Nonfronter to regular fronter
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shield_badger - 2020-03-27 00:04:58
My experience wasn't quite the same, but I went from being someone who was stuck behind a frontstuck person and kind of only vaguely existed in front for a long time and had no sense of myself or what I liked or really who I was, to someone who has scheduled fronting days (Thurs-Sat) and my own life outworld and religion and hobbies and an ever-growing sense of self.
It seems like you're having to learn a lot more than I did. In my experience I have had to heal from performing a role as "protector" now that I don't need to anymore and learn how to accept that I feel my own emotions. I still have a lot of trouble identifying them, and the fact that I even have the room to have feelings and think about them is pretty new.
I've also had to learn just … what to do? Who I am? What I like and dislike? Just basic personality things that most people have their whole lives to figure out and now I have to re-learn who I am here in this new world. It's hard.
I've also had to learn how to take care of our disabled body, learn what it's limits are, how to move and not move in it, when I need to use our crutches, remembering to take the medications for it. Just … a lotta stuff is different when you're able-bodied or noncorporeal and supernatural inworld/pre-system and then you have to deal with a very disabled body outworld.
This isn't quite the same experience, I know. But hopefully it's at least somewhat relatable or insightful? Becoming a regular fronter is hard.
Chordata - 2020-03-28 10:37:24
My experience is only similar to yours in how I started out as largely a non-fronter for the first year of being in this body. I couldn't front much, let along for a long time. Once a month for a few minutes at best, I think. It was like that for approx. a year. I front a lot by now. I guess I could describe it as being stuck behind someone who was front-stuck like shield_badger did, but I also think that the lack of interest in and frustration for the world played into me simply not wanting to front.\ I do relate to getting accustomed to using a living human body that doesn't fall in line with my own self-image, even if I am just human too. I very easily fell into the habit of copying my (formerly "front-stuck") systemmate's basic social behaviours, because that's what we know is the kind of person we outwardly portray ourselves as, and I'm genuinely still annoyed that my first instinct is to behave like him when he's putting on a social front instead of being myself. It really is a lot easier to have and express your sense of self while only existing internally. Naturally. The outside world poses challenges that will pull your identity into question with more pressure than your system will.\ My experience is different from yours, but I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who have struggled in the same way as you have.
-Anton
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VeraLycaon - 2020-04-18 06:40:47
Though I've integrated back into a singlet state since, my own history would probably prove pretty relevant here as well - specifically that of my former aspect Veronica. She was the personality that took over for most of the '00s after I'd left elementary school and after that promptly went into hiding, playing the role of persecutor and protector all at once - in other words, she was trying to protect all of me at once by slamming down every part of me (including herself) that stuck out of the mold made for us in an effort to succeed within society. This eventually led to her integration within a particularly dreadful aspect of mine that went under the name of Ziyenni in the early to mid-'10s, taking away any genuinely positive contribution she had in the process (letting my therian feelings fly free, above all else) who had to be outright killed by someone who was… I'm still not sure if shi was a walk-in or if shi was to some extent there all along, but proved to be the head of my at-the-time system for nearly four years.
Thaminga, in other words - who essentially served to represent the idea that not only were better things possible, but they were real and I could embody them to the best of my ability. Shi lasted for a very long time largely because that was the best shi, or any of us could do (there were two of me that could jump in at nearly all times if necessary - Kaz, arguably the original facet everyone else split off from and Seraph, playing the role of id and superego at the same time, along with five other aspects at the end who could front if necessary including Veronica) but at the end of the day, after a harassment campaign leveled against me and several friends of mine by people almost a decade my senior for some of the most petty reasons one could imagine (note to self: never interact with creepy, cultish folks ever again), shi was so burnt out that shi had to take a step back, and with Veronica being right there as the final piece to the puzzle of whom I would've turned out to be had I not broken up into multiple people as a result of trauma in the early '10s, I ended up integrating back into who I am now.
That said though, yeah. Speaking as Veronica specifically for a moment, still there even if she takes an active effort to bring out nowadays:
you can't help the circumstances you were born in, nor the ones that you live in right now. all you can do is make sure you're the best person you can be, and sometimes that takes a lot of fuckin' looking back at what you've been doin' just so you can see what you've been doin' right, and what you've been fuckin' up entirely. I've been around for goddamn ages now, maybe longer even than some of the folks on this forum have been alive, but even so I needed time to figure shit out and do better than I did in the past, which was lean on makin' us not stand out in order to not be blatantly attacked by folks like kaz was in her younger years.
that said though? everything I did back then to protect us? fuck all that shit. I may've had my reasons to do it at the time, but fuckin'… there's nothing that actually made hidin' basically all of ourselves 'n livin' in fear of everyone around us a genuinely good idea, lmfao. take your time to learn how interaction with other people really works (I sure as shit had to in my near decade of isolation), let yourself adjust to the world around you (utterly fucked as it is) but other than that? welcome to the physical world honey, here's your human meatshell that you gotta navigate, have fun
All that said however, welcome to the forums, above all else.