Re: the memorable fanfic scene, I think the first fic of yours I read (maybe just the first one I commented on?) was Searching for Good Times (I'm also re-reading it now so maybe that's skewing my recollection lol). Anyway, the scenes that I always remember are a) when Five has to confront reality and disavow his life in the hotel - and Delores - to escape and b) the ending scene where he gets hugs. I love the scenes in all your fics where Five gets hugs. He needs them!
The scene that started that whole fic <3
Literally, I was chatting with @candiliam328 I think about this Wandavision-esque HOb, and Five having to confront Delores about not being real to get out. The single most painful thing Five would have to acknowledge/go through after losing his siblings - losing his Wife to not even death, but non-existence. So deliciously painful. And then I had to write the rest of the fic.
And Five always gets a hug or some comfort at the end (well... almost all of the time). We're here to torture Five, see him kick ass, and then get a goddamn hug. If the show won't do it, we'll do it ourselves.
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Ya know... over time... ummm... Idk how to put this cus it's gonna hurt someone's feelings.
I used to identify as endo. In my teens when I started to realize I was multiple and I started trying to communicate with them... when it still wasn't apparent to therapists and I was labeled bipolar with schizo-affective or outright schizophrenic. Back in those days, I genuinely believed I was psychotic. Things were weird. I had a lot of hallucinations, I had a lot of switching.
I was still a kid. I didn't want to believe I had childhood trauma even though I knew the kids had memories that I didn't, even though for a time I believed they weren't in there... I believed they died... I believed a lot of things, a lot of things that weren't true. I held on, tooth and nail, to the idea that we were multiple because we were just meant to be that way. The voices in my head during this really spectacular thing I went through told me so, after all.
Shit came out in my teens, and my mother eluded to the place where it happened. I still denied it. We're multiple because we always were.
In my adulthood, through a fair amount of research, I learned a lot about DID and multiplicity. I'd already been to inpatient three times, on countless meds, diagnosed with just about everything except DID. I had spoken to some therapists about it, only one ever made me feel like she believed me (my therapist in highschool).
In my mid 20s, sometime after being formally diagnosed with DID (and learning how... not great that actually is in terms of accessing mental health services), I spoke with my aunt about what my mother had told me in my teens, and she revealed the thing I didn't want to accept: I am a survivor of CSA at a very early age, my parents knew and did nothing because they didn't know what to do about it. I had a bit of a mental breakdown after that, and I think that's really when I accepted that we were what others would call "trauma-caused" or "traumagenic"... and furthermore that even my hallucinations, which I'd had since childhood, were largely a part of PTSD which had been triggered by an assault at 13, bringing a lot of my dissociative symptoms to the surface and starting the journey to communicating and vague attempts at healing that were mostly aimed at trauma that occurred in my teens.
I fell upon Paul F. Dell's work on Structural Dissociation and something clicked. I had identified that I was always multiple because I didn't ever remember not having them... I just didn't always understand what they were, so for much of my childhood (and teens), I explained them through what language I had --- as ghosts or something supernatural. I was haunted, afterall, by my own skeleton.
It made sense, and still does, that yes, I always was multiple, and that's why the endo label appealed to me and why I secretly held onto it beyond accepting my early trauma. The reality is that the trauma didn't make us, the trauma didn't allow us to develop normally. The further reality is that the early abuse was only a piece of that - that other instances of sexual, physical, and emotional abuse at the hands of both adults and my peers played a role. Being neurodivergent and trans played a role. Being queer but devoutly Christian played a role. The fire that burned my childhood home to charcoal played a role. My parents fighting and separating played a role.
And here's my point. Trauma is a wide and deep category. Maybe had things been different, if I'd had a home life where my parents were more supportive, had I been taught to cope, had I been able to talk about what I was going through and actually process it, maybe I wouldn't be multiple. Trauma is a lot of different things but it's the surface of what's really going on in a child who becomes a teen and eventually an adult with DID.
I never coped with any of the things I went through as a kid. I never processed them in any substantial way. I never healed. My brain was too full of PTSD for it to be able to do the things everyone else's brains did: unify the sense of self.
In this respect, we're all multiple as children. Being a parent, I see this everyday in my 4yo, who has two others: D & Monster. This is developmentally NORMAL for his age. It IS NOT at my age, 34yo. He is what is literally an endogenic multiple. I am not anymore. And I am not because I passed the threshold (7-10) without reaching that milestone because of PTSD, which universe willing, he will unify when he's old enough.
So here's what I'm getting to.
You can identify as Endo, and I'm cool with that. I can accept that you feel this way because I felt this way once too. I will happily accept you into spaces I inhabit that are intended for multiples. If you're multiple, you belong here.
I do have a problem with blogs promoting this like it's this... ugh... how do I say this without upsetting you? I think it encourages people to avoid processing and healing. I think it encourages people to avoid their feelings and ignore that shit in their childhood effected them. I think it encourages denial and a misunderstanding of what DID and OSDD are. I think it's harmful to everyone.
To have DID, to really be multiple past the threshold... you have childhood trauma - major and repeated stressors that you were unable to process and cope with. It's the only way this developmental milestone doesn't happen.
That doesn't mean you were physically or sexually abused. It really doesn't. Neglect is trauma. Bullying is trauma. Moving a lot is trauma. Being an outcast is trauma. Struggling with symptoms of neurodivergence or mental illness as a kid with no idea why it's happening or why people react to it how they do, or having sensory issues that no one accepts or helps you navigate (etc) is trauma. Being in a car accident is trauma. Death of a family member is trauma. Being constantly ignored is trauma. Not having enough food is trauma. Parents separating is trauma. Major illness is trauma.
There are so many fucking things that are trauma. It does not matter that you don't think it was ever "bad enough" to cause DID. Clearly it was. All it has to be is a thing child you felt couldn't be addressed, that child you couldn't cope with... so you buried it and it took up so much of your brain, that you were unable to unify (or at least completely).
You have trauma. Maybe it's not the shit movies were made of. Maybe it's not the kind of trauma that other people will readily express sadness or anger about, but it's still real and it still effected you.
No matter how you want to address your multiplicity, or how you desire to identify... you owe it to the kid you once were to tell them it's ok to feel however they did about whatever it was, and it's ok to talk about it and express those feelings.
I want you all to understand that this is a piece of healing you all need to look into - not because you need to magically unify as an adult (frankly, I think that's entirely misunderstood too), but because clearly SOMETHING effected you to make you who you are today, in all your multitudes, and you owe it to your future self to accept that you, like every person on this planet, has experienced trauma. You owe it to yourself to learn to accept that even if other people don't understand, your emotions exist for a reason and it's good and right to accept them and find outlets, which child you was unable to do.
And this goes ditto for anti-endos... or whatever the term for that is. And furthermore that those who identify as trauma-caused (etc) need to at least attempt to accept that plenty of folks who identify as endo... have DID/OSDD just like you. You can feel however you want about their identity, but the gatekeeping is toxic and it's harming the community, including survivors.
Hopefully the nuance isn't lost on... anyone.
If you need clarification on something, feel free to ask.
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