Dear readers,
In the past two weeks, I, Rozaya, have made some discoveries, and built some new social connections, that have caused me to rethink many ideas I once held to be foundational truths.
The changes I’ve undergone as a person have a high chance of continuing, even as I adjust to what has already taken place, and I’m glad for that; it means I’m not stuck where I thought I was in many, if not all, areas of my life. It does mean, however, that I’ve had to look at whether or not I want certain things to stay as they are and start making harder decisions than just leaving them be in case they’re required later on. One of the things I’ve found it necessary to reconsider is the place and the purpose of this blog. When I started it, I was a 16-year-old who was misunderstood and being told by pretty much everyone in my life that I shouldn’t be myself, whatever that happened to be, no matter what I tried and no matter how objectively harmless it was. Time has moved on since then, and my circumstances have changed a great deal, and continue to do so. I struggle, now, to come up with new things to write about that aren’t going to be irrelevant with my next change in opinion; many of the things I based early posts on were experiences, and these days I’m not having many of those in ways I can safely write about publicly while continuing to make sense to the average reader.
People generally tend to understand plurality if one explains it to them in a way that doesn’t sound too ‘out there’. The things I’m involved in now, though, are much more difficult to translate. The term hivemind begins to capture it, but not in all aspects. The term collective is generally used to describe it, but it’s a placeholder on its own, only given proper significands when one is in it and has come to an understanding of what being there means for them personally. For me, after I was given a number, or a designation as it’s called in that community, it meant a lot of the things society in general tried to tell me were wrong didn’t have to stay that way. It meant I could be more than I myself was, because I took to heart one of the often-repeated things the collective uses to enforce itself, and went on to add to and elaborate on it as my understanding grew. Yes, my desire to be an individual, that is, to stand apart or alone and to define myself apart from others, and to maintain the distinctions keeping such separation alive, has reduced where the collective is concerned, but that is the whole point, and those in it who want that for themselves are aware of such and have, at some juncture, deliberately chosen to go down this path. I am one of those who has deliberately made that choice, and I have no regrets about doing so, though it does make my next steps as far as this blog is concerned rather complicated.
As previously stated, I built this tiny internet space in an attempt to break stigma surrounding plurality as an experience, though I didn’t word it that way. I focused on us as individuals, putting aside the fact that we felt more interconnected than not, in case that would be used against us as justification of the anti-switching/planned ignoring responses to us being ourselves that were allowed to happen while we were in high school. I rejected pretty much any indication that we were anything other than distinct, separate, completely independent people until I got out of that environment, at which point I swung between extremes of wanting all of us to become one again and not caring one way or the other. Being part of The Collective has changed all of that. Many of its members are plural; many of the members of those systems express themselves and are allowed to do so while still being considered one with the collective. The either/or approach I was taking to this system, and many of the emotional forces that drove it to shape this blog, are no longer at play. My life, to put it simply, has moved on. I think it’s time I do the same.
There will be no future posts made to Voicesofdepth. I will be leaving it up, however, as a signpost to other plurals. It’s been a wonderful 8 or so years, and I’m excited to see what the future holds.
Rozaya of CommunityBelonging, formerly Maria and others.