Writing while dissociating | part two

Dissociating feels awful to me, although I've heard others find it a gift to escape painful moments. To me, it feels like my soul is leaving my body.

I wrote about this once before last year. It was around the time I finally met an alter named Vexis formally, but I didn't know their name yet or what they looked like. They were just an Intruder, or a Voice I often thought was my own, despite it whispering horrible things for many years that I was confused by. It hadn't come from me. Everyone else in my head fam have always been supportive, kind, and loving.

When Vexis and I started to work together, and split finally from being integrated (we did the reverse, I guess), we co-wrote their story. It's a short horror story I’ve since integrated with a much larger work called Open Wound.

Vexis wasn't yet so friendly, to put it mildly, but I wanted to work with them and show them that I respected them as much as the others. As much as we all respect each other. I wanted to welcome them to the family, so to speak, because I believed anyone could change. Even head mates.

During the writing, I dissociated often and tried to fight through it. A lot of the time, it was Vexis coming through. The story ended up being in both first and third person, which is enough of an indicator of that. It certainly wasn't written for any other purpose than to finally give Vexis a voice. I hadn't intended to publish it or do anything else with it.

Dissociating feels awful to me, although I've heard others find it a gift to escape painful moments. To me, it feels like my soul is leaving my body, and everything feels far away and like static. My vision grows black around the edges, and another interesting thing happens sometimes.

The last time I dissociated while writing, it was last night while revising the first book in my series about all of us, starting with my and Byleth's story. At first, the second antagonist was a nightmare entity I'd pulled from my sleep paralysis nightmares, and it was feeding off of my alias in the story, which caused my anorexia and illness for a few years. That was before I met Vexis.

I started to replace the nightmare entity with Vexis last night, which involves some additions to previous chapters and major revisions of part two. During a particularly lengthy explanation by Vexis in the story, about what their intentions were with me (to take over my body and become the one to front 100% of the time after mind-breaking me), I dissociated. I knew the signs as I sat back and looked at my hands, and I tried to focus on the screen to continue typing. I had to pause, however.

I barely remember what I did, exactly, but at some point, Vexis came up beside me. They were as real as my friend was tonight while she sat on my couch as we made our own sets of Elder Futhark Runes. I had felt Vexis' presence in my space, saw them clearly with their dyed purple hair and oversized sweater and black skirt, and I heard the faint breathing you barely notice from another except in absolute silence.

"I'm not like that anymore, idiot," they'd said. Byleth crept up behind me and set his claws on the back of my computer chair, and I felt his presence just as vividly.

"Are you okay, sweetie?" "Shane, are you okay?" I believe he said. I tried to breathe — he may have told me to breathe. I have very little memory of the details as when I dissociate, I tend to have spotty memory loss of the moment.

It also happened when I went into the hospital for my gender affirming top surgery in July of 2020. As I lay on the table while they injected a sedative to calm my nerves, Lestan, Darokin, and Byleth were there around me to equally calm me. They each kissed my head and told me it would be okay, and I think one of them might have sung to me, but I can't really recall as I was a bit out of it. Even then, they were quite vivid.

I've yet to really discuss that part of things with my psychiatrist because it doesn't happen so often, so I tend to forget when I finally go in for an appointment. It's not something that needs to be addressed anyway, as it's just a result of being plural and perceiving reality differently from others, and having head mates and spirit guides who exist on a different plane than ours.

My counselor wants me to mention it, however, since my psychiatrist should know everything about what I experience. She already knows about my head family, but she likes them based on what I've mentioned. I can't remember if I've told her about Vexis or not. Sometimes I feel I should just bring up the blog entries I wrote about them (Vexis), especially when I first met them, and show her, but we have only 15-20 minutes, if that, to speak.

Either way, it's just a bit of a jolt when it happens, and while I'm aware of the reality of my family no one else can see (except for in the stories we write and the art I make of them), sometimes they become as vivid as a flesh and bone human being standing beside me. It's unnerving because it's a reminder that, yes, they're very real and they're choosing to be here, to help me, and to put up with me.

Lestan and Byleth dislike that I put it that way. They're here because they've grown to love me and will be here as long as I'll have them, but sometimes it's just wild to be reminded that they are ancient, have been around for longer than any human can perceive, or in the case of Vexis, who is a being that's fearsome and better placed among Lovecraft's terrifying Old Gods (they are, in fact, not one of the Old Gods, but they are a terrifying being of eldritch proportions in human flesh).

Our reality is very different. My relationships with my head fam are unconventional, and I don't speak about the depths of it often to others. I remember the time I helped Lestan make a Facebook profile and I marked us as being in a relationship, because we are life partners, and I became self-conscious because no one would understand. It's become a polyamorous deal between me, Lestan, Byleth, and Darokin too, I think. Darokin finally has started to say he loves me, so whatever that means for him, maybe it's similar. He says I can call it that. With Vexis, I'm not sure. They're aromantic and don't feel love, and they're mostly asexual as well, but we do have... something we can't really name.

Maybe one day I'll write things out in great detail. It's scattered and obvious in my books that read as 'fiction' even though many details in them aren't (the stuff about an angel being after my alias is definitely fiction, though). It's out there, but it's scattered. Maybe I just need to be 100% blunt all in one place.