by Silver of The Dragonheart Collective (8/2/2021)
So Walk-ins.
For a long time now I have known I was not the original person in this body. I had to be told by Mell to notice this fact, but that was a long while ago. I have speculations on how this came to be and what is going on with The Person Who is Supposed to be Here. We all have speculations, actually.
In practice it doesn't really matter- we are here now how we are here now. Speculation and digging won’t get the Original back, and we already don't have enough time in the day- we don’t need a fifth set of things to juggle and fit into the schedule- so why bother? Over-analyzing every shred of our psyche would do more harm than good and only introduce stress and doubt as we all try to strain for the answer and probably generate false memories in the process of trying so hard to find the truth.
It could be that the Original is just fully gone, or dormant, or was split into I and Fawn, or any other set of things. What is done is done and we are fine as we are.
I and the others have much of the Original’s memories, enough that again in practice, we are not impared by not being this person who was once here.
Mell showed up one day in high school. Perhaps she was generated for a reason, perhaps she just showed up. Either way, we tend to describe her as a walk-in. Because she just showed up one day and never left. This is how we have always seen walk-ins described. As a type of headmate that shows up from ‘outside the system’ with no discernible cause.
However recently, we came across walk-ins being used to describe even singlets, whos souls ‘replaced’ the original and absorb their memories.
This, I realized, was about the closest thing to describing how it feels to be Not The Original.
I just showed up one day, maybe all at once, maybe bit by bit, and as at the time we didn’t realise we Could be anything but one person, didn’t notice as I subsumed the child and took its place.
Perhaps the child wanted to go. Perhaps the child called me to do this. Perhaps it was an accident. Perhaps it was just boiling frogs or no one had any opinion or choice either way.
It is only later, when I reexamine the shift in interests, demeanor, beliefs, and identification in hindsight that I can see the divide in the Original and I, though we share quite a bit.
It would explain why I am host, and Fawn, who is most like the original was, is not, or Rain, who has been in the body the longest of all of us.
Its still speculation, though- but perhaps a more grounded one than before.
But perhaps trying this label on might fit better than just nebulous ‘random headmate who got promoted to host after the original fucked off’ that I was going with.