The Chimeras' Log

Date First Written: January 2013


Being in the closet about being multiple takes on many forms. Some people are out to no one at all, some are only ‘out’ to a few very select people, others are out to a number of  people in there lives, and perhaps a few are even out to much of the public around them. For ourselves, we are mostly only out to a few very select people in our close social circles and even fewer in our family though we are almost completely out to everyone online. However a fair number of people in our lives do not know we are a we at all and we have chosen to take this route for a verity of personal reasons and slowly come out to certain people when we feel it is proper or wanted. Its all about personal privacy, being comfortable, and being able to come out to any number of people if that is what has been chosen. No one has to come out at all, though at times some multiples have chosen to do so. It’s a very personal matter.

Being out to some people, but not others have its pros and cons of course. Like coming out about any kind of personal information about your life - sometimes its just not anyone’s business or concern but other times coming out seems much more needed to the personal situation. For us personally, just as there are some people we know casually that don’t even know our last name or anything of the sort we feel zero reason for them to know any other amount of personal information. If we only know them casually and they don’t know a lot about us to begin with plus they will likely never know a lot about us - the fact of us actually being multiple is beyond consideration for information they need to know. We are a group of people in one body and we are family, not a fun and curious factoid of the day. Our family and family matters just aren’t anyone’s and everyone’s business most of the time.

However there are some people in our lives who we are closer too and that we do consider people who should know us and we should be honest too. They are either actually part of our family or they have become rather close friends or confidents. It is in these people that we come to even begin to consider possibly coming out to as being multiple. At this time, we are not out to much of our family due to either knowing that they would not take our being multiple well, or because we do not think at this point in time is the best time to come out. However, we are out to a few people in our lives and so far those coming out experiences have been positive to neutral.

Being multiple, or just being plural in general, is not something readily known to the general population. This can cause all sorts of troubles when thinking of even the prospect of coming out to anyone. Plus, due to the stigma of Dissociative Identity Disorder (once called Multiple Personality Disorder), there can be issues with coming out as a non-disordered or healthy plural system. The fact that DID has become so sensationalized in media, it can easily complicate things if coming out becomes a topic of consideration. Trying to possibly come out to people who might have head of DID/MPD and try to come out as an individual system rather than a media stereotype and oversimplification can be possibly daunting. Especially if you are a natural and healthy multiple trying to basically go against the stereotypes laid down by media portrayals yet alone the dictions between being a functioning system cared to a non-functioning one. Further there is the natural skepticism and confusion over the idea of either multiple souls sharing a single body and/or a brain being able to handle more then one identity and sense of self (depending on how each system considers their group to be set-up and caused). Most people don’t think about that being possible. On the one hand, that makes people figuring out someone is multiple unlikely usually as they aren’t trying to peg someone as such, yet on the other hand it can make coming out and accepted as a multiple much more difficult.

For us, we’ve come to find the hardest and most difficult part of being not out as multiple when it comes to our close friends and family is not hearing our names being called. It’s a rather simple thing - the sound that has been designated as a label for an individual but it makes a lot of difference to us. We’ve never been the kind of people that thinks we need to be out to anyone and everyone, however we would love to be able to be known by our own family and close friends. We do wish at times that we could be out and accepted by our family and have them call us out by name and acknowledge us rather then always collectively have to pretend to be the same person.

Over the years we have gained a lot of practice at keeping our multiplicity hidden when we want too. Each of us has our own tone and style of voice as well as physical mannerisms and ways of holding ourselves among us. That is not to forget to mention our own individual opinions on certain matters as well as certain preferences and dislikes. Just like any group of people we act like we are different people because we are different people. However being in a multiple system that is not out to most of the world has made our keeping our multiplicity from being really noticeable an art. While fronting around people who do not know of us being multiple - we keep to around a certain tone and to certain options and likes/dislike which we have weaved over the years to be what people think this one ‘person.’

