Are they muses? Story characters? Imaginary friends? Does it matter? We love each other.

[brightlotusmoon]

Some random rambling about my own mind, my imaginary friends, and how my mind likes to invent coping mechanisms that talk back.

One of my imaginary friends, Amara, who is the human coping mechanism in charge of all the neurochemical, neurodevelopmental fuctions, has been interacting with me more and more ever since Alicia (the epilepsy mechanism) and Serena (the pain, fatigue, psychological, neurobiological functions) urged her to show herself more often after I fell into a chemical depression with severe anxiety. Serena and Koan could only do so much.

Amara, at the beginning of her creation, was not even human; formless and elemental. These days, she is human shaped but she loves to take bits of my writerbrain as inspiration. Her ears are pointed and her eyes and hair change color with her moods. She likes to mimic my bone structure and basic figure shape, just with more muscle intensity. Serena says it's because Amara wants to show me that I am beautiful.
Also, when I saw a Google image painting of a woman with elf ears and a unicorn horn, posing with a unicorn, Amara insisted I make it my current Facebook cover photo. She made herself up to resemble like that character while still mimicking my features, including the horn that represents the third eye - just with chestnut brown streaks in her white-lavender hair and honey brown flecks in her intense blue eyes... although none of that is her true coloring. When she made herself human, her coloring randomly became alabaster skin, gold eyes, and pale flame hair, essentially inhuman. But she kept the mirror shape of my skeletal structure and body shape. She even plumped her lips, made her eyes bigger, and made her nose smaller, because she knew I desired that. It makes me smile, which I think she likes. She wears the same jewelry as me, the same clothing colors, the same makeup colors. She is determined to "reboot" the parts of my brain that are having trouble accepting the recent flooding overload of information about these disabilities and chronic illnesses. The name Amara means everlasting, eternal, immortal... which is why she was formless and elemental to begin with. I finally understand why I created her. And she wouldn't mind being the inspiration for any stories I write. I'm grateful for that.
She insists that my jaw, hair, and eyes resemble the jaw, hair, and eyes of Elena Risteska from Macedonia, which I agreed with and humbly accept with a simple thanks. The only way I even knew about Miss Risteska was through searching for shades of brown.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e2/Elena_risteska.JPG
http://img27.fansshare.com/pic34/w/elena-risteska/1200/12861_elena_risteska.jpg
http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/_/18051115/Elena+Risteska+elena+r.jpg
https://fbcdn-sphotos-e-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/p480x480/578088_479387062121006_1822646409_n.jpg
http://img27.fansshare.com/pic34/w/elena-risteska/1200/12858_elena_risteska.jpg
http://tekstovi-pesama.com/g_img2/1/e/28986/elena%2520risteska-10.jpg
She just wants me to feel better, to feel my own positive human emotions. Since Amara is still learning about humanity, she looks to Serena for help. In my dreams, they have amazing conversations.
I'm so glad I created these characters. They help keep me sane, emotionally stable, intellectually stable, and psychically curious. Also, every time I meditate and concentrate on my third eye, I actually feel a short unicorn horn on my forehead.
https://scontent-b-lga.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-frc3/1469926_10151743304270684_204893984_n.jpg
I just love that my own mind is creative enough to make up whole people with entire personalities, back stories, individual appearances, individual likes and dislikes, and actual behaviors. They mainly come to me in sleep dreams, daydreams, and meditations. My psychotherapist adores the fact that they exist, which relieves me. It's just one of those things that I, Joanna, have in my brain to help me handle all the stuff that life gives me. Awesome.

Comments

[naamah-darling.livejournal.com]

It really is awesome!

I love that you can do this. I love that *I* can do this. So amaze. Very cool. Wow, imaginations.

[tobyhayes.livejournal.com]

Wow, any person with a brain can have an imagination that generates their own friends. Please keep in mind that this is FAR different from a REAL psychological disorder that is dissociative identity disorder.

Yes, imaginations are cool, so long as you realize that it is imaginary, not real.

[naamah-darling.livejournal.com]

How Joanna identifies is for her to say. I'll say that, from the outside, what she experiences looks a lot more significant than play, and serves a\ critical role in her ability to function. What she experiences is fascinating and beautiful, and I'm honored to be in a position where she trusts me enough to talk about it in front of me.

