*** This post contains discussion of power dynamics, particularly those found in alternative relationship styles. I discuss domination and submission in the context of my own experiences, and there is talk of emotional abuse involved as well, with some examples given for the purposes of furthering the story. ***
Well, that was certainly an experience…
We’ve returned from the collective, and wow do we have stories to share. We also have a lot more to process in regards to the purpose of this blog, but we can at least be sure that we don’t want to leave it behind anymore. We discovered, last month, that we were outright lied to about formatting issues making it difficult for folks who could see to read what we posted, I’m guessing so that we would abandon this part of our life in favor of focusing entirely on what the founder of the collective wanted. Sadly, it worked, and I’d like to thank the one who told us the truth after we started coming out of the spell woven around us from April to October. I’d also like to say up front that I don’t blame the collective as a group for what happened to us. That responsibility rests on its founder, who we’ll call H for the sake of preserving their privacy.
Before we get into that story, though, I want to say that, contrary to our prior posts on the subject, we’ve come to the conclusion that yes, our individuality does matter. We’d let go of the question upon our entry into the collective, and found its answer upon our exit from it. H had a lot to do with that, with their trauma-based rants against individuality and attempts to erase contextual divisions of this life so that it aligned more with the way they thought it should be lived. We already struggled with the concept that everyone had to do at least some things for themselves, with our history of emotional neglect making it seem like a threat more than anything else, and the promise that we would never have to stand alone again while also being respected for who and what we were was very appealing to the most wounded among us. Unfortunately for us, H used that view of individuality to exert a level of control over us that left us reeling upon our exiting the relationship. We have headmates who formed from that time who still feel intense fear at the idea of being unique to themselves and one another as a direct result of that control, which, when combined with our need to feel like we weren’t left alone to live in a world that frequently misunderstands and criticizes us, left us open to that exact outcome. We welcome those headmates; it’s not their fault the one who helped them come to exist was an asshole.
As may or may not already be apparent, H and I were romantically involved. A couple of months after that was established, we added a power exchange element to our relationship, with H taking a dominant role while I took a submissive one. I’m not going to go into detail about what kinds of things we did in that context, because this is a public place and I’d feel exposed in a major way if I did so, but it’s important to me to present as much of the experiences we’ve had in the past several months as possible. As I’ve since learned, a lot of steps that ensure the safety of everyone involved in such power exchanges were skipped by H, and my own inexperience and love for them blinded me to that fact. The result was more like an abusive relationship than anything enjoyable, which is very far from the intended result of dynamics like the one they and I were attempting to foster. I don’t feel like it was the exchange of power that caused H’s relating to me to harm us; there are plenty of instances where relationships that incorporate things of that nature work out perfectly well and everyone is happy with what’s happening. Ours wasn’t one of them, I believe, because they wanted to use the vulnerability that comes with submitting to another to shape me into their ideal partner, even if that meant breaching boundaries I’d previously set as non-negotiable.
I’m still in the process of deconstructing some of the more harmful elements of the worldview that was drilled into us during the relationship. H’s specialty was taking things someone already had a lot of emotion around and building on them to make themselves look like they could save that person or group, in the case of systems, from the aspects of life that caused them pain, and this message was one we were drawn to believe, as I think anyone would be. The reality was that H frequently lied, both about their experiences with others and their own abilities to follow through with the promises they made. I attributed a lot of that lack of follow-through to their disabilities at the time, but looking back at it, I remember them explicitly telling me that they felt as though they had to pretend to be more capable than they were. I frequently asked them if they were able to sustain the pace at which various things moved forward, and they consistently answered yes, even after I’d demonstrated, both to myself and to them, that I would not be hurt or disappointed to the detriment of my ability to carry on with daily life if that answer changed, and they still maintained the lie, finally admitting to it when I wasn’t the only one asking them tough questions. Ultimately, I lost trust in them; I had put far more of myself under their control than I could afford to if this was the way they treated themselves, and the relationship ended soon afterward.
