Internal History

[omimouse]

Based off of a comment in griffen's journal that started a discussion in tigerbright's journal. This was just way too long to post as a comment, so I figured I'd post it here instead.



We are multiple. The body is 22 years old. Naomi is the same age as the body. Astrid appears to be about 26 or so. She's older than the body is by a few millenia. At least that's as far back as her memories go. We don't really know who the birth-personality was. We think that it was Astrid, and that she was pushed down very early so that we would survive. We'll never be entirely sure, because we don't remember the early years of the body.

Basing internal history off of Astrid being birth-persona, Naomi was in part born to help us survive, and in part created by the body's parents. They did not want Astrid for a daughter. She was too independent, too strong-willed. So Naomi was born to give the parents what they wanted. Astrid went deep under. Astrid has always known that the parents abused us. (She refuses to call them *her* parents. Naomi loves the parents, and calls them hers. Since we are both typing this, we compromise.) She knew that the knowledge would destroy Naomi utterly for a very long time. Astrid spent about 14 years as our rage, pain, and desolation.

When Naomi got involved in role-playing, she created the character of Astrid, or Wildstar k'Treva. She re-created this character for any new game, used the name online, and started to write out her story. When we met our heart-family through RPGs, we also met catchild, who is made up of 13 different people. Until we met her, Astrid had thought that she needed to always stay where Naomi didn't know about her. She thought that Naomi would always refuse to accept that we were being abused. She had been sleeping for a long time, coming to the surface only as uncontrolled emotions.

And then Naomi fell in love with warinbear. The parents got very angry. They didn't allow us to take the 19-year-old body to a doctor. They told Naomi she wasn't allowed to see warinbear or his family ever again. They threatened her. They told her she was selfish and lazy and ugly and fat and stupid. Astrid half woke up, and Naomi realised that this was not how a loving family was supposed to work. She moved in with her heart-family in January of 2001.

In December of the same year, the family had to do a lot of moving around. warinbear had always been suffering from mild depression, but it was spiraling. He was pushing the family away and tearing it apart. Naomi was the only person he would listen to or allow to help him, and Naomi wasn't strong enough to help him by herself. Naomi was desperate, and scared that she was going to lose her mate, and she didn't know what to do. Astrid woke all the way up. She didn't even really like warinbear at the time, but she loved Naomi like a sister, so she helped Naomi help warinbear drag himself out of the pit he'd dug for himself.

Astrid gave Naomi strength, and Naomi gave Astrid love. While we were helping warinbear heal himself, Astrid fell in love with him. He already loved her, because she was part of us, and he loved the entirety of us. We have healed ourselves and Naomi has grown up a lot over the past two years. Astrid is our Warrior, and Naomi is our gentle side. Astrid is learning to trust and love others more easily and freely, and Naomi is learning to stand up for herself and fight when it is needed. We share the front seat a lot. Naomi does almost all the talking for us because she gets along better with people than Astrid does, but Astrid is almost always up there as well. We refer to ourselves as 'I' and 'me' because for the most part, it makes no difference to us how we refer to ourselves, and using the singular makes interaction with non-family easier.

We are two distinct people who happen to share the same body. We can fully interact with each other, share memories and the front seat, and we get along with each other very well. We see no reason to 'integrate', that is, become one person. In fact, most people don't even know that we're multiple until it is pointed out to them.

We are healthy and thriving the way we are, and we see no need to change simply because various psychologists see multiplicity as an illness which must be cured. We do not use being multiple as an excuse for anything, nor do we claim that it makes our lives any more difficult than they already are. We do not use it to try and garner sympathy from anyone, nor do we introduce ourselves to everyone we meet as multiple. We have not undergone therapy, nor do we feel that we need to.

On that note, we need to go edit a comment in noelfigart's journal. We have let go of what was done to us. We are at peace with our past, and with ourselves.

Comments

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