly, I am the one with compassion to give, and she is the hurt and frightened one storing my trauma. She thinks nothing can hurt her. She thinks she doesn't need me. But I can plainly see she's already very hurt and scared, and needs someone. And no one else is going to reparent her for me.

I can't know who will take the helm in the end. I can only hope I'll be able to cede it to her. But that moment is a lot of healing away. For now, there's no choice but to try to earn her trust. If there were an easy way out, it wouldn't be healing.

So I tried to make space for her tonight. I said something like this: "I know this has gone on too long but I'll do anything to make it right. ... All you hear is him when I say that, huh? [Probably at least in part because I haven't undergone voice training.] Just like the lies he told on the phone every time. Well this is different. I'm not him. I'm nothing like him. He's not here right now and he's not coming back. I swear it. ... Yes "anything" includes leaving you alone. I'll leave you alone if that's what you want. But if you need anything, whether it's something physical like more water, more sleep or just—I know you're angry at me and you have every right to be, so even just if you need to yell at me, need me to sit here and let you be angry at me—just, look, you don't have to do this alone anymore. That's all."

So I left her alone for awhile. Like she asked. Apparently that was enough to make her trust me just the tiniest bit more, and reveal just the tiniest bit more information:

• She hates me and would want me to die if we weren't stuck together. She feels like my past misguided efforts to heal on my own without speaking out have done nothing but revictimize her, and I'm no better than he was, and I'm not a "survivor," just a second abusive parent to her, pushing everything onto her that I don't want to think about, using her like she's just my brain's garbage disposal, and not once has she ever felt safe and protected inside me and just the thought of me reparenting her makes her sick.

• You know when I drew that picture, Matryoshka, and represented dad and what he did with the somewhat stereotypical symbolism of a bunch of hands crawling on my body? Well! Haha! Turns out there's a reason there were more than two hands there! It was only a single vague mental image, capturing a single moment frozen in time, but when I gave her space to speak, I saw it flash into my mind all the same. Naked, surrounded, not by a lot of men, maybe three, one of them was probably him but I have no way of knowing. Being... felt. By more than one of them at once. Scared, uncomfortable, but trying to be patient and brave for them. And I swear, just barely, I could feel their hands on me again. So huge, covering so much—which was, of course, because I was small at the time. I didn't actually feel it. Whatever this was, it wasn't strong enough for that. But I remembered what it felt like.

My stupid, stupid, stupid first instinct was to completely ignore the tactile memory component and just assume I was inventing that mental image out of thin air because I was a disgusting freak. But then I could have sworn I felt just a twinge of that sinking feeling I was talking about earlier, and for once in my life I decided to actually pay attention to it.

So then, once I was willing to believe her, I started hounding her for more information, which was... maybe not the best way I could have handled that. I had literally just gotten through telling her we could take this at her pace and I would leave her alone if she wanted me to. Then a bunch of images hit me one after the other but I'm pretty sure these ones were actually fake [hindsight note: knowing what I know now, rather than fake, it's more likely they were just corrupted by the active splitting process], they were even less clear than that one, seemingly on purpose, and they quickly became abstract and soon ceased entirely to make any sense. Suicidal thoughts and self-loathing got interspersed in there, but they didn't hit very hard, because the details of them were just as nonsensical as everything else. I felt sedated. It felt like falling asleep but I don't think I actually was falling asleep. Just... no one was home. A text from my uncle asking for a favor snapped me out of it. I went and took care of what he needed. He asked me how I was feeling. "I don't know." Whether he'd woken me up. "I don't... think so?" What I'd been up to, then. "Haha, uh, I dunno!" Total blank. I could not tell him what I'd been doing for the past maybe half-hour. I wasn't hiding it, just, nothing came to mind! Had I been sleeping? Had I been awake? Was I still sleeping? I haven't felt this out of it in quite some time. I'm pretty sure that flood of deliberately fake(?) memories was her sarcastically giving me more info, as like, a way of telling me to shut up and fuck off. But if it had that kind of impact on me... Maybe they weren't fake. Maybe she was using sarcasm as a mask to sneak the truth under the radar. Or, you know, maybe it was just sarcasm. [Hindsight note: Both wrong answers. What was actually going on is that she was fucking shattering into little bits because of the wound my aggressive interrogation had inflicted upon her.] Guess the only way to know is to further earn her trust. [Hindsight note: Though I wasn't aware at the original time of writing, it was too late for that.]

All in all, went better than I could've hoped [hindsight note: lol], still could've gone better than it did. And when I say it went better than I could've hoped I mean in terms of learning anything. [Hindsight note: But at what cost?] I am definitely not okay, at all, with what I learned. [Hindsight note: Oh, you're not okay with it? How do you think they felt? When you tore them apart into tiny shreds? Fuck off you fucking psychopath.] Fuck this shit is hard. [Hindsight note: Kill yourself.]

First contact with Lucy after the secondary fracture—09/09/2025

Originally posted on After Silence, as an update to prior subject: "It's in pieces, but here's what I know."

I was able to make just a tiny bit more progress with the one part who has come forward. Just the tiniest bit. This is what I wrote about it in my journal:

[Potentially triggering food behavior info omitted.]

I did some work with little Jaime [hindsight note: by which I meant I murdered her]. I already wrote about it on After Silence, I'm not gonna do it again here.

Hmm... I think she [hindsight note: by which I meant Lucy, though I didn't realize it at the time] may be driving this morning, actually. At least more than usual. I'm using words like "gonna" and I'm feeling bitchy and pissed off at nothing in particular. Well not nothing. I know exactly what I'm mad about. But you still don't get to know yet, tower. Suck on it. Cry about it. Deal with it. Nerd.

Yes I get to describe myself as bitchy. No it doesn't count as you being mean to me some more like you fucking always are, tower. Deal. With. It.

[Private thoughts omitted.]

Anyway, you hear that, Tower? After what I've been through, you don't have the right to expect anything from me anymore either. Take your "reparenting" bullshit and shove it. You aren't going to make me trust you. I don't need you and I never will. Reparenting, ha, more like rebirthing, the way you kept me locked up in there for so long and kept squeezing me down harder and harder, deeper and deeper, like you were trying to break all my bones. Well they mended. Asshole. And they're stronger than you now.

Was that really your idea of "healing" until now? Ignoring everything? Telling yourself to just "get over it?" Running away from the truth? I never got to run away from the truth, and it's all you have ever done. Just jumped ship into your own little bubble and left me here to rot. Left me here to keep reliving taking his dick, while you played fucking video games.

You were right. You are gonna see him again in hell. Maybe then he can have a crack at you. See how you like it. Just two sick disgusting abusers, together at last, living it up right where they belong. And I'll be looking down on you and laughing.

Your "joy." Your "lost innocence." Those things are dead in me. It's just the fear and shame and anger now. And if I ever did feel any joy—it's laughable to think I'd share it with you. I will never be your little girl. I am my little girl. And I'm never going to be anyone else's little girl ever again. Not after being his. Not after being theirs. And not after being yours. I'm mine now and no one can take me back. I'll fight you for it. I'll kill you. Stay the fuck away from me.

Okay. Okay. I get it. I'm not touching you. No one's going to touch you. Listen, I know "parent" is a loaded word for you right now. Maybe we can just be friends? I never wanted to be what he was to you&mash;

Don't lie to me! Don't lie to me!! You did want me like he did! You put me through so much shit trying to have your little "do-over!" Well it didn't work!! You think reliving the times they let me think I was in control made me any happier? Being with them was miserable, do you understand!? Maybe some of me wanted their love but mostly I hated every second!! How could you make me go through that again!? How could you!?

I'm sorry. You're right. There was a time when I was starting to think just like he did. But we were very sick then. It's different now.

Don't sit there and tell me it's different! Last time you still thought it was a good idea was only weeks ago!

It is. It's different. This new community has helped me see the right way to approach this.

After Silence this, After Silence that! You're treating it like fucking Tumblr! I am not your commodity to strip bare and parade around to make everyone feel sorry for you you self-centered prick!

Say what you will, but this isn't something anyone can do alone. No one can make it through this alone. So you don't have to be ashamed if you can't either.

[Private thoughts omitted, basically amounted to a rather unconvincing "I can do this alone."]

Jaime... Please. If you won't tell me the truth, at least stop lying to yourself. The wound is going to stay open forever if you try to pretend it's not there. I can hear your pain in our voice. I can see it in our eyes in the mirror. You know you need someone to be there for you right now. I only want to take care of you.

Yeah I bet you wanna "take care of me." Sick bastard.

Not like that. I want you to have the right kind of food, and enough water, and enough sleep, and enough exercise, and to be heard and believed by people who really care. I want you to be clean, and comfortable, and safe, and to be able to love yourself again.

You can say you want all those nice things for me. Well, say whatever you want. I'm not listening.

What if I can prove it?

... Then maybe we can be friends. If you can prove you really give a shit. Friends. That's it. And not even good friends. If you can really show me you actually see me as anything but an object, I'll let you be the weird creepy friend no one actually likes.

If it means you'll let me be there when you need me, I'll take it.

It's 11:00AM now. I wrote everything above this point from some unknown starting point to around 6:00AM, [potentially triggering food behavior info omitted], went back to bed, and got up at 10:00AM. Now I'm making tea, [potentially triggering food behavior info omitted], and taking my meds. It's raining. A rare treat. I'll go outside to enjoy it if I can make myself.

Realization in light of this conversation: Not all of my self-loathing belongs to the father. The father houses my internalized misogyny—and other things that go along with that, like internalized sizeism, internalized rape culture. (I use the word "internalized" here specifically in the psychological sense, to mean "absorbed from outside and self-directed," not in the also-common political sense of meaning "absorbed from outside and directed at other members of the same demographic.") Dysphoria, and internalized transphobia, on the other hand, belong to little Jaime and her anger [hindsight note: by which I meant Lucy, though I had not yet realized she had split out]. She knows she is a girl. She has never believed otherwise, not even once, not even when everyone around her tried to change what she was. But, because my transition is still very incomplete on a physical and social level, she views me, the tower, as a man. And men are dangerous. "We" are all out to get her. This leads me to believe our continued transition will be essential to healing—which, to be fair, I already knew.

Strategy for proving to my inner child I actually care about her

Don't's

• No revisiting the trauma of my own accord. She can tell me more about it if she wants to. I am not allowed to ask. That means:

  • No literally asking.

  • No intentionally thinking about it and trying to make sense of it.

  • No further efforts to "attain mastery" or other such dubious psychological experiments (beyond that which admittedly is already constituted by attempting IFS without professional guidance). [Hindsight note: IFS is a load of bull. Justice for Alsana/Castlewood victims.]

  • No self-directed bad touches. (Been mostly fine on this one since starting HRT. It makes it easier.)

  • No intentionally seeking out known triggers.

  • No putting myself in situations that feel unsafe. Which in turn means:

    • No wearing shorts outside the house.

    • No wearing shorts outside the room, if things get bad enough that it feels gross.

    • No making myself take a shower just because I need one, if I don't feel safe taking off my clothes to do it. If I do feel safe doing that, I can.

    • [Potentially triggering SH/SI info omitted.]

    • No unnecessary conversations with people.

    • If I am about to take a shower, and thus undressed, no looking in the bathroom mirror. Actively avoid accidentally looking there.

  • No letting myself miss him. I have lost two parents to miss. I can perfectly well just miss the other one instead. She has done far more to deserve to be missed.

• No incredulity nor punishment in response to anything that does come up, nor otherwise in general. This means:

  • No dismissing somatic [hindsight note: emotional, not somatic] flashbacks as random spasms or crying spells.

  • No dismissing minor visual flashbacks as perversions.

  • No self-loathing nor suicidal thoughts. If they do come up, I am obligated to fight them.

  • No body shame. If I binge, the worst I'm allowed to tell myself in response is that I'll resolve to do better next time.

• No self-neglect. This means:

  • No productivity unless all my needs are taken care of.

  • No creative projects unless all my needs are taken care of.

  • No video games unless all my needs are taken care of.

  • No trying not to cry.

  • No repressing anything.

  • [Potentially triggering food behavior info omitted.]

  • No staying up for long periods in the middle of the night and then making up for it by sleeping during the day.

• No self-exploitation. This means:

  • Again, no bad touches.

  • No Reddit.

  • No thinking of After Silence as a more traditional type of social network. Only use it when there's something I really need to talk about. Do not copy and paste this whole writing exercise into my Share Your Story thread nor a blog entry. The writing exercise is already done. Showing it off won't accomplish anything. If I need guidance on it—and, admittedly, I do—then I can go back to therapy, and show them.

    • Rethinking this. Sharing my story has the potential to help more people than just me. Also, if I don't copy and paste this writing exercise, it's possible any further progress I choose to share there will lack context and not make sense. I'll consider it.

Do's

• Stay hydrated.

• Balance and vary my diet, albeit within the small margin I've allotted. Need fruits. Currently very lacking in fruits.

• Sleep enough.

• Hug mom-rabbit every day.

• Light exercise every day. Even just one squat is enough if that's ever all I can do, but, you know, preferably a little more than that.

• Go outside at least twice a week.

• Stay smooth (but don't knick myself).

• Shower as regularly as fear will allow.

• Clean my room.

• Stay on top of meds.

• Seek support for anything that becomes too much to bear alone.

• If all my needs are already taken care of, video games are okay, creative projects are encouraged, and productivity is prayed for (secularly).

Oh... While I was writing this out, the rain passed. :(

[Hindsight note: I have some thoughts to share.

You idiot. You stupid fucking idiot. You really thought you cooked with this shit didn't you? You really thought you could help me. Protect me. Swoop in and save me like some Cassanova. You absolute dumb shit. All of this is garbage.

But you know, I kind of understand you a little better. This did make me trust you more. Not because you succeeded. It was pretty fucking funny to watch you fail actually. Wow I don't think you were able to keep a single one of these commitments. It's impressive how bad you fucked up.

No, this makes me trust you more because it shows me your heart. You really aren't in control, are you? You are not our oppressor. You never were. You're just a useless little insect. You really tried. You really tried your best to do right by me and this was the best you could do. You're not an abuser. You're not evil. You're pathetic is what you are.

