Open Sorcery

Tag: introspection

  • The Perils of Being Private

    Hey, everyone. My name is Tamsin (he/him). I was recently dormant for around a year, and it seems that I have emerged in the midst of a cascading shitshow and frankly I’m annoyed at Eight. Allēna alluded to a PTSD attack of epic proportions yesterday, and that’s due to Eight going through a whole lot of shit in approximately August-December 2022 and apparently not telling a goddamn soul about it. I have no fucking clue how he managed to go through all that fuckshit and not tell anyone about it, save for when he crafted and released our album Metacognition, but when it was triggered yesterday, much to the people involved’s horror, they heard about it for the first time.

    I knew we were private, but I had no idea we were that private. So we ruined what would have been a happy moment for the Zelda System and a dear friend of ours by having several dozen flashbacks over the course of about ten hours as the full ramifications of what Eight had gone through hit Allēna with the force of a category five hurricane.

    So yeah. I’m done being so private. The others in this trauma ridden brainhole can do whatever the fuck they want, but I hope they follow suit. And I’m going to be 100% honest with you here. We aren’t doing well. Before that set of fabulous PTSD breakdowns, Allēna was already one more goddamn thing away from a PTSD breakdown because last weekend, a friend of the Zelda System’s, who we shall call Midas, decided to simply Arrive in Milwaukee, giving those in the Zelda System no notice, expecting to stay at their place, trying to get them alone any chance he could, proceeding to drag them all around town, and dropping loads of cash on them when they were visibly tired and burnt out. Midas coordinated this with everyone who’s locally in their life but them, including their bosses, and when he got in, he arrived at their work first, completely blindsiding them.

    Everyone we spoke to about the situation said it was fucking bizarre and we kept getting a fucking awful feeling about what he was doing and everyone in the Zelda System was massively uncomfortable, so eventually my headmate Tindwyl stepped in and made himself the bad guy, citing the absolutely true nature of our agoraphobia and sleep anxiety to try and politely get Midas to fucking go back to where he came from and stop being such a fucking creep. Suffice it to say that this didn’t go over well with Midas, and before he skittered off all the way back to whence he came, he called us controlling and has not contacted the Zelda System since. Mission accomplished, and they felt relieved after the fact. We can handle being seen as controlling by a guy we really didn’t like anyway if it (consensually) keeps our partner safe. However, that fuckshow threw everyone off for the next few days, and we’re still dealing with residual bullshit from it.

    Additionally, Emerson is developing some pretty fucked heart issues and has a narrow window where he could get treatment once they’re bad enough to treat, but if he misses that window, he could die from any number of ways his heart could say “fuck this, I quit”. And she’s stressed out about having to make rent along with that because Emerson still has not found work when she’s struggling so bad herself and can barely muster the energy to reply to people, forget performing any kind of services for people or writing crowdfunding posts. Hell, I’m surprised she hasn’t spawned 30 new fucking alters with how stressed out she’s been these last couple weeks. She’s said on numerous occasions that what is going on with Emerson feels like watching our father die all over again.

    Then what should have been a happy moment occurred when the Zelda System got with a mutual friend of ours, only to set off the breakdown because there was a whole lot of trauma there due to an interlocking shitshow involving all of them back in ‘22 that I can’t really blame any of them for because MY DAMN HEADMATE APPARENTLY DIDN’T SAY A FUCKING THING ABOUT HOW MUCH HE WAS HURTING?????? TO ANYONE???? So nobody did anything wrong here, except Eight, who is now fucking AWOL off gallivanting somewhere in the ether, which I’m not pleased about. He heard the news and peaced the fuck out. I haven’t a damn clue when he’ll be back. Allēna, for her part, is resting down near the replica of Lake Erie which we still have in our headspace. This has taken a great deal out of her.

    Now, I’m trying to help Emerson work through some problems in his relationship with us, though I’m not dating him. It’s slow going and frankly I’m kind of aggravated with him, but we’re making headway slowly, so that’s good, at least. I’m taking a break to write here because I swear if I don’t put all of this down somewhere I’m gonna fucking explode. However, we’re gonna reconvene in about an hour so he can work through some sticky points in a writing project he’s doing. I don’t know how much help I’ll be, but I sure as fuck want to try.

