Harmony Friends' blog

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.

NOTE: Originally posted November 28, 2023.

every now and then fucking tumblr recommends us a random post that happens to come with "endos dni" "fuck endos" tags on it even when the post has nothing to do with that and it is always so infuriating every time.

to those who don't know what that means because they aren't a terminally online plural system, "endo" is short for "endogenic system", which means any plural system that isn't formed by trauma — basically, these people think there's only one correct way to be plural and are bigoted towards people with other experiences.

and god damn it fucking pisses me off so much every fucking time. it's such an ugly exclusionary thing, and while I'm inclined to give some forgiveness because, to be frank, like most DNI bullshit, it's mostly kids, it still riles me up. you hate the idea of non-traumagenic plurality so much you have to remind people of it on everything you post? jesus.

I think part of the reason it bothers me is that I wonder how people can even be so sure about what their system origin is in the first place. traumagenic plurality is about severe childhood trauma happening so early that it was before your sense of self could properly integrate (which is usually around 8 or 9 years old iirc?) — so early that, from our perspective, it's impossible to know who we would have turned out to be otherwise.

plurality is a complex interaction between neurodivergence and environment… we actually disagree, within the harmony friends, about whether or not changing those events would have caused us to turn out not plural or not. this one writing this believes us to be traumagenic in nature. but I have nothing against the friends in here that believe we would have been plural no matter what. in fact I kinda find something a little romantic to the notion… even though I don't find it very realistic, myself.

anyway if I have any advice or whatever it's this: don't let your origin define you. you are so much more than your childhood trauma (or lack thereof, if you're lucky) — you're who you are now, and that's amazing and beautiful; you've got nothing to prove to anyone, and especially have no mandate to broadcast your trauma history to strangers in order to be accepted for yourselves.

—👻Fate