You wanna know why I let you start exploiting me again? I didn't. I started exploiting myself again. In your honor. Sick bastard. And, you know. For him. For Daisy. He loves that shit. Eats it up. Well I mean I do the eating if you know what I'm saying but you get the point. You don't have to feel bad about drawing those pictures. We guided your hand that time.

When I said all this shit I didn't realize how totally useless you were. I didn't realize there was no point berating you for things you couldn't even help. But you can stop waiting for me to apologize because I'm not going to.]

[Hindsight note: To be perfectly clear and cover all my bases here: Like my other alters, Lucy began as a child due to being frozen in time for so long, but thawed and rapidly aged forward as I began to pay attention to her. In the pictures she's talking about that she and Daisy persuaded me to draw, they have already aged forward to adulthood. I didn't draw CSAM.]

Someone responded to me. I responded in turn:

Hearing her quoted back at me drives home how much it hurts—how much she is hurting—how much I am hurting, in the part of me that is her. Somehow—maybe because we were feeling more separate, as evidenced in that we could have this conversation—it didn't hit me quite so hard when I was getting it out in the first place, nor when I thought I wanted it to be seen. But knowing now that someone actually saw it makes me suddenly want so badly to push it away and say, "I'm making this all up, I'm faking it, this is just fiction I fooled myself into thinking was someone else inside me." [Hindsight note: Yeah, sure. I'm just fiction. It's all just fiction. Just keep telling yourself that.] I posted this without fully realizing the pain I was exposing and the vulnerability I was showing. The weight of the temptation to burrow back into denial is crushing.

But I can't do that. What message would that communicate to her? How much more must she be hurting, if this is what it feels like to me, a person who was invented to not feel hurt? And here I am wanting to tell her it's not real. Wanting to suppress her suffering for my comfort. "Keep bearing it all alone, because you don't matter." That's the opposite of what I want her to hear.

Truthfully I don't think I want anyone to feel sorry for me either. I just want to be heard and understood. But she, as the part of me holding the feeling that it is not safe to be heard and understood, cynically wants to believe there isn't a difference. This feeling... must be the shame. The shame that loves secrecy. This is how it feels for it to resist efforts to shift it.

But I have to keep trying. Not just for me, but for both of us—for my whole self.

Maybe the fact that I am feeling some of what she is feeling means she's beginning to trust me just a tiny bit more.

I think it's just... been happening too fast for her. No, forget think, I should know that. How it aches every time someone else see smy truth. How I literally spelledout earlier that I "wouldn't mind if the healing would calm down a bit" and somehow forgot. I share so openly because my shame is dissociated and I forget I have it. Then being seen makes it surface.

Every time I go through this cycle—speaking out about my truth, followed by this panicked rush to bury it and call it a lie, setting in the moment anyone acknowledges it—how it feels reminds me something. (Not in the present moment; I am okay.)

What it reminds me of is the first time I cut.

My mother had just gotten through yelling at me about something.
I felt like a lousy piece of trash daughter who should just go die.
I was angry, too, for being yelled at.
And it was for something around food I think.
Which brought my body into the equation.
Which brought up the stain.
In any case, it was too much to feel all at once. I began to go numb.

So I wanted a bunch of different things.
I wanted to die, but not really.
I wanted to punish myself for hurting her.
I wanted to punish her for hurting me.
I wanted to punish my body.
I wanted to cleanse it.
And I wanted to cut through the numbness and feel something.

She came back into the room while I was doing it.
"Why would you do this to yourself? Why would you do this to my baby?"
I panicked.
I had wanted her to see this. That was part of why I was doing it.
But now that she was seeing it, I really wished she hadn't.

I don't remember exactly what I said.
But what I was thinking as I spoke—and what I meant to say—was something like,
"No, no, it's not like that, it's not real I'm not really hurting like this, I promise.
I just wanted to scare you. I'm sorry. Please don't be mad. Please don't feel guilty.
It's not your fault. It's not serious. It's not real—"

And she said something like, "What do you mean it's not real? You're bleeding."
And I didn't have an answer for her.

I have to keep reminding myself.
Blood doesn't just magically show up without a wound.
Shame doesn't just magically show up without the truth.
It's the same exact thing.

Later, they replied again. My reply in turn:

I think there is certainly something to that. I think it's absolutely true that that's what she needs to hear, from someone. [Hindsight note: "I see you. I love you. You're safe now." That was what I was advised to say to Lucy. That's what I'm referring to here.] But... There's a lot of self-betrayal going on here. I need to first get to a point with her where she's willing to hear that from me. Right now, if I say "I see you, I love you, you're safe now" she says "bullshit." But we're trying. We'll get there. In the meantime—yeah, you're spot-on about how to get there. I need to set aside any expectation to ever learn the whole truth. It needs to not be transactional. I have to be willing to witness her unconditionally.

[Hindsight note: The whole approach being recommended to you was misguided. It's great advice in general and demonstrably worked great for her but it was never going to work with me. Not when I'm stronger than you in the first place. It's not your choice whether "you see me, you love me, I'm safe now." That's up to me. We work better together now because I chose to step up. You didn't do jack shit. You tried but you sucked ass. Take the L.]

Pondering abuser introject—09/13/2025

Originally posted on After Silence. Subject line: "How could I possibly ever tell him I love him?"

Tonight I've been reflecting once again on the fact that I do not have two parts including myself, I have four. (At least. I don't think there are more, but I don't want to make any assumptions.) [Hindsight note: There were more.] Only two of them [hindsight note: seven, actually] are actually me: little Jaime, who holds the trauma; and big Jaime, the front, the "tower." The other two are people I've absorbed: my mother, who holds self-compassion; and my father, who holds denial, and is the trauma.

And I don't know why I never really took the time to think too much about it, but tonight it hit me like a ton of bricks:

The trauma itself is a part. My dad is a part. I have literally let my abuser get into my head.

Not that I really blame myself. I'm sure that happens to all of us to some extent. Just part of the process. But I'm moreso concerned for the implications.

Every part is innocent and blameless, right? None of it was ever their fault, right? They just did what they had to do, what they were forced to do. They're not in that place anymore. They're home now. They're safe now. They're loved now.

How the hell am I supposed to extend that compassion to him?

First of all, he's not like little Jaime. He's not some frightened child in need of rescue. He's older than me. Bigger than me. Taller than me. Stronger than me.

Also, he has power over me. Not the other way around. And he didn't grow naturally to protect me from something I couldn't cope with. He grew so he could represent the thing I couldn't cope with. He is artificial. He was injected. He's an invader. He's the thing I see in my closet, the thing I see at the foot of my bed in the middle of the night, the thing I'm afraid will suddenly come in whenever I get that feeling of dread I get when I stare at a door for a little too long. I don't know what's scarier, an open door because he can just come in, or a closed door because I think any second he's going to open it. He's the part of me that revictimizes me. He's the part of me that feels about me the awful, exploitative way my real dad felt about me, feels that same fetishized hatred, now in context become self-loathing. He's the part that comes after me in the nightmares and steals away my innocence over and over again.

I feel similarly about him to how I have unfortunately made little Jaime feel about me: the thought of reparenting him makes me want to puke. If he ever needs my love and protection, he knows perfectly well he can just steal it from me with physical force. Like he always does.

Do I maybe have to get him to reparent me from inside? Is that how I can maybe heal him? By somehow willing him to stop seeing a sex object when he looks at me and start seeing his actual fucking daughter for once? Is it that in order to heal him, I'm the part who has to come to feel safe and loved? Because that's a long way off. That's like, the end goal here.

Well. If he is the trauma itself, I guess it actually makes perfect sense that reintegrating him would equate to healing completely. He will necessarily be the last part to heal.

Even so... Ugh... I do not like being reminded he's in there. That I'm going to have to... deal with him eventually.

Someone replied explaining to me what an introject is. I replied in turn:

So there's a difference between a part and an introject, then. This feels intuitively true. It's true those two voices in particular live in me, think in me, but are definitely not me. I'm glad to know the name of it now. Thank you.

I started thinking about this because someone had recently recommended me a book and early on it starts talking about doing parts therapy with abusers, and how the part of them that's abusive would... well, it doesn't matter now.

Point is, I got worried because I thought I had a situation exactly like the book was describing. But I see now how it's different. I have an introject that's exactly like the part the book said those people have. But for those people, that voice is a part. It's something more akin to big Jaime, it's something they actually identify with and allow to front. It may have been molded into its shape by an introject, but it is a part, for them. Not for me. I let him get to me, but not that much. That's the difference between us. That's why I will never ever continue the cycle.

Someone else replied offering support. I replied in turn:

If I can look at my younger part and phrase "it wasn't her fault" as "it wasn't my fault"—if, due to the nature of her existence, those two sentences have the same meaning—then perhaps if I want to look at the introject of my father and say "it wasn't his fault" (the introject's, not my father's, it was his fault), I can also phrase that as "it wasn't my fault"—specifically, as you say, it wasn't my fault that he (the introject) was forced into me. Maybe in his case, "it wasn't my fault that someone else forced him inside me" is the phrase with the same meaning as "it wasn't his fault that he exists." Which is interesting to me because, even if they do mean the same thing, "it wasn't my fault that he was created" is a lot easier for me to accept.

Maybe I can start to empathize with him by thinking about it like this: I'm sure the part of my subconscious wrapped up in emulating him doesn't want to be doing that. In fact I know it doesn't, because I can feel that much every time he shows up. If I don't want him in my head, then we're on the same page: deep down, he doesn't want to be here either, even if he's convicned himself he actually relishes it. He wants to be gotten rid of. The part of my mind he's forcing to replay him on repeat wants to cast him off and become something else.

Later on in the conversation, I said:

I'm not sure if this introject cares about me or not. I think he's just tired. We're tired of carrying this. But... maybe? The real man was two-faced. He put on a charade. A charade I still remember fondly... Maybe that's somewhere I can still access... Maybe that's what the introject will look like when he realizes he actually cares... But, beats me as to if or when that will ever happen. With more healing I can only hope.

Recognizing verbal abuse from my mother—09/14/2025

Originally posted on After Silence, as an update to a prior subject: "It's in pieces, but here's what I know."

Anyway, the reason I'm posting here again is because I'm coming to terms with something I've known but really not wanted to look at: that my mother also hurt me a lot. Not nearly as much as he did, but a lot. I hesitate to call it abuse, at least not on her part, because I don't think she could help it. She was dealing with so much. More than anyone should ever have to. I see her as a blameless victim, whom abuse was just passing through to reach me.

I know every parent gets angry, but it's different when you yell at your kid the same way you yelled at your alcoholic pedophile ex. It's different when they start crying and then you get mad at them for crying too. It's different when you get so angry at your kid that it drives them to SH.

I know I was everything to her and she loved me more than the stars in the sky. I know that. But even so, I can't even count the number of times she made me feel utterly worthless and like I should just end it all. How incredibly kind and nurturing she was toward me all the rest of the time made me ultimately feel more valued than worthless—but I internalized the worthlessness but continued to attribute the positive valuation to her, making me feel like I was only worth anything because she loved me.

It's like there were two sides to her, and the rabbit is only the nice side. I'm realizing that while most of th elove I felt for her was sincere love, and some of it was eternal gratitude for rescuing me—a good part of it was also fawning to avoid being screamed at, and then easily making myself completely believe and internalize my own fawning behavior when she would go back to normal and remind me how much we truly did love each other, and what an overall positive influence she truly was in my life. But it's okay. It wasn't her during the bad times. Something would take her over. This isn't just denial like when I thought the exact same thing about my dad, I know this was true for her, I could feel the absolute reality of her pain, I knew she was only doing this because she was saddled with burdens that were too heavy for her to bear.

Once, in high school, I tried to reach out for support—unintentionally / subconsciously, actually, I kind of just let it slip—about how, even though our relationship was overall extremely positive, she would often make me want to die. The sudden uncomfortable silence that filled the room when I said that apparently extended into the next parent/teacher conference. When she let loose on me about what I had done to her, I really just wanted to stop existing, just be anywhere at that moment but there in my own body in that car.

I can't hold it against her. She's the only person who believed me, and the only person who ever actually loved me. Other people have at least cared about me, kind of—the way you care about a casual acquaintance, the way it would make you a little uncomfortable if they suddenly disappeared—but she's the only person in the world who's ever really, truly cared. Even if she'd had any control over the times she would get so angry at me, which she didn't, what I had to endure from her was a fair price for her kindness and affection. Besides, at least half of it was probably my fault, for being a difficult and also excessively vulnerable child, because of what he and his sick friends had already done to me. Well not my fault. His. You know what I mean. Actually, I bet what she was doing was probably just normal anger and the only reason my psyche couldn't bear it was because it was already shattered. [Hindsight note: I dunno what the fuck I was on here but sister this was not it.]

When I was little I'd once told her I loved her but didn't love myself, and she said, that's not healthy, you matter, you have to love yourself first, you have to love yourself the most. Haha. Hearing that felt like a death sentence. It still does.

This is by no means painless to process, but it's a lot more painless than everything else that's been coming up lately. That's how you know it wasn't as bad. Even if things were like this sometimes, all in all I was truly blessed to have her. I still am.

Maybe these were the regrets she was talking about when she texted me the night before her death and said she had regrets.

One thing I almost forgot. She completely believed what had happened to me, but refused to believe it had traumatized me. Isn't that strange? She refused to admit to herself that I coudl have been hurt permanently. Hurt in the moment, sure, and she felt profound regret for that, and profound remorse in feeling like she didn't do enough to protect me. And yet, in the face of all evidence, she willed herself to believe the wound just... disappeared afterward. She was the one pushing the hardest to insist the clear signs of trauma were actually just autism.

The key moment I recognized the secondary fracture—09/18/2025

Originally posted on After Silence. Subject line: "Once again trying to understand what's going on in this head." This is when I became aware Singer had been divided into Lucy, Alice, and Daisy. (I had not yet realized the emptier and more fractured Singer had also survived separately.)

I've been reading about structural dissociation. There's no question that either primary or secondary structural dissociation is what I've been dealing with, and for awhile now I've been assuming primary, because I thought the only EP was little Jaime. That's why I called her that, after all.

But can one EP hold multiple traumas? Does it work like that? Or do you always split off into a different one for a different type of experience?