    Anyhoo… stay tuned for more magic, y’all. We’ll be around. 💛

    -Tamsin

  • Yay, PTSD Art For The People!

    Hey, peeps. This is Allēna. My PTSD is kicking my ass today, but at least y’all get cool art out of it. We appear to be that special kind of creator that gets even more inspiration when our trauma comes back to kick our ass, taking us from decently prolific to FUCKING ON FIRE creatively in order to cope with the emotional pain of it all. Today has been no exception. First up is a poem that spilled out of me this morning before I went back to sleep for about three hours: 

    Let’s set the scene 
    The year is 2019
    I wake with the dawn and simply try and breathe -

    You give me tools and time and I will build my way through this rage 
    I will sing and chew my way through the bars of 
    this cage

    Five years later and I still can’t sleep
    I still feel stuck with the cards close to my
    concave chest 
    When will the craving subside? 
    When will I stop hungering for more? 
    Nothing short of everything? 

    They couldn’t take my mind
    No matter how hard they tried 
    They couldn’t strip me of the things I’ve seen
    They could never quite dull the hunger in my eyes

    The dawn breaks anew and I lay in a room 
    still trying to spread these battered wings
    surrounded by nothing but windows…

    And then I got inspired again this evening and painted what my synesthesia makes of “Didn’t It Rain” by Songs: Ohia, one of the songs that sonically shaped our album Metacognition. The PTSD attack is pertaining to the events that set off the hot streak that caused Eight to write and record the bulk of Metacognition, so I figured painting a song that he had on repeat at the time would help get some of the emotions out, and it did. I wasn’t present during that time, so I’m essentially having to process someone else’s trauma right now and all I know to do with it is make art and talk about art. I feel like a mess, even though logically I know it’s pretty damn healthy to process shit this way. Here is the painting for y’all:

    Didn’t It Rain by me.

    I’m not really okay, y’all, but I deal with shit like this regularly enough that I know how to get through it safely, and y’all get cool art in the process. I’m over at Emerson’s currently, but once I’m back at Sheik’s I or whoever else is in front will probably drop some more spare room roaring on here. 💛

    Fucking flashbacks.

    Anyway…

    Stay tuned for more magic!

    -Allēna, your traumatized, if hyper-prolific, super-admin. Fuck PTSD up the ass with a Joseph cactus. 😭

  • Safe

    Hey, everyone. Allēna here. There’s a thunderstorm raging outside and it’s pissing rain. However, the Zelda system is curled up against me, head on my right arm, arms tucked against my torso, with my legs slung over theirs. They look so fucking peaceful. It reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend of mine once – they said something to the effect of “nothing compares to the feeling of knowing that a person you love feels safe in your arms”. I have to agree with them. It gives me butterflies every time they or another one of my partners feels safe enough to cuddle up to me and be this clingy. I absolutely fucking love it.

    I spent most of the evening with an alter in their system that wishes to be known as Parlay, which was a lovely experience. Parlay is…odd, but a good kind of odd. He’s pretty soft spoken, with a deep, husky vocal tone and a direct, intense way of speaking that just melts me. He’s this sort of passionate that aches with an endless hunger for whatever interests him at that moment. Their body seems to vibrate when he’s in front. And he seems to know what he wants so deeply it becomes a visceral craving..

    We got to talking about that sort of thing and he told me he has wanted me since arriving in that system. He arrived in the midst of a fuckshow of epic proportions, and would often hear me ranting to Emerson about anything and everything. It wasn’t necessarily what I was ranting about that caught his eye, it was how I was ranting. He found my passion and anger incredibly attractive, just as I am attracted to his intensity.

    I’ve noticed that soft, intense people like him make me feel safe. The system seems to have more energy overall since we began. splitting time between Emerson’s and the Zelda system’s place, so much so that I was able to handle going up to the hospital for my doctor’s appointment on Friday without my cane and have been able to work through a great deal of what caused us to break up with Emerson in the first place. We’ve become a lot safer for each other.

