Imagination, subdivision, quite a bit of multiplicity

[azurelunatic]

Sometimes I feel like I don't particularly exist: that, if I wanted to, I could, would, and have warped myself out of recognition with myself, just because I thought it would be fun.

I am a physical body. My brain is stored in the physical body. Inside the brain is stored a set of memories, and several sets of preferences and patterns of choices and viewpoints from which to view the memories.

I'm learning which things I prefer, which preferences are mutable, and which things I tamper with at my own peril.

Sometimes, I feel I've drifted so far from where I come from, that I wonder if my past isn't all imaginary. A year ago, I felt like I'd lived in Arizona forever, and I came up with a memory of Alaska that seemed so far-removed as to be false. I remembered stacking cushions from the orange couch into the table that Mama had made. I couldn't put it in context. I wondered if I'd just listened to a friend, if I'd actually lived with that family at all, if I wasn't adopted.

I'm not very associated with Marah right now. I don't think that's a good sign. There was much upsetness on Friday, the low-lying kind that evidently no one can detect. I was conscious, in myself, of being quiet and tired and hiding. Evidently I looked as though I was having the time of my life. votania couldn't even tell.

There's got to be a psych word for the opposite of dissociation. In dissociation, one classifies internal events as being external, and unrelated. Marah and I have dissociated. (That split happened ... began happening... when I realized that I liked, of all my possible selves, the one I was around Darkside, the most, and began consciously choosing that.) In the opposite, one sees things external to oneself, and begins internalizing them. People often do it with movies, books: identify themselves with characters, with cultures, and then absorb it, at the shallowest levels of immersion to the deepest. River absorbed Japanese culture that way. I got no small bit of Jewish culture that way.

I'm wondering if some of my odd social effects are due in large part to my subdivision. Do y'all think of me as a very unhappy or quick-to-anger/prone-to-violence person? Because I know that, in the aggregate, that I am. Just, since I keep that out of my main persona, I [garnetdagger + Marah] keep that from Joanie, that doesn't show up so much here as it might. When I ['Ni] get mad, it's either something slow-boiling like righteous indignation or outrage, or something that flares up and then burns out when the issue's over. When garnetdagger gets mad, it's cold, pressurized, and long-lasting, display calculated for effect. And she neither forgets nor forgives. (Though I may consider worrying about some dumb-shits beneath me. Like Shawn. He's pathetic and I wouldn't hesitate to craft him a new one should the opportunity arise, but I won't court it nor give him too many openings for new shit to pull. He can fuck himself without my help. --D) Or that.

Like Linux, I modularize. I don't have some personality traits I need? Simple. Craft a new personality, test them in her, and then integrate her once the initial bugs are worked out. Much easier that way.

I wonder who got Angela/Alys. I think Naomi got Angela and garnetdagger got Alys. Marah doesn't believe in Angela. Odd, because Marah's name is Biblical, even... Historical fourth-position personalities, minor and brief: Angela was the religious one, Christian, circa 1994-5, and Alys was the diplomatic yet ruthless one, ref Alys Vorpatril of lmbujold, 2000.

It's really always been three or four of us. The Bujold shows in that I tend to call it "9th auditor" position, or "fourth Auditor", though it would be more properly "fourth, Auditee".


I can imagine myself as different, and if the difference sticks, it will come to pass. Method acting, research, and a way of engraving new patterns and habits in the brain.