The Journey to Understanding our Plurality - Ivek & Verse

(Note: not every system’s experience of plurality is going to be like ours, please be kind yourselves and others)

This post is a short recap about our experiences and our story rather than about the clinical definitions and bullet point by bullet point list of ‘symptoms’ we have as a system. Instead of going over the medical history and many of the pain points we experience while being plural (although we may touch on a few), we want to mostly share how we came to understand we are plural, and how it affects us today.

When we were growing up our “Imaginary Friends” didn’t stay “imaginary”, or our alter egos we played ‘pretend’ with, became what some people would call ‘Alters’ in our system. (Although we prefer the term headmates.) Since when we were young we can remember talking to the voices, drawing what the voices would look like and just hanging out with ourselves and these disembodied voices that only we could hear sometimes. These voices did not exist in a vacuum, they had started with specialized purposes for us to interact with like a friend or a protector or someone to keep us company on long stressful car rides. Once we got a little older though the voices started to grow from these one specialized purposes into them reaching out and waiting to talk about different things and interact more fully with the environment we were growing up in. Suddenly my playmate asked to be there for dinner, or the protector started having more feelings than just bravery. This was all before we knew about plurality, Other Specified Dissociative Disorder (OSDD) or Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). We kept quiet about our friends/voices/headmates soon after school started because most people didn’t have ‘imaginary friends’ anymore and definitely didn’t talk to or interact with them- but we did. 

Things changed in high school when with our close friend at the time we started presenting as “Alter Egos” or personality types that felt more comfortable from moment to moment with gaps of memory and unbiased amount of time between them ‘changing out’. (Not knowing these were in fact separate people/headmates and we were switching!) We presented outwardly, and in our art, how their egos looked, interacted with one another and other people. Our friend was super adaptive and was understanding of the various needs of each “Alter Ego.” This went on in secret, with rare discussions with other close friends on occasion when we felt we couldn’t stop an “Alter Ego” from fronting or to explain our rapid changes in behaviors. 

Once high school was over we soon left our hometown to attend college. None of our friends who knew about the ‘personalities’ were going to attend this school with us. We thought that we wanted a fresh start with one ‘ego/personality’, to be ‘normal’, so we buried all the feelings, hid the drawings and notes we wrote to each other while fronting and tried to move on as we would have perceived a singlet’s life to be. There are still names and faces we can remember from back then when we buried everything- some who have seemed to have faded into the background and we haven’t heard from since this dampening on who we are.  

Once college started we were well off: getting organized, staying focused, getting things done, getting good grades, keeping our life together as a fresh adult. We kept things tamped down pretty well early on but things got tense around early college too. Personal life changes, friend drama, money troubles, the general stress of school- things became less stable the longer the school year went on. We found that time started to pass more strangely and we had to be a lot more organized to keep our class schedules and assignments straight. Still not knowing about plurality or DID we continued functioning as if we were a single person just a really really organized single person. I had briefly mentioned these ‘personality changes’ to my roommate at the time, in fear of what could happen to our relationship if I didn’t share and one of the ‘egos’ came out. They were confused but generally accepting (for a time) and school continued on.

Late freshman year our experiences of time blindness, amnesia, and our notes started getting worse, along with our mental health. It was difficult to determine what was wrong- we still held onto our grades and some of our fast fading relationships but we were losing composure. First we were in class, then blink playing video games, then blink having a breakdown, then blink walking through campus going… somewhere? We got lost constantly- not only on campus but we were losing ourselves in ourselves. It was rough. Even sometimes unable to control our own actions because it was a different headmate we didn’t know about who was controlling the body. Taking actions that did not align with the singlet persona we had made throughout the previous year. We knew it was out of our control again, we were losing grasp on day to day life and our personal relationships with others. Even getting into a huge fight with my at the time roommate over these behavioral changes- we stopped speaking after that. 

Luckily and thankfully during this time we were a part of a couple campus groups and had made some friends outside of our roommate who were more accepting. When we started to be in class and then blink, be with friends studying and then blink, we were alone in a dark classroom in the middle of the night- things started getting really scary- but not only for us, for our new friends too. They were concerned. Soon after a very stressful incident similar to the one mentioned I came out and started talking about these ‘egos’ and ‘imaginary friends’ I have had since when I was really young. Talking about these ‘egos’ that remerged with our close friends at the time helped us gain some foothold of stability, but it was shaky. They would field a lot of phone calls from us asking where we were on campus, help us stay organized in our classes and start on campus therapy to help with the overhanging stress and anxiety from the whole situation. By senior year we came to live with these same close friends and they accepted us, all of us. Even if it was difficult they were always supporting us.

Once I had gotten comfortable in my new living situation with my closest friends the ‘personalities’ became stronger, took on lives of their own and left all of us feeling confused. I would have small outbursts of different behaviors, my work ethic would change drastically from moment to moment, along with our rising levels of stress. To the advice of our friends we decided to turn to looking online and with outside campus therapy resources. Our doctor suggested we look into OSDD (to which we would be getting a diagnosis within a year).

Once we started our own digging online we came to read books and posts and find others on social media. We went to Twitter (back when twitter was better) and made connections with other people who had some experiences like us. We started cataloging the ‘alters/headmates’ and their likes, dislikes, triggers, etc. Making Picrews or avatars of what they looked like. Making space to talk with each of them and find how to best support them and ourselves. Things started making sense and more headmates started to fill the mind and headspace. We started getting specific therapy that targeted us working with each other as opposed to against each other in living a fulfilling life/lives. And over the years the number of headmates grew, each with their own degree of ‘solidness’ or ‘connectivity’ to the system. 

Now-a-days we have a handful of headmates who front very often and even for long periods of time, then a couple who come out every now and then, some who have faded into the background or don’t come out much anymore. We also have some floaters who come in and out of the headspace without being very tactile or concrete themselves. It is hard to balance the amount of wants and desires and people with the select amount of time we have in a day. So, we are handling life as we can and being supportive of each other. 

Our journey has been a lot of drought and heavy rain in metaphor with our plurality. There is nothing then there is everything. It is hard to share these things but I knew some people out there might find this experience helpful in understanding plurality as a whole or even in their own experience of plurality. If you have any questions let us know and we will do our best to respond in kind! Thanks for reading!