Life is…hard

I am well aware that I’m posting this on a site full of people who will look at this title and be like “NO SHIT”.

Life is hard.

Life is difficult.

However, I haven’t been allowing myself to truly acknowledge this for myself.

At least, not until recently.

And by recently, I mean…yesterday.

When my “comedy mask” broke apart.

Though, I guess…I didn’t really ‘allow’ myself to do this.

I just…reached a point where I could no longer pretend that life ISN’T hard.

**deep breath**

Holy shit is this difficult to talk about.

I’m ‘supposed’ to be the “ADHD-fueled gamer boi host” of our system.

A host that doesn’t even fit the “definition” of host that our system has heard the most commonly.

It was always “find whoever fronts the most, and that’s your host!”

We…didn’t have enough “safety” for my role to front more than anyone else. I was our system’s host only in the way where a host masks and hides away the disorder from everyone.

Switches? What switches? It’s just “adhd-brain”!

Changes in things we like to do/eat/drink/wear/etc? Nah, just my neuro-divergent ass doing ALL the things.

OBVIOUSLY nothing weird/unusual here.

No alters.

No amnesia.

I’m just you’re spacey, loveable dork.

Maybe I never truly was a host, then? 

I’m honestly not sure. 

I probably should look up the different terms for myself and let myself figure it out. 

But at the same time…does it matter?

If this role of mine is something I’m finally at the point of being able to let go…is there a purpose in naming it?

I guess we’ll see what happens in the future with that one.

For now, I want to try to encapsulate what I’m feeling, and what led to my mask breaking apart in order for me to reach this point.

First. I want to introduce you to some very big influences for me. These are people/characters/etc that have shaped me over my entire existence.

…now, ignoring the ABUNDANT amount of the couleur green that you just got subjected to… (^^” that is one of the weirdest things to see when I put these alongside each other)

All of these people/characters.

They all are full of energy.

They are (or have at some point been) of the same “adhd-fueled gamer boi” that I was talking about earlier for our system.

They’re examples of the sort of person we wanted/want to be.

Never giving up.

Never losing hope.

I…honestly feel like I have failed the very /essence/ of these wonderful people/characters.

Because yesterday, after years of bottling up all of the ‘negatives’, I broke apart.

Or at least, my mask did.

And it made me think.

None of these people/characters are /always/ happy-go-lucky.

Most of them have cried at one point or another.

(Looking particularly at Steve and MatPat rn)

And that brings me to one of the biggest hits my mask of perfect happiness has taken lately.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8R1_TqU68yo

We came across this while we were high, the day after it was released. We had seen an episode of one of the theory channels that we thought would be really nice to watch while high, and it referenced that MatPat was retiring, and suggested watching the video I have linked for the explanation.

Needless to say…that was not the ideal time/circumstances for learning this news.

Especially when I/my system have been watching MatPat’s theory channels for longer than any of us can remember (hahaha…amnesia jokes ^^)

But seriously.

MatPat has been one of the few good real-person creators that have stuck with us for so long.

Even Ethan’s transition away from gaming didn’t hit us so hard. Though…that may have honestly been part of the start of my mask breaking apart, now that I think back that far.

And like, hey, I’d much rather MatPat retire and leave behind such a wonderful community, which will surely continue to grow and thrive for as long as the internet exists, over having him leave due to anything negative.

But oof

It hurts.

But hey…it also was part of what led me to this moment now, as I’m writing this post. (Hopefully it’s making at least some sense, too, and isn’t just some weird ramble…)

It was actually as I was rewatching this Goodbye Internet video, as well as the follow-up “Goodbye Internet Meme Review” today that I started to really realize that, even the happiest among the people/characters I shared…

Well, they’re not that way 100% of the time.

The people are well…people.

The characters…yes, they might not be human. But they also hold emotions, and those emotions are expressed in their sources.

It’s not always happiness.

There’s anger.

There’s sadness.

There’s love.

There’s even hopelessness.

Hell, even mr “Ultimate Hope” was confronted…REPEATEDLY…with despair.

But he didn’t allow it to stop him from fighting.

I can be sad. I can lose hope. I can want to give up.

I can…wish that I didn’t exist.

That isn’t a ‘failure’. That’s…having emotions. That’s being…human. (Sucky as being a mortal human is)

Me losing hope doesn’t mean that I don’t WANT to have hope.

It just means…I don’t have it right now.

And that’s okay.

Rewatching MatPat’s farewell, and listening to how he was shifting his focus to the various projects and ideas he’s had, as well as being able to focus on his family…it also made me realize another thing.

