Well, finals are over and we're on break now. I don't know if we wrote
about the whole AWS fiasco, but our college site for classes was down
for seven hours because Amazon Web Services servers on the other side of
the country decided to crap themselves on finals day, so it was kind of
a frenzied rush to get everything done on time. Good grades though, so
at least it worked out well. And now that's all done for the month.

So we're on break. Haven't been doing too much, mostly working on making
gifts for friends. We do most gifts by hand, so there's a whole process
of getting them done on time. Most of them are ready now, just one or
two more to put together. Lots of hand-bound journals this year, some
needle-felting, one plushie, and going to make some kandi for a few
people. The elaborate kind of kandi. It'll be a day's project each for
sure. Thinking cat ears and a mask at the moment. Maybe a mask with cat
ears? I think we could pattern that.

Otherwise, it's been trying to keep ourselves mentally afloat. When we
have a break, it tends to go one of two ways: either we wind up very
happy and relaxed, or our brain sees that we're free and decides to hit
us with a few mental buses. This time's definitely the latter. We probably
need more distractions to make sure we stay sane enough to function when
break lets up, but in the meantime we're trying to process and work through
things. It's messy and it honestly hurts, but it helps a lot when we manage
to get past an issue, and it's not like the brain's letting us do anything
else anyway. Annoyingly, the insomnia's acting up and getting involved too.
Awkward combo of being up at 4:30 AM trying to beat down panic with a stick
for no apparent reason. We're hanging in okay though, just really wish we
could get more sleep. We're tired.

Semi-vent ahead about identity, integration, and a whole lot of emotional
issues. No obligation to read, but it does explain a lot about how we're
doing and was written with a reader in mind rather than for ourselves.
But don't read if you're not up to it, okay? Put yourself first. You matter.

---

Big things right now are ongoing identity issues and home stress. Identity
issues are because there's been an ongoing process of integration and, if
we're honest, fusion over the last few years. We properly confronted that
pattern recently (we hadn't chosen any of it, so it was jarring to notice
it was happening all this time) and it's been messing with us because
recognizing it was like giving it permission. We were at probably... four,
five, maybe six people that weren't quite people. Recognizing it and coming
to terms with it has brought us down to two people, one of which is part soup
that's not quite a person, and the other of which is a group of a few parts
who have been clear this whole time that they'd prefer to stay separate
(and we intend to respect their wishes). The part soupiness is what's
messing with us because it's as though suddenly what identity there was just
dissolved and now there are just a bunch of parts sharing something that is
and isn't personhood. All parts of the mind, but no real shared self beyond
"we're in the same mind." It's incredibly messy and confusing and a little
distressing if we're honest. And we haven't even poked into what's going on
with the parts that were most connected to our subconscious, where they went,
or what memory issues are like at the moment, or quite a lot of things. We're
just trying to relearn how to interact with ourselves when many of our parts
no longer want to be treated as true individuals. Do you know how hard it is
to consistently work with someone that doesn't want a name but insists you
work with them? You can't get their attention with a name or anything. It's
rough. We're trying to reconstruct a sense of self out of the part soup and
it's difficult. Maybe we should ask Kaz (other remaining person) how they
managed it. They're the result of two people merging a year back and it took
them a while to reconstruct a self too, so maybe they have some advice for us.

It's both overwhelming and comforting, though. There's comfort in the closeness
that comes with it. We're all still here, but much more closely integrated and
connected. And we've always sort of seen ourselves in a yin-yang relationship
with Kaz, so having there be two person-entities like this is... strangely
soothing? We know they'll be there for us, and we're trying to learn to better
be there for them. It's a lot more manageable and workable than it was when there
were many more people here. Most of the overwhelm comes from in ourself (part soup)
because we're still trying to figure out who the hell we are now. It's like trying
to construct a house out of LEGOs, but all you have are the little 1x2 bricks in
random colors, and there's no manual or guide or reference photos. But that house
has to be up to earthquake code and livable and good enough to survive in, and
no one tells you how to make a house at all. It's just assumed everyone already
has a house and therefore no one needs to build one from scratch out of all the
little pieces. And then there's also the issue of the "pieces" fighting with each
other now that they're close enough to really come into conflict. There's been a
lot of infighting in here, and a lot of struggling to make sure all of our parts
feel heard and respected, even the ones that aren't as well-liked. They're important
too and they have a significant role. There's a lot of fear and anger going on that
we're trying to process because we have access to it now.