Being multiple and not out to everyone can create some confusion on how to talk to be people. In our own case, because of our wide verity of (for example) gender identification, sexual orientation, and religious stances - those became an issue for us on how to outwardly present or label ourselves. In our case, we have ended up deciding to go for sticking with umbrellas that can explain most of our most notable behaviors to avoid confusion for those we are not out too. For example, if people who we are not out to ask our religious beliefs we might state that ‘we’ (though they hear ‘I’) and simply say pagan. If asked further we would state ‘we’ are an “eclectic pagan of a mix of various pagan or neopagan religious.” This wording allows for a lot of what people could potentially read or infer from us. If for example one day Lunatani makes mention of things which are Wiccan-based but another day Pantairin makes mention of more Buddhist practices - people thinking we are an “eclectic pagan” will make the most sense to them and allow us more freedom on what we might say to people without fear of stepping to much off their social labels on us. Not breaching labels or ideas people have set up for us, because they think and see one person whereas in fact we are many, can lessen a lot of confusion. To keep things simple and to not breach what image we have created for us in our everyday life.

Of course, we make mistakes and at times one of us might say ‘we’ rather then ‘I’ on accident or slip into their natural voice rather then our mask tone of voice. It happens on occasion and perhaps more then we even realize. However thankfully usually people don’t notice our mistakes, or if they do notice they make no mention of it. It seems when our mistakes our noticed most people will happy and quickly let it slide off their mind as something not really our of place for being ‘normal’ and will likely never think ‘multiple.’ Actually of all the years, only on a few occasions have people called us out on it, but that happens very rarely and usually these events are laughed off as slips of the tongue.

This is some of the nature of not being out as a multiple system to some people but not others.

- Zedjeb

Date First Written: January 2010; Date last Updated: August 2013


We do not fully at all understand how our system really and truly came about. We know how certain things were throughout life, and how it all seems to be connected in how our system evolved; but we don’t really know the actual root cause of our multiplicity if there actually is one at all. We don’t know the rhyme or reason, and instead we just know the end result that is now things are today. We can guess and theorizes about it one way or another, but they are only pet hypnoses that are only based on scant evidence and experiences that can sway either way. So we do have are our thoughts on how we might of come together and ended up this way in some way, but those theories very well could be wrong. In the end we just don’t know. We’re not fully sure, and may never be fully sure to how we came about in the end no matter now much time we would sent combining through memories. In the end however, the cause does not matter to us as much as how we live our lives together now. Even though we don’t know the root cause from the beginning, we do know the evolution of the after effects and how we came to be throughout life.

We have never, as far as our collective memory persists, been alone in this head or body. There have always been things going on inside this head completely out of each of our control. Even if we were not aware of each other as we are now and see each other as we see ourselves today, we were still there none the less. Our early life was something of a strange thing in relation to our multiplicity looking back now. Each of us were there in a weird way off and on, and in control of our body in a way; but we were unaware of each other and ourselves in the end. We weren’t sure of ourselves or what we were, but that of course would begin to change over time. During that time, we were still young.

We are not exactly sure how it was beyond a few general ideas and memories. It is weird in that we remember our childhood and into preteen years generally rather good and all, yet we cannot quite put into detail what was going on our brain throughout that time. We have a hard time recalling what was believed, thought, or felt during any given time early on in our life even if we remember what was going on outside our mind. We remember our mind was always going and going with ’voices’ and thoughts here and there. We are not sure as the cause of this, though perhaps it goes back to our brain being so full of chaos early on in our lives because we were not organized like we are now. Our early life was full of chaos in our mind for sure. Our thoughts and feelings were all over the place back then.

One thing we have noticed is that looking back we can point out memories and events which remind us very prominently as someone in our system today. Memories in which any number of us certainly appeared to be fronting at one given time or another before we even knew we were multiple at all and before we awakened to ourselves as we know each other today. There are things we remember doing or saying back as a child or young teenager that was distinctly one of us even if we weren’t fully aware of each other back then. Times when which what we said or the tone of voice that was used or what we did, which we can place as being distinctly from someone. We remember events in our early life in which our voice sounding like how Lunatani speaks today, remember our factual expression at several times having Kardegray’s famous smirk, events in which we held Pantairin’s more formal and slow speech pattern, and so on. Little things here and there that happen to actually remember though there is so much we likely have forgotten over the years. 

It wasn’t until we started going into our teen years that the first hints of our multiplicity started to come to our awareness though at the time we miss construed them into thinking what was going on was something else. It was sometime during our pre-teen or early teen years, with think, that Earth Listener and Cavern-Risen came to distinctly front the most. From what we can figure, everyone else still made appearances and had influences on the body, but it was Cavern-Risen (whose identity as a werewolf influenced how things went during this time in our lives) and Earth Listener (whose name was used and from this ze got confused about zir species identity) who were the main fronters at that time. That would change though. Echoes of all of us would continue to peek though our mind and into the outside world, but we wouldn’t fully realize our multiplicity for some years.

