My Shiny Fictives and Me; or, Media Influence on my DID System
A really frustrating thing about experiencing good media - books, games, movies, tv shows, whatever - while being a DID system is the aftershock of experiencing good media.
I'm one of those people who's addicted to video games, I'll openly admit that. It's a coping mechanism. I immerse myself completely into the world, gameplay and characters to pretend the real world doesn't exist. To pretend I exist in a different world where I actually have some level of control over things. As a child, it was to escape the lack of autonomy, respect and love I got from my parents. As an adult, it's my body taking away my autonomy; I'm in constant pain, and the direct result of my childhood is a mind also in pain. There is no single day I've had where I've felt 100%. I've been close, but never quite there. In media, though, I can pretend I am 100%. I'm beating the shit out of cops or bad guys or whatever, how can I not be in control?
So, why should good media - meaning, media that makes the suspension of disbelief effortless - frustrate me? Shouldn't I be glad the escape from life is effortless?
Well, good media makes me split. MLP:FiM, The Owl House, Project Sekai. They all basically downloaded files into my brain that turned into people. I have technicolour horses in my head for fuck's sake. It sounds crazy. It is crazy. That's not the frustrating part, though; it's whatever. I don't consider 'crazy' to have a negative connotation. All my favorite people are some flavour of crazy because I'm also crazy, and it's nice to be reminded I'm not Uniquely Crazy or Alone In The Crazy... if that makes sense. But also, if I explained any of the Crazy I deal with to Not-Crazy people, the most common reaction would be "...the fuck?" or "oh that's fascinating!" I'm not a tragedy or a petri dish for god's sake. I just want a "oh yeah, me too."
"Okay," i hear you asking, "so it's not an issue with how others would perceive your brand of crazy. So what's the issue?"
Well, I can't just experience good media in a normal way; good media always incites some kind of change within my DID system that becomes disorienting, and I hate being disoriented. I like hearing "I feel that way too," but when I'm knocked off-kilter by good media and start dealing with the dissociative fog afterwards, I become unable to use words in a way that makes even the people I love say that line to me. I stop making sense. The English language becomes a fucking puzzle to me. My ability to comprehend the media I just watched melts into my own Self, mixes around and becomes inseparable, like adding too much salt to a soup. You can't just fish the salt crystals out, they're already dissolved in there. You're just gonna have to eat salty fucking soup now. The frustration comes from being completely unable to just watch a good show or play a good game and leave it at that. I can't be normal about a good show or game or whatever, and I can't not be crazy about them.
I want to enjoy good media and just leave it at that. I don't want my mind to become an incomprehensible puddle because it's struggling to disconnect itself from the game, book, show, movie, music or whatever I'm experiencing. I don't want it to keep spitting out people I have to coax out into the control room, making them feel comfortable and safe, and introduce them to the system, and give them orientation, I just don't want to do it anymore. It's exhausting and it's getting old. We have enough people already, I don't want more.
I just want to play or watch or read things without my brain combusting into more and more pieces.
I just want to play UNBEATABLE and not be insane about it.
Please, just this once, I want to be normal about something.