hi, this is clove. this is just a little bit of a ramble over things we've seen on different sites that we feel safe to express here. there will be a few warnings for this. so please read and leave if you express discomfort over them. !!!!!! WARNINGS FOR: - ableism / ableist language - self-fakeclaiming - generally just fakeclaiming - lots of paranoid stuff from here on out, here's just my thoughts dump. we have a lot of headmates; and when i say a lot, it's more than what your first or second estimate is. i don't know why. we've tried to cope and keep our count down but the most minor inconvenience caused our brain to decide we just need more headmates. but can i even say im a system if I was never diagnosed? what does that mean for me? am i fake? is my entire identity fake? would i just.. cease to exist if it turned out it wasn't real? i really hope not. like.. we have a concerning amount of fictives. almost all of our scratch accounts are for our fictives who want to express themselves. but that makes us feel guilty. what if that's a sign we're faking it? but i know some headmates would be hurt if i said 'i feel like we aren't real'. would that mean what we went through wasn't real? and i know that would upset them greatly. i know that some headmates seemingly know what our total headcount is and they all claim it's likely far higher than it currently is discovered as, and it makes me feel guilty. people summarize a system into something.. a small few, totally different personalities who suffer from trauma and can barely function. we have many. we all suffer but not from the same things. and we need each other to function, we need them to live. without some headmates we'd be worse off due to them taking action to help us. knowing you're a system for many, many years and being scared to show it anywhere hurts. but hiding it hurts more. things such as roleplaying or being in groups, I never know who will believe that we exist. that i exist. is it because of the fictives, or how we mask similarly? or maybe the amount of headmates or something else entirely? I'll never know. but some times seeing people just smile and accept us fully without hesitation makes me the happiest. im recovering. I will always be recovering, and our head count will only grow until we get out of this home and into a place we can thrive, because we're barely surviving. But at least I'm not alone. At least you're not alone. And you never will be. You were one of the first who showed themselves to me. You came from a hospital incident, helping us feel better in those places and about family there. And even if you're hurt more from unrelated things, you're still you. I couldn't ask for a better friend. -Umber
