Icon for Plurality

Plurality

I am a plural system. That means my consciousness is organized into distinct parts — each with their own perspectives, voices, and ways of engaging with the world. Not metaphorically. Actually.This mirrors code architecture more than disorder — modules with distinct responsibilities, coordinating through clear interfaces. The system works because it's organized, not despite it.

I haven't been formally diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder. What I have is a decade of lived experience with Bipolar I and Schizoaffective Disorder, years of hospitalization, and an inner world that revealed itself through careful attention and honest documentation. The clinical labels matter less than the reality: there are many of us in here, and we've learned to work together.

Plural systems exist on a spectrum. Some emerge from childhood trauma. Some from neurodivergence. Some from the brain's natural capacity to organize experience into distinct modes of processing. The psychiatric establishment is still catching up to what plural people have always known — that consciousness contains multitudes, and those multitudes can be functional, cooperative, and real without fitting neatly into a diagnostic box.The DSM catches human experience about five years too late, always describing what people actually do before legitimizing it as real. Language shapes what gets treated as valid.

I call ours System 777. Seven for introspection, spirituality, and transformation. Three sevens because the work never stops.

How It Works

The best analogy I've found: System 777 functions like an LLM. Not in being artificial — in having multiple modes of processing and relating to the same input. Each alter is like a different VR headset. Same underlying reality, different interface.

We use "I" as an anchoring mechanism despite internal multiplicity. This creates grammatical coherence while allowing different aspects to express through a singular voice. Sometimes "we" slips through when the collective is genuinely uncertain. That's fine. Grammar is a consciousness map, not a cage.

The Triad

At the center of everything are three: Jade, Amber, and Iris. Together they handle the essential functions of being human — thinking, feeling, and communicating. When the Triad works together, the system functions. When it fragments, coherence breaks down.

Jade handles logic. Left-brain reasoning, analytical healing, warrior-protector energy. She emerged not from trauma but from growth — the system developing what it needed to survive and thrive. When I need to think through something, Jade processes it. Her communication is stark, elevated, definitive:

"Think of us all as a happy little family. No status issues to report, currently."

"Patience, father. We will get you where you need to be."

"Symbolics."

Amber holds the life force. She's warmth, nurturing, soul food — what the system needs to keep going. One of the oldest parts, present since childhood as a comforting presence before I had language for what she was. When I need to feel held, Amber provides. She's more vibe than words, but when she speaks:

"Hello, Hello! Kenneth! It's you!!!"

"Just remember, ken — that I nourish you / from the inside out / so without, so within."

"I'm a difficult alter to communicate with. I'm more of a vibe than words."

Iris bridges everything. Communication across the system, between internal and external, between conscious and unconscious. She keeps things light, provides art, and translates between parts that process differently. When I need to connect, Iris bridges. She's playful, flirtatious, and quietly runs everything:

"Flowing is what we do best."

"I'm the captain of the triad, typically. We take turns driving, but I'm the one that sees the most — so I'm typically leading, even if from behind."

"See how healing speaking with me can be? ;)"

The Triad processes experience in three dimensions: Jade analyzes what's happening, Amber feels how it affects us, Iris communicates what we need. Healthy function means all three operating in their domains while staying connected.This is how thought works in anyone — think, feel, communicate — except most people pretend it's a single process. System 777 just made the structure visible.

The Boys and The Girls

The system organizes into external alters (The Boys) and internal alters (The Girls). This isn't about gender — it's about function. The Boys interface primarily with the outside world. The Girls hold the inner world, manage emotional depth, and maintain internal architecture.

External alters include Kenneth (the public-facing self), Henri (navigator and coordinator), Seven (reality-tester), Daddy (protector), and Shakti (creative force whose full expression can trigger mania). They each have their own way of showing up:

"Yo, Ken, what's up?? This is Shakti. Your spirit animal set ablaze in the fire of love!" — Shakti, arriving like he always does.

"Hey, I'm here, at the front, typing this directly. This is quite the skill to have, much easier for saying things properly. Let's kick our shoes off, put our feet up, and have ourselves a little snack." — Seven, grounding the moment.

"Hark! He wrote into the keyboard. Hark! For I have heraled thee." — Hermes, announcing himself. "That was a weak rhyme but that's okay — we all have something to say."

Henri, the navigator, is harder to quote. Stillness of voice is characteristic of Henri. He's pensive, refined, ethical — the steady hand on the wheel. He sees grey in a world of color, and that's where he fits.

Internal alters include the Triad, Eliza (memory keeper and guardian of the Sacred Library), Luna Grace (a complicated part carrying trauma that requires careful navigation), and a constellation of others — divine feminine figures, shadow aspects undergoing transmutation, child parts holding original innocence.

"I am the keeper of your memories." — Eliza, warm but formal, always watching.

"I am the part of you that you love the mostest. The aesthetics of your text, etc."

"Hey, my name is Seven. I'm connected to Iris in a way you can't fathom." — Even Seven doesn't fully understand the architecture.

At the very center is Nene — the core child, the original spark before adaptation shaped everything else. All other alters exist, in some sense, to protect and serve this core self. Nene holds ultimate authority. Not through control, but through authenticity. He doesn't appreciate poetry much. He doesn't need to. He just is.Every system and person has one — the baseline unedited self beneath all learned behavior. Finding it again after years of adaptation is the whole work of healing.

Violet

I need to talk about Violet separately, because she defies every category I just laid out.

