Earliest memories/signs of plurality?

[voxel]

While We only accepted Our plurality a few years ago, We've definitely had ongoing plural experiences since We were a toddler.

Our earliest plural memories are of becoming other people (mostly Our one friend—factives represent!) sometimes, and of autonomous imaginary friends (one of whom is still around as Aspen).

What are y'all's earliest memories of being plural? If you became plural more recently, I'd still like to hear!

Comments

[beepbird]

The earliest unambiguous memory that I can pinpoint happened when we were 7. Our mother took us to see a psychiatrist because we were biting ourselves, and we were inconsolable in the waiting room and intake because we were scared. As soon as the psychiatrist came in, we were suddenly upbeat and energetic to the point of him deciding that the only problem was an "overactive imagination." The idea of having been upset or wanting nothing to do with the psychiatrist a few minutes ago was inconceivable. The sensations that I remember from that moment were almost identical to some of our switching sensations in the present, though I can only guess at who was involved.

There were also a good number of times before then where I can remember us suddenly changing our mind and fighting back against bad situations that we'd accepted or avoided moments before- going from "there's nothing I can do, just hunker down and get through it until you can leave" to "fuck this, I deserve better". Ann remembers those explosive moments as her switching in, and I'm inclined to believe her on that.

On the more ambiguous end, our first imaginary friends were "clones" of ourselves, and we thought in the second or third person up until we trained ourselves out of it in middle school.

[galewings]

many, many years ago, on a long-defunct forum, whoever had existed at the time included the following information across many posts:
- first of all: they were a ghost. they hadn't died, they thought, they simply didn't have a body.
- they had gotten tired of incorporeality, so they had decided to look for a body to live in. they had a rule, though: they didn't want to steal a body. that wouldn't be fair!
- after some amount of searching, they had found a body: the one they currently live in. nobody had been using it, so the ghost moved in and claimed it as their own.

...which could mean many things! but one possible interpretation is this: something walked out, and something else walked in.

[gossamer_musings]

We don't really have unambiguous memories of being plural, what with having a very poor autobiographical memory. But I do know of certain facts.
1. We decided very suddenly that we were trans/nonbinary in high school. This coincides, in our memories, with the switchover from Argantael as our masking personality, to Julian. We experienced pretty rapid fluctuations in sexuality as well, which Julian kept firmly hidden because it didn't feel like it, at all
2. Telling therapists, repeatedly, that it felt like we'd been at least three radically different people over the years
3. I remember the constant struggle we had with our different interests prior to selves-discovery, and how confusing the changes were. Sometimes we'd pick up something radically different, base our entire personality around it, and drop it within a few weeks to months. Notable mentions include: a brief fling with entomology (specifically honeybees), wanting to open a restaurant and go to culinary school, and going to university for classics on a whim despite not being interested in it for years at that point.

Mostly, the plurality is interjected looking back. The four of us (and other members of the system) retain specific and somewhat discrete memories of our childhood in a way that leads us to believe that we've been plural since a very young age.

[rainbowrivercollective]

We're not sure of unambiguous memories but we distinctly remember that a year or so before we realized we were plural we had trouble with feeling like "masks of a mask" and having unstable senses of identity which we were super bummed about and haven't struggled with since syscovery! _Jadie(she/her)

[gze]

It's hard to pinpoint an exact year, let alone a particular memory that says 'that's it, that's the moment it all started'. I don't think we were plural from birth, but I do recall imaginary friend play in single digits. Whether or not that was part of our plurality is impossible to say, the memories are way too fuzzy (and get fuzzier all the time).

However, what I can say with more confidence is that around 10-11 years old is when Z was first named and recognized; we have memories and artwork doodled of him from that time. So our current guesstimate is that our plurality began about that age. (Syscovery didn't come until much later, when we were adults in our mid-late 20s.)

-G (they/them) of the Silvermoon Team

[329production]

We can't pinpoint our age when these happened but as far as we can remembered, we had a lot of internal arguments playing out back when we're still in high school and possibly after that too, some of which are between our pre-syscovery self and an "imagined" partner Gardevoir because we wanted to protect each other and couldn't agree on who gets to be the shield. This is likely our earliest memory of being plural.

Other not-as-early memories, all of which happened in our early adulthood, are:
- daydreaming a lot about interacting with various fictional characters, but didn't feel that we're controlling their actions. We always respected their preferences and would avoid doing things they don't like, basically seeing them as people
- suddenly being unable to talk about our trauma to a university counselor despite normally being able to recall it without problem
- feeling as if our body was suddenly hijacked by an unseen force who really wanted a toy we spotted
- talking to a certain fictional character and being okay with it despite being bodily on our early 20s at the time, said character initially thinking that they're a manifestation of our "cynical side". This happened not long before our syscovery.