Someday, hopefully in the near future, I’ll be able to honestly say that it was nice to be with all of them—with everyone in my system. It’s partially true now. I enjoy time with aspects of myself, it’s just that usually I’m only with a few at a time.
There are parts who I used to despise and fear. They lived in the gray building-a concrete structure with no doors or windows. I was terrified of what they represented, and what it meant for me to have them as part of who I am. But I’ve come to understand that those parts of myself did things that were necessary for my survival. They helped me find a way to survive, to avoid being hart.
The mountain people used to scare me also. Not because I knew why they were part of me, but because of the chaos they brought to my internal landscape when they joined the fields and houses in the area I was more familiar with. Putting them in bubbles to help make their presence feel more manageable seemed to help other parts of myself, and offered a way for them to interact. Looking back, it doesn’t seem very kind to impose a structure around each of them, but I am grateful for the connection it initiated.
My internal landscape has changed significantly several times over the past years. The most recent shift left me unfamiliar with where everyone was, and how they decided to organize. It took several months for the idea of making an updated system map to be agreeable, and there was a lot of discussion about how to bring it to physical reality. Someone(s) came up with a very clever idea, and gathered some of the materials to begin the process.
It continues to be challenging for me to focus on internal system work with any degree of depth when the outside world demands too much of my energy/attention. In deciding who can best navigate whatever is going on externally, and presenting as a unified being who is consistent across time, we have to create barriers and channels internally. This does not lend itself to having free flowing information inside. When outside life is like that for a while, like it has been lately, it’s like a latch has been closed on the inside, and it takes quite some time for it to be reopened.