helloo how did you discover you were a system ₊ headmates
૮˶• ﻌ •˶ა
./づ~ 🦴
hello! there were a few instances when i was a kid where i had characters and/or imaginary friends who i didn't seem to be able to control. i remember thinking i must have been crazy because of it, but not in a negative way; i just accepted that that was how i was. it was not a big deal to me at all. even now i have a lot of plural-adjacent experiences wrt my ocs and roleplaying; they don't seem to be able to communicate with me directly, but they tend to "push back" if i change something about them in a way they don't like and "write their own" character arcs, if that makes sense. unfortunately none of my childhood headmates are around anymore and i miss them very frequently </3
what really kicked it off was in early 2022 when i was working on a particular character named jax. unbeknownst to me, the universe had other plans, because within a couple weeks this emo guy showed up in my brain and refused to ever leave. note that jax-the-headmate has little to nothing in common with jax-the-character and does not consider himself a fictive or octive. xe just showed up and stole his name (and i ended up changing the character's name later lol). it was just us for quite a while, and its existence briefly overlapped with some of the people mentioned in the previous paragraph (SHOUTOUT TO ELLIOT HE WAS PRETTY COOL ACTUALLY - JAX)
i was somewhat familiar with the concept of systems at the time, but i wasn't sure if it was my identity to claim. it took me a long while to get comfortable referring to us as a system, to be honest. even though i didn't consider myself "a system", though, i never wanted to deny jax's autonomy. the way i thought about it, and the way i still think about it to this day, is that if my headmates aren't real and i treat them like they are, then no real harm has been done. it's normal to realize you were wrong about your identity and for your identity to change over time. however, if my headmates are real and i treat them like they're not, then i'm doing serious harm to all of them, and that's not a risk i'm willing to take. jax was also there to call me a dumbass every time i had doubts about whether or not we were plural lmao.
getting new members is a slow and gradual process for us and we never really know when to expect it. it was just me and jax for years before we ever got anyone else (mid 2024 i believe). we've had more fragments and half-formed people who never properly came to fruition than we have full headmates in here. sometimes we really expect someone and they never show up, sometimes we don't expect someone at all and suddenly they're here. we've learned not to push it and to just let things happen as they happen. thanks for asking anon ^_^
