Calico Constellation

"op what does this mean" "decay is an extant form of life"

it's okay for your headmates to be similar! y'all literally share a brain, it would be more surprising if you WEREN'T similar. i have heard a lot of people, including myself, try to fakeclaim themselves (or others, but i'm not gonna get into that here) because "we're too similar, maybe i'm just pretending". you guys share a brain! amnesia barriers or not, you still have the same life under your belt and the same set of experiences more or less (not including exomemories, usually)

i promise you, that isn't a reason to think that you're faking. people who spend a lot of time together, like, i don't know, sharing a brain, often end up being very similar!

just remember, you are valid in your experiences, whatever they may be. you're not alone in this

of course nonverbal headmate experiences are going to be different than bodily nonverbal singlets, and a system with only one nonverbal headmate is going to experience something different than a system who has many or all nonverbal headmates / experiences a physical condition that causes the nonverbal-nature, but like…

that does not invalidate the fact that the headmate cannot speak, and trying to force them to speak or take away the mots known word that means "cannot speak verbally / with their mouth" just feels weird.

also, to say that people shouldn't use those words but not give alternatives is frustrating. what other terms are there for nonverbal headmates to use?

(also it feels weird to say that nonverbal experiences are exclusively a body thing, as there's a lot of conditions (physical and mental) that may affect verbality, and i would not be shocked if plurality (especially DID) was one of them)

but if someone physically or mentally can not talk bodily , then they are non-verbal/semi-verbal . DID is different because other alters can speak .

it is like saying a black alter in a white body can consider themself black , or if a japanese alter having a japanese name despite bodily being non-japanese .

There have been case studies of systems where some of the alters are blind (due to psychogenic blindness) but the others are sighted.

It doesn't matter that the rest of the system can see. Those alters are blind and therefore disabled.

We Willows the hosts are disabled due to our PTSD, along with Ameris and Jas who also have PTSD. We're diagnosed with it.

The other members of our system do not have PTSD. We're still fucking disabled and you do NOT get to sit there and tell us we don't actually have a disability from it just because there's members of our system who don't have PTSD from the things we do.

You're talking to a system with multiple disabilities. We have physical issues that we all share. We all deal with the body's mental and physical health problems. But some of our problems are restricted to only some of us. Those of us with those problems ARE disabled due to them.

nonverbal people has it as a permanent thing for the body .

listen to actual nonverbal people .

i am not even going to touch on your PTSD because that is not what i was talking about .

A nonverbal systemmate is a person who cannot speak at all times. Just because they're not the only person in the body doesn't mean that nonverbal person suddenly gains the ability to speak, because sysmates are individual people. Same way a sysmate who is blind cannot see, regardless of what other people in their system can or can't do.

You wouldn't say the SYSTEM is nonverbal, only that that sysmate is. Other people in their system having the ability to speak doesn't change the fact that that person in that system cannot speak.

Sysmates are PEOPLE. They are not the body! I'm so sick of this community acting like it's okay to diminish sysmates to just the body.

We're chronically ill. We have a child who legitimately is more chronically ill than the rest of us. It's not even his perception of symptoms, when I was co-con while he was fronting I could feel exactly how much worse his symptoms were. And then as soon as I switched in our symptoms eased.

He cannot walk for more than at most 5 minutes. Is he not allowed to say "i cant walk well" just because the rest of us have an easier time? Fuck that.

We also have a nonverbal sysmate here. Telling these two they're not REALLY as disabled as they are because "b-but the body!!!" is absolute fucking bullshit.

Ableist anti-plural nonsense

A solarpunk future that doesn't include (or purposely excludes) Indigenous/PoC populations is just green-washed white supremacy/colonialism.

A solarpunk future that doesn't feed the hungry or house the poor is just green-washed capitalism.