    I have gotten back with Emerson after a series of heavy talks where we hashed a great deal out, this has been such a boon for me. The rest of my system is still varying degrees of peeved with Emerson, so the ultimate fate of those relationships is to be determined. That said, I’ve informed my headmates that if they’re dicks to Emerson, I will court martial them so fucking hard that they will not see the light of day for the next goddamn decade, so fucking help me. I don’t honestly know what to do in this situation. They don’t really make a handy guidebook for when your headmates could not be bothered with the man you love and who still loves them deeply. However, I figure not allowing them to outright make things worse is a decent place to start, and so we’re rolling with that. He’s currently writing lyrics while I write this post.

    I often feel similar cravings from Emerson as I do from Parlay, as well. Emerson is, for lack of a better phrase, all emotion, and it’s an interesting counterbalance to how much time I lurk in my mind and my body. So when he craves me or someone else in my system, it’s all-consuming. I used to not be able to meet him where he was in that, and it fucking sucked. However, now I can. I just hope it isn’t too late.

    Well, my night meds are hitting. My headmate Kalla has planned a very special rager for the headspace tonight, as well. She’s set up an enormous game of Capture the Flag in our headspace’s catacombs that is Lake Erie themed. One team shall be playing as Cleveland, Ohio, and the other shall be playing as Erie, Pennsylvania. I can practically see the carnage already, so I must wander off. I need to make sure they have the proper permits and shit.

    Stay tuned for more magic!

    -Allēna, Super-Admin (and Lake Erie Replica Inspector)

  • Weekend at Emerson’s

    Hello, everyone! My name is Sarah. I’m a newer alter in the system. I don’t really have a plan for what I’m going to talk about tonight, but I was told I still needed to post, so I guess I’m going to ramble.

    Today has been really nice. Thanks to Castor’s weed adventure the other day and us smoking smaller bowls today, today has been deliciously slow, relaxing, and lovely. Emerson has been in front for the most part today rather than Pendragon, with Allēna fronting on our side. These two have been broken up for some time now, so many of us were expecting today to go poorly.

    Andrew, who runs a betting ring in headspace, even says that a whole lot of people lost a whole lot of money today over it. It went really well, however, from what I can see, surprising both of them. I think Allēna really needed that experience yesterday and time with Pendragon to get her into the right frame of mind to spend time with Emerson without things going horribly. They enjoyed a nice day in each other’s company with our body nicely stoned.

    Emerson himself was in high spirits from the time I took front and still appears to be in a good mood. He’s been having a very rough time with the super-admins deciding in an emergency session to leave him. Pendragon was not included in this decision, but still….it’s been rough. I decided to take a chance on him because I could see the absolutely precious man beneath all the trauma and bullshit and really wanted both he and Pendragon to be okay. Today, that precious man is shining through. I think being around the two of us is doing him a lot of good. I adore him, so I always have fun when he’s around.

    I don’t know if she included this observation in yesterday’s post, but I completely agree with Allēna that this strain of weed allows us to exist without all of the barriers we were forced to put in place around our mind and behavior due to trauma. Holy shit, is that world a beautiful place… Her memories of the light pouring through the windows every time she gets stoned are filled with the most aching beauty and vivid color. The people we love are almost unearthly beautiful, as well.

    Allēna enjoyed messaging our partners while baked because that mental state gave her permission to say all of the things she had been wanting to say to them for years without the body eating itself alive from fear. It felt like she was finally able to treat them right. I don’t know how true that last part was, but gods, is seeing Allēna unfurl like this and take up space without fear beautiful. She is learning to embrace the attentions of the people she loves and trusts and see herself as they see her, not how her abusers did.

    Something else she observed from this experience is that when sober, she often has to consciously remind herself that it’s okay to experience desire of any kind, because she will forget it’s something she is even able to do. Even if it’s simply desire for company or a nice snack, she’ll forget that it’s something she can want and then have to consciously remind herself that it’s okay to want things before she can truly determine if she wants something.