I think that's one of the big challenges, actually, is that our emotions are less
segmented. Most of us never had to deal with anger, or deep grief, or shame, or
fear/panic. Some of us are still stuck living mentally in the past, or in crisis
mode, and now it's everyone's problem instead of just theirs. It's like being beaten
by a rainbow. Different parts have different fears and experiences they'd rather not
repeat, and with the big dissociative barriers between them coming down, suddenly
those fears are all exposed to each other and often come into conflict. How do you
reconcile a part that protected you by hiding and avoiding people with a part that
protected you by being hyper-social and forcefully optimistic all the time, both
of them protecting you from the exact same person and believing the other one is
in the wrong? And then reconcile those two with the part that protected you by being
angry and standing up to that person when it was impossible to take any more from
them, and the part who feels deeply ashamed that they feel hurt by that person, and
all the other emotions and responses that come from a family relationship where no
one meant to hurt anyone else but did deep harm anyway thanks to generational trauma
and mental health issues and all kinds of factors out of their control, so you can't
blame them but they still hurt you badly enough that you know instantly walking in the
door when you come home that they're angry, and that's all it takes to make you feel
small and helpless again? Ugh. Sometimes I think being more integrated at this point
is almost more difficult than when dissociative barriers were higher. It's so much to
try to process and reconcile, and parts work is both easier and harder because of it.
We can actually get at those issues now, but we're completely on our own in dealing
with it, and these issues are deeper rooted and more painful than the ones we could
get to when there were major barriers blocking us off from each other. It's hard to
make sense of all these conflicting parts as being part of *me*, as there being a me
at all now. But there definitely is a me, and they're all me. And that hurts a lot
to recognize. It's painful. It means seeing what happened and that I'm hurt. I can't
deny it now. It's my problem and I'm not blissfully unaware of it like some of us
were, and we're struggling with a lot of shame for being hurt when no one meant to do
any harm at all. They tried their best to be good parents. They love us, genuinely. It's
just that their own parents were shitty, and their grandparents were REALLY shitty,
and so they never really learned good parenting and are coming from a perspective of
trying not to do what their parents did to them (or trying to emulate it partially)
and struggling with mental health issues on top of it. I can't blame them for any of
it. They did their best. It's just that their best left us afraid of them. I know that
Kaz knows all this and they're just sort of resigned to it, bitter, but for me it's not
something all parts of me have ever had to confront. There are whole parts of me that
exist solely because recognizing that someone was hurting us when around them would have
led to more pain, so they couldn't ever know about it. It *hurts* for all of me to see
it. I think that's the real reason we're struggling to adapt to this. There's so much
pain we weren't aware of that we're finding now, and have to deal with. And we're on our
own. We don't have a therapist, and there are no open ones in our area (we know because we
tried to help a friend find someone recently, no luck) or with telemedicine. As usual, we
have to figure out how to cope on our own. We do research and find what we can but it's
still a lot to have to work through solo.

And then there's the identity muck. I'm a we. I have parts of me that are as important as
*me*. I can't ignore them most of the time like most people seem to, because they're all
hurting and in conflict and very conversational without being their own people. It's weirdly
difficult to wrap our head around that. Some of us really hate it when things can't be
categorized and those parts have been in a frenzy trying to make sense of it all.

So, yeah. It's a lot. Probably going to spend most of break trying to relearn how to have
a self and be functional within ourself, and trying to cope with emotions and everything.
It's tiring but important. And it is healing for us, if painful to get through. It comes
out better on the other side.

Going to go write out feelings now. This brought up a lot of unexpected emotions.