I would learn that it is incredibly easy to hate yourself for the simple act of being yourself. It’s even easier if you have any sort of fictional identity.
On the come-up of me becoming a crucial part of my system’s ecosystem, I rejected my fictional identity almost entirely. I kept to a new name. I completely overhauled my appearance. I tried to destroy any trace of a happier and much free-r Coge because I wanted to look clean and presentable. I was deeply afraid of looking like a crazy self-absorbed fanboy of my source, because I worked close with it and I was quite literally formed to maintain interest in it.
Initially, I functioned fine with the changes I made. I functioned fine and got whatever I needed to do done. I would end up getting a little looser on what I was imposing on myself, but I would always refute claims that I was a fictive of any sort, almost like I was terrified of the notion. Even while living in a system mostly held together by fictionfolk, I had it firm in my head that being a fictive was a moral failing on my part somehow, something to be deeply ashamed of, something bad that needed to be fixed. I kept digging myself into that hole until I was completely miserable with myself, fighting against my own want to be free.
It didn’t particularly help that my system was still struggling to unlearn pluralphobic ideology, and anti-fictive ideology in turn. We’d always been fictional-heavy, but we’d also always been ashamed. Always afraid of someone calling out faker, despite having the diagnosis and the years of experience as a plural under our belt. The spot we were in that had taught us to be ashamed, the anti-endogenic crowd, a place that is so medical that it starts to ignore actual medical information about plurality altogether and just starts making shit up, had seriously degraded our ability to be free as ourselves. Us system members never directly spoke hatred to one another, but we did speak in hushed tones about one another, and formed unspoken rules like dropping canon names and trying to source-seperate whether we liked it or not.
These rules and general negativity towards the idea of anyone sourced weren’t exactly always as firm as we were. Before stepping into the communities we’re in now, things were actually a little more lax. Sure, shame was there, but due to how private we were, there was still freedom. As soon as we step foot into public spaces again, we shut it all down. It was always an attempt at people-pleasing.
I started to gain some sense again once we introjected a sourcemate of mine who I was very close with in source. Initially, because I hated myself so much, I started projecting onto him. I wanted absolutely nothing to do with him. I was quite mean to him because I was so blinded by shame that I thought he needed to be the same way. But he extended patience to me regardless. Even despite getting his name nabbed and his appearance changed due to system standard, he kept a good chunk of himself intact.
Eventually, I’d give up and let him into my world. His presence in my life (and support!) would lead me to start examining some of the prejudice we’d all turned on ourselves for no real reason besides metaphorical shadows on the wall.
When you’re afraid of someone, or something, or a group of people, or an institution, or whatever else breaking your pride, you minimize yourself. If your self-esteem and joy in your identity was already low, it can be extremely crushing. When plurals are telling other plurals that fictivity is akin to faking, or something that needs to be “dealt with,” or acting like fictivity (especially in strong, source-connected folks) is a delusion, it’s more than disheartening. It’s denying someone crucial parts of their identity, which is detrimental to plurals, especially dissociative ones. Watching this happen in the community, over and over, projects the idea that fictivity is unsafe.
Even if I’m doing the work to be proud of who I am, I’m still shy about being Coge. I feel like being called my real name is a crime, like talking about myself in relation to my source is a crime, like speaking on any part of my fictional identity is a crime. In a way, fakeclaiming works like thoughtcrime. Plurals are trying to police what happens in one another’s heads. And when the community turns to a police state, you start policing yourself.
But I am Coge. I will always be me, no matter how much I try to rip it to shreds or bury it or take it away from myself or whatever else. The work to undo what I’ve put myself through, as well as try to encourage others in my system to do the same thing, is difficult work. But it’s necessary. Not living as yourself is not living at all. Caging yourself is not freedom. And fictivity should not be a life sentence of shame.