    While high, it’s much easier to bypass that multi-step process, which doesn’t appear to simply affect Allēna. The body itself will ache and yearn for anything we desire consciously or unconsciously when we’re high, and it feels exquisite to them to actually fully experience desire instead of simply feeling flat most of the time. Allēna alone gets lost in the ache for hours, letting herself relax fully into the feeling and slipping into an almost meditative state as she daydreams. It appears to provide both the body and the mind some much needed rest.

    I would like to work on experiencing that more fully sober, but I know that will take some work on my part and on the system’s. Most of our emotions feel very good, and I want to get more experience with all of them. I think I may be able to do my headmates some good that way. I think reminding the system and the body that it’s safe to experience desire and to crave things and experiences is a good first place to start. Because how can you know what you want in detail if you think on some level that it’s unsafe to want anything? Of course you’ll shut down.

    All in all, I’ve really enjoyed today. If you’re reading this, I hope you’ve had an excellent day, as well. You are amazing!

    As always, stay tuned for more magic!

    -Sarah, (she/her), new girl

  • My Body Is A Cage

    Hey, everyone. Allēna here. Lately, I’ve been grieving the fact that the body is so disabled. Therefore, I don’t know how hopeful or positive this post will be, but I can promise that it’ll be honest.

    I was never abled. After having a stroke so young, I was always an odd duck. However, I could always fake being abled a whole lot better when I was younger. I could…power through better, so to speak. I know now that just because a disabled person can sometimes power through something, they really fucking shouldn’t. But I miss the days when I even could..

    I had to learn how to dissociate from the body and power through tasks that would otherwise be horribly physically painful (and often still were) in order to escape further abuse from my mother, Hera and thereby avoid becoming so burnt out I stopped functioning at all.

    I was going to hurt either way, so I might as well take the less painful option and give her hell on the way out, using my wrath at her as fuel. The extent to which Hera wanted my system to appear normal included refusing to accommodate our neurodivergence or even acknowledge it existed at all, except when it suited her. She chose instead to take a “my way or the highway” approach. So I was fucking pissed enough at her that my system and I ended up choosing the fucking highway.

    This crippled the body further, as we had to haul ass even harder to survive, despite hauling ass as a baseline for over the past decade. We were beyond burnt out, and when we started working through our trauma, we started to feel it deeply. Eight, who was our host at the time, could often barely get out of bed for weeks at a time. We’ve improved a great deal since that point, but we’re still largely bed and housebound due to chronic pain, fatigue, and agoraphobia.

    This makes me horribly sad a lot of the time. I’m still working on getting diagnoses and treatment for everything that’s ailing me health-wise, but I just want to bitch for a second because I’m in my feelings about it, even though solutions are very much in progress. I had gotten so good at powering through after college that I was training for a marathon and was often swimming, as well before the body rebelled, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to run cross country or swim outside again, seeing as the body takes psychic and physical damage whenever it’s outdoors for a number of reasons and we are, in essence, allergic to the sun. And I know that listening to my body and meeting its needs is more important than powering through in any situation, but it just… bugs me and upsets me to a huge degree. Ah, well. One day at a time, I guess. I’ll get there. ✨

    Stay tuned for more magic, y’all.

    -Allēna

  • Hope As A Practice

    Hey, everyone! Dria here. I’m Allēna’s cousin and a rather infrequent fronter, but I’m here today, so I figured I would scream into the void while I’m on deck for your viewing pleasure, because why not? We’ve challenged Sheik to write a blog post every day for the remainder of the week and I like participating in challenges. So I’m here, aboard the fucking bandwagon. Welcome to the shitshow, only Dria Edition today.

    I came across this post (shown below) while making my Facebook rounds and it got me thinking.

    The post I came across while scrolling. It was the most delicious synchronicity, really.