When I was with H, I was frequently made to feel guilty for talking to others who didn’t support their message or the collective as they portrayed it. Instead, I was encouraged to stay on a perpetual voice chat with H alone, and eventually I came to feel like I myself wanted that just as much as they did, in part because of that encouragement, and in part because the friends I had prior to this time period had nothing but criticism to offer about both them and the collective’s identity-erasing principles and practices, which made several of us feel unsafe. We were told that we would never be alone again, and adjusting to that statement being completely out of line with reality as we knew it after we left H behind was probably one of the most difficult things we’ve experienced in our lifetime as a system. We were suicidal for the first two weeks after the breakup, and then we found ourselves rebounding, hard, on a complete stranger’s social media persona after that. We took to writing, playing computer games, talking to friends, and even, once, visiting family, in an attempt to cope with, and balance out, all the feelings associated with those mental states. Time, and continued use of any combination of all of those things, eventually did make it more bearable, and writing this article is the next step.
We’re currently in the process of trying to not only build a wider network of people to whom we can stay in contact, but diversify that network in hopes that something like this will be far less likely to happen again. The tole H’s actions have taken on our social connections has threatened our mental health far more than any direct impact on us as a group ever could, and that is because they repeatedly called themselves a creature of connection, reminded us, not entirely untruthfully, that we were emotionally isolated despite having people around us in virtual spaces before they came into our lives, and created a dependence on them as our only source of fulfillment where that was concerned until they either couldn’t sustain it anymore, or got tired of us. The idea behind the collective was never clear, but the implication H wanted me to take away from it, and which I eagerly did, was that being part of it meant I would never need to be alone, or lonely, again. Now that we know that’s not possible except on the inside, and even then that there can and very well may be, obstacles to the level of connection desired by those of us who were formed specifically to be in a hivemind as described from April to October, we need to figure something out. That starts by returning to basics, with me sitting down and actually trying to connect with each of us, as individuals, like I have with everyone outside of us, and learning what they want and need, even if those things clash with what I’d like to see in this life. It means discarding the question of whether or not we’re all parts of me in favor of actually, properly listening to the rest of us, and it means no longer making compromises to our expression of our identity as a plural where they don’t need to be made.
While H never frowned on us using the self-referential pronouns reflective of there being more than one of us in this body, they didn’t like it at all when someone unsupportive of their message showed up and spoke their mind, and their reactions to the few instances of this happening left us reluctant to allow any but the most vulnerable among us to come to the front. We’ve made great strides in internalizing the positive qualities demonstrated to us by H’s nurturing of those vulnerable headmates, so much so, in fact, that many of the socially based triggers that once sent us into spirals of anxiety and/or distress of some other kind no longer have that effect, or have a far less wide-reaching one than they once did. Our task now, as a group, is to start reconnecting with those of us who can stand up for those softer headmates, those of us who might be able to look people in the figurative eye and tell them that no, we aren’t going to hide the fact that we’ve switched, or use the word “I” where “we” would be more apt, those of us who have far less trouble than I where it comes to standing up for themselves, one another, and the system taken together. But that task relies on me completing the ones I’ve laid out for myself above, because, as we’ve found out through a lot of trial and error, only after something is consciously known, in the space where external input is taken in and processed, the place where, sometimes, fronters can leave knowledge to be picked up by whoever comes out after them, can it be worked with while the body is involved, or a fronter can be aware of the work. Being forced out of a home I was convinced would never fall apart has answered a question I’d been picking at for years, that question being whether or not it mattered that switching felt like I simply became another of us. It doesn’t; we are each still ourselves, and I’ve accepted that in order for any progress to be made where I’ll be able to see it, I’ll have to be aware of it in some form, even if the headmate who makes those strides takes the memory with them when they return to the inside.
With this as our new, or perhaps refreshed, starting point, the purpose of this blog is still what it always has been, and I plan to make use of it a lot in the coming year. I’m not going to say there will be regular posts made to it, because I can’t be sure of that anymore, and haven’t been able to be for years. I will be using it, though, that much I’m certain of. My question now is, will you join me?