tunneling

given time, all introductions grow outdated and pale. so i’m updating it. what should i say this year?

shiveringnaked.org is the personal site of matt/the myriad/myrlings (we have very many different names, but even as a system and a body there are several names we go by.) we are a multiple system (yes, diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder/multiple personality disorder) but we don’t see it as inherently a disorder. for more about our multiplicity and multiplicity in general, visit our frequently asked questions. this site used to be larger, but now is just a journal. it has an impressive 18 years of archives, though!

given multiplicity, all introductions will be inadequate. we don’t agree on anything; we span so many identities. but i still want some sense of me here. what goes first?

our body is 27 years old and we’re studying linguistics at the university of washington, seattle. we received our ba at the end of 2007, and are starting a master’s program at the same school. we are on disability and don’t have a job – due mainly to depression and anxiety, though other issues about being multiple get in the way at times. school is a struggle too, but not as much as it used to be.

we span many sexualities so we just use the umbrella term “queer”, or sometimes bisexual. we’re polyamorous, meaning we are open to multiple partners or lovers or whatever term you want to use. as a whole, we don’t identify as either gender – but we are definitely on the transmasculine spectrum. our gender could be a whole intro by itself, so you’ll have to be happy with that.  a big part of this journal right now involves our transitioning process from female to male.

although we don’t think being multiple is a mental illness, we do consider ourselves mentally ill. we are very shy and tend to have panic attacks in social situations. (in the past we have battled severe agoraphobia.) we’ve had depression in varying degrees of severity ever since we were fourteen. we survived severe ritual, sexual, physical, and emotional abuse as a child, as well as mind-control/programming. we battle memories, old emotions and beliefs, anxiety, and depression on a daily basis. it used to be much worse – we’ve been hospitalized several times and had to take years off from school. there is still plenty of room for improvement, though.

together with our best friend in seattle, we started a peer support group for multiples in 2004. we co-facilitate it, and it takes up a lot of our time.

as one might expect, our interests are many, and include learning languages (mainly welsh, spanish, and japanese), syntax, natural language processing, guitar, programming, general geekery, watercolor, taking walks with our camera, dance, and computer games.

we live in an apartment by ourselves, near the capitol hill district of seattle.

this year’s introduction seems to be comparatively short! if you have any questions, or just want to say hi, feel free to email myriad at shiveringnaked dot org. sometimes we’re bad at returning emails, but we always read and care.