    I firmly believe that hope, like love, isn’t a feeling. Rather, it’s a practice. Sure, a person can feel hopeful or excited or optimistic about something, but it’s the practice of it, the action of it that gets them from that feeling to actually having the thing they’re hoping for in hand. So, by that logic, is perseverance through spite a substitute, or is it merely hope put into practice with a different motivation than blissful optimism? I would argue that it isn’t a substitute at all. Not by a long shot. Here’s why.

    I’m not an optimist. Perhaps I’m an idealist, and a very angry one, and I belong to a system of very angry idealists who believe a better world is possible via widespread, hands on action and by people putting in the work to make the world a better, easier place for everyone, not just the rich fucks in power. And they’ve been putting in that work for years. They don’t stand for bullshit, Allēna especially, and they’ve worked very hard to heal and build a life that, at its core, prioritizes rest and care, fuck whatever the rest of the world has to say about it.

    We were raised from a young age like many neurodivergent people socialized as women in Western culture, to be obedient, self-sacrificing for the good of everyone else around us at the expense of our own comfort and safety, to appear “normal”. There was one small problem there. We had gotten very sick as a tiny baby, had contracted heart failure due to a virus that attacked the body’s heart, and then had a stroke in quick succession, and had narrowly survived. This threw a wrench in the conditioning, because in order for us to appear normal, we had to be anywhere close to normal.

    People who are anywhere close to normal do not survive near fatal heart failure without a goddamned transplant, fucking massive strokes, then go on to walk, talk, sing, and teach themselves how to play numerous musical instruments by fucking ear. We were fighters with a will stronger than goddamned diamond even before the age of a year old. Fuck iron. Anything less a will made from something stronger than the hardest stone on Earth and we would be dead. And by the fucking gods, we were not fucking dying. Not yet. We were fucking pissed.

    Nobody believed we’d survive that objectively hopeless situation, but we fucking survived it and became goddamned polymaths to show for it. Forget normal. If we were normal, we would be long dead by now. We put hope into practice even when we didn’t realize that’s what we were doing simply because we didn’t give up the fight. Our mind broke into 1,700 pieces but our solid will did not, even after countless people wrote us off, mocked us, tortured us, abused us, and neglected us. We never fucking gave up.

    We called what we were doing by a number of names – rage, spite, revenge, survival – but what it ultimately was was hope as a daily practice. By putting one foot in front of the other and choosing to move forward when we didn’t want to and could have given up, we were practicing hope. And now, we’re 27. We’re safe. We saved ourselves, goddamnit. I’m writing this from a cozy bed in Sheik’s apartment. Because of their mad hope, their courage, and their fucking indomitable will, my headmates’ work in a variety of disciplines has saved lives and they’ve built an honest to gods shitposting empire on social media, as well. I’m proud to be a part of this cockroach system that understands that hope isn’t a fucking emotion and puts it into practice every day even when the odds are stacked and the game is rigged.

    So if you feel like your situation is hopeless, may you have the sheer guts to be spiteful for long enough to realize that you were practicing hope all along. ✨

    Peace out, esteem’d sewer rat warriors. As always, stay tuned for more FUCKING magic.

    -Dria (he/him), Rat Lord

  • Not Being The Hero

    Hey, everyone. This is Fen. Today was difficult, there are no two ways about it. Eight was in front for most of it, and he started feeling really stressed out about all the shit he had to get done. So he started talking to Emerson’s attorney alter Castor dragged through the mud the other day about everything going on. The basic gist of it was that he’s beyond exhausted because he is often placed in positions where he has to save the people he loves from all manner of horrible predicaments often outside of their control when he’s barely able to take care of himself or they’ll face a terrible fate, and he’s burnt out and done with the whole damn thing. He’s got the means and charisma to stand up for people and help them where they can’t help themselves, but he’s also just one guy trying to shoulder the weight of an unfair economic system and make a difference when things objectively shouldn’t be this way, and it’s hurting him.

