I was explaining to someone last week about Paul and Stephanie coming with memories of their very own that are not part of my original experience base. And that led to some thoughts for here.
You see, I tend to be a fairly practical, I-can-explain-this kind of girl. I'm a fan of Science. And being multiple, well, psycho-science can explain that. At a reasonably young age, there was some trauma. My mind just couldn't take the pressure, and it cracked. It seized upon this great propensity I have for acting and using my imagination, and turned that into, "I don't want to be the person suffering this. So I'll be somebody else." And alters were created. At another point, my mind decided it didn't like something else that was going on and thought, "Gee, wouldn't it be great if I were somebody else again?" - and made another alter. And so on. So all these alters in my head are basically my mind playing make-believe so hard that it became true. Yeah, that's simplified, but in essence, it works.
So there are spiritual schools of thought around multiplicity. But when we speak of the spiritual world, you have to start with the fact that I'm Christian. And I don't really see any room in my faith system for multiplicity. Of course, there are lots of things that the Bible doesn't address, like flying in airplanes and why some people molest children and the evolving of rules to fit the situation. But it leaves me confused and wondering how my multiplicity fits in. A person is a soul in a body, and when the body ceases to function, they go to the afterlife; done. Well, the best way I can explain the existence of my alters is as 'extra souls' in my body. So how did they get there? Did too many people get sent to live in this body by accident? Or were there some loose souls running around, and my predisposition toward multiple personalities gave them a 'dock' to land on and move in?
With most of my alters, they can be explained as a 'different me'. Rubi is who I might have been at seventeen if I hadn't gotten pregnant and all. Kiara is certainly a mix of me as a kid and my daughter as a kid. Sam could be me in college years if I hadn't been a mom at that time. But what about Jarett? I guess I could stretch and say me if I'd been born male. And then Paul came along - and he has memories. Memories of things that never happened to me. Memories of places I've never been. And then Stephanie showed up with memories from nearly two hundred years ago! And how can I 'stage' autistic behaviors like she shows?
So how do Paul and Stephanie fit in? Can I believe that I have taken things I've read and heard and created their worlds so clearly? I mean, I do have a very strong imagination, but if that's the case, why don't I make-believe people who are from happier worlds than I am, or from science fiction universes? The memory pieces they showed up with are too strong; I can't convince myself they are fictional. So that leaves Paul and Stephanie, at least, as beings that existed before they were in my body. Loose souls, if you will. How they ended up not in their bodies, I couldn't say, but they both lived pretty awful lives; I would certainly expect them to have died young and traumatically. Maybe that's why Paul hasn't managed to age-slide any older than seventeen, and that rarely.
Perhaps the trauma that ended their residence in their original bodies made them sensitive to a 'broken' mind, like that of a multiple. And so they came to try living in my body for a while. I don't understand how they didn't go on to an afterlife, but maybe it's because they hadn't had any chance to have any goodness in their lives. I feel some obligation to grant them some happiness, happiness they obviously didn't get to have before I knew them.
Does that mean they will be with me until I die, and then we'll all go to the afterlife together? I don't know; I just don't understand enough to be sure. Maybe once they've had 'enough', they'll move on on their own. Enough what, I don't know. Enough happiness, pleasure, goodness, maybe just enough life. Being multiple is a challenge to my faith, frequently.
But what it does mean to me is that I don't feel it's right to have shoved Stephanie away into cold storage. She needs to have a chance to live and love and experience. Her being out still frightens me, but I'm going to work with Boss to bring her back out sometime in the next few weeks, and he's going to work with her and try to get her to a point that it's not a danger to have her in front.
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