My Old Notes

The following notes are here for my own archival purposes. I wrote these down on March 5th, 2023 while trying to make sure I remembered everything I was going through. I was still trying to figure out if Amy was even real, and if she was, what I should be doing about that. I didn’t expect to make contact with Amy, or to have her front, nearly as soon as I did (she managed to front that very night!) and I wanted a record my journey so far to referenece later. I may as well post it here, as well.

December 14, 2022:

i had a dream where i switched out. in the dream it was really clear what was happening and i woke up freaked out about it before i could explore it at all

March 2, 2023:

i had a nap and woke up without any memories of my dream but i felt different in a sort of indescribable way. i felt like some identity shit had happened while i slept. but before long i was clearly just holly.

late that night i was in a voice chat still thinking about it. i tried to sort of let go of my personality, i can’t describe really what i was doing but i tried to leverage my tired brain into “stepping away from who i am as a person” for a moment, to maybe let someone else try for a bit. results inconclusive. i did ask the other people in the chat to call me “holly” out loud. i expected to either clearly feel “oh that’s me!” or to feel “that is not me”. instead i felt nothing; results inconclusive

March 3:

i woke up feeling less like myself than usual, and with the name “amy” in my head. this is when i started to be pretty convinced that there is actually someone in there. i started to question myself like “am i amy now?” but then i checked my phone and rewatched a clip of me playing guilty gear the previous day, and almost immediately it was clear that i was holly. perhaps amy isn’t into fighting games?

i started talking with flowers about what was going on, and got some reassurance and advice. i’m glad to have a network of people who know what the fuck’s going on that i can talk to

on this day i idly wondered, more than once, how amy sees themself. and more than once, i felt like i got exactly the same image beamed into my head of a human person. unfortunately, i couldn’t really focus on it because of my aphantasia so i still don’t know what they look like but it was definitely the same human both times

later i was playing guilty gear and out of nowhere have the thought “if amy’s a normal human that’s pretty funny actually. fairly few of the people i know in any other systems considers themselves human unless they’re fictives of humans, amy’s going to be the normie who rolls up and gets roasted in the group chat haha”. i didn’t really believe this, it was just a joke i sort of told myself? but then immediately i felt like the sentence “hey i live in a pokemon’s brain, i’m not THAT normal” showed up in response. so. hi amy.

i lost that match. i think “the person in my head has started talking to me” is a pretty good john

March 4:

once again i woke up not totally sure who i was. tried to hold onto it longer but eventually melted back into holly

had an online weekly melee tournament with my friends today. the same group has had a pokemon showdown tournament every week simultaneously for the past 3 weeks. i played in the first one but not the second or third. i had considered building a team for next week, but wasn’t yet fully sure. but as we were talking about it, i found myself saying “yeah i’ll definitely play pokemon next week”, and i was way more excited about it than i expected to be. i tried building a team and it sucked but i was having a lot of fun putting it together and trying it out

if it turns out that the human being in my head likes playing pokemon more than i do, that will be extremely funny

other events from this day include:

• deciding on likely pronouns for amy. i kept going “she–well, i don’t know. they” and i feel like EITHER that’s because i subconsciously knew OR she would have been angry with me about getting it wrong by now and i hadn’t felt anything like that
• trying to compromise on stuff like music. flowers said previously that (while it’s not my RESPONSIBILITY to do anything right now) something i might WANT to do is try to make amy feel safe to be here and make herself known, and i figured part of that would be trying to make my life a comfortable place for the both of us. based largely on just what i remember from a few seconds of possibly being her during the december dream (basically just vibes that seem compatible with the other things i’ve figured out so far) i found a playlist on spotify and we just chilled. i feel like she liked that? i don’t know

March 5:

had an in-person melee local today. haven’t heard or felt much from amy, which makes sense; if fighting games are my thing (to whatever extent they’re my “thing”) then she probably would be less active for this. i woke up later than i wanted so i haven’t had much free time other than “preparing for/going to/being at the tournament” yet which is when i’d expect to hear from her if ever

but i will note that i woke up wondering if i was partially amy again, but it didn’t last very long because pretty soon i had all my “oh shit it’s late i have shit i gotta do” thoughts take over. is this just always going to happen when i wake up now? not that i mind; if anything it’s nice to have a regularly scheduled period of the day where my grip on my identity is weaker. maybe one day amy will decide(/be able to) elbow her way into front then, since i currently have very little idea of how i’d step back voluntarily

something i did start to think about today is that: i feel like sometimes when people realize they’re plural, part of it is realizing “oh that explains these things that happened in the past”. i don’t have any of that, as far as i can tell. i don’t think i was plural a year ago and didn’t know, i think it’s happening to me currently

and i have concerns about that, i think. like, if amy hasn’t always been there, i don’t know how much she’s there now. it seems like it might be less “there’s someone in my head who i’m learning about” and more “i’m building a new person in my head”

a few days ago i had some moral concerns about something like that but after talking with flowers i’m not really worried about that anymore. instead what i’m worried about is that i don’t really want to construct a new person in such a way that i’m like, stripping them of opportunities for organic self-discovery or whatever

here’s what i mean. i made an assumption about music amy might like yesterday and put it on, and i tried to pay attention to if she had any reaction to that. and i think she liked it, so i kept it on. but now my question was: was it always going to be the case that she liked that music, or was it my assumption that made her that way? on friday i felt like i was pretty solidly in front by myself once i watched a guilty gear clip and started thinking about it, and i immediately assumed that maybe she’s not into fighting games and that acted as a sort of trigger to pull me into front alone. first, is that true? second, was it true then or did i make it true by having the assumption? i don’t know what to think. this might be something to ask someone more experienced about.

whoever’s in here, i want the best for them. i’m not going to lie and say i’m not sort of weirded out by the situation. it’s kinda scary. but i imagine it’s just as scary to amy–to whatever extent she’s currently able to find it scary. she is a person, that seems fairly clear. but is she fully formed as a person who’s struggling (or simply doesn’t really want) to express herself, or is she a collection of ideas still being formed into a person, still malleable and ill-defined? how would i know? and if it is the latter case, how can i approach that in a responsible way? can i help her somehow grow into a person herself without just overriding large swaths of personhood with assumptions?

are any of these questions even well-formed?