    I can’t really blame him. Looking back through the logs, he’s had to carry himself through unspeakable horrors, often privately, and then after he was some measure of safe, he began helping those he loved get out because he couldn’t bear to see them suffer due to circumstances that they didn’t cause when he had the mind, skill, and connections to get them out. But now, years later, he’s tired and wants something better for himself and everyone he loves. The body is fucking bedbound, for crying out loud, and just because he can help doesn’t mean he always should, especially when the stress is so bad it’ll take him out for days to weeks. He knows it isn’t his responsibility to save everyone or even anyone but himself, but he worries about what will happen to the people he loves if he taps out. And honestly, I don’t know. I hate the thought of it as much as he does.

    So we’re at a fucking loss here. We are tired of being heroes, because every time we save someone, the burnout gets more intense, we’re placed on an even higher pedestal, and we just really want a goddamn vacation.

    I think that’s all I’ve got for y’all today, unfortunately.

    Stay tuned for more magic and internal screaming!

    -Fen

  • A Decade of Hidden Longing

    Hey, everyone! This is Eight. I haven’t been out in a bit, as I’ve been taking a much needed rest, and it seems like our people and the blog have been fucking hopping! I love to see it!

    We’re at the Zelda System’s place again this week, and Sheik herself is cradling me and taking a day nap. She deserves the rest, sweet thing. She works extremely hard and deserves to rest and play as hard as she works, so I’m happy to be held while she sleeps. It feels like a sacred honor to be a soothing and protective presence while our lovely partner sleeps so she gets good rest.

    We often think quite deeply when we’re over here to the point that it becomes almost meditative. It’s deeply restful for us to be around her and the others in her system as much as it is for her to be around us. Sheik is so gentle and tender with Allēna that Allēna ends up deeply processing and working through her deepest fears due to Sheik’s mere empathetic presence. It’s scary because Allēna must face these fears head on in order to communicate them with Sheik, but Sheik has never shamed or judged her for her fears and often responds in such a way that sharing is easier for her by the day.

    We deeply fear vulnerability as a system, but Sheik and her current headmates’ kind presences have made them safe to share with. Something that came up today that Sheik responded extremely kindly to was Allēna feeling guilty for asking for a favor. In a moment that should be a fucking case study for top notch communication, Allēna noticed she was feeling guilty and anxious for asking Sheik for that favor, so she told Sheik outright what she was feeling and asked point blank for reassurance, which Sheik willingly gave.

    From there, this uncorked a second wave of emotion and memories as Allēna explored the root of why she felt so guilty and afraid of asking for help while Sheik stood as witness. This is what she found.

    As a child and young adult, we were abused and neglected into keeping our needs and desires invisible and only meet or attain them on our own. Our mother, Hera, was very emotionally withdrawn, and had little tolerance for our – at the time – enormous emotions we had no idea what to do with. So we were severely emotionally abused out of expressing them in a way most people could recognize. However, Allēna resisted.

    She is far more emotional than she lets on to most, and turned to art as a means to express herself and protest in the midst of a family who had, for all intents and purposes, abandoned her. She became a highly skilled multidisciplinary artist, creating an enormous volume of work most people, even people who have known our system for years, have never seen. For a decade, she kept a journal not unlike this blog which she, Castor, and occasionally myself wrote in almost daily. It reverberates with the full spectrum of human emotion, sadness, punctuated with joy, with deep currents of rage and willpower most people don’t attain until midlife. And that’s just the journals.

    She was also an accomplished visual artist, turning to a brush and canvas when words failed her. She created a series of paintings in which she documented her various emotional states. Anger, her most common emotion – and the most forbidden to express during the time we were under Hera’s thumb – was her favorite piece. Its very existence was an act of rebellion. Slashes of black paint against large swaths of white space, which she knew Hera hated.

    Anger (unknown year) by Allēna

    The longer we work on our communication with like minded friends and partners, the more we unpick the years of trauma that kept the mountain of exquisite longing beneath the surface. We are very logical, yes, but we also have a treasure trove of emotion often stored in the body. The more we’re able to safely communicate it with people who can hold it with respect, the deeper we’re able to process and feel it. It’s deeply healing and freeing, and we’re eternally grateful to those who witness us. Thank you.

    As always, stay tuned for more magic!