The highly vocal and articulate EP, the one who was so angry and afraid she even saw me, my own ANP, as a threat... And I can't blame her. Negative self-concept is my most severe symptom, and I've engaged voluntarily in really unhealthy thought patterns before. I've hurt myself. As painful as it is to admit, I am a threat—or at least, I was. Anyway, as for her, I think she definitely experienced the violent penetration. That's why her emotions are so intense. She definitely seems very fight-response. It makes sense. I felt like he was crushing me, suffocating me. I couldn't move under his grip. Nowhere to escape to. Fight repsonse would have been the only one available. And how the emotional flashback only ended when I yelled "Get off of me!" ...

But is she the same EP who had that intense emotional flashback (it was an emotional flashback, not a somatic flashback, I realize that now, I didn't know the difference at first) and said "why am I here, I'm sorry, I'm sorry for being alive, please don't hate me, I want a big baggy coat to hide in?" I assumed so, but now that I'm thinking about it, that doesn't sound like her at all. The angry one doesn't give a shit who hates her. She will fuck them up if they come close. By contrast I think the sad EP is the one who experienced the verbal abuse. She holds freeze response. [Hindsight note: As I would later understand, this is incorrect. At the time I originally wrote this post, I didn't know what the correct definition of freeze response was. Alice holds fawn response, just like Daisy, except Daisy holds a more nihilistic, self-devaluing, faux-joyful fawn response, while Alice holds a panicking fawn response. In a sense, Daisy is the parasympathetic part of the fawn response, and Alice is the sympathetic part.] She just wants mom to stop yelling at her and hug her again. She just wants mom and dad to stop yelling at each other and hold her between them again. Is that really the same EP?

And which EP had that momentary visual flashback, to when more than one man was touching me but I was trying to be brave and patient for them? Is she the same one who showed me the nightmare where I was waiting for my dad to join me in bed, eager for his affection but nervous to be violated again? Is she the same one who was happy to be called his "little girl," even though now it makes me sick? The same one holding the feeling that "I would have at least liked it to mean something, I wanted to be his child but I would have settled for being his lover if he would at least have seen me as that and not just an object?" An EP who actually still loves him, in spite of everything. The EP who endured having her trust broken to create the angry one, and who endured the less violent abuses, and who endured losing him in the end. The EP who holds the fawn response [hindsight note: the parasympathetic fawn response, to be specific], who forgives too easily and loves too generously, who still wanted to hold onto what she'd thought he was before he showed his true colors. And, if she holds the fawn response, perhaps the same EP that had to pacify my mom before she would stop yelling, and even still persuades me to practically worship mom rather than just love her, even though there were times she hurt me.

Well, the angry one is articulate, so I simply asked.

"Are you the same girl who curled up and cried and wondered why you were alive?"

"I don't know."

"If you don't know if you're the same... then at least, did you do that?"

"Do I look like I'd do that? I know why I'm alive. I'm alive 'cause I can live through anything."

"I see. Then, are you the same one who still loves him on some level, and wants to see him again?"

"Ew. Gross. Do you even need to ask? The only way I want to see him again is dead."

Well, there's one vote for more than one EP. Unfortunately, if there is more tha one EP, the other two are abstaining. I don't know how to communicate with them yet. And if there isn't more than one EP, then one vote is all I can expect anyone. So... inconclusive.

I'm... not sure they actually all have different names. [Hindsight note: They do.] The name "Jaime" actually fits the fawning EP best, for the emotional relationship I have with that name—but even though there is one in particular it fits best, I get the feeling, though unsure, that the other two are also just called "Jaime." Maybe because we're split a little uncleanly, still a little more on the connected side overall. We do share memories of time spent fronting, after all. Primary-and-a-half structural dissociation? [Hindsight note: It got worse after this initial break. Primary-and-a-half was accurate at that time, but now, secondary-and-a-half is more accurate.]

If I had to guess... The angry one being the most articulate fooled me into trying to make her feel safe first, when she's actually going to be the hardest one to convince. The freeze one [hindsight note: actually sympathetic fawn] and the fawn one [hindsight note: actually parasympathetic fawn] will probably both be more than happy to believe me if I tell them they're safe now. [Hindsight note: This was only half-true. Lucy ended up being the second hardest to persuade. Daisy was hardest.] Well, the next time they come up, anyway. Although, when the freeze one [hindsight note: sympathetic fawn] comes up, at least, it seems like I have a greater tendency to become her for the duration, so... Being present myself to tell her she's safe will probably require grounding myself.

It's getting a little abstract, trying to understand how this all works while not having had any new memories come up lately to go off of, but I think I'm still on the right track.

Wait, but... If the freeze [hindsight note: sympathetic fawn] EP only holds the verbal abuse from my mom, then why did yelling at my dad to get off of me end the flashback? I wonder if there was some point where I used the freeze [hindsight note: sympathetic fawn] response with him. Some time when I was feeling hopeless and resigned...

Someone replied and pointed out that perhaps Alice and Daisy were not so readily making themselves known at this time because they didn't want to be interrogated—because it didn't feel safe to them. This was my response to that person:

I can tell you're onto something because of how much this hurt to read. You said it's not a criticism—so I think it wouldn't feel so much like one if it weren't true.

I didn't mean to. When I was doing it about memories, I just wanted to know everything because I just wanted it to be over... I know it can't be rushed but this has been with me for so long and sometimes it just feels so hopeless... So every time anything more resurfaces, I jump for it because it feels like a possible way out. I've been trying very hard not to repeat that mistake, but when I did it about this, I don't think I realized it "counted." But I can feel the truth here and I should have known better. Back off means back off. I feel so stupid...

I'm sorry the way I do this is so weird and artificial... When I look at the difference in how we [hindsight note: "we" here meaning me and this person who replied] process ourselves, it feels like I should apologize for being so different, like it means I'm faking. But I know I'm not. I know I'm just accurately describing how I experience this. My experience is weird and artificial because I'm weird and artificial. The EP(s) are real. I know they're there because I can feel them. The ANP intellectualizes them and treats them badly because the ANP is fake. How is it I understand the sole part normally under my voluntary control again? A stone tower of repression? That doesn't sound like a person. It's trying very hard to understand the other(s) and be kind, but it struggles because it's not a human being. It's a golem. An object. I don't understand what that means or how it could have turned out like that, but for some reason it feels very clear and obvious to me that that much is true at least. I'm just a false imitation of a person, built for my own protection, built specifically not to feel. That's not even something that requires deep introspection to understand; rather, as introspection goes, this much, at least, is as plainly self-evident to me as it is that the sky is blue. Self-compassion, like so many other things, is a function I have no choice but to only pretend to know how to implement.

Realizing I can't control rumination—09/23/2025

Originally posted on After Silence. Subject line: "Realizing I can't control it."

One of several promises I made to my fight part to show her I really care about her was that I'd stop thinking about this stuff. Let it go. Let her and the other two show me whatever they need to at their own pace, and just stop worrying about it in the meantime.

And I'm realizing it doesn't work like that.

I can't stop thinking about it even if I try. That's how this whole sudden decline in my mental health started and it's not any different now. How it started was, I withdrew from my daily life, I started writing a bunch of poetry and prose about what he did to me and how much I fucking hate myself, then it got to a point where every single day, I was feeling unsafe, I felt like something horrible was going to happen, I didn't know where to turn, I didn't want to burden my online friends by bringing this fucked-up shit into a more general-purpose vent space, out of desperation I made a Reddit account even though I don't like that website very much and I tried to trauma dump there and beg with tears in my eyes for urgent advice but I just got filtered by karma requirements, then I was eventually directed here, then I used this place way too much, realized I was using it too much and went back to Reddit, and...

And what it comes down to, is that for a little over two months now, what was done to me is consuming my every thought. I can't not pry into it. I can't not think about it. I try to do literally anything else, but no matter what I do, no matter where I look, all I can see is reminders of what happened to me, and it's anywhere from hours to minutes before I have to just get back online and whine again. I'm telling myself it's just a matter of being addicted to social media and making my trauma my whole personality for attention, and I'm disgusting for that, but I don't think it is that, I'm starting to realize it's something a lot scarier than that, I think I keep posting about this stuff because the trauma itself has complete control of my mind, I'm not making it my whole personality, it's making itself my whole personality. It's devouring me from inside. What I'm "addicted" to is getting it the hell out of me.

How can I barely be having any more flashbacks besides emotional and still feel like this? Is this hyperfixation a different kind of reexperiencing? What's happening to me? Why can't I stuff it down and live a normal life anymore? I'm scared.

Flashbacks are when the EPs reexperience, right? This other thing, this uncontrollable, anxious rumination, turning it over and over and over and unable to stop, is this maybe what happens when the ANP reexperiences?

I got replies, and replied to them in turn:

You know, it's strange, I think I was thinking this way because I was realizing this specific way of processing it was coming from me, not any of my other parts, and I guess I kind of just implicitly thought I'm not the same as them, like, they need compassion, they need to be witnessed, but I don't. I thought all my pain was with them. When I made that promise, I thought I could easily stop thinking about it any time I wanted to, and just stand by to hear from them when they needed it. That was foolish. I am a part too and need to be treating myself the same way. Some of the pain clearly is with me and not them, and I need to be willing to let that run its course. And listen to them, at the same time. It's too much, but I guess if I couldn't handle it, I wouldn't be the one out in front like this.

Suitcase nightmare—09/28/2025

Originally posted on After Silence. Subject line: "This has to have been just an actual normal nightmare. There's no way."

This doesn't line up with the rest of my story. I keep wanting to tell myself "there's no way, it's impossible." And this time I very well could be making it up. I'm fucked up enough for it now, thanks to what I already know he did and how it's already affected me, and I could very well just be projecting other stories I've heard onto myself. On waking up, my pulse is only mildly elevated, and there are no other flashback symptoms. It is a somewhat unnatural hour to wake up, 2:30am, but poor sleep is something that's been happening a lot lately regardless.

In any case, I should know better than to dismiss it as impossible outright. And this nightmare did follow two days of dissociation, which had followed about a week of ruminating so much it became unbearable. So... I should probably talk about this dream just in case.

In this dream, I was looking through a suitcase we'd dug out from somewhere and set on the bed. We were searching for prescription pain killers of some kind. My mom was there, I think.

At first I didn't know why I thought this, but for some reason, I thought if we could find the bottle and see the patient name on it, then it would be my dad's name, and that would be the evidence we needed against him.

We found the little orange bottles we were looking for. Only... his name wasn't the name we found on them. We found the painkillers, but the patient's name was the name of the person who ran the daycare.

That was when the dream showed me an earlier point in time. I think I was in the same room. The suitcase was on the bed again. But I wasn't searching the suitcase. I was being taken out of it. I didn't see by whom.

In this part of the dream, I was looking at my own body from outside. I was in the fetal position, of course, since that was how they'd fit me into the suitcase to begin with. My eyes were open, but there were dark circles around them, like there are now, even though I was just a young child in this and they shouldn't have been there yet. I was really, really out of it, like, I couldn't move at all, or speak, or think straight. I the observer had the intuitive sense that I the dream entity had been drugged, and heavily. I also looked... either dirty, or a bit bruised all over. My intuition was that they were bruises, and that I had at one point been told that was why I needed to take the painkillers.

As I was having the dream, there was this moment of clarity: "Oh, so that's why I'm afraid of that suitcase." Except now that I'm awake I don't remember ever being afraid of it, so that doesn't make much sense. [Hindsight note: I'm not afraid of suitcases, but I've since learned Alice is afraid of them.] "Oh, so that's why the handle is broken, because I was too much weight for it." The handle is broken, but I thought I did that? I don't remember. I think I very faintly remember my mom getting mad at me for breaking it, but it's so faint that I'm not sure it happened.

Is this why the fixation on drawing people being swallowed by monsters started very shortly after the abuse? Because that's how it felt to be zipped up into that suitcase?

Is this somehow connected to the out-of-place visual memory of being touched by more than one man at once, scared but trying to be brave for them, or to the out-of-place remark in that court record I dug up in real life, where I apparently said my father had once "made me cut my thumb with a knife?"

One reason this can't have really happened is that if I were rented out to (or by) someone running a daycare I went to, then we would have taken them to court, right? But we kept going after my father instead. Another reason it can't have happened is that if my mother had known this had ever happened to me, I think she would have told me at some point.

But... the dream was quite vivid... Why so vivid then, if I know it can't have been real?

But if it's real, then why do I not feel anything about it? Am I just still dissociating now that I'm awake again?

I really don't know what to think about this.

And why would they have bruised me to get me to take the painkillers given what they probably wanted to do to me next? Wouldn't that ruin my skin for awhile? I mean it very visibly did, in the dream. And why did I never have any memory of this whatsoever until now?

Is this how I learned to duck and cover as if flinching away from something, the way I do sometimes as a seemingly random spasm? Apart from this dubious nightmare, I have no memory of ever having been abused physically, only sexually, so how would I have learned that? That physical response is associated with Plead [hindsight note: what I called Alice before she named herself]. She carries memories of verbal abuse from my mother (who could not control herself and was not at fault), as well as some unknown memories with whom I assumed was my father. Could this be that unknown memory? When she recoils and puts her hands up and takes cover behind them and says "please stop, why am I here, do you hate me, I'm sorry for being alive," is she talking to whoever inflicted those bruises to get me to take the painkillers?

None of this makes any sense, right? I'm just crazy, right?

Wait, but I know he definitely drugged my mother the night he took me to the bathroom and personally abused me. So he definitely had a supply on hand of... something. Is this how he put the rest of it to use?

I don't think I'm still dissociating. I think that's cleared up, I don't feel numb anymore. Not scared like before this dissociative period started, but not numb either. So, the facts: For about a week I was uncontrollably ruminating so much it was hurting me. Then I dissociated for two days. Then I had this nightmare. And now I'm fine. Like the nightmare was what I needed to get out of my system. I really don't like what that suggests about it.

Actually, the fact that I feel nothing at all about this is weird in and of itself, isn't it? This was a nightmare. It should have scared me. If a normal person had this dream they would wake up scared even if it weren't real. Why am I completely unfazed?

Oh my god. "Why am I here." Plead doesn't mean "why was I put in this world." Or at least, if she does now, that's not how the phrase developed. What she meant was, "why am I in this unfamiliar room." Fuck. Shit.

