#deex

[image: a ballpoint pen drawing of a twilek woman with a scar on the right half of her face (shreea). She’s holding a rifle in one hand and a twilek baby in the other. Next to her is a droid with a nearly featureless face (sans two eyes), triangular torso, and large forearms compared to exceptionally skinny bicep area. Shreea smiles at the baby. The droid says “Your baby is small and weak and cannot protect itself.” Shreea says “That’s why we gotta do it, Deex.” end image]

This is a weird situation, but I wonder if anyone has any thoughts or advice on this very strange spiritual crisis.  Bear with me here, witches.

I am an alter in a DID system (dissociative identity disorder).  I have been here over a decade, and I am now the host of this system (the one who is generally in charge of daily life).  The original host, who has been a witch for over twenty years, since he was in his teens, is no longer available (for trauma reasons).  Already weird enough for those with no experience with DID, but it continues. 

Some alters, like me and most of my system, have detailed memories of lives before being here, some in worlds similar to this one, some vastly different (the brain is weird and does what it does, folks).  In mine, we have magic -- of the point a wand and beetles turn into buttons variety.  That is the magic I grew up knowing and using.  Those memories, though likely in actuality fabricated by spasming neurons during trauma, are very real to me.  I’ve been here for a long time now, and I have identified as Pagan for most of that time.  I love the magic that exists here and am thankful for its prevalence, but I find myself unable to dive into it as fully as I want to do.  I seem to have somewhat of a mental block.  I believe wholeheartedly in the magic of this world -- I’ve seen it work, even seen the former host and other alters in my system use it -- but somehow I have lost the belief that *I* can use it.  I think it has something to do with my world, and how magic is either in you or it isn’t, unable to be cultivated in the Muggle-types -- and that that magic is not subtle.  I know how it feels when it moves through me, and I have not felt anything like that here.  Though I know logically that it’s not the same here and *shouldn’t* feel the same, I think my brain may be shutting me down because of those preconceptions of what magic is *supposed* to be.

Anyway, so this is an extremely unusual problem, but I wondered if anyone might have any thoughts as to how to unblock myself.  There are other concerns around this topic, like how those of us who practiced deity-based stuff in other worlds can do so here (do those deities exist? can we reach them? were they made up by our broken brain in the first place?), but this single issue is the gate for the others, I think.  It puts up a big old wall in front of any kind of magical practice when I don’t believe I’m capable of the smallest amount of energy work.

One person fronting: One person driving.  Others that may be co-conscious are passengers.

Co-fronting: As in a driver’s ed training car where there are two steering wheels, two (or more) people are both driving the car.  Control may be equal or unequal, but they both have it.

What we call Soft Focus: People are in the car, but no one is actually driving.  People can see out the windows of the self-driving car.  People clearly remember the trip as though they could have been driving, but they definitely had no hands on the wheel.  This is a dissociated state.

What we call The Hollow: The car is driving itself.  There are people locked in the boot/trunk.  This is a dissociated state of a different and much more disturbing colour.