Being multi-faceted.

Identifying as multi-faceted is a very recent thing for me, despite having facets my entire life. I attribute this to the fact that I didn't understand myself well enough before.

I think I know the question I'll get the most about this subject: "What's the difference between mutli-faceted and being a system?" For me, it comes down to the fact that I am always me, that I never experience a shift in consciousness and never deviate from being and feeling like I am "Fost." My facets are not complete beings, they are pieces that form the whole with me.

Quite simply, I don't feel plural, so I don't identify as plural. Some probably could make a good argument that this is system-like behavior, to view myself this way, but at the end of the day I always come back to the fact that I am "me" and my concept of "me" never shifts.

"So why have you chosen to give each facet its own name?" you might ask. I did this for two reasons. For Silver and Fletcher, my psychologically formed facets, I did this to honor who they were before I realized they were part of me. Both Silver and Fletcher began their lives as characters I made, as my mind's attempt to process my own identity when I didn't have the education and language to understand myself. They are part of me, but for a while they maintained their own "personhood" so to speak, and I wanted to respect that and not strip them of who I made them to be.

For Ehv and Checa, my spiritual facets, I wanted to honor the lives they lived before they became part of my soul. I don't know their full history, but I know several things about them and who they were before we came together to be one person. Like Silver and Fletcher, I didn't feel right erasing their history by stripping them of their names. I also have a spirit companion who knew them in their previous lives, and I wanted to honor their memory for that companion as well and let them know that, even though they are gone physically from this world, they are still here by being part of me.

Also, quite frankly, it makes it easier to talk about them in things like this.

Since identifying myself as multi-faceted is a very new thing for me, I don't have as much to say on it as I do my alterhumanity. I will continue to explore it, however, and we'll see where it takes me.