During the early half of the decade of 2000 is when Earth Listener found zir name; however, also during this time Cavern-Risen also fronted a lot and her identity as a werewolf and her understanding of that over shadowed Earth Listener’s aquatic identity which didn’t have species names to it back then, causing both of them to think they were a spiritual werewolf. Once we found the therian community during the mid 2000s that would translate into thinking ‘we’ were a gray wolf therian for a time. It was also during this time what our innerworld began to ’form’ in our mind. Though more correctly, it could be said that we started being aware of it more than anything. Though back then, what was known was a dark enclosed temple (what is the Ruins in our innerworld today).

It was through time period that we really began to appear in any artistic endeavors. Looking back, we can see our multiplicity before we knew of each other in what we had written or drawn during our childhood and teen years. Our early drawings and writings portrayed images not too unfamiliar to what some of us are though few of us had our names ascribed to those early writings and drawings at any time. Unfortunately, most of our drawings before our high school years have sense be either lost or sent into the recycle bin, which is something we find sad for the one’s we remember which are very distinct in our mind and can be directly linked to someone in our system. 

One of the earliest drawings we remember doing very clearly was from back in the winter 2004 of a is of a monstrous black wolf with lager than normal ears and shorter tail that was chained down within a cage with moonlight coming in through a bars and shadows along the wolf being red. Also in 2004, we drew a detailed pencil drawings of young adult snowy owl. We remember rather clearly having done countless drawings spanning 2004 all the way up to nearly 2008 of a large white feline. In a few early drawings she was given more tiger or lion-like features before becoming more lean from there on until the later drawings of her right before her awakening into our system, in which she was almost like we know her today. Another drawing in the Spring of 2005 specifically, which we still happen to have, is a pencil shaded drawing of a white-tailed deer that was female, but with antlers. One of the very strikingly similar drawings we can remember was of a sea dragon in pencil shading which was not too dissimilar from Aquasarius as we know him today complete with long neck, a tail tipped with a fish-tail, and gills along his chest. The drawing was done in the year 2005 and the sea dragon within the drawing was called “Aquarius” which is actually something of “pre-name” given to Aquasarius before he changed his name to what it is today. In 2006, a short lived short story was written about a young teen named “Zeo” who had wings. Two years later a novella would start being written about a young man named Zeo who could turn into a harpy like creature that was white, which we later discovered was one of Z’s past life memories. In 2006, a rough drawing of a literal half human, half wolf creature as drawn though the drawing depicted a male rather than a female. Another drawing, this one also done in 2007, was of a female black werewolf in a hybrid form in a fight with another werewolf  that was more wolf-like which had reddish-orange fur within a stony background. The black werewolf was Cavern-Risen ad the reddish-orange one was from one of Cavern-Risen’s past life memories. In 2008, for a sculpting project, we crafted a wall hanging bust of a red deer that was also rather similar to Pantairin again in a way. These are just examples we distinctly remember drawing during our teenage years, but even somewhat earlier we can strain to recall drawing or thinking of a few images off and on in later childhood as well which seemed not too unfamiliar to one of us.

That is how the progression began - slowly at first, right under our noses throughout of life. However by the time our high school years came around, we had grown more and more aware of each other but with now context for what was happening we all saw everyone else as a ‘voice’ or ‘character.’ Feeling pressured by how we had inferred from society that ‘having people in our head’ was wrong and unhealthy even though it didn’t feel wrong and didn’t cause us harm we tried to put an end to. During this time Pantairin was mislabeled as a spirit guide (and being male due to having antlers) until even she was forced a way for a time before being able to come back. Before to long, Cavern-Risen and Earth Listener forcing everyone away as tension within the system increased. In the end, this lead to our system grinding to a halt. Many members fled deep into our innerworld and out of awareness of our innerworld (including Cavern-Risen after a time leaving Earth Listener alone) and some going into a sleep/unconscious state. By the time, mid 2009 rolled around Earth Listener was alone fronting and there was one around for a time. That wouldn’t last for long however.

