The Arena
Today I'm going to talk about the weirdest of the weird when it comes to introjecting. Most academic sources on dissociative identity disorder will only ever cover introjects based on living people in a person's life, such as an abuser, but I rarely hear anyone talk about the ways in which introjects based on fictional characters and personas can manifest. Most articles will discuss how those alters tend to be from a source of comfort, and thus that alter will be someone the system can rely on in trying times to rise up and be the hero their story needs.
My name is Deejay, and I'm here to tell you that introjects based on fictional characters don't always end up being the brave, ambitious, strong, or happy-go-lucky hero that your story needs. And I really, really need people to start understanding this.
For those who know way too much about DID for their own good, subsystems are systems within systems, or in the case of our system, an alter with alters. I'm one of those "sub-alters", and I exist in Ray's subsystem. I originally split halfway through our first year of middle school, when the bullying was already getting bad. We would go home and watch YouTube and scroll through RayWiki and play some videogames, but everything changed when we got our hands on Rayman Raving Rabbids for the Wii.
That game suddenly became a lens through which Ray understood the world. The story basically has Rayman enjoying his life, a warm sunny day and a picnic with Globox's children. Then they are all kidnapped, and Rayman is immediately tossed into the arena and forced to participate in tests that would push his body and his psyche to the absolute limit. He does eventually make it through to the end, only to realize that he's left behind those he cared about the most.
While we made it through, we also abandoned most of our system. They went dormant for our own safety, or perhaps left to their own shadows and unaware of what our life is like today. We also felt connected to the story of being forced to go into a harmful environment that would do everlasting damage to our development, more so than elementary school had already done. We would be praised for our talents and encouraged to get good grades, but when I was left at the hands of other students and forced to endure what no child should have to, I ultimately realized then and still do now that middle school, and all pre-college schools in general, are prisons. The crime is being born not of one's own volition, and the punishment is taking the human instincts of compassion and humanity and ultimately destroying them. You will become no different than those "naughty kids", and you will become something you're not.
Even at the end of the first Rabbids game, Rayman displays violent tendencies that he would not have adopted had he not been forced to endure the Rabbids' torture and tests for fifteen days straight. Suffering and having to play their game to survive, he knows no better than this.
Makes me think that I wouldn't have such a self-sabotaging disposition and a tendency to lash out if I wasn't treated the way I was in school. I know it was five years ago since I graduated from high school, but I'm still feeling the effects to date. It hurt me and it hurts those around me.
And lately?
It feels like therapy can only do so much.