Individuality

July here.

We don't really pay much attention to terms or discourse, really, but we're aware that we presumably fall within the part of the spectrum that gets called a 'median system.' That is, we act as one person. It's a matter of memory primarily, since ours are shared. So we act as one person primarily, with one set of information. If you look at, say, playing video games as a hobby, that's shared between us, and we basically agree pretty strongly on any of them. I have maybe a little more patience for sitting down with a fiddly puzzle game, but we all like them. Viper is more prone to sitting down and digging into a visual or design project, but I know what he knows. So if you ask us an opinion on something like that, we'll probably just give you a single, unified one.

I worry about this at times. I guess the others do, too. Do people really see or believe in the differences between us? Those differences are very important to us. Recognizing them made our life a lot easier. For some systems like us, it makes sense to present a more unified identity, but we don't like that idea. Most of our most prominent differences are things that we've learned to hide throughout our life, or feel private, or are made up of deep feelings that we don't think show on the outside at all. Or if they do, it's not pleasant.

But even more than that is the things we haven't, or can't, sort out. We have feelings, anxieties and fears that aren't universal to all of us, even if we can't always place them. If we could, though: if we could say that just one of us is anxious in certain situations, and simply keep that one away from those tasks, we can imagine it making us invincible. It doesn't work that way. Some feelings remain vague or confusing, if only because they're strong enough to be felt by any of us, because we aren't separate people. We also aren't one unified person. We are what we are: a venn diagram. A composite, as a friend of ours might say. If one of us has a problem and the rest of us feel it, then it becomes an us problem. Separation is great, but it's limited, because that's the nature of our existence. At the same time, some problems really are individual, and isolating those allows us access to many powerful coping strategies. The trick is figuring out which case is which.

On that note, I should say that we have a fifth headmate now, confirmed. We wrote about Blackheart here last month, and it resurfaced again this month. One of us will write about it sometime soon, but not a lot has actually changed. We had another situation where we were suffering too much anxiety to function easily, and it took over a couple of times. Now that the situation is over with, we might not really directly see or interact with it for another long time. It's changed, though. Grown. It's still a purely logical and practical being, but none of us could hide behind the convenient lie that it was anything temporary. It had to exist. To find a sense of self, such as it is. It did its best, and we'll see where that takes us going forward. It might be a long time before the question is ever asked, but I don't think we'll go our whole lives without seeing it again. That's just not a realistic expectation.

When I think about the kind of anxiety Mira feels, I can understand it through the lens of their personality, but I also feel that anxiety for myself when it comes, if I happen to be out. But when I think about Blackheart, so far from us, its worries were partly caused by the unwelcome sensation of feeling our emotions, and having complex feelings about it. It was never meant to take ownership of those feelings; that's its purpose and its strength. The way it felt is also something I can't take ownership of. What I feel towards it is more like a sense of responsibility as its senior. I care, but I can only offer sympathy. I can support, but it had to come to its own conclusions. Hopefully, you can respect that as a being created to act only semi-autonomously, that required some courage on its part. I'm proud of it. Those sensations will never penetrate our brain from where it sleeps, though. It's completely different from Mira's anxious feelings. Even if I feel something from the back, it becomes a part of me in a way that it wouldn't have been if it only lived in my memory.

I could try to generalize that, say that if I feel it, it's mine, and if I don't then it's not. I don't actually believe that, because I'm an adult and I know better than to think things would be so simple. In any community, you have to make these same judgements, about when an individual problem becomes a group one or when you have to trust someone to get through with the support you're able to offer. And... that's all I can do about other people, too. I have to trust that other people see us in an honest way. It won't be the same as our self-perception because it never could be. There must be similarities and differences between us that even we can't perceive yet. I came here to admit to an insecurity and work it through, not to actually arrive at some simple answer. Later, we'll try to get something more written up about Blackheart. It warrants a little more introspection.