Not only is it okay to be MORE than just “adhd-fueled gamer boi”

But…when that doesn’t need to be my job/role anymore, that means I get the chance to shift MY focus.

I can actually figure out what /I/ like.

I don’t have to pretend to like everything any of our alters mentions liking in order to maintain continuity.

I don’t have to act excited and engage in talks about Friday the 13th, Saw, or other horror franchises. I don’t have to pretend to enjoy reading Dostoevsky or Tolstoy in my downtime. I don’t have to pretend to fill in crosswords or cryptograms for fun.

There are alters in my system that enjoy those things.

But they’re not /me/.

I’m honestly…not a huge fan of horror. The chasms/depths in TotK has been MORE than enough for me.

And hey…maybe that makes me a bit “lame”.

But hey…we’ve been through enough trauma that some of us just…want happy/nice things.

I’ll let Alexei watch and play the horror things. That’s something that they really enjoy.

I’ll let some of the girls and Talyn read their books. I don’t want to invest that much of whatever brain-power is needed to comprehend and enjoy the types of authors they do.

I’ll let Vessalius and our spies deal with the crosswords and ciphers.

Instead, I can go towards what I actually WANT to do.

I want to be my WHOLE self.

And wow…I’m not done with this blog post, and I’m already able to offload a LOT.

I don’t have to mask my emotions.

I don’t have to pretend I like/enjoy things that I don’t….or at least, I don’t have to crank that excitement up to the same level as those alters who actually DO enjoy it. 

(For example, I LOVE this one anime/manga called Bungo Stray Dogs. Not only is Fyodor Dostoevsky a character in it, but our wife/partner-system has been quite impressed by the way it threads themes from his books into the show. I love watching the show, reading the manga. I even like theorizing about what might happen next. But I’m not about to go and pick up Crime and Punishment or The Idiot to read in my free time to do so.)

But this revelation brings up an important question.

What DO I want/like to do?

Ha ha ha

That…

Is a question I’ve had trouble with since the start of our self-awareness.

People have flat-out asked what I like.

And the answers have been…varied, at best.

The most consistent have been: “Funko Pops”, “Dungeons & Dragons”, “Hamilton”, and “Legend of Zelda”

Funko Pops…huh. I think I was maybe the one who started collecting them. But we mostly collect figures that we have fictives of. So…it’s more of a system-wide thing at this point.

Dungeons & Dragons…I DO really enjoy it. However, the one group we play with has…not been good for our mental health a lot of times. It’s been super triggering, and in a way that causes me to switch out more often than not. So again, that’s more of a system-wide thing at this point.

Hamilton…hahahahahahahahahahaha. Remember how I’m a host-type and not ‘supposed’ to hold trauma? Well, that failed during/around 2020, with a few relationships I got myself into. Hamilton was one of the things that got heavily tangled up with that…even though we liked it prior to then.

Legend of Zelda. That’s not really fair. Legend of Zelda has been a MAJOR special interest for our system since forever ago. So yeah, I like that. And yes, Link is over in my area of the system. Yes, I do really, really enjoy Legend of Zelda. But I don’t want that to be all that’s associated with me.

I want to be a whole person.

I want to be more than what I’ve been so far.

But I also don’t want to exist?

Seems like a bit of a conflict, there, huh.

Maybe I just don’t want to exist in the state I’m in now?

I think that’s what I’m hoping, at least.

Ha.

There’s that hope sneaking in there again.

Maybe I’m uniquely cursed to be optimistic even in my suicidality?

So maybe, if this hope/optimism is creeping up, I should continue to write this post.

Maybe, through ramblings and rabbit-trails, I’ll be able to figure out what I DO like.

Hm.

Well…I like the couleur green. (Which now I wonder if that has been subconsciously thrust into me with the people and characters I pictured before…probably not entirely, but it is an interesting coincidence).

I love my wives/girlfriends and husbands/boyfriends and partners/spouses in our partner system. “Laleh”. This was the name I was first given, back when both systems thought we had double-digits at most for alters in our systems. Now I know that “singular alter” by other names.