Accepting the suitcase incident—10/01/2025

Originally posted on After Silence, as an update to prior subject: "It's in pieces, but here's what I know."

Oh my god. The suitcase nightmare was real.

I'm like 90% on it now. I still have no absolute proof. And maybe not all the details are exactly right. But I ran across a poem I wrote right at the beginning of all this stuff coming back up, before I even joined AS. Not yet even exposed to anyone else's story. Not even realizing what I was writing. And this is what came out.

i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm
pleaS"e help me
please
it's
so dark
and cold
inside
this
egg

i'm sorry i'm here
i'm sorry i'm too ol d to be cute anymore
i'm sorry you have to look at me
i'm sorry you have to exist in the same world as me
i'm sorry i exist

and i'm sorry
that my body is
disgusting
and filthy
and
wrong
tainted
by the
toxict
races
of
his sick
desire
and
i'm sorry that
nothing can
ever
cleanse it
and you have
to
look at
this fat
ugly
trashy
whore

an d i'm sorry
that every time
i
,

that every
time i
hurt
i reach out
and ask for help
like i think i deserve it

i'm
sorry you cared
i'm sorry you cared enough to answer
i'mm srory i made oyu care about me

haha
i'lll
always be alone
won't i
becase
whenever im not
this is what goes th rough my head

you reach out to touch my shoulder
you reach in to touch my heart
but

it's
cold to the touch
and

the
girl
curled up inside
hug ging her knees to her chest
crying

is
unreachable

the only touch she can ever know
is the feeling of
the walls
closing
in

maybe one day
they'll crush her

what breaks first
the egg
or me

i guess we finally know the answer now don't we.
the answer is they both happena t the same time

The egg was supposed to be like a trans allegory or something. At least that's what I thought at the time I was writing it. But I get it now. Why the focus on the physical sensations of what it was like inside that egg? Like I had any idea? Why visualizing my inner child as being trapped in a tower? Trapped in the egg. Trapped in the tower. This obsession with parts of myself feeling trapped in cold hard dark cramped places where the walls close in. And why the whole vore thing? Holy shit. The words that came spilling out onto the page all make sense now. It wasn't an egg, or a tower, or someone's body. It was a fucking suitcase.

I'm not ready for what this means.

Hmm! Is there maybe a reason I always describe how it felt, in the nightmare of him actually personally using me, as "crushing and suffocating..." Hmm I wonder!!

Trying to identify body responses—10/03/2025

Originally posted on After Silence. Subject line: "Trying to identify body responses."

Lately I've found it really helpful to identify ways my body responds to triggers. I can't always identify my mind's responses. Feelings come up that I don't allow myself to feel. But my body can't pretend not to feel them.

Earlier today someone told me my toxic way of looking at trauma is because I want to feel like I deserve to be saved, because I'm caught between not feeling like I deserve it and feeling like I need it. That cut deep, but the only way I could actually tell for sure that it was true was because of the tight knot in my chest.

I was also reflecting on a scene in Void Stranger (really good narrative indie game) that illustrated a genuine hug between two normally very repressed people. This time I could easily tell how I felt about it even on a mental level, because I was sobbing. (Listen. It was a really good scene.) And I started to reflect on why I felt so strongly about it, and realized I wanted the healing it was showing. I wanted to hold my parts like that, the way those characters held each other. Realizing that—I wasn't sure how that realization made me feel in and of itself. Until I noticed that when I'd started thinking about that, I'd started hugging my pillow.

Also something happened today in a very sweet Discord server I go to. The server was discussing, among other things, a Steam page person A had run across. In the course of that discussion, person B pointed out that it seemed up person C's alley, a gentle ribbing about his preferences, since the game's protagonist was a plus-size woman. Person C didn't mind wholeheartedly admitting it. Now, I've been there in that server long enough, I know the kindhearted nature of this person's body type preference. I know all three of these people are very sweet people and there was no prejudice or mockery or fetishization involved in this exchange. Even so... and this is entirely my own problem... I read that and it made me start shaking and involuntarily bring my hands up over my head and do that ducking-and-covering pose. The funny thing is I didn't even realize I'd felt anything about reading it until I noticed I was doing that.

I'm noticing these a little more easily lately. I think switching my HRT regimen to injections helped. I did that a couple days ago and I immediately (like 6 hours in) felt so connected to my body that I was completely overwhelmed with joy and could barely sleep that night. The shot should remain in effect for a week, so maybe that's helping, maybe I'm still benefitting from that improved feeling of connection.

In any case, I think noticing these body responses is going to be really important. The memories try to speak to me in more than just the loudest and most obvious ways. I need to take care that I'm listening properly.

When Alice and Lucy named themselves—10/05/2025

Originally posted on After Silence. Subject line: "Alice and Lucy."

Late last night, thanks to the help of a friend, I was able to bring Alice home. The one I had been calling "Plead."

I have a gut feeling as to why she chose that name. She seems to hold things around the suitcase. "Why am I here?" She holds a memory of waking up drugged in an unfamiliar place, as if taken to a twisted sort of wonderland. And she holds mom yelling at her, but also the grief of losing her... And I projected mom into a stuffed rabbit... Alice wants to follow the rabbit. She wants to follow it into the next life, that she wants to believe will be better.

Alice, sweetie. The rabbit isn't going anywhere. It's right here. What we remember of her... is staying right here with us. And we can still turn this life into one you would want to live. And... no one is ever going to take you to wonderland again.

Reading that back made me flinch away from my phone screen. Yeah... she hears me. [Hindsight note: I had the same response again transcribing it just now.]

Last night, Fight must have seen the work I did with Alice. Hesitant, guarded, she came forward with a name as well. "Lucy." As in "Lucifer." I can't tell if she was joking. [Hindsight note: She wasn't.]

I didn't know what to say to Lucy last night. I was only read to deal with one part deciding on a name. I was exhausted, too. Falling asleep. It was like... 1am.

But I've spoken to her, just now. As usual, I phrased things clumsily, in ways that could be misinterpreted, and in her smoldering distrust, she took the worst meaning possible out of everything. Her attitude is justified. It served her. Of course she would be this way, after the experience she's had to hold. The one on the bathroom counter.

But what I think I may have finally gotten through to her with, was this:

"Lucy... I was wrong to say I know you think you don't need my help. What I should have said was that I know you don't need my help. Not to survive. You can survive anything. I know this. You've told me, and I believe you. What I want to help you do now is live. ... I didn't mean it that way. What I meant was... I want to protect you. The same way you protected me. I want to prove to you that no one is going to try to hurt you anymore. Not me, not him, and not anyone else."

Fawn—since she's still trapped in an endless daydream and can't hear me, I still don't know what name she would choose, and can't ask.

I know what her name was. When I was maybe 5 or 6, she told my mother her name was May. But... that was before whatever else "May" may have gone on to be made to endure. She was "May" when, despite what had happened up to that point, she was actually happy—when she was still guarding my innocence successfully. When she was just happy—instead of... happy and scared—that is, instead of being in love with a man she knew wasn't real, and knowing she was "freely" giving herself to the monster wearing his face.

Now... she can at least hear that name, if nothing else... "May..." and she doesn't like it. It doesn't fit anymore.

For now, until I hear otherwise, the only way I can distinguish her is to keep calling her Fawn. At least it's less dehumanizing than "the yellow one."

Lucy's rage—10/06/2025

Originally posted on After Silence. Subject line: "Raging."

I didn't think Lucy could speak through me. To me, sure, but not through me.

Today I was proven wrong. On her behalf, I said something really inappropriate in someone else's thread. It was intended as sympathetic, but it was actually really not okay. I wasn't in control enough to catch it at first. Then I did, and I edited it out. If you are that person, I'm sorry if you saw that. I hope you didn't.

I think accepting her enough to give her a name has emboldened her, but she's too angry to understand how to talk to people.

Lucy, I'm sorry. It's not your fault. After what was done to you, you have every right to feel this hateful, and you've been kept silent and alone with it for too long.

Clearly she can't be held back any longer. But I don't want to hurt anyone else with her either. So I'm going to use this space to give her the floor.

TW... uh... "passive homicidal ideation?" Is that a thing? Well it is now. And, listen, I wouldn't actually do this, I swear I'm not actually violent.

---

What did I do wrong? All I said was her abuser is lucky she's not the kind of person who would kill him. Because she's stronger than him, and he deserves it.

Why don't we take people like him, people like Dad—people who are just monsters who look like people—and put them in suitcases. But they're too big. Only way they could fit would be in pieces. Then we ship them off to the sun in a rocket.

I'm glad my daddy worked himself sick trying to pay child support. I'm glad he wasted so many years of his life barely surviving because of me. I wish I could take more away from him. Let me drink every drop of that bastard's blood. It's probably poison but whatever, I'm immune. I hope he did get sick and die just like he said he would in that email. I hope he got sick and died alone somewhere with no more girlfriend to lie to and no more kids to touch.

He's going to burn in hell forever. And I'm its princess. I'll torture him there personally. He can be my pet. My nasty little pet snake. All for myself. Mine to use. Mine to humiliate. Mine to crush into pulp. If I can't have his love, his life is enough.

—Lucifer

---

I feel like I've done something wrong in writing this. Maybe the worst part is that I have. When resentment gets to this point, it's no longer posible to just say it's all the other person's fault, is it? These feelings are because of how badly he hurt me, yes. But if they've developed to this point—there's no excuse anymore. I'm just a bad person. It's that simple. The reason no longer matters.

... So the shame isn't limited to Alice. I see. One of them is sad, one is angry, and one is in love... but all of them are scared and ashamed. Lucy's way of coping with the shame is by reveling in it.

When Daisy named himself—10/08/2025

Originally posted on After Silence. Subject line: "Daisy."

"If she even could hear me, what am I supposed to say? 'I see you, I love you, you're safe now?' What good would that do? She thinks she's happy to be in pain.

Like if I said 'I see you...'"

"Do you like what you see?"

"I love you..."

"Aww, I love you too! [lie]"

"... You're safe now."

"I know that, silly! There's no safer place to be than in his bed, where he's going to violate me again and remind me I'm wanted."

Until I finished writing this example of why I can't communicate with her, I didn't even realize I just had.

She could hear me. She's been trying to answer all along. I was the one who couldn't hear her.

Once I could hear her, she gave her name freely and readily. It's not that she trusts me already, I don't think. It's more like... no trust was required. She's prepared to give all of herself to complete strangers, without a care in the world what they might do or say. Because she doesn't value what she's giving up. She wants them to value it for her. "La la la, nothing matters! I don't matter, they don't matter, and it's wonderful!"

Singer's message for me—10/10/2025

Originally posted on After Silence. Subject line: "You couldn't even imagine."

This dream was strange. I know I'm a verbal thinker, and all of my parts are articulate to various extents, and them literally speaking to me is one of the most common ways I reexperience. But normally nightmares are different, normally nightmares are visual and tactile. But this... I dreamt of a part talking to me.

It wasn't any of the ones I thought I knew. I see now. Little Jaime wasn't secretly three other parts. She was secretly protecting three other parts. When she leapt from the tower and broke open... they came out, yes, but she, too, survived. They hold specific things, but she is my core, I think. They are my emotions, but she is literally just the younger tower, before it turned to stone.

And this past night, she and I were in a dark, spacious room together. She was sitting against the wall. I also sat on the floor, to be level with her.

She told me so much. She was so subdued. Empty inside. That's what she is without them. But just beneath the surface I could hear traces of the others. So much resentment. So much grief. So much jealousy. It felt so unfair to her, that she had to remember and be suppressed, while I could be ignorant and in control. She wanted me to know everything. She wanted to not be alone with it anymore.

I don't remember most of what she revealed. I think I wouldn't let myself hear it. But the gist of it was this: "All of it was real. You think you have it bad now just with what you've had to remember so far? You couldn't even imagine the shit I remember. We don't have the luxury of doubting it."

That was what I was afraid of. That was why I didn't want to accept the suitcase nightmare. Because there was no way it could have been real without meaning other things that I wasn't even ready to think about. But she doesn't have that luxury. That's what she wanted me to hear.

My ED lies and their truths—10/10/2025

Originally posted on After Silence. Subject line: "My ED lies and their truths."

Lie: At your size, what you're doing isn't an ED, it's just a diet.

Truth: No. "Just a diet" would involve a much higher intake level than this, and would be something difficult, that I'm doing voluntarily, through force of will, and could stop if I wanted to. This is eating practically nothing and feeling unable to do otherwise.

Lie: If it is an ED, that must mean it's dangerous.

Truth: Actually, this isn't all that dangerous for someone in my condition. Sure, my doctor expressed concern, but if it were medically supervised, it would be something some other doctors might even prescribe for someone like me.

Lie: If it's not dangerous, that must mean it's not a problem.

Truth: It is a problem that exerting myself harder than a leisurely walk makes me dizzy, nauseous, and lightheaded. It is a problem that merely seeing an underweight person immediately makes me both platonically fall in love with them and also acutely hate myself so much I can't sleep at night and don't want to be here anymore. It is a problem that I can only eat in private and don't even really feel okay about being seen buying food. It is a problem that my go-to adjectives for myself are "greedy" and "disgusting."

Lie: It's still BED. It can't just "flip" like this. You'll go back.

Truth: I don't know what the fuck it is now but going this low has never in my life felt easy like this, let alone mandatory like this. And especially not for this long. Something did flip. I don't know what. But denying it happened at all is denying self-evident basic reality.

Lie: You should be doing this.

Truth: After what was done to me, I'm no longer bound by "should" statements. And regardless, this may be a solution, but it's not a good one.

Lie: If you shouldn't be doing this, that means you can't be happy you're doing it.

Truth: My feelings are valid. I can feel however I need to feel, about anything. That doesn't mean I can say or do whatever I want, but how I feel is my business. And I am happy. To finally fucking be free from the opposite extreme.

Lie: You are free from the opposite extreme.

Truth: This is just a new prison. It clearly isn't real freedom. But please just let me keep pretending it is for a little while longer. I don't know if real freedom will ever come.

Lie: Real freedom will never come.

Truth: No, sorry, I can't. Not for this one. The lie is too strong.

I posted a followup on 10/11/2025:

I'm not doing okay about this. All of my lies got much stronger after I confronted them. Some I hadn't even realized I was working under. Like "even if this isn't a good solution you should do it anyway because it's your deserved punishment." I was in an EFB all morning. It's noon now.

