Living With Multiplicity

✦ ﹚ This System uses [blank]

✦﹚ Requested by : anon + @the-theta-sigma ⇋ ✦﹚ Art credit : n/a⇋ ✦﹚ Notes : edit: i forgot the other two boxes they are added now ⇋ ✦﹚ Read pinned post before requesting ⇋

Can we normalize talking about poc experiences with both being queer and being a system? , especially being black. Everytime I see a conversation that includes the experience of someone who is a poc it's often skipped over, played down, or they get completely bashed.

The queer community is a very good example of this, I get told all the time that "Oh, but you pass! I don't see the issue?" I am black first. I will always be seen as black first. (this might tickle some of your guys bones so hold on tight to your pants.) being black and queer is VERY different from being white and queer. being black and trans is VERY different from being white and trans.

Another great example is with our system, while we are a poc we mainly have white alters in our system, we often get fake claimed or our experiences immediately shut down because "well, if you're black it's impossible to have white alters" , which honestly if you've ever said anything CLOSE to this to another person you can go ahead and block me, you are not someone I want to interact with.

I won't be surprised if I get some comments that are like “Well... I'm. white and my experience–” , thats because you're white. White experiences will ALWAYS be different than black or poc ones.

The queer/system community isn't the only community faulty to this, there are so many other communities that brush off or ignore or put down poc experiences and it's getting really sad to see.

is this you?!

if a system has an introject with a 'problematic' source, it is NOT your place to ensure that alter is fully source separated. that is THAT SYSTEM'S BUSINESS. you can ask them to just not talk about their source, but it is NOT your place to force them to source separate. YOU ARE NOT THEIR DOCTOR. YOU ARE NOT THEM. IT IS NOT YOUR BUSINESS.

Source Separation is a form of recovery that TAKES TIME. It looks different for everyone. Hell, in my system, it's different between every introject! a little under half of my system is made up of introjects, some of us are "fully"* source separated, others aren't at all, and others are somewhere in the middle. Some of these introjects, on all ends of the spectrum, are sourced from problematic characters or problematic shows. where they land on the progress bar to source separation should not be the concern of a random discord mod that claims their server is a "safe space for systems" if they don't view introjects as their source. Forcing source separation when an introject isn't ready can be HARMFUL to not only the introject but the system AS A WHOLE.

(obscuring username as not to single anybody out + not negative. just in case someones shy) but this is actually what we did with our journals at first too. we used lighthouse for some time, alongside discord/simplyplural. but with simplyplural being left and not wanting to be as on our phone/computer, we switched to paper.

for people with higher system counts, there are actually really good paperback journal 'packs' you can get at most stationary stores. if buying a 10/15$ journal seems too intimidating, you can get these packs for like, 10 dollars total, and each one only has about 40ish pages.

this way if you have parts that dont front as frequently, you dont have anyone worrying about 'waste' while still providing them their own space. these are just a few examples.

something unexpected this ended up helping with was actually our individual memories too. i noticed some people asking 'how do you journal if you're blurry/have bad memory as a part?' and, well, that's actually why i started doing it. i wanted to remember more than just 'feeling bad' whenever i fronted, so i carry my journal with me and write down basically like, everything.

even just passing thoughts like 'i kind of wish we had beef strips at home for dinner' or 'im really excited for artfight this year'. when you're trying to recover as a system, especially as a part thats been heavily slotted with a lot of 'negative' emotions, its important to give yourself the space to express more than those things. if you only ever remember yourself as being 'angry/bad' then you wont develop much past that, and you start to internalize that shit and really hate yourself.

journaling has been a great outlet for me to vent and draw my own stuff, but it's also given me some dignity and the space to feel like a person outside of just being like. traumatized. i sort of use it as a vault of everything about me, good and bad, important and trivial.