I assure you, with sincere respect, I don't doubt the validity of multiple people living in one body, and lament only that our language doesn't have good words for this sort of group/collective/partnership yet. THAT'S not imagination, nor did I mean to imply that it was; apologies if that's what was objectionable. I do respect the difference between DID or other forms of multiplicity, and imaginative play; I likewise respect the difference between something that arises as a result of illness/trauma and something that is deliberately chosen. oneonthefence has a pretty good comment below covering the difference between DID and healthy multiplicity that's on-purpose cultivated that pretty much sums up my thoughts on that.

I wouldn't identify as DID, ever. I don't think I could comfortably identify as someone with multiplicity, either, though I've looked long and hard at what it entails, because I've been trying to understand this thing I do a little better, to make sure I'm not actually doing myself harm. There's nearly nothing out there about it.

I've worked pretty hard and steadily to create . . . isolated subroutines in my brain? That I can access when I need to, as a defense mechanism, a way to keep functioning when pretty much gutted by panic attacks or the bipolar or dysphoria. It keeps me functional when other parts of me are giving out and/or don't know what to do. So while I may talk about it playfully -- that's how I roll -- it's not for funsies. It's the only effective technique I've found to deal with certain very frightening and dangerous and deeply unpleasant things that are wrong with me, and I've spent years deliberately reinforcing it to make it stronger. One of the most miserable times in my life was when I was on meds that pretty much killed my ability to do it, and I could no longer interact with the parts of myself that I had separated out and walled off and carefully balanced to be more or less functional independent of my core persona. They were no longer capable of stepping in and even deliberately invoking them had nearly no success. That showed me just how critical it was, scared the everloving crap out of me, and was what started me looking into what it actually meant much more seriously.

So, no disrespect toward people with other circumstances is intended. No disrespect toward systems and the individuals that comprise them intended.

This is tremendously difficult to talk about because agreed-upon language to talk about it simply does not exist yet, and a lot of defensiveness exists among groups/collectives and individuals with DID or related -- for totally good reason! And I don't want to be a part of that "for very good reason." Shit's hard enough without me making it harder. So, yeah, I just want to make it clear that while I was being playful because that's how Jo and I are, I'm coming from a place of understanding and respecting the difference between what I do and what others experience, even as I acknowledge the weird parallels between them.

If, after this too-long (sorry) reply there's still an inkling I'm being disrespectful, well, I'm open to talking about that, because that's for real not what I want.

Jo's one of the few people I can/will talk about it openly with, as I feel about as safe in her journal space as I do in my own. I know about her coping mechanisms, she knows about mine. We respect each other.

To assure everyone that I mean well and end on a positive note, here is a picture of a fox cub keepin' on keepin' on.

[brightlotusmoon.livejournal.com]

Amanda, I love to bitty pieces. If you'll let me, may I give you part of my soul to keep? I feel you are a soulmate.

[brightlotusmoon.livejournal.com]

Er, Toby, honey, I NEVER said they were real.
Please PLEASE don't tell me you are assuming I am comparing THIS to DID, because HOLY HELL NO. DID is a fucking illness. This? This is just a healthy coping mechanism. Mandi herself knows that.

[brightlotusmoon.livejournal.com]

And it looks like I may need to write the word IMAGINARY in a big bold text, maybe a different font. Obviously I know the difference. I don't know if on your part it is worry or defensiveness for Mandi, but trust me, I am in no way saying I have DID.
Yes, I dissociate from emotions during clinical depression. I even depersonalize. I even experience derealization. But that is still not the same as DID itself.
I have CREATED and INVENTED these IMAGINARY friends that are NOT REAL in order to help me handle my clinical psychiatric and psychological issues. I need you to really really understand that. Please. Your darling wife can explain it more helpfully. I just don't want you to assume I am unable to separate reality from fantasy. I can, quite well.

[brightlotusmoon.livejournal.com]

That word, imagination. I do not think it means what some people think it means. We INVENT. We IMAGINE. We do have clinical mental illnesses, you and I, but we have deliberately, creatively, intuitively made up a bunch of characters that grew with us... through games, through stories, through dreams. And it is starting to worry me that this is being compared to something as severe as DID, which is destructive and unwanted. I don't mean the commenters in my post, I mean internet forum people in general. Trying to claim a self-diagnosis of DID is... creepy.