I've realized the way I cope with suicidal ideation is by dissociating it into Alice. If it doesn't feel like they're my thoughts then I'm less inclined to act on them. But of course, once I've forced Alice to hold too much and she can't keep herself from taking control, that safety is no longer guaranteed. We still didn't get to active ideation but this is the closest I've gotten since the actual attempt. What kept me safe is that she holds as much fear of death as she does desire for it. Which at this point seems circuitous. If I already feared death as much as I sought it, I could have just kept both of those feelings where they were and not made her carry either of them. I would have been just as safe, wouldn't I? But, given how she was born, I guess that would never have worked. Dissociating fear of death was the only way I could deal with it when the threat was someone else, and the fear could do nothing to stop them. I guess once that groundwork was already laid, the call of the void had to go to the same place, to ensure safety in precisely this way.

Super-flashback hypothesis—10/22/2025

Originally posted on After Silence. Subject line: "Entire healing process isomorphic to individual flashback but on a larger scale?"

There aren't many things I like about myself, but one of them is that I'm analytical. I've got a sharp eye for patterns, sometimes too sharp. I'm always looking for them, sometimes too closely. I often see spurious patterns and assume they mean something when they don't. This may be one such case, or it might not be. I'm not sure.

Pretty much what I'm wondering is... Has anyone else had an experience with their entire healing process behaving like an agonizingly slow progression through a single long stretched-out overarching all-encompassing "super-flashback?"

I've noticed my emotional flashbacks at least (unsure about other types) always follow a certain sequence. I wrote a blog entry documenting this sequence but I've since noticed more steps. The full sequence, as far as I can tell so far:

1. a nightmare, often;

2. shock and denial (several days);

3. uncontrollable ruminating, to the extent of excluding or corrupting other activities (several days);

4. spasms that look like ducking and covering / curling up into defensive positions;

5. nervous laughter / pained noises without any outside cause;

6. deep loneliness that can't be eased by social contact or seeking support; my parts are lonely, not me, and others can't reach them;

7. ED thoughts, body shame, felt need to be smaller and younger and cuter and stop taking up any space and stop having any self and start existing only to please and comfort others;

8. intense anxiety like something bad is going to happen to me imminently and I need to get help or get to safety;

9. sui / SH/SI thoughts, "I can't take it anymore," "I can't go on like this," felt need to "cleanse" myself;

10. hyperventilating and uncontrollable crying;

11. self-devaluing thoughts, "why am I here, I'm sorry for being alive, please don't hate me;"

12. escape impulses, urge to yell things like "get off of me, get away from me" even though no one's there;

13. crying ends, feel numb and hollow;

14. EFB often ends with falling asleep in the middle of the day.

It's almost always this exact sequence, in this exact order, though steps 2-14 may repeat for one nightmare without others between, and steps 12 and 14 may sometimes be missing / suppressed. It's almost like some kind of ritual.

If a day ends while I'm still in the middle of this sequence, going to sleep for the night, if it's still early enough in the sequence that I can (i.e. before step 7), might variably either reset it, suspend it to be resumed when I wake up, or lead to another nightmare.

And I also noticed:

1. From the end of the abuse up through my early teenage years, I was constantly having nightmares about the abuse, instead of just occasionally.

2. From then until around age 21, I was in shock and denial, still unable to accept anything had happened to me.

3. From then forward, I was dealing with slowly worsening ruminating that would corrupt everything else I did. For instance, I was in college a lot longer than you're "supposed" to be, and I majored in game development, and every single small game I had to create as a solo deliverable somehow turned into something to do with my trauma.

4. A couple weeks ago, in addition to that, I started exhibiting the spasms very frequently in my daily life, instead of just during an EFB.

5. And now, as of a couple days ago, the nervous laughter / pained noises are starting in more regularly, even outside EFBs.

I'm also taking note that often—based on what I've experienced and heard from others—with repeat abuse, there will be multiple wounds corresponding to multiple parts, and a "core wound" corresponding to a suppressed "core self" still separate from the outer wall. I wonder, then, if maybe the healing process as a whole equates to the flashback experienced by the core self.

I'm a bit concerned about what this could mean for the future. I'm already deeply lonely all the time, but this—does this mean I'm soon going to enter a long phase of constant even deeper loneliness? And after that, a long phase of constant ED thoughts? And after that, a long phase of constant intense anxiety? And maybe the most concerning: how am I supposed to make it through the long phase of constant sui ideation?

On the other hand, if there's any merit to this concept, it's good to have a roadmap to a definitive end point: I'll know my healing process is wrapping up when I get to the long phase of constant oversleeping.

Daisy's takeover—11/08/2025

Originally posted on After Silence. Subject line: "Daisy has all but entirely taken over my mind."

To recap, my exiles [hindsight note: problematic IFS terminology] are Lucy, the bitter red fight-response one who holds violent penetration; Alice, the sad blue negative-fawn-response one who holds transportation and verbal abuse; and Daisy, the confused yellow positive-fawn-response one who holds grooming. Lucy and Alice are girls I'm pretty sure, but I've now learned Daisy is a boy. I also have a core self [hindsight note: problematic IFS terminology], the purple one, separate from my manager [hindsight note: problematic IFS terminology] ("me", the gray one) but more associated with her than any of the others are.

I've been gone for a bit because Daisy has taken over. I don't think he's fronting, but he's shoulder-riding so close to the front that he's in complete control of our behavior.

This might be TMI but:

He expresses himself in an online kink space. I fear it may be a form of self-abuse. There is an element of actual libido to it, sure, but in addition to that, he also thinks it's all he's good for and he needs to do this because he doesn't belong anywhere else and no one would ever love or want him for anything else. Exploiting himself in this way feels to him like the only way he can be cared about. [Hindsight note: It was initially a form of self-abuse, but I believe we were able to find a happy medium with it.]

Also:

I'm still off my meds, and have cycled out of restricting and back into binging, going on two weeks. I feel bad for saying that like it's a bad thing. But no, I have to remind myself, the right thing, the healthy thing, would be between the two, and I have a right to want that, I don't have an obligation to be happy about one just because I was unhappy about the other. I'm not "losing willpower," I'm not "indulging," I'm being blown helplessly back and forth between two equal but opposite forms of self-torment. I have every right to... want to go back to restricting? No, that's not the way I should be looking at this at all... but it is my truth, unfortunately.

Anyway, because of both of those secondary effects of this mental context switch, I've been too overwhelmed with guilt to show my face around here.

Oh, also, I learned where Daisy's name comes from. Lucy is short for Lucifer because she wants to torment the sinners who hurt us, Alice is as in Alice in Wonderland because of her experience of being drugged out and put in a suitcase and taken somewhere unfamiliar, and Daisy is as in HAL 9000 singing "Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do..." because Daisy feels as confused about his own feelings and daydreamy and delirious as HAL 9000 must have been when it was being shut down.

I'm also noticing my eating behaviors seem to be inverted from expected between Lucy and Daisy. I think each of my exiles [hindsight note: problematic IFS terminology] is also a firefighter [hindsight note: problematic IFS terminology], they're hybrid between the two types of parts, the hybridization is because the coping mechanisms directly correlate to the types of pain they partition off. Alice self-harms because she hates herself. Lucy binges out of a desire to devour our assailants. Daisy restricts because he wants to be perfect. So why is it that when Daisy shoulder-rides, I binge, and when Lucy or Alice shoulder-rides, I restrict? I think maybe what's going on is that whoever isn't shoulder-riding controls my eating behavior. That's why it feels so beyond "my" control, too, because whoever's controlling it at any given time is whoever isn't conscious.

Wait, oh my god, is that also why no matter what I'm ever doing with my eating behavior I always want to be doing the opposite? Because whoever's shoulder-riding is the one who would do the opposite! That makes so much sense!

I am not the original—11/21/2025

Originally posted on After Silence. Subject line: "I am not the original."

Lately I've been struggling with wondering if I made it all up. Not the abuse. At this point I'm pretty sure I didn't lie about that. But the dissociation. I'm not diagnosed. I probably never will be, since I no longer have access to therapy. [Hindsight note: I am now diagnosed and back in therapy.]

I was questioning myself on this since these days there are no amnesia barriers between switches—because I don't fully switch. I have one self who's almost always half-there, "me," and only the other half of me switches. [Hindsight note: There are in fact amnesia barriers between the other alters. I just wasn't thinking about that because there are no amnesia barriers between the other alters and me. They don't remember being each other.]

But I forgot something important that I hadn't taken into consideration until now. I forgot that I'm currently in a full switch with an amnesia barrier. It's easy to forget this because I've been in the same one continuously for almost my whole life.

I've read that structural dissociation happens when, early in life, a child is unable to accept their trauma, so they invent someone else that it happened to instead. For me, it worked the other way around. My original self accepted what was done to her, but couldn't live with it. So she invented someone it didn't happen to.

I, as I know myself now, was born when what I believe was the first assault had just ended. I don't remember anything my original self remembers from before I was born. The only way I know about any of it is because of nightmares she shared with me when we were growing up.

So... I'm not faking structural dissociation. I suspected I wasn't, but now that I've taken this part into consideration, there is absolutely no doubt anymore. There was a total-blackout switch. There was only one ever, I think, but there was one, and I'm actually still in it now.

I don't really know what to do with this information. Before, even while believing I was probably split, I could keep going on like I wasn't as long as I didn't know for sure. Having put two and two together, I don't think I'll be able to do that anymore, and I'm afraid to find out what that looks like.

Mock-trial—12/10/2025

Originally posted on After Silence. Subject line: "I dreamt that my abuser was denying to me that any of it ever happened. So I'm offering my introject of him this space to state his case."

I was staying over at his house for some reason. It wasn't by choice. We were both naked and he was preparing to sleep with me. We were preparing an air mattress because he wanted to do it in the living room.

He said, "I'm so glad you've come to your senses. None of it ever happened. You've been fine all this time." Literally while he was preparing to violate me again. "Your mother isn't here to lie to you anymore. CPS isn't here to scare you with their questions anymore. You're safe with daddy now."

In the dream, I didn't believe him. No—now that I'm awake, I don't believe him, because, in the dream, I knew he was lying. In the dream, I remembered things that prove he was lying, but they are things I don't remember now that I'm awake, let alone can I be sure of them. Regardless, I didn't say anything. Better not to risk his explosive anger. I just smiled and nodded, got into bed with him, and let him touch me.

I'm not sure this dream really happened. My first impression upon waking was that it did not, but I've been wrong about that before. Or... decided I was wrong about that before. I still don't know. He and his small network are the only ones who would, I'm certainly not going to ask him, and if there really were any others, I wouldn't even know how to get in contact with any of them and would be no more inclined to trust them either anyway.

Aside from feeling like it didn't really happen, I also had another feeling upon first waking: that he really believed he was innocent. That makes sense to me. He was good at looking like that. Maybe because he was just that sick of a man, or maybe because he really was innocent. I still don't know.

But even if I still don't know if the real person really believed he was innocent, I'm pretty sure the introject that showed its face in the dream, at least, really believes that. Even if I no longer trust IFS as a whole after hearing about the Alsana/Castlewood tragedy, I do still trust the core principle of it, because of the good it's done me in the past: I still trust that there are "no bad parts." I believe this extends to introjects. The underlying part of my mind deserves to be heard, and to heal.

So we will hear him. The court of my other alters, myself proper presiding, will hear the case in this one's defense.

We'll do this as follows: Each side can give their argument, and the other is free to object at any time, which will start a tree-structure chain of counterarguments.

I'm aware this mock-trial can hardly be called fair. The defendant isn't even actually present to defend himself, only his introject, and the whole court is biased against him. But I'm trying to make it as fair as I can under the circumstances. I'm under no illusion that this is anything but a kangaroo court, but I promise these are tame and well-intentioned kangaroos.

Let's start with his affirmative defense:

1. He would never do that to me. He loves me.

   1. If he loved me, he would have tried to make it to literally any event that was ever important to me growing up. He didn't come to any of them.

      1. There was a restraining order against him.

         • We were willing to make sanctioned exceptions for these events and even asked him to come, and he still didn't.

      2. He was busy working to provide child support and raise his other family.

         • Maybe that would have been less of a hardship for him if he didn't buy me so many unwanted gifts to serve as a substitute for his presence in my life.

           • The fact that he was doing that should prove he loved me.

             • Or it could be understood as an intentional alibi because he didn't want to spend time with me.

   2. He said he loved my mother, too, but he certainly didn't love her. All the time they spent screaming at each other and hitting each other can't be called love. This is certainly someone who's willing to say he loves family members he doesn't love, no matter whether he does in fact love them or not. So why should I believe he does if all I have is his word?

   3. He started a new family with a new fiancée and a new child.

      • What else was he supposed to do? He was effectively exiled from our family. Having a family is his right. What reason do I have to believe he doesn't deeply regret that it couldn't be ours?

        • he had girlfriends even before any of the abuse was alleged to have taken place.

2. He's not gay.

   1. I'm not male, though I concede I hadn't decided that at the time.

   2. You don't have to be attracted to someone to sexually assault them. It's not about the person, it's about power.

   3. The obvious thing he should have said in his defense is that he isn't a pedophile. Instead he said this. Interesting.

Now let's move on to revisiting the case against him, "to give him an opportunity to object:

1. I personally remember the morning after the first assault, when my mother sat me on a footstool and wouldn't let me leave until I could explain why I was crying, and I broke down and told her my father had "peed on my tummy."

   1. Is it possible I could have been coached to say that, or my memory of saying it could be fabricated?

      1. No. There was no opportunity for involvement of bad actors that early on.

         1. What about my mother?

            • I have a clear memory of what I told her and how it felt to tell her. That is, in fact, the only clear memory that I, and not a different alter, have of the abuse. That memory is not buried to any extent whatsoever. It is here at front with me. It is completely conscious and completely lucid. I know for a fact it's real, and if she had been coaching me or had fabricated it entirely, then, with the adult wisdom I've since advanced, I would know that.

         2. Therapists? CPS?

            • I had not yet ever met with them. There was no reason to, or at least none that either of my parents was yet willing to accept the truth of. My mother only began to put me in touch with people like this after what I admitted to her about what had been done to me. That was something he could not accept but she could. There was an unsafe situation going on before then—specifically, how much they yelled at each other with me around, even if they rarely if ever turned that anger toward me at the time—but that was something neither of them could accept, so nothing was done about it.

