polyfrag realization: on finding the angels

On Sunday, something happened. We had spent the previous day writing our essay “I’m a Broken-Down Android”. The next day, we received a message regarding the essay, explaining that what we said had resonated with the asker. This was incredibly appreciated! We were very glad that our feelings came across in the essay. However, the asker mentioned specific web-themed ARGs, which had us feeling a bit nostalgic. So, we proceeded to watch a video detailing one of our old favourites: Stephanie Lawson Stevens. And that is when things went to shit.
Immediately following the video, we began to dissociate a little bit. Chalking it up to our religious trigger, as the ARG deals with religion, we decided to stop watching. However, a few minutes later, we kept thinking to ourselves, “I’m Stephanie. We’re all Stephanie. Wait, no, I’m not Stephanie. Why do I think I’m this character?” The dissociation got worse and worse over the course of an hour. We found ourselves curled up into a ball, head pounding, feeling physically ill. We thought of the general themes and aesthetic preferences of our system, as they were fresh in our mind, and felt like throwing up. Our room is covered in anime merchandise, so we kept our eyes closed, not being able to even look at an anime character. Being ourself was too much. So, I guess we became someone else.

Hi! My name is Skye and I’m from the Angel Layer of the Milky Way Collective. Nara, who was writing before me, is from the Agape Layer. After a lot of dissociation, someone clearly came forward. He didn’t know who he was at the time, and was convinced he was involved in some sort of body-swap situation, in which he got placed into some girl’s body (we are transmasc! btw!) In his heavily dissociated state, he was only aware that he was a grown man with brown, messy hair. This man was Sam! Thankfully, another alter from the Agape Layer (Nara note: I believe it was Ben!) managed to fight his presence a little, playing a song that would trigger another member of the Agape Layer that had a bit stronger of a presence (Nara note: This is me because I’m host lol) From there, they continued throughout the day, vaguely dissociated.

Nara:
The following day, Monday, we woke up with a splitting headache, incredibly dissociated, to the point where we needed to make a specific role on our Simply Plural just so people would understand how out of it we really were. Our head was pounding, our identity was unknown, and we felt extremely weak. On our walk to work, Stephanie took over. She was admittedly in a manic state, though that seems to be her default. Thankfully, before we got to work, the blur took back over and we were able to calm down again, though we were, again, incredibly dissociated. At some point during the day, Hawk managed to take over, though he was the only one that could really break through the dissociation barriers. He began working on a Tumblr sideblog, which grounded him a lot. Still, he was very stressed about everything involving the system, knowing full well that this meant something big. We had been questioning whether or not we were a polyfragmented system for a long time, and the reveal that there was a separate layer above our own that contained, at the very least, three alters was incredibly intimidating and had us questioning further. We spoke to a friend who is polyfragmented, who explained a bit about their experiences, which we related to a lot. Still, the thought that we could have possibly hundreds of alters under the surface was terrifying, especially when we felt we finally had a proper handle on our system. We were debating burying the whole matter, honestly, and just continuing as normal. Another friend recommended we not do that, however, as those from what we called the Angel Layer deserved to feel heard as well. Sometimes, a system has to do serious restructuring, relearning how to exist alongside one another. Being a system means your identity is always growing and changing. So, Hawk decided that, after we got home from work, we would try and reach out to the three alters we found. Unfortunately, a large part of that memory is walled off, but Dai did manage to speak to the three of them, telling them it was their decision if they wanted to come forward or not. But if they did, they would be accepted. At some point in this experience, we fell asleep, likely out of being mentally overwhelmed from the experience. Before Dai fell asleep, however, he did check to see if there were any other alters in the layer. He bumped into one teenage boy, who quickly began to run away. (Skye: This boy was Satoru!)
At 1am, I woke up. I felt a really bad headache coming on when I tried to think about what happened with Dai, but after some trying and serious determination, I managed to find ourself in… a headspace. I need to note, the Agape Layer does not have a headspace. We have tried in the past to make one. It just. Never worked out. We assumed our visualization was just. Really bad. So we stopped trying. I looked around for a bit, realizing I was in some sort of school, and saw a man who looked similar to Baizhu from Genshin Impact. Then, I heard a voice. I turned around and saw a teenager, who I could only assume was a fictive of Sora Harukawa from Ensemble Stars. This was Skye! They mentioned that the person I had just crossed paths with was the school’s librarian. They then took me on a tour of the building. The building was… elaborate. There were multiple rooms for clubs and classes, with all different tools and activities. We exited the school for a little bit and passed a soccer field and track. It was there that we met a teenage girl, appearing as Ayumi from The World God Only Knows. We decided to take things little by little, as the headspace was extremely large and apparently had many people in it. Skye told me that they didn’t know who was real and who was an NPC most of the time, as the headspace allows anyone in your imagination to come into being, just not sentient. Still, they explained to me the members of the system they knew to be real. They told me about a fictive of Ayano from Yandere Simulator, though she seemed to be more focused on the process of making friends with others, similar to an AU we had created as a teenager. They also told me about an older teenage alter than them, a fem alter with long hair that seemed elegant and mature (though they had never interacted and Skye did not know their name!) Eventually, we had to go back to bed, worrying about work the next day (the same day?)
We’re going to try doing more system work in the future, so that we can fully understand the Angel Layer!