Our computer is broken and hanging on the edge between life and death, so I am writing this on my phone. Hopefully that doesn’t fuck up the format beyond repair. We copied the in-progress plots of our current short story and novel onto our main typewriter, so now the computer is out of commission until we can buy a new one and transfer everything important from the hard drive.
So, you know those memories that destroy your perception of life as you knew it? Those, “What the fuck? How can this be real? I’m gonna need proof before I can believe this.” punches to your existence? I thought we were done with them. And that was apparently a joke that the gatekeepers were playing at my expense. (Yes I know this is freaky for you too, Marionette. I deal with life using hyperbole and sarcasm.)
Lothair’s area is the only previously ignorant subsystem of ours that seems adamant that these memories are real. Everybody else is reeling. They aren’t BAD memories. They’re good memories that were apparently gaslit out of us, and we are having a very hard time accepting their possibility. Proof is possible. It will just take time. Months of time. And how do you wait months of time when you’re trying to not accept the good memories in case they get pulled out from under you?
Pre-marriage, I only had one good memory that belonged to me as an alter. Most of my fronting time was spent among creepy-ass adults, and one day a particularly disturbed fellow victim was kind enough to twist my arm so hard that it made a distinctly un-arm-like sound. It hurt all day, triggered memories all day, and so I had/got to front all day. I was able to spend time being babysat by my great aunt, who is a decent human being.
Now Lothair is claiming that he has whole archives of good and safe memories that his subsystem had hidden from him, and that technically belong to all of us by right. He’s blockaded himself innerworld so that nobody can convince him they aren’t real. And they seem to be real. They really do. They are piecing together memory fragments that had been inexplicable, drawing up more alters and memories, making us feel like people. But I can’t trust it. I refuse to trust it without proof. Lothair may view “betraying the memory” as a crime he is unable to commit and he may be okay with letting himself get hurt over that. He has ALWAYS been this way, and he has always been a stubborn idiot. Maybe I’m a stubborn idiot too, but more in the sense of, “I’ll take that slap to the face in exchange for the right to insult you.” I knew that my abusers were terrified of visible signs of abuse that would end in a trip to a hospital, and I took full advantage of knowing what lines they were afraid to cross. But I don’t like trusting things that I can’t prove.
I guess I’m in a position where I’m safe, more or less, to ignore the memories until I can get proof. Which is going to fuck me over emotionally if they prove to be real, but by then Lothair can front again and take over most of my innerworld jobs. I’m sure he won’t mind in the slightest or have anything pressing on his mind.
-Simon