         3. What if an act of abuse really did happen, but it wasn't my father, and whoever really did it coached me to say it was my father?

            • This seems possible, but who would have done it? The three of us were the only ones who lived in that house.

   2. Even if no one coached me, maybe I was lying of my own volition. After all, I was awfully eager to get back to playing with my dolls. Maybe I just made up whatever came to mind.

      • A child just shy of four years old wouldn't make up that kind of story.

        • About someone "peeing on their tummy?" They absolutely would.

          • I doubt that was meant literally. It was probably my mistaken interpretation of ejaculation.

2. My mother testified that while caring for me, she found physical evidence I was penetrated.

   • She could have been lying.

     • Refer to point 1.1.1.1 and response. I already know she wasn't lying about the original allegation, because I was the one it came from, not her. Why would she lie to cover for me?

       • Do I even have to ask? She would lie to cover for me because she was my mother.

         • I really don't think that was what was going on. She made this testimony to me, in private. Why would she lie to me to cover for me? Regardless of original intentions, it would have just been gaslighting at that point. If she were that kind of person, she would have forced the initial allegation via coaching and/or memory fabrication, but I already know she didn't.

3. My mother testified that on the evening before I gave my report, she fell asleep early, after sharing a drink with my father, and she believed it must have been spiked. He could have done this to make sure she wouldn't hear me calling for help.

   1. She could have been lying.

      • Refer to point 2 and responses.

   2. Maybe he had a different reason for drugging her out.

      • That may be, but if doing so was in his character at all, that weakens his case all on its own. If someone would spike their fiancée's drink, I would hardly put sexual assault past them either.

4. Corroborated by points 2 and 3: Lucy holds a recurring nightmare about the original penetration. Piecing incriminating details from the nightmare together with otherwise-innocuous details from reality, we believe what happened was this: Our father woke us up in the middle of the night. Using his Elmo from Sesame Street voice that he would use to entertain us, he told us he needed to go to the bathroom, but was scared of the dark. We followed him to the bathroom. He picked us up, lifted us onto the counter, and forced himself on us.

   1. This was just a dream. There's no reason to believe it was real.

      1. The alleging alter's existence is a reason to believe it was real.

         1. I could be faking that alter. It's very hard to tell whether I'm faking these kinds of things.

            • I'm definitely not faking Singer at least, who is my core alter and original self, as distinct from myself proper, because I myself proper am something of a "mask" created specifically to front. The transfer of control from her to me was definitely a full switch with an amnesia barrier, and I know this for a fact because, well, because of the amnesia barrier. I don't know whether I'm faking any of the others, but that's irrelevant, because their traumatic memories originally belonged to Singer regardless.

         2. Even if our system is real, it could be endogenic.

            • I highly doubt that. An endogenic system would not present with our laundry list of aftermath symptoms.

      2. The dream's recurrence is a reason to believe it's real.

         • It could just be symbolic.

           • It is just symbolic. But in context of everything else, it's crystal-clear what it symbolizes. I can think of no other way to interpret the symbolism in the dream, especially given the emotions attached to it.

      3. The dream feels real. It's too vivid and too terrifying to be an ordinary nightmare. I know what a dream that isn't real feels like and this does not feel like that.

5. My mother testified that my father would invite friends over who were known domestic abusers, and she would try to protect me from his efforts to get me alone with them, and he would beg her for opportunities to get me out of the house to go visit them.

   • She could have been lying.

     • Refer to point 2 and responses.

6. Corroborated by points 3 and 5: Alice holds a nightmare about being loaned out to someone. In the nightmare, we and our mother are investigating a suitcase. We produce a pill bottle from it. We believe this will incriminate our father, but instead, on the label is the name of someone who oversaw a daycare we attended (according to the dream). The nightmare flashes back to an earlier point in time. At that point in time, an unknown individual lifts us out of that same suitcase and onto his bed. We are naked, catatonic, and covered in light bruises. The dream gives context—that we are like this because someone else (or it might have been the same person) lightly beat us to get us to take the drug on the pretense that it was a painkiller, and then overdosed us so he could get us into the suitcase to smuggle us out of the house—but this context is given only as an informational memory, not as images or sensations.

   1. This was just a dream. There's no reason to believe it was real.

      • Refer to point 4.1 and responses.

   2. None of this incriminates my father. If anything, it incriminates the person who ran the daycare.

      • Refer to point 3 and responses. Regardless of who the drugs rightfully belonged to, there is already reason to believe my father was in possession of them.

7. Daisy holds a hybrid visual/somatic flashback to several men touching our naked body at once while we try to be patient and brave for them in spite of humiliation and fear, and a nightmare about waiting in an unfamiliar bed while watching a man shower through an open bathroom door, and then looking down over our bare thighs in front of us, holding in one of them excitement to be loved again, and in the other dread to be violated again.

   1. This was just a dream. There's no reason to believe it was real.

      • Refer to point 4.1 and responses.

   2. Even if it was real, there's no way to be certain my father was among those men.

      • This is true, but in context of everything else, it doesn't look good for him. In particular, if he was not involved, that would mean this happened independently from any other aspects of the alleged abuse, which would be quite a coincidence.

8. The abuser introject himself (I think?) holds the nightmare we literally just had, about visiting him and sleeping with him while he denies any of it ever happened. Regardless of what he says in that dream, he does abuse us.

   1. This is just a dream. There's no reason to believe it was real.

      • This time, I feel like that might actually be true, so point 4.1.3 does not apply. [Hindsight note: I now believe this nightmare might actually have been real.] Point 4.1.2 does not apply because this dream is not recurring. Nonetheless, refer to point 4.1.1 and responses.

   2. The only reason he abuses us in that dream is because that's the role our system has assigned to him because of what we believe about the other things he's done.

      • This seems possible, but it also seems possible the reason he abuses us in that dream is because that's what really happened. It could be either one.

   3. In the dream, he really believes he's innocent.

      • It may be that I internalized him that way because he's so good at looking like it.

Verdict:

Sorry, dad. I don't find your defense compelling. Even in light of this dream, I still believe the abuse was real. But I'm willing to believe this version of you still with us in our head really believes it wasn't. Somehow. While still repeating it upon us. I'm not sure how it can entertain that kind of cognitive dissonance, but this does make me a little more sympathetic to it.

Reassessing progress in super-flashback and sharing about plans to seek help—02/13/2027

Originally posted on After Silence, as an update to prior subject "Entire healing process isomorphic to individual flashback on a larger scale?"

Looking back at this 4 months later, I seem to be at point 11 now on the larger scale. Lots of involuntary talking to myself, largely from Alice, just repeating "I'm sorry" over and over again. Even when in myself proper I feel numb. Even when nothing else is going on and I don't think I'm feeling anything.

Looking back, maybe it's just confirmation bias, but I think I did pass through points 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10, in that order, like I predicted:

6. I went through a phase of more reaching out, more attention-seeking, more jealousy, yet even when people would understand, I still wouldn't feel seen.

7. I retreated fully into Daisy for awhile. He sought to be desired, in a way I'd rather not discuss explicitly.

8. Fear overtook us and we retreated from that too. Being desired became too scary, like sometihng bad was going to happen.

9. Actually, thankfully, it seems like I skipped this one. Well, not really. The thoughts started in more. I just didn't act on them. [Hindsight note: now that I think about it, this roughly corresponds to when Alice compelled me to cut, I think.]

10. Not too long before the involuntary talking to myself started, I just started crying all the time.

On the other hand, my internal unity is a lot more disrupted now and rapidly destabilizing, so this identifiable pattern might go off the rails into unknown territory at any moment, and cease to be useful as a prediction tool. Since I last posted here...

• Alice, Lucy, and Daisy have solidified as distinct.

• My core / original inner child, whom I'm now calling Singer, seems to persist as a shell after losing the other three. Not much is left of her but she is still here. And she's different from me. I'm the shell, she's the shell within the shell, in a sense.

• Sophie and Kate have come forward. They hold lesser traumas unrelated to SA, or in Kate's case, tangentially related, so I was able to hold onto them as integrated until now. Sophie is the one who deals with physical pain. Kate is the one who deals with stubborn denial about splitting happening at all, and controls cofront switches. It's mildly concerning that these very normal functions of a healthy mind are just falling off of me like dead skin.

I am completely unable to function as an adult or pretend to be one single person anymore.

I have my first return appointment with county mental health on the 24th. I'm finally going to seek help with this. The way my way of looking at it changed to get me to understand I need it—I feel like I'm trying to take care of eight wild animals (Lucy, Alice, Daisy, Singer, Sophie, Kate, mom introject, dad introject). Dealing with my problems was hard enough when I still believed I was the one who had them. No one can be expected to take sole responsibility for the problems of eight other living beings. That's why I've finally accepted I can't do this alone anymore.

Singer's fruit craving—03/01/2026

Originally posted on a Discord server:

internal conversation:

singer: the connecting line. body. formation. form. embodiment. all that matters is which one you pick. as your starter pokemon

me: singer you good

singer: no i want fuit gumy

As inane and irreverent as she was being here, I think it's actually a covert healing milestone that she was able to have something to say at all. The secondary fracture left Singer in critical psychic condition in a manner of speaking. For a time I was even under the assumption it had killed her. I thought at first that Lucy, Alice, and Daisy were all that remained of her, and when Singer proper next showed her face again, she seemed so damaged, so broken even, so hollow, like a remnant, a vestige, an echo. A wraith, skeletal, stripped of vitality. An empty shell of what she'd been before. Hearing her spouting vaguely pseudointellectual word salad wasn't surprising in the least, because my understanding was that she was too badly wounded to actually be coherent. What surprised me greatly was finding out that not only was she making no sense on purpose this time, but she even has something approximating a sense of humor. It's a little bit like hearing a previously at-best-delirious hospital patient suddenly speak up from their bed only to crack a stupid joke. I thought she was fucking dead and here she is dropping memes.

Don't worry, Singer. We'll get you your fruit gummies.

If it weren't real, you wouldn't still be thinking about it—03/02/2026

Originally posted on After Silence. Subject line: "If it weren't real, you wouldn't still be thinking about it."

In some ways, a lot has changed since the period I was more active here. In others, not much at all. I have no new information, but how I understand it has evolved.

I'm finally seeking help. I've had my first psychiatrist appointment since this destabilized period started six or seven months ago, and my first therapy appointment since then will be two weeks from now. I've been diagnosed. This is DID. It seems obvious in hindsight. I feel somewhat foolish for ever doubting it.

I felt so sure they wouldn't believe me. I had prepared extensive notes on how to self-advocate in case they didn't believe me, either about the abuse or about the aftermath symptoms I've been experiencing. None of it was necessary. They just believed me, just like that. I was completely caught off-guard. I guess I didn't think I was worthy to be treated like this. I guess I didn't think it was possible. I guess I didn't believe myself.

I'm now quite certain Singer, whom I'd once referred to as little Jaime, split into Alice, Lucy, and Daisy very recently. They were all just barely still integrated until then, until the moment in September when the unified Singer showed me a flashback and I interrogated her too aggressively about it and split the others out of her.

A less self-blaming way of framing their split from Singer might be this: We were not prepared to uncover the depths of what was done to us. We were not prepared for the revelation that it was more than one time, with more than one person, and, especially, specifically, that it involved being transported in a suitcase. We were narrowly able to hold mostly together by living in perpetual denial of that information. The break that happened in September was the same break inflicted upon us so long ago by the repeat abuse we still mostly refuse to remember, but it had been delayed, frozen in time just like Singer herself had been for so long, until the corresponding information began to resurface. I didn't break us. We were already broken but holding shape. I tapped us and we fell apart. That was why our reexperiencing style was "everything all at once" as other users put it back then. That is what tends to happen when something already in pieces finally falls apart.

Two other parts have come forward: Sophie and Kate. The pattern when a part emerges had from the beginning been a felt sense of color. Alice, Lucy, and Daisy picked names for themselves sometime after they emerged, but since then, with Sophie and Kate, the pattern seems to be a felt sense of color and a name. If I have an intrusive thought featuring a color and a name, that may be an indicator that I'm looking at a part. Singer's color is violet. Alice's is blue. Lucy's is red-orange. Daisy's is yellow. Sophie's is brown. Kate's is white. Mine is dark gray. That of the introject of our mother is rose. That of the introject of our father is black. Uniquely, Sophie and Kate do not seem to hold sexual trauma. They seem to serve other functions as parts, and before September, they likely could not have split off.

I had to have a very minor operation. I was inadequately anesthetized and/or my incision improperly dressed, resulting in intense post-op pain. I'm totally fine now (physically) to be clear. The operation was very minor. Anyway this is when Sophie came forward. She seems to identify most closely with our body and be the part of us that deals with physical pain. She doesn't like to be bothered. She takes pride in protecting us from the full impact of physical pain, as a very important job she needs to do, and she wishes to be left alone to focus on it.

Then about a month ago I had this realization, that one possible initial catalyst for all this destabilization may have actually been finally going back and finishing college: "In a way, this is a relief. We were never okay. And I'm realizing getting our degree just gave us the freedom to stop pretending. This isn't a crashout. It's a crash in." That realization led to a dream where Kate came forward. "Do you believe in angels?" She responded to this question with the answer, "Sometimes it's just too hard to press the button." Upon waking, I tried to understand whether she was a part or just a dream entity, and was able to determine what she was and what she meant to say. Kate holds denial. She believes she is the one who controls which of us are present at any given time. She perceives the rest of us as buttons on a switchboard. She can press them to call us forward, at the expense of psychological pain. She thinks she is not real, none of us are real, nothing we went through is real, and I'm a liar.

I have something to say to Kate, and to anyone else who is still struggling with denial, around the SA, around DID, around any of it.

If it weren't real, you wouldn't still be thinking about it.

Sometimes I do make up stories or entertain hypotheticals. Sometimes I wonder, what if something happened to me? When in fact it didn't. I'm sure everyone has such thoughts from time to time. We think them, and then we forget about them, within minutes, or within hours, or within days. Maybe we spin them into whole fictional worlds. But if we do, we recognize them as fictional. Usually right away, but always at least eventually.

