meinmyatrium

[meinmyatrium]

It's been such a hard, horrendous month, and I need to get all of this off of my chest.

content warning: suicide attempt, homelessness, inter-system neglect, abandonment issues (there is a relatively happy ending)

Our system has been homeless with my and the host's partner for far too long. We have been homeless off and on for the past two and a half years. But when he and the host started sleeping in parks when the car was taken, things became infinitely worse.

I am typically our system's spiritual center. I practice magic. It has kept us safe mentally.

But I was drained. Nothing was working, or no one was listening, or they didn't care. Friends stopped coming through for us. Family showed their true, abusive, colors.

Rebel, our host, has always been suicidal. But at the end of May, they had decided it was finally time. And all five of us, for the first time, agreed.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Allow me to back up a bit.

Marq, Rebel's partner and my fiancé, has always had problems with object permanence. Out of sight, generally out of mind. We would hang out when I was around, and things were good, but he rarely asked about me when I wasn't out. Our system is comfortable switching when he wants to see one of us, and sometimes it's necessary as Rebel is more or less selfish with the front seat and doesn't generally give it up unless prompted by someone outside the headspace, but he wouldn't ask for me.

So, when Rebel decided it was time to be done, and I came out to say goodbye, and he mistook me for someone else... I was devastated. Perhaps irrationally. But this was going to be our last time seeing each other.

Rebel went through with the attempt.

Nothing happened. A whole thirty day supply of pills that should have caused organ failure, and nothing happened.

From what I've been told, Rebel evidently had a new lease on life (and still does). In their eyes, they had been given a second chance.

I did not feel the same. At all.

I stayed in my atrium in the headspace. I didn't leave my bed. Couldn't. I was so very angry. That we were still alive, that he had mistaken me for someone else, that years of prayers were unanswered.

The anger left me after a few days, but I still couldn't leave my bed. I thought about him, how he was doing. As I am essentially incapable of having Rebel leave the seat until they're ready, I waited.

And I waited.

Days went by without a check in from anyone. Not him, not my other headmates. And then weeks.

I didn't sleep. I didn't eat. I wept, and I stared at nothing, alone with my thoughts for an entire month, my body (in the headspace-- my actual body) eating itself until my curves were all but nonexistent. Every plant in my atrium died, surrounding me with I was a shell of my former self, convinced that any higher power that might exist didn't care even a little about me. I wanted nothing but death, for the pain to cease.

Last night, however, Adia, who spends most of her time in the headspace and fronts maybe once or twice a year, knocked on my door.

When I first spoke, my voice was hoarse and cracked from not speaking. I asked her what she wanted, and, to my surprise, Marq had been speaking with her, and he wanted to see me.

So many emotions bubbled up. Shock that he even remembered me. Relief that it was finally over, that I wouldn't be stuck surrounded by so much death anymore, that I could finally come out. Gratitude for being pulled away. Blinding fury that the man who proposed to me, hadn't checked on me once since the attempt.

When I came out, fury was the emotion I chose to express. I contemplated ending the relationship.

But we talked it through. It got heated at some points, but, eventually, it was revealed that crippling insecurity that I would be angry with him was what kept him from reaching out all this time, that he didn't deserve my love. We talked about his worth as a person, how he only feels like he's worth loving if he's providing something, and that he had such a hard time asking for me in the past because he felt that spending time with him was a chore. I made him understand that I wasn't just here for the good times, that I want to be here through the bad times too. an agreement was made that I would have set days just for me.

He helped me rebuild my atrium in Sims, which our system uses as our main way of visualizing our headspace. It's bigger and better.

I took this selfie in Sims just before we started building. I edited my Sim to acknowledge my weight loss, and, while I don't look like myself, it's the first picture I have of Marq and I, in my body, in my world.

We've had our share of issues, and we've got a lot of work to put in. But our relationship, and our lives in general, are getting better. It just takes work and communication.

Thanks for listening.

#relationship issues #did community #actually multiple #dissociative disorder #system stuff #did alter #things are getting better #we will get through this