    -Eight

  • First Breath After Coma

    Hello, all! My name is Castor. I’m the Ashley system’s first host, and I went dormant for fifteen years at the age of eleven. I titled this post “First Breath After Coma” because I was essentially comatose for fifteen years inside my own mind while my body and headmates carried on without me, and while I’ve been awake for about a year now, I feel like I’m finally breathing.

    As I write this, my beautiful girlfriend Sheik is cuddling me while she sleeps, and she’s a big reason why I feel like I’m finally able to breathe. I emerged from dormancy severely touch averse where most people are concerned to such a degree that I won’t front around many, but I went out on a limb with Sheik and I’m glad I trusted my gut. It’s a miracle she can touch me at all, as the touch aversion makes it feel for most like my skin is burning if most people even consider touching me. But her? She feels so wonderful she can touch me anytime she likes, and she’s very clingy with me, and I’m the same with her. I love it – and her – dearly.

    While I enjoy the company of the system’s other partners that I’ve met so far (the damned attorney in Emerson’s system is a notable exception, he annoys me and I tolerate him for my headmates’ sake), I’ve only really bonded closely with Sheik so far. I look forward to seeing how things develop with the others, provided they aren’t the lawyer type. The only lawyer whose company I’ve ever enjoyed is my great-aunt. There’s only room for one argumentative bitch system in this polycule, and by gods, we’ll defend you with our life, but I really hate being grilled. However, I digress.

    I used to not be nearly so touch averse, but was still very selective with who I clung to. My childhood was fucked, see: our Tragic Backstory posts, so I didn’t enjoy many members of my family. That being said, I loved my late grandmother. She was my fucking person. This woman was raised wealthy in New Jersey, very close to New York City. She was absolutely brilliant and delightfully eccentric, the closest thing to a living, breathing faerie I’ve ever seen.

    She met my paternal grandfather while she was running the damn lab where he worked as a pathologist, and became his second wife. She was a chemist by trade, read books backwards, was left-handed, and had warm, kind brown eyes with the loveliest violet rings around them. She was also a gourmet chef and baker and slept only about four hours a night. After she retired, she and my paternal grandfather became fucking art dealers, then retired properly to a sumptuously decorated log cabin in the Texas Hill Country.

    Her idea of retirement was running the fucking town where she lived, as she was involved in damn near everything. This woman was an inevitable powerhouse of indefatigable energy and warmth. She slept only about four hours a night, the perfect sleep schedule for my extremely anxious tiny self. Before the body came down with mononucleosis at the age of sixteen, we also only slept about four to five hours a night, and we are lucky if we get six hours a night now.

    So on nights I struggled to sleep, she would tell me stories about her youth in New Jersey until I fell asleep in her arms, then I would wander downstairs about four hours later at perhaps six in the morning, and she would already be hard at work baking something like two hundred cookies for a charity event. She would make me a small cup of coffee, as she knew I loved it, but it would give my small frame the jitters, and we would begin the morning slowly.

    She didn’t believe in sitting with one’s brain idle, but she did believe passionately in doing things one enjoyed to pass the time. So she was fascinating and took equal fascination in what I was doing. I was an unusual child, and she supported my dual special interests in computers and Greek mythology while making an effort to stimulate my mind and get me to explore new things. I gladly participated for the most part, as I loved her dearly and trusted her with everything I have. We explored a great deal of the Hill Country, went to more lovely antique stores than most children ever see, ate some truly amazing food at extremely inventive restaurants, and generally had a blast. She expanded my mind while still making me feel safe, and I loved her for it. Sheik reminds me of her in many ways, and I think that’s why she is so comforting.

    I only front once it’s safe now that the vessel is an adult and we’re free to make our own decisions, and it feels like I’m seeing color again for the first time since the events that led to me becoming dormant. I’m getting out more slowly, so are my headmates, we’re meeting new people, and bonding more closely with our partners and friends, not just Sheik and her compatriots in the Zelda System. We’re working our way out of a major depersonalization and chronic fatigue hole that we’ve been mired in for years, and frankly I love it. We’re actually learning how to be vulnerable and unguarded with our people, as well, and the results are beautiful. I would even venture to call them deeply magical.