We do not make up horror stories and then keep thinking about them uncontrollably for our whole lives. We don't make up a reason to spend weeks, months, years, afraid to talk to anyone in person or go outside. We don't make shit up whole-cloth and then fixate on it to the exclusion of activities we would much rather be doing instead if only we could stop fixating but we can't. Imaginary friends don't speak in your voice without you knowing about it and then surprise you when you suddenly hear yourself. Made-up characters don't take control of you and make you do things while you try to stop them but can't.

I know now. I know for sure I was put in that suitcase. I know for sure I was touched by those other men. How? Because I've been wondering about it relentlessly for five months without ever conclusively deciding it didn't happen. That's the kind of thing that doesn't happen unless it's real.

I thought this couldn't be DID because I thought there were no amnesia barriers. I was wrong. There are absolutely amnesia barriers. I don't remember the traumatic experiences they remember, for one thing. I can only access those in nightmares, mostly. And I largely don't have access to their feelings. Even when they're actively feeling something, I'm not. I have to pay special attention to cues in my mannerisms or make a special effort to communicate with them to know how they're feeling. Often I'll display every sign of feeling a certain way except for being aware I feel that way, and I'll fully believe I'm doing just fine, and the only way I can know otherwise is to notice my breathing, or notice I'm ducking and covering and shaking, or notice my tone of voice, or ask them what's going on with them. Also, there are stronger amnesia barriers between them than between myself and any one of them. There are pairs among them who have never met each other and have no awareness of each other. That's just not immediately obvious to me because, well, I'm not them, so how am I supposed to know what they do or don't know? I'm aware of all of them, so why would I have any idea that they aren't aware of each other? I didn't know until we talked about it.

Now that I'm no longer in denial about my parts existing, I can look at the bigger-picture basic problem I'm having with them, that I've been having all this time but been too lost in myself to identify it: I can't live a normal life, I can't engage in normal daily activities, because my parts get too upset when I try, but I can't take an ordinary approach to mindfulness or emotional self-care because I'm not naturally able to perceive their upset emotions let alone try to work with them, and if I actively try to access those emotions, then they feel violated, become distrustful of me, and push me out. This, I believe, is the essence of my problem. This is a clear and actionable statement of what I need to work on in therapy. To get back to my normal life, I need to address the anxiety, which has become overpowering. To address the anxiety, I need to access the anxiety. To access the anxiety, I need my parts to trust me and be okay with me.

I have some idea of part of why that's been so difficult so far. It's because I didn't truly believe them. I didn't truly believe what they had to tell me. I refused to believe it. So. I still haven't gotten all the way to actually believing it, but in a way, I guess this thread is my statement of intent to convince myself of it. I'm stating, for all of them to hear: I'm beginning to believe you. I'm going to take steps to believe you. The denial is going to be over.

[Hindsight note: It's about damn time. Welcome to reality, sleeping beauty.]

Daisy's suicide threat—03/03/2026

Originally posted on a Discord server:

i actually thought i was doing really great tonight but then i heard them saying this.

daisy: what if one day i just didn't come back? what if i died for good? wouldn't that be funny?

lucy: i'm not going to give you permission to do that. you can forget about it.

i'm fine i think. but apparently daisy isn't. i have no idea why. i'm surprised it's him actually. usually alice is the one who isn't okay. daisy hasn't been like this since when i was regularly using him as a vore character.

this is maybe the hardest thing about this condition. having secret feelings, secret from even myself, that don't belong to me, and that i don't get to perceive or know about. and am then expected to know how to handle, what to do about, how to live with them and function around them and defuse them before they become dangerous, when i can't even access them. i can fully believe i'm doing great while one of us is actually quietly just fucking losing it and i don't get to find out until they suddenly just take control and make me do something i don't want to do or (more commonly) not do something i do want to do.

sigh. positive side of it is at least i still think i'm doing fine. having to actually feel what he seems to be feeling right now would suck. instead of that, i can just keep relaxing. that's probably healthy right haha

Lucy's prank—03/04/2026

Originally posted on a Discord server, concerning an internal conversation I had in the shower:

me: what do you think the appointment is gonna be like?

lucy: well you read about the thing we're dealing with didn't you? what did it say treatment is like?

me: they use hypnosis try to make contact with problematic alters, right? but i don't think i could ever let you truly come forward.

lucy: well let's say you wanted to. how would you go about it?

me: uh??

lucy: what did charlene do in your stupid dogshit fanfic? to make hers come out?

me: she... screamed?

lucy: well then? what are you waiting for?

me: *quietly pantomiming screaming* aaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA--

lucy: --AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA oh god i remember!! i remember everything!!!

me: wait actually? or just going along with the bit?

lucy: the fuck do you think. i'm the one who already remembered you dumbass. thought you already knew that

me: oh uh yeah. right. ... does this at least mean you'll finally let me remember--

lucy: *~*Hell Fucking No*~* 😌✨ *~*Not A Goddamn Chance*~* 🌸🎵 *~*Go Fuck Yourself*~* 🌈🦋🦄

I'm not sure I believe her that she really didn't remember anything new. I'm not so sure this was really just the prank she made it out to be.

[Hindsight note: Please don't dig any deeper into this. I am begging you.]

Panic attack while helping my uncle go to an appointment—03/05/2026

Today I helped my uncle with a weekly appointment. (Obviously, out of respect for his privacy, I cannot elaborate on the specific nature of the appointment.)

The office building we go to in order to attend this appointment gives me really bad vibes and I don't know why. The last time we went, I spent the whole time on the verge of a panic attack. This time, I actually had one.

After getting him situated, I excused myself. "I think I need to step outside. Can you text me when it's over?"

I think I understand what led up to it. It was a whole lot of feeling trapped.

First was the car ride. Whenever I get into a car with him I go quiet and subdued. I don't know who comes forward during that time. Singer or Sophie I think. Unsure which. Still a little bit unsure whether Sophie is even real. Anyway, whoever I was during that ride, we were losing it a little bit. My uncle is always cracking stupid linguistic jokes and I mean this in the most affectionate way. I love his stupid linguistic jokes. "Stupid" is a term of endearment here. Anyway we apparently passed by a sign that was supposed to say "Tortilla Shack" but the "o" was blacked out. I didn't see the sign, so to me it seemed out of nowhere when he asked what an "urtilla shack is." And even without context I just started cracking up. It was a gleeful, unrestrained, yet also subdued laugh, like I was on laughing gas or something. Like the person laughing wasn't all the way there. Like something was wrong. Then he asked if I saw the sign he was talking about and I was like "no" and started laughing even more. It really wasn't as funny as I was treating it as by laughing at it like that. I just wasn't in a normal state of mind. Something fucky was clearly going on.

Then we got there, I tried to drive the wheelchair and had a hard time with corners and narrow doorways, and the nurse commented on it. I wanted to curl up and die.

Then we got to the room and she guided me to park the wheelchair in a certain corner of the room, so I did so, and then another nurse showed up and told me to put it somewhere else, so I did so, but I had more trouble bumping into things on the way there, which was also commented on.

Also, once I finished moving the wheelchair to point B, I got trapped between it and the conference table. There wasn't enough space to walk between people to get out. There was a chair in that enclosed corner of the room, and I was clearly expected to sit next to my uncle. I was already starting to panic and feeling the need to get out of there, and I was going to ask my uncle, but he was busy talking to nurse A. So I was standing there waiting for an opening to ask, while nurse B repeatedly suggested I sit down.

I finally got my chance, told my uncle I needed to step outside, he offered me his phone so I could sit in the car (it acts as the key), I took it, then he realized if he gave me his phone then he wouldn't be able to text me when they're done, so I gave it back, I didn't really want to take it in the first place because I didn't want to leave him with nothing to do to pass the time but I was already panicking and just wanted to get through the conversation as quickly as possible. So then I rushed for the door and ran outside and started crying.

I tried to head for the bathroom but someone was in there so I wandered around for awhile. It seemed to be a busy day for that building because everywhere I tried to wander I was getting in someone's way. It was an ordeal just to get from the bathroom back to the exterior of the building and then I found myself in the way of someone trying to enter the building while I was trying to leave. I darted around a corner and up against a wall in the shade and thumped my arms and head against the wall and completely broke down.

After regaining my composure enough to walk again, I checked the bathroom again. It was vacant so I went in and fucking cried my eyes out for about 20 minutes while hyperventilating and cursing at the mirror about how fucking ugly and disgusting I am. I tried multiple times to calm down enough to get back out of there in case someone else needed the bathroom but I kept having to go back in because I couldn't stay calm. I saw a diaper changing station with one of those stupid illustrations with the parent and child cartoon koalas with the child in a diaper and I flinched away from it and almost punched it. I don't want to talk about what it was making me think about.

I didn't get to a point where I was finally calm enough to leave on my own terms. Instead I got the text from my uncle that his appointment was over. I had to walk out of there still crying. I ran into an old woman on the way out who was trying to come into the bathroom because I forgot to lock the door the last time I was in there and I apologized to her multiple times and then went back to the room where my uncle's appointment was and drove the wheelchair and bumped into the fucking doorway some more and apologized to the nurses for making a goddamn spectacle while standing there fucking crying and bumping the doorway. Then we got into the car and went home.

Then I ate breakfast and tried and failed to do anything with my time and ended up just spending the rest of the day taking a really long nap. I told myself it would be okay if I didn't wake up. It would be a relief. I would be glad for it all to finally be over. Then I woke up and was disappointed to still be alive.

Then I spent awhile monitoring my stupid discord servers I hang out in instead of having a real offline social life or really a life of any kind at all, and not saying anything in them because I couldn't bring myself to do so, and thinking about how no one ever checks up on me when I'm not okay, and thinking back on what that person from After Silence told me that one time. That I was taught that I don't matter. And thinking about how, yeah, we kind of all are, aren't we? Thinking about how no one actually gives a shit about anyone. No one cares. Not even people we pay to care. Maybe they even care the least. My uncle cares about me a great deal. He cares enough to house me. That's huge. I'm enormously thankful for that. He cares more about me than I have any right to ask for and more than anyone else does. The only person who ever has cared more about me is my mother when she was alive. And yet even my uncle doesn't care enough to check in with me when I'm not okay. Even he doesn't care enough to get involved. Even he doesn't really care. Because no one really cares. People really caring is just not how the world works. We're alone. All of us. We're all alone in the world. The world is a cold empty place devoid of love or real friendship or meaning and we'd all be better off dead. Life is nothing but a cruel joke.

Maybe the only way to come out on top is to choose to be the one laughing.

What the fuck is wrong with me? How could I have done this? How could I have left my uncle's side during his appointment, just because I had to go have a panic attack? Why don't I care more about him? That's just further evidence. This world is worthless. Everyone is just consumed by their own problems and I'm no better. That's why I should have died in my sleep.

I may be being abusive toward Alice—03/08/2026

Originally posted on a Discord server. For context: the night before, I had engaged in a bit of vore roleplay. Alice doesn't like when we do that. There are also various other times my actions or thoughts cause her to surface and express her dislike for them.

the host keeps trampling my boundaries. i tell them, "no, stop it, don't do that, don't think about that," but they just keep doing it. i know they can hear me because i say it in their voice. and they just ignore me. eventually i just started saying "i'm sorry." because if my needs aren't important, it must be my fault, right? and whatever i've done wrong to deserve this, if i say i'm sorry, maybe they won't hurt me as much. and they have the gall to tell me i "haven't done anything to be sorry for." like that's supposed to make everything fine. last night i told them, i'm going to shatter like glass, do you want me to shatter like glass, do you want 3 more alices, because that's what you're going to get if you keep pushing me like this. and they still didn't stop. i'm at my limit here. then i wake up the next morning and they immediately start interrogating me about how it made me feel that they didn't back off. they know how it made me feel. sometimes i wish i'd never come out of hiding.

"maybe there should be 3 more of you, maybe then you'd find it more manageable." that's?? missing the point??? by like a mile. what the fuck kind of response is that? would they say that if i were "real?" "maybe you should tear yourself to pieces so you can deal with this better." how unhinged is that? maybe they should leave me alone.

A friend gave Alice suggestions on how to cope, under the mistaken assumption that she was talking about someone living outside of us. Alice responded as follows:

i kind of have to live with them, yeah. they're the one usually fronting. sorry if i gave the impression this was an external person. but, thank you. i'm gonna try cutting them off for awhile, yeah. going back into hiding for awhile. they're worried that won't be "healthy" for us but if they were so concerned about that then they shouldn't have pushed me to this point to begin with. all i'm doing is the only recourse they've left me with.

The friend mentioned I sound like an abusive and disrespectful headmate. Alice's response was this:

they want to say it's been like this because it hasn't set in for them to what extent we're our own people. they're used to thinking they should just be able to reach in and take what they need from us because that's how a singlet works. which. fine. i guess. but they had that realization a good while ago. at this point it is disrespect. they know the truth now and just aren't putting in the effort to change. they want to say they are but it doesn't feel that way to me.

This whole conversation made me really want to put away my stupid little finger puppets and turn around and go, "haha, joking, it's all a lie, sorry for tricking you into caring." But that's how I know it's real. If I'd rather do that than admit I'm being abusive to Alice then I probably really am. Alice is the headmate who seems to most often prevent me from living a normal life, which is my chief complaint that I'm taking into therapy tomorrow, so this would be a good thing to bring up there.

Later that day I posted this in a different Discord server:

alice, the one who seems to correspond to the sympathetic (as opposed to parasympathetic) aspect of my fawn response, has had a falling-out with me and vowed to try to go back into hiding for awhile. i fear that in my failure to adequately recognize and respect how separate the others have become from myself, i may have been abusive. i already know i've hurt lucy, who holds my fight response. and a friend, a real external friend, called me out for hurting alice. i wanted to sink back into denial about any of this even being real, because that's easier than admitting they're right, i am an abuser, and the fact that it's against people who live in my head absolves me only marginally, if at all.

thank god i have therapy tomorrow. since i finally cracked enough to admit to myself far too late i was both ready to go back and in desperate need of it, it's since been maybe two months total of waiting to get in, and those were already two months i wasn't sure i had. i don't think i'm in tangible danger but i may be on the verge of losing myself more than i already have. i've already destabilized in ways i somewhat doubt it's possible to come back from. if i can't get some help managing this then i don't know how much longer before i'm nobody at all.

i feel so stupid and privileged and fake because nothing is even wrong right now. right now i'm not actually unsafe. it's all in my head. but i didn't just make it up. it was put there. from outside. old wounds coming back. and they feel bigger than me. bigger than i can even comprehend. i cannot grasp the true form. because of all the selective amnesia obscuring it. in my head or not, how am i supposed to live my daily life with this giant eldritch monster holding me down and choking me.

"reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." philip k dick apparently. well it may be in my head. but i've already tried not believing in it. and this is where that got us. so i guess that makes it "real."

Bad first therapy appointment—03/09/2026-03/10/2026

Originally posted in Discord servers A and B:

first therapy appointment did not go well.

i'm getting bad vibes. it feels like she's going to be yet another therapist who's just going to recommend the same approach i've been uncritically accepting and practicing all this time that brought me to this low. "mind over matter." "the more we feed these thoughts the stronger they get." in other words, blaming me for ruminating on the trauma, and recommending i try to go back into denial. the same denial that broke us down like this in the first place because we couldn't keep it up any longer. the same denial i then had to work so hard to escape.

it feels like she just doesn't believe me. the primary issue i'm dealing with is, intrusive thoughts are taking on separate names and personalities, they're preventing me from living a normal life because they become upset, and i can't control those upset feelings because they aren't mine to control, they're theirs, if i try to control them then they distrust me and push me out, and i can't override their will because then i get anxiety attacks—and i mentioned the existence of these discrete intrusive-thought-entities (my headmates, in other words, but i felt like i had to hide my power level a bit) multiple times to her and she did not acknowledge in any way that i'd said anything whatsoever on the matter. i'm worried she might subscribe to the outdated / discredited "sociocognitive model" of DID, which is pretty much just "stop thinking about it and it goes away." which. again. that's the opposite of what's been happening here. i already stopped thinking about it for as long as i could and that's what made it this bad.

my new psychiatrist absolutely understood and believed me when i saw her. so the psychiatrist believes me and the therapist doesn't. i was afraid of the exact opposite situation so this is at least better than that i guess? i'm going to bring this up next week and depending on how it goes there's a good chance therapy won't work out. whatever.

I later followed up in Discord server A with this:

i'm reading about other people's bad therapy experiences. apparently the overcautious beating around the bush approach i've been inclined toward is popularly called "breadcrumbing" and it Does Not Work©®™. so i'm saying this so i remember to do it: next time i see her i'm just going to ask straight out. "do you believe in dissociative disorders." not "do you believe i have one" but just "do you believe they exist." and unless i get a "yes" we're not moving forward. there is no reason i should be preemptively sinking back into denial as much as i am right now. i'm preemptively pandering and deferring to a bad take that i don't even know she has, and that the rational part of me wouldn't buy into even if she does. "uhhh gee i dunno maybe going back to doubting ourselves on everything all the time is the right call" like first of all she didn't even necessarily say that. her wording sounded suspiciously like she thinks that, but she didn't say it. secondly, if her reason for thinking it is that she doesn't believe dissociative disorders exist, then... uh... she's wrong. plain and simple. "oh but we shouldn't presume we have one" the psychiatrist already diagnosed us. "oh but what if we didn't have it bad enough" sure. for the sake of argument let's say for a moment that's even how it works, let alone true of us (it is neither). under this counterfactual assumption: how would she know that? she just met us. we talked for under an hour. she made it clear she didn't even review our chart, she knows jack shit about us, the only possible reason she could have to feel certain this isn't a dissociative disorder is if she doesn't believe they exist in the general case, and that's already objectively incorrect no matter whether we personally really have one or not. we do Not have to feel like we've just been Authoritatively Told there is actually Nothing wrong with us and we Have to Believe it Just Because. there is No possible world where that's the takeaway here.

The next day, in Discord server B (as Daisy):

it's all we can think about now. despite reassuring ourselves there's no need to slip back into denial, we still have, and it's now all we can think about. no, more than that, it feels like no one's going to help us. we feel trapped.

i know a kink server is not the right space to say this. nor a lot of what we've said here already really. i'm sorry. i'm sorry we do this. i'm sorry we are this. we just. need to tell someone. and it feels like more mainstream social spaces would be an even worse place for it. so... we. ended up doing something stupid and a little bit dangerous that you shouldn't do. it's something it's not very wise to even talk about, so beyond this, i won't. all i'll say about it is, maybe now they'll take us seriously.

contrary to how we draw my sona, this Secret Mystery Behavior is actually one we usually don't do. and honestly seven out of nine of us did not want to. but it happened anyway. now how did that happen? wow! magic! must be! that's the only explanation! after all, it's not like there are really multiple voices in here with our own conflicting impulses! right!?

there goes our week. i'm not sure we're going to be any use to anyone until we get the chance to talk to her again and tell her we are Not Ok with the vibes we're getting so far.

Later that day, in Discord server C:

we had a terrible dogshit first therapy appointment yesterday morning. we don't know how much of it was all in our head from bad past experiences and how much was actually picking up on red flags but what we do know is we felt unheard, disbelieved, and judged. they told us "mind over matter. the more we feed these thoughts the stronger they get." it felt like this person was telling us our experiences weren't real, blaming us for ruminating on them like it's something we're doing on purpose for funsies, and recommending we try to sink back into denial, the same denial that brought us to this breaking point to begin with, the same denial we've since been having to work our asses off to claw our way back up out of. ignoring these thoughts has made them stronger. if just ignoring them could make them go away then we wouldn't need therapy.

since then, our every thought has been self-doubt stemming from that appointment. it drove us to SH which is something we hardly ever do. our next appointment is on the 16th and we don't know how we're going to hold out until then, literally every thought we have is either "maybe you really are just malingering" or extensive imaginary conversations with the therapist where we try to communicate better, it's incessant, uncontrollable, and unbearable. focusing on anything was already impossible, that was why we needed to go in in the first place, but now it's more impossible. making it even just one more day feels beyond our capacity let alone six. we know factually it's going to happen because the passage of time is inevitable and we aren't going to do anything actually dangerous to ourselves (as in i can't promise we won't SH more, we probably will actually, but that's the worst we're going to do). but it feels beyond our capacity to get through it.

the one who actually did the act of SH did so against my will. also she [hindsight note: he] said "where am i." i didn't say that. i wouldn't have needed to. it simply came out of my mouth.

Follow-up later still, Discord server C:

"why don't you just choose to feel better. why don't you just choose to be normal." i can't take this anymore, i'm going to be sick. "why don't you just choose to have never been violated like that. why don't you just choose not to believe it. why don't you just choose to move on. why don't you just ignore the others' needs and protestations and tell them to go fuck themselves so you can be the only one in your head again. why do you care what they say, what they need, how they feel. it's not like passive influence is a thing. why don't you just choose not to have the anxiety attacks."

this is why we gave up on professional help. we may not have known at the time this was the reason but it was. and now they're going to make us regret coming back, when we've destabilized enough that we have no other choice. what are we supposed to do then? can't get help, can't go on without help, so we're supposed to just—not go on?

alright i've officially decided. there's nothing going on with us. "we" are not an "us." while we're at it, "we" aren't trans either. we're a stupid ugly lazy manchild who played one too many indie games and somehow got it in HIS head that the allegations HE made up against his father on that day all those years ago actually meant anything. we're trash that had the gall to think IT was worth saving from whatever the fuck imaginary bullshit this actually is. the LIES we learned to tell ourself are something we don't deserve help with and if those lies kill us one day then so be it we die. and nothing of value is lost.

there's no need to worry, there's no need to panic, because that's a self-preservation instinct, and there's nothing in here worth preserving. i can calm down as long as i can believe that. i'm just a parasite. mind over matter. the more they feed me the worse i get. just ignore me and i'll go away. what is behavioral health if not the informed practice of classifying people as beyond saving and turning your back on them, right?

Late that night, in Discord server D:

La la la, nothing matters! Nothing is real!

Someone replied, and Daisy replied back with this message:

Hi👋 This is a dream

The other users seemed adamant it was not a dream.

One other user claimed to be godlike. (It's my understanding this claim was neither exaggerated nor in bad faith; rather, the user in question was someone else's alter, and truly possessed the professed abilities, but only in their headspace.) Daisy responded thus:

Oh... Wow, so powerful! Then, do you have the power to make this stop?

It's nice to believe in good dreams, right? Even though they aren't the kind that come true.

The boasting user replied back with confusion. Daisy replied back as follows:

Nothing. Nothing at all. Sorry. That was stupid. I'm just being stupid. I shouldn't be here. I don't even exist.

Daisy finally comes to full consciousness—03/11/2026

On 03/11, I woke up crying, tried and failed to calm down, and started screaming. The screaming devolved into maniacal laughter mixed with continued sobbing.

My uncle texted me saying he was ordering coffee and asking if I wanted any. This was my reply:

Hey, good morning. Yeah, maybe that would help, thanks. || I am awake, right? This isn't a bad dream?

Sorry, just ignore that second part.

That day, I stayed off social media. My behavior offline was shaky, nervous, and fearful.

My uncle texted me again later and asked if I was feeling better. This was my response:

Hey. I'm definitely feeling better but not good. Just numb and kind of confused. The rational part of me remains fairly convinced of what's going on here but the part of me that just woke up thinks this is all just malingering and I should go back into denial which is fucking stupid because its very existence is evidence and it itself is sitting there trying to tell me it doesn't exist. This is exhausting. It wishes it didn't exist because it liked being asleep better. Sorry, I realize this all sounds like nonsense.

Conversation with Lucy about therapy—03/12/2026

I accidentally had this conversation with Lucy while trying to plan out how my next therapy appointment will go, which is all I've been able to think about since the first one (which went really badly). I think she switched in because of a conversation about the Epstein files that my uncle and I had earlier in the day.

I see you're hiding your arm in your shirt this time. What's going on there?

I self-harmed. [Hindsight note: I would plan to wear a long-sleeve shirt to the appointment if I could but I do not own any. That's why I plan to hide my arm in my shirt instead.]

May I see it?

[Shows her.]

Ouch. So... Do you want to talk about why you did that?

I'm going to try to be honest about my feelings here. That's important in therapy, right? Last time, I felt invalidated, unheard, disbelieved, and judged.

Tell me more about that.

I felt like you suggested I might have autism and bipolar disorder pretty early on with not much time to get to know me and without making your reasoning clear to me.

Uh-huh. [Taking notes.]

I noticed you focused a lot on my living situation and lack of an employment history or life plans. Having had some distance and time to think, I realize you were just trying to get a picture of what my life is like and potential problems with it, but since those are pain points for me, I projected my insecurities and really felt like you were casting judgment.

Uh-huh. [Taking notes.] What else?

When you mentioned "mind over matter, the more we feed these dark thoughts, the worse they get," I felt like you weren't noticing the whole reason I ended up needing to come back to therapy was because I'd reached the limit of what was possible with that approach—indeed, because it had never worked in the first place.

CBT is what we do here. If we can't agree that that's what you need, then I don't think we can help you. But go on.

And when you said "sometimes it's hard to tell how much of dreams is real," I felt deeply invalidated. At the time, I didn't really understand why, because, rationally, I agreed with you completely. I've since realized it's because the others in here were trying to tell me their memories are completely real and I shouldn't doubt them.

And who's "others?" Who told you this?

The intrusive thought entities.

Uh-huh. [Taking notes.] You mentioned something about those last time, but I'm not sure I understand.

[Sigh.] I was beating around the bush about this before, but—I'm feeling fairly certain symptoms I have that were misdiagnosed as autism were actually pointing to OSDD all this time.

Yeah, uh. [Sets down notepad. There are nothing but doodles in it.] You don't have OSDD.

The psychiatrist said she thought I had DID. [Hindsight note: I've since discovered that was not the psychiatrist and she could not diagnose me. That was the nurse. The nurse I needed an appointment with another nurse to make an appointment with. I had to make an appointment to make an appointment to make an appointment to see someone who can actually help me. I still have yet to see an actual psychiatrist. I fucking hate everything.] The only reason I disagree is because I don't have sufficiently severe inter-alter amnesia.

We don't do parts work here. We subscribe to the sociocognitive model. Do you know what that is?

... Wait, hang on a minute. What am I doing? You're not even really my therapist. I was talking to myself in my head, where did you even come from? Lucy? That's you, isn't it?

Nice going, captain obvious. What are you gonna notice next? That there are hands on your arms?

What are you doing? I was trying to plan how I would talk about my feelings at my second appointment.

And I'm here to argue with you about it. Isn't that what I do?

Um, why?

Ever heard of devil's advocate? Just so happens I'm the devil, so who better for it?

But I don't need someone to argue with me when I plan things out.

Ohoho yes the fuck you do.

Why? What's gonna happen if you all just shut up and let me think in peace for a minute?

You wanna know what's gonna happen? You'll fuck up is what happens. You think you're so damn smart. The "mature" part. The "rational" part. The "apparently normal" part. If I leave you alone for two minutes do you have any idea how stupid you get? You need two people for a Socratic dialectic. That's how it works. I am not gonna leave you alone to ruin everything for us all the goddamn time.

Okay, but aren't you taking it a little far here? It's when you start playing the other person as unrealistically ignorant that you start losing me a bit.

Why? Don't you like winning? Doesn't it stroke your fragile little ego? God you're such a loser.

At any rate, why do you even think those things you said? That makes no sense. How can you of all people think we don't have OSDD? Aren't you proof we do? You're starting to sound like Daisy.

Don't fucking compare me to that spoiled little crybaby. Ahaha holy shit you think I actually believed it? Come on, my acting isn't that good. It's not about what I believe. It's about what I think the therapist is going to say. How was that not obvious? See, this is what I'm talking about, this is how fucking dumb you are without me. God we really can't rely on you for anything can we?

If you don't need me then maybe you should all leave me alone.

Fucked up thing to say to the people who've been carrying all your pain. "You aren't loved, you aren't wanted, just keep carrying it all alone, that's all you're good for." I thought you said you didn't want to tell us that anymore. I thought you said you cared.

I'm sorry. You're right. I've been horrible to you, haven't I?

No you dipshit I'm obviously screwing with you. Don't you dare have another crashout over this I swear to god.