Leap of Faith

I took that leap of faith again.  Telling someone in real life about my mental-health (yes, the actual detail) and crossing my fingers it doesn’t end up biting me in the ass.

It hasn’t so far, but I keep waiting for the ax to fall.  It always has before.

I am managing to remain mostly co-conscious, but there are a few inners who are pissed about my decision.  They still remember the last time with stinging clarity.

The fact that I told a male makes it all the more agitating for them.  It doesn’t matter that the situation is entirely different and he is a totally different sort of guy.  One of the few “safe” ones I’ve encountered in my life.  He’s a really great friend who has his own awesome life, residence, and social life (including a lovely girlfriend who has excellent taste in cars).  I always have a great time hanging out at his place or going to the drive-in with them.  One of the few places I can really relax, even before I ended up telling him that secret aspect of my psyche.

But the fact that he’s been a great support is unfortunately, a bit triggering to parts of me.

That idea of support, of true honest, no walls-up sort of support, is terrifying.  Every single time I’ve done that, it just ruins things.  Everything.  I go back to square one and it’s almost as if it’s worse than if I had never reached out in the first place.

But I can’t exactly go through life being a complete coward.  That would be a pretty poor existence.  And I know I can’t keep going forward at the rate I am without some sort of break system.  The wheels are close to falling off.  Not to say I want someone to hold the wheels on, but it’s nice to have a sort of “mechanic” to be honest about the make and model of my car so he can help me purchase and install the correct axle or joints or whatever is fucking me up.

Wow.  That car analogy was weird.

So despite the slight backlash of my system, I’m really hoping this leap of faith won’t turn out like all the others.  Really hoping.

Let’s see if I can turn some of this pessimism into optimism.

Pen

Integration is basically a four letter word to me.  It terrifies, destroys, triggers, and corrupts my system.

However, over the past couple weeks, we’ve come to be more co-conscious than we’ve ever been.  It was probably a bit noticeable on this blog (especially in hindsight) with a lot of the recent entries being more generalized and categorized under “Multiple Alters”.

To mark this occasional, we decided I need a new name to be known as when we’re more co-conscious.  On the blog, that is.  Obviously in day to day life, I go by the body’s legal name, which is becoming a bit more comfortable to us lately (Army helps immensely with the sweet way he’s been saying it lately).

In a rare unanimous decision, we decided upon “Pen”.

It is not short for anything.  It comes out of the first part of this blog’s name, yes, but also because most of us enjoy some sort of hobby or activity with a pen- whether it be blogging, writing, composing music, doodling, or taking notes.

It’s been nice to have the co-consciousness.  I now know what some of my DID friends have been talking about.  It isn’t integration at all.  We’re all still here, still separate.  But there can be this beautiful unity.

It’s not entirely perfect yet- Victoria and Daria have yet to join in, and Rika does tend to keep herself slightly free/loose in order to observe the world more closely in her paranoid way.

But things are more balanced.

And the self-harm is at an all-time low.  Part of this is a pact we made with Army to be better about this and truly reach out for help if we need it.  But part of it is this unity.

I hope it can continue.

-Pen