    Speaking of magic, stay tuned for more of that! I’m excited to see how things go.

    -Castor, Original Host

  • The Blood of the Covenant

    Howdy, everyone. My name’s Fen. I’m one of the super-admins here as of late, and I have some thoughts about family, both chosen and blood that I’d like to scream about a bit, as we’ve been talking with our girlfriend Sheik about the system’s early life a great deal and that got several of us thinking.

    I see Millennials and Gen Z get a lot of shit for still living around or with their families, and frankly, I hate it. It’s complete and utter horseshit. Western culture prizes hyper independence to such an extreme degree that people forget now that we’re a fucking social species and have lived in huge multigenerational cohorts for most of human history. The setup we believe to be “traditional” – one man, one woman, and their children, living by themselves, separated from their in-laws and relying on none other but themselves – is a relatively recent invention and keeps people fucking isolated from other people they might otherwise form close connections with, share resources with, ask for help, etc..

    Now, I’m all for monogamy and heterosexual relationships if they’re consensual, negotiated, and entered into willingly, but I myself am a committed pansexual polyamorist who inhabits a large system who made the agonizingly painful decision to distance themselves from the multigenerational cohort they themselves were raised in due to years of abuse very few of those fucks were even willing to acknowledge.

    Yes, for all of Hera and Xavier’s big talk of being independent, resourceful, and pulling yourself up by your goddamned bootstraps, they ironically raised Castor, Allēna, and the others in the system before me in an enormous extended family network made up of great grandparents, grandparents, great aunts, great uncles, cousins, second cousins, the whole fucking nine yards, funnily enough.

    Neither of them would have gotten anywhere without both our maternal and paternal grandparents, who helped with damn near everything. Hell, Hera, Ms. “I’m The Most Normal, Independent Woman to Ever Live”, has never lived more than a thirty minute drive away from her parents and her sister for the body’s entire life. At last check, she lives next door to her parents and they knocked the fence between their land down so they could visit each other easier.

    This by itself isn’t a bad thing. I simply find it hilarious that Hera was completely incapable of practicing what she so thoroughly attempted to beat into Allēna, independence and normalcy. Hera, that ain’t normal by today’s standards. Sociologically, it’s completely right, but it sure as fuck ain’t considered normal.

    Once my headmates were estranged from them, they didn’t want a bullshit nuclear family type setup in the life they were going to build for themselves. Allēna’s first marriage to Fang showed her that she didn’t want that. Anything that even smelled like compulsory, possessive monogamy and the trappings that came with that were not her or the rest of the system’s thing. Even Eight’s very serious relationship with his beloved Delta, which is still very loving despite now being platonic, was very open and they both had a wide range of deep emotional connections despite being initially monogamous. They were possessive of each other, but only because they wanted to be. Eight loved Delta more than anything, and did his utmost to show it in every way he could, and they enjoyed it when he was possessive of them, and vice versa. They both came into the relationship having built fine lives of their own and gotten to know themselves and each other deeply, and most of the work there was learning how the other communicated best. It was – and still is – magical, in many ways.

    When Eight and the rest of the system got into polyamory, they took what they had learned from the relationship with Delta and crafted that same magic, only with multiple committed relationships simultaneously. Perhaps the most interesting part of it all is that I’ve noticed that we’ve built that same sort of non-nuclear extended family network the original alters here were raised with, only with people we chose. We’re still close with a few members of our blood family, as well, but they were the select few brilliant black sheep who were good to us well into adulthood, so we chose them, as well. Our close friends are also an integral part of this web, and we don’t want to do life without a single soul present.

    Our life is certainly not normal, but it is rich and full of color and joy. If you’re reading this, you’re probably someone we love and treasure. Thank you for being here. Your presence means everything to me and to my system. Always remember that “blood is thicker than water” is actually incorrect. The original saying is “The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb”.

    As always, stay tuned for more magic!

    -Fen