Yikes.

So, I'm gonna come across like I've lived here all my life and it's totally normal that I'm writing a post about it.

But the amount of bullshit is unbelievable. Okay, we're in places where we go looking for it, but that's not the point. The point is that there's large enough gatherings of people sharing that bullshit that it's easy enough to find that we can go places where we can expect it. Not sure how that relates to the post I'm making, but today's highlights are "DID is literally just BPD and CPTSD. It isn't its own disorder" like ok yeah, doc, I've gotchu, that's why we lost our diagnosis of BPD as entirely unfitting, and aren't treated for it, okay. That's one thing, another is the ages old, DID doesn't exist, every famous case was fake.

I'm sorry, okay, I died in the 80s. Did you fucking die in the 80s, too? Is Internet a fucking time machine where you can have a chat with people who literally got stuck in a past decade and it's fucking Groundhog Day every day for them? Secondly, like, okay, every single famous case of DID ever has been fake, I'm not gonna contest that because it doesn't matter, whatever, let them all be fake. People fake for fame all the time; healthy people, fucked up people, people with degrees, people with something to prove, that's life. How are you gonna live with the cognitive dissonance of saying this while there's about two, three famous (contested) cases of DID, versus the millions upon millions of diagnoses made on private people, never publicised? Like that's the hill you're gonna die on - people make shit up and exaggerate shit for fame, so therefore apples are oranges?

And this whole thing jumps into, "there's something seriously wrong with you if you think you're a fictional character."

Right so, I don't remember being big on essays, but this shit has my head aching. It's existential. It's philosophical, it has jack to do with material reality. So what is identity? Is it a structure of observed fact or a construct of beliefs? Both? I don't think I'm a fictional character. In my case, that's stark as day; first off, I don't remember anything. I take my being someone in media as a guideline, as somebody else here put this feeling months ago. It's not a tangible experience of believing something. It's more like reflecting, mirroring, looking at things through that perspective. I recognise myself when I see who I come from, but it's not like I believe that's literally me, in the flesh, while I'm looking at myself from the outside. That is an actor, with a script, with lines, scenes to act, and a layer of makeup and FX on them. That's got shit to do with me or who I am, actually, except that in my head I somehow picture myself to be about that shade, shape, sound. What has more to do with me is the reflection of all of that off the eyeballs I'm gazing through. What matters is how I perceive the story, the feelings it evokes. Those are authentically mine. They're unique, unscripted, genuine. That makes me who I am. No, I'm not a fictional character. I'm a construct. You could argue that, in the multiverse theory, I became as the story unfolded, the consciousness within making me into a unique person whose story reflects the narrative. If there are infinite universes, then I was in one of those, and the mind is a mirror to let me through.

People take this shit too literally. They think we've got worlds in our heads, they think we've got delusions of being other people, or have difficulties separating reality from fiction. I can't speak for everybody, but here at home, we're solidly aware. We're as cynical as they come. There's proven reality, and then there's the other shit. We dabble in the other shit because the unexplored, the intuition draws us, but that's not material reality. Even if it's reality - hell, if magic, spirits, other dimensions exist, that's exactly what they are, supernatural, a different layer of reality. We've got what's here, what we're painstakingly trying to carve into equations and theories, and then there's what's untouchable, what doesn't bend to the laws we've established. And between these places, we have the human consciousness.

At best, I'm a consciousness traveller, a mind tourist. I inhabit the place of fanciful entertainment and grounded reality. In essence, myself and the others, we're ghosts. Every consciousness, ultimately, is a ghost. An idea of self, that isn't bound to the limitations of perception, as other people are when they perceive us. No one is limited by the boundaries of their flesh when it comes to the belief of who they are and what they are. All we are is approximation and ideas, impressions, and nothing we create in our minds is objective, including our theories, until they are tested and proved. Imagination makes us, and not only in the sense that it influences us, but it's only with imagination that we can picture ourselves as we understand our own selves. There's studies done on how people don't even know what they actually look like. You can flip a photo and no longer recognise yourself. Someone else can take a picture of you and it looks wrong, "that's not what I look like", so which is right, the physical photographic evidence or what the person's own impression of self is?
 

I'm no more or less than anybody else. In the end, all we are is concepts, a different "me" existing for ourselves, and in the minds of everybody who meets us; one guy thinks I'm an asshole, the other thinks I'm a darling, the other thinks nothing of me because I'm just a bypasser and a piece of the scenery, a normal human being defined by the t-shirt I'm wearing. You make up a different guy every time you make an assumption of somebody. So is your perception of them more objective than their own idea of who they are?

In short; do you think you're a fictional character?