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

[oneonthefence.livejournal.com]

Sorry to hear it. Yeah, unfortunately, actual DID does come from a traumatic and isolated childhood, and when kids are asked to keep secrets - it's appalling. I wish that hadn't happened to either of us. The "worst" of my trauma ended when I was 15, but 15 years of it was enough. Some major things happened after I was 15, but that only drove my alters out (one was out for two years in place of me, as the main person, because I couldn't cope with life), and I've been in therapy pretty much ever since. I'm 32 now, and it's been helpful, but my system isn't completely under control. I still find new alters all the time who hold their own secrets.

I hesitate to use the term multiplicity when it comes to DID, but that may be a personal thing. I still have a hard time saying, "I am fragmented, I am many." I rarely say "we," though I'll sometimes use it if a head-mate is chiming in on a comment. But one alter has her own journal, and just like you said, there's a shared journal at home so that notes between alters or between alters and myself can be written. Internal communication is going well for a few, but some resist, and some flat-out refuse.

It's a truly traumatic and painful illness for us and those who love us, which is just why I wanted to chime in and say, "This is different from what Jo and her friend are describing." They didn't have that trauma - luckily, and I'm glad they didn't - and have created a system by choice. Our circumstances are truly psychological and clinical, as the diagnosis shows, and I can't imagine wanting to have DID (not saying they DO, but people do tell me how fascinating it must be. Yeah, right...). I've lost years of time, my ability to work, and two alters are determined to harm me. So it's rough. But this year, physical health issues have overtaken the mental ones, so self-harm has been minimized, which I'm quite thankful for. I just don't know a lot of people with ACTUAL DID who talk about it openly and don't use it in an imaginary sense. Even in trauma units, a lot of people wanted to integrate or were co-conscious, and I left a bit left behind. My alters won't integrate, and I'm only co-conscious with a few. So it's a challenge. But at least I'm informed, and I know reality from the imaginary. And I have a two-year-old, so keeping my life and my time in check, as well as continuing in therapy, is vital.

Thanks for your comment, and I wish you well. Definitely let me know if you'd like to chat. I'm around some of the time. :)

[brightlotusmoon.livejournal.com]

Exactly. Fucking exactly. Thank you. You get it. My chronic illnesses are real. As a child, I went through all sorts of therapy and pain, but I don't see it as "trauma" - I think I just deliberately created and kept up my imaginary characters - and, as an adult, those characters changed themselves in different bits of my brain. They never take over. They never speak through me.
They are all me, all parts of me helping me cope with stuff... and maybe that is the only possible connection I don't know. The main difference may be intentional versus unintentional - maybe?

If I had DID, I certainly wouldn't talk about it like how I wrote in this post. You get it.