In December 2009, Kardegray came back around from being forced away for a time. He quickly made himself known to Earth Listener and began to really press to show how real he was to zir though at this time he could not front for some time. Due to being members of The Daemon Forum, Earth Listener became aware of the ‘headmates’ more though we had heard a tiny bit about multiplicity in the past from the otherkin community. From that, Kardgeray began to be called a headmate by Earth Listener though we still did not we were also multiple for sure. During this time everyone else continued to exist away from their awareness of the outerworld for a time. It was during this time that the Ruins in our innerworld became as they are today and some of the temple that it has been fell away and plants began to grow all over it in mass.

Then at the start of 2010 Kardegray accidentally ended up fronting, and it was the first time it was recognized as being such. Earth Listener recognized and was aware of the lost of control of our body, Kardegray realized he himself was fronting. It was then, both Kardegray and Earth Listener began to really suspect something. Then, in February of 2010 Lunatani began to come back into the awareness of the outerworld and Earth Listener and Kardegray quickly realize this as well.

It was at this point the idea of multiplicity really began to come to our thoughts as a possibility whereas before it had been hand waved away as to what was going on in our mind. By March 2010 we had grown to seriously consider the idea and by June 2010 we officially decided we were a plural system, though specifically that early on we though we were maybe median rather than multiple. So the first steps to learning about our system as a system really began to talk off. In the months and years that followed more and more people found their way back and in time we started looking for them as well. Further,  few years later we even had a few additions into the system whom had never been here before. 

And so, things have continued on. We are still learning about our system, about our innerworld, piecing together our past as a system, and learning about each other. Our lives together is a process of discovering and learning. We did not come to know everything there is to know about our system under a short span of time and there are things we may still not know or might be mistaken about. We are still learning about ourselves and our relationship with one another. We have learned a lot, but there is still much we do not know still. About ourselves, and certainly about plurality as a whole. There is certainly still so many things we do not know about the cause or formation of our system at its onset.

Outside of these general known facts throughout our lives so far, everything else is much more little more then a lot of guess work and hypotheses set-up by our  thoughts and opinions on what we think we might know. We do wonder why we are a system and how it actually began at its onset. We know the after effects in our lives but not the cause behind the scenes, if you will. Some of us such as Kardegray and Mist Weaver prefer to see our multiplicity in a psychological light, others such as Z, Pantairin, and Tanka lean toward a spiritual explanation, while others prefer something kind of in-between or just do not know and haven’t formed an opinion. However, they are only opinions and hypotheses based off primarily on our own spirituality and beliefs about the nature of a person. Regardless of what any of us might believe caused our multiplicity we all agree on the opinion that which ever is correct - whether it is spiritual, psychological, both or neither - we do feel that our multiplicity is essentially natural. We consider our multiplicity, to be something that just came about on its own. We think that, however our multiplicity might have actually formed, those root causes were just how things fell and formed rather than our multiplicity being something was caused by an outside source primary.

From a psychological point-of-view we can think that our brain was just naturally inclined toward multiplicity and from that nonhuman identities. That this mental abnormality of ours is an innately occurring one that our brain managed to wire into place in a way to told onto multiple full identities going on at one time within it. From this view-point, those of us who came into the system later on in life could be seen as just further results of how our brain just naturally works.  From a spiritual standpoint, popular pet-hypothesis among us is that our system was formed and caused by many souls being either incarnated into this body (rather than just one soul being incarnated into this body) or that a fair number of us walked-in while this body was still very, very young in life. Of course that later idea of us possibly being walk-ins brings up the question of which of us is the “host”  if either of us is or is not the original at all. However in that possible scenario, if it was so, then due to our body being so young, one could say whoever was the “host” if that person was one of us and not that that said host actually walked out when we walked in that the idea of it mattering seems moot. Further, in this view-point, those of us who we know came in/appeared in our system much later on in life can certainly be described as walk-ins.

Either way though, for all us in our system, if we had to pick a hypothesis to standby and we could not play the “we don’t know for sure and so won’t put a hard stand on it either way without more details” we would stand by the theory that our multiplicity and otherkinity is built form a whole host of psychological and spiritual causes and roots. Where and which way things actually fall within this theory is unknown by far. Really, though, it really doesn’t worry or haunts us. The past is the past.

In the end though, those are just ideas and hypotheses. What we do know is that we have lived this way for as long as we can remember. That how our multiplicity is, has not something which has been detrimental to our lives. That, for whatever cause, we are here as we are. We can’t be sure how we will continue on in life and change in the future. If we will gain new members, how our independence and interdependence with grow and mature, and so on down the line. Time will tell.

- Pantairin