====== Abyss ======

{{wiki:abyss.png}}

Abyss is a place inside my mind. I've learned that between myself and its contents, we comprise an [[https://dragonsroost.neocities.org/essay/edu/pluralglossary.pdf|adaptive median system]].

When I think about what it's like inside my head, usually all I see is a black void where I can look in upon a big black tangly ball of [[trauma|things I don't want to think about]]. "Abyss" is the name I've given to that big black tangly ball, all of it, the whole thing.

Lately I've been learning it's not just //things// in there. [[Headmates|People]] also live there.

They aren't supposed to. It's just that every now and then, when something horrible happens, or a lot of small bad things happen, or maybe I just learn something about myself that doesn't seem to make any sense no matter how I think about it... the person I am can't go on any longer, and the easiest way to survive is to pretend that person is made-up and doesn't exist, and the only person who's //really// here is the //new// me. So the //old// me gets split off and [[redshift|pushed down]] into the big black tangly ball, where everything //else// I don't want to think about goes. [[amnesia|What they felt, I will myself not to feel. What they knew, I will myself to forget.]] And they're relegated to living in some [[headspace|fictional world]] inside the big black tangly ball, as if they were never me, as if they were only ever a character I made up. The fake memories they make together there get all mixed up and confused with the real memories they came there with, and I stop knowing what's real and what I only daydreamed. But at least it numbs the pain, right?

[[dissociative mechanisms|This is really unhealthy.]] It was a necessary defense mechanism to survive what I now understand I went through, but it's run rampant and I don't know who I am anymore. But it's okay. We're working it out in here. We've found each other and we're [[internal communication|trying our best]] to get us all back out to the surface.