harmonyfriends | 3rd Pluralversary! (Reply)

NOTE: Originally posted May 30, 2024.

Well, today marks three years since the day our brain friend Stella suddenly said "oh my god. I'm real. I'm real and my partner Aurora is real and we're both real people with wants and needs and you have to take care of us. a fantasy life is not a life", and we were thus forced to respond with a "holy shit; there really is more than one thing in this brain. we're fucking plural" and our life changed forever.

I've been waiting for this day for most of the year, but now that it's here I find myself struggling to think of anything meaningful to say. I suppose one could take it as a good sign that plurality has become, on some level, a mundane part of our existence that doesn't need that much said about it. I know that's only because I'm me, though — for some of us, every day continues to be an agonizing challenge of self-acceptance.

There are certainly a lot more of us on board than there used to be. I remember back when we thought finding the eighth one of us was this "surely this is the end" threshold moment. It's pretty quaint, looking back at it. I'm glad we're managing to make as much room for all of us as we are, difficult as it may be.

Three years is a long time. Three years is hardly any time at all. I'm so impatient for our system's self-acceptance to stabilize and for us to no longer be choked with doubt and drowning in confusion about this whole thing, but it's still going to take some years yet, and I just have to accept that, and celebrate that we've came as far as we have already.

You can just be plural. You're allowed. You can just do it. Three years ago, after much hemming and hawing, I began my journey to figuring that out for myself. (They couldn't tell me apart from my sister Dissy yet though.) It's pretty hard to believe it's been three years already. It's also pretty hard to believe it's only been three years. I guess those two things balance each other out, then.

Thanks for joining us on this journey and here's to another year. Cheers.