[Written 27/05/2023]
Recently, I went through a sort of "death." Not actual death, mind you. A metaphorical one. I am an introject of a fictional character. More specifcally, he is a villian. I am not a new alter. The furthest memory I have is from when we were 10.
I was introjected because I was evil. My source character, a manipulative, scheming villian, often potrayed as crass and evil for no reason, resonated with us. I was often villianized for my (undiagnosed at the time) developmental disorder. I was always a bad kid, even if what I was doing was completley out of my control. I became a persecutor, I was our negative voice. I agreed with our abuser when they hurt us, and sabotaged other parts when I felt they had stepped out of line. This was most of the surface level knowledge I had about myself [as other parts had been keeping some of my memories and feelings away from me]. Recently, a child part of my subsystem surfaced, asking me a qeustion that threw me for a loop regarding my own identity.
"Were we born to be a bad person?"
I didn't have an answer for them. I could've said "no" but that wasn't entriely honest. I did form to be a bad person. More specifcally, I formed because my source was a bad person, and thats how my brain decided to cope with the abuse we were experiencing at the time. I don't want to be a bad person, but the control of that has felt beyond me for years. My sources was a bad person, and so was I by proxy. That was it. That was final. It stuck with me for months. I couldn't stop wondering about, that if I wasn't an introject, would I still be the same person. Would I still be a bad person?
Once we started getting back into my source characters franchise, reigniting an old special intrest, I was more able to look and interact with my source character as a character rather than an extension of myself. I slowly became more and more detached from my idea of me, until one day I woke up and it felt as though I had died. I didn't feel any of those feelings I once did about myself, my image, or my source character. It was freeing and terrifying. On one hand, my self worth and my image of myself was no longer grounded in fiction, it was real. It was based on me being.. me. On the other hand, no longer having that identitty to sheild myself was scary. I felt more vulenerable than I had ever felt.
I still don't entirely know how I feel about myself. I have been slowly rebuilding my sense of identity, which isn't easy. But it's made me happier. I still haven't let go entirely of that fictional identity. I still have his name and face. But I feel more like "me" now, whoever that shapes out to be.