Annabelle. The fiery redheaded ragdoll. The one who, if she wanted, I would sit and watch the Annabelle movies with, though I’d probably be freaked out by the end of one. I know the Annabelle doll is where she got her name. And, even with my apprehension to horror, I can appreciate the beauty in that. Annabelle may be a doll, but she’s not going to let that stop her from being a terror to people who deserve it (the alter, that is…I don’t make any guesses about the actual doll and whatever may have attached itself to that.). And I’m very proud of her for fighting for herself and her system in any and every way that she can. I love you, my cutest cutie pie of a wife <3

Alice. The dark-haired wielder of the vorpal blade, which goes snicker-snack. A violent flurry of beauty and determination. Platforming-extraordinaire in world of gaming. She’s often fronting right with Annabelle, as being a ragdoll makes it difficult to move. She’s supposedly the one who kinda rejected me to begin with. (More complicated than that, as I wasn’t actually involved in that. One of my headmates noticed my feelings for “Laleh”, and then sent her “Won’t Say I’m in Love” from Disney’s Hercules and basically just said “this you?”, to which she pretty much flat out said that she had no interest in me at all…but things have definitely changed since then ^^ and tbh, it may not have actually been Alice with that, for all I know now). No matter what, Alice doesn’t take crap from people. She stands up for what she believes is right and true and…is basically just a straight-up badass. I love you, my beautiful wife<3

Mikhail. Fire and smoke personified. Very cute, both with me and with the others he likes. (Polyamory between the systems for the WIN! lol ^^). I personally haven’t fronted around him as much as others in my ‘area’ have, but I know that the times I have seen him, I always have felt safe. He may be crabby a lot of the time, but I know it at least partly comes from seeing so many things he loves get broken and/or corrupted right in front of him. He doesn’t want that to happen again, and…oof. I’m sorry, Mikhail. You’re just fronting more again, and you’ve already had to see/hear about a boyfriend/husband (what stage of relationship is ours???) of yours being…more suicidal than I have ever outwardly expressed before. That…doesn’t seem fair to you. I know you aren’t wanting me to mask it or anything…but I am sorry that it timed out to being one of the first things that came up. I love you, wonderful boyfriend/husband of mine <3

Frei. Probably my most unique partner, in terms of…I’ve fronted with them a lot, but can’t remember nearly anything about her, for reasons which I shall explain. She’s cute and smart, and brilliant in every interaction I’ve had. However, they are a fictive from a game called Hello Charlotte. This game is incredibly important both to our partner system and to our own system. HOWEVER, it is also triggering af and hardly anybody in our system is allowed to remember much about it…and I probably know/remember the absolute LEAST. I have vague memories of knowing that she’s the Oracle character…but when I try to remember more than that, I just…crash into a wall. But I hope she knows that I love her and will always listen to any source talks, even though I cannot guarantee that I’ll retain any of the information. I love you, my amazing mind-librarian of mystery(mystery, at least, to me)!

I know there’s others that make up “Laleh”. I know I’ve fronted with them. But between amnesia and more knots of alters being untangled, I have lost the names that go with my memories and feelings. But I hope each of them know that I love them, and want to be with them forever. <3

“[But Gabriel, weren’t you just saying that you’re extremely suicidal? That you want to give up on everything? How then are you going to make so bold of a statement that you want to be with your wives/boyfriends/partners/husbands/girlfriends/spouses/etc forever, if you can’t even promise them tomorrow?]” (Note: Alexei didn’t actually say that, but it kinda sounded like their voice as I was typing it out)

Well…it’s true that I can’t fully promise any of them ‘tomorrow’. But I can promised them that I will try to exhaust every possibility I can think of before I eliminate myself from existing. Especially since to truly guarantee that, I’d be taking so many more people with me…it wouldn’t just be my friends and partners losing me. It would be my friends losing their partners too. And I would be the one responsible for murdering them.

So yeah…I am still very suicidal. I still…really don’t want to exist. I still don’t actually know what I like. I don’t know if this feeling of not wanting to exist will go away. But, at most, I hope that I can go away in the form of integrating with larger parts of my ‘area’. To disappear, but to not erase everyone. To not even fully erase myself, but to…change.

But before that, I really want to try existing…but honestly.

I want to try existing as a depressed, anxious potato.

I want to try existing and not pretending to be happy…especially around my partners (I feel like I honestly have the hardest time allowing myself to not be happy around them. But that’s because of dumb thoughts like “Oh…they have enough to worry about. I don’t want them to have to worry about me, too.” Which…is stupid. If I worry about them all the time, of course they’re going to worry about me, too…hell, some of them having been poking at my mask for ages at this point anyway.)

Blah.

Living honestly sucks.

[You’re the one who’s always said we need to]

…that was a lot easier when ‘living honestly’ was a masquerade of singularity.

I’m sorry that I failed in being my honest, full self before.

But I guess here’s to hoping (once again it appears) that I can figure out things I like and want to do.

I know I was hoping rambling would help.

But maybe it’s also okay that it takes time.

Welp. Here goes.

-=-=-=- Written by “Gabriel” -=-=-=-