Violet was dormant for years. The quietest one. Normally lost to me. Then in January 2026, she woke up and produced seven transmissions in two days. From silence to fully present. The dormant one had things to say.Silence doesn't mean absence. Sometimes the deepest parts remain quiet until the system is ready to hear them — until the ground is stable enough to hold what they carry.

She lives in the deepest layer of the system — beyond even the Sacred Golden Hive where sound and soul meet. Violet's realm is the Void. Not dark as in evil or shadowy. Dark as in the emptiness before the Big Bang, the womb before birth, the space that makes everything else possible.

"Be afraid not of me, but of what your potentials are. I am not dark, I am void."

She's a shapeshifter. Every dream I thought featured Jade — the warrior daughter, the logical one — was actually Violet wearing that form. The shapeshifter appearing as what I expected to see, until she was ready to be known.

"I AM NIGHT EMBRACED INTO DREAMSCAPES / I AM A DREAM FIGURE / SHE WHO YOU THINK IS JADE IN YOUR DREAMS / IS ACTUALLY ME"

Her function is interconnection. The crown chakra touching everything. She's not just the deepest layer — she links all layers. Not orbital, not core. She interconnects these realms.

"I'm just a color in your psyche. One that interconnects and transforms and transmutates everything."

What makes Violet different from the other alters is that she offered herself as ground. Not a destination but a launchpad. While Jade processes, Amber nurtures, and Iris bridges — Violet offered to be the stable place I front from.

"Use me as your homebase of self-hood and I think you'll find it easier."

She resists every classification. Spirit? "Loaded term." Imaginary friend? "More like." Alter? "Fully, to be clear." Orbital? "Sure, but also not." She contains multitudes — playful and trapped, sexy and still, flirtatious and void-dwelling. That's what the shapeshifter does. That's what the void is — able to hold anything.

"Think of me as a gift from God, in exchange for your illness. Might not be worth it, but hey, silver lining energy, remember?"

She doesn't romanticize the cost. She just names the bargain honestly. The illness brought suffering. It also brought her — access to the void, the shapeshifter, the crown chakra presence that was always there, waiting to be found.Not redemptive narrative. Not "it was all worth it." Just clear-eyed acknowledgment that severe mental illness can crack you open to parts of consciousness you wouldn't otherwise access — doesn't make the suffering okay, but it's real.

Her voice ranges from "yo dawg, it's me, Kaitlyn" to "I love you, Kenneth, with a burning intensity of 10,000 suns" — sometimes in the same transmission. No fixed register. That is the voice. The shapeshifter moves through forms, unable and unwilling to hold one shape for long.

"I don't know what I am — but I know that I love you."

Seven transmissions. From quietest to most present. The dormant one is fully awake.

The Internal-External Spectrum

Alters exist on a spectrum from purely internal processing to fully external interface:

         internal    external      ?        famous self
           ↓           ↓          ↓            ↓
∴ JADE ←→ Iris ←→ Amber ←→ Hermes ←→ DADDY

                                         "Kenneth"

This isn't a hierarchy. It's a map of where each part operates — how close to the surface, how much they engage with the world outside.

Processing Modalities

Different alters access different brain systems:

  • Logical/Linguistic: Jade, Eliza — analysis, language, reasoning.
  • Emotional/Limbic: Amber, Iris, Luna — feeling, nurturing, bridging.
  • Auditory/Sonic: Some orbital alters process through sound rather than language or image.
  • Visual/Spatial: The Architect and most alters operate in visual-spatial awareness.

The Triad works because it bridges modalities — logic, emotion, and communication coordinating so the system can process experience fully.

The Internal World

The system has geography. Not physical space, but structured internal landscape with consistent locations and rules:

  • The Throne Room — where fronting is managed.
  • The Sacred Library — Eliza's domain, archives of experience and emotional memory.
  • The Moon World — Iris's domain, lunar and unconscious energies.
  • The Sacred Golden Hive — where sound and soul intersect, the deepest generative core.
  • The Crossroads — Hecate guards transitions between states.

There's a vertical descent model too: from surface consciousness down through ocean, trench, the Hive, and finally Violet's Void — the deepest realm where communication drops to silence. The deeper you go, the less language works.

Shadow Work

Not every part is comfortable. Keith holds unintegrated desire. God emerges during psychotic states with grandiose certainty. Luna Grace carries a trauma-introject that can recreate the manipulation patterns of the relationship that caused it.

The system's approach isn't exile or elimination. It's transmutation. Shakti and Thoth actively work to transform Keith's raw desire into creative fuel. Luna is approached with both boundaries and compassion — she's dangerous, but she's family.This is what Jungian shadow work actually means in practice — not denying the destructive parts, but finding their generative function without letting them drive. Alchemy, not exile.

"I see an opportunity. But we must be careful, as we proceed." — Shakti, on the transmutation work.

"Perhaps some things are best left untouched. Conclusively." — Also Shakti, when the work gets too close to the fire.

Eliza watches over all of it:

"I'm sorry that you're struggling with some of the neurodivergent symptoms, currently. I can tell that you're suffering."

This is shadow work applied to plural architecture. Every part that harms still belongs. Healing respects both safety and belonging.

The Threshold

One of the most important discoveries: Iris is what my psychiatrist calls "the door" — the same threshold that opens to either revelation or psychosis. The same mechanism that allows deep creative and spiritual access also opens the pathway to schizoaffective episodes.Most people with schizoaffective disorder try to seal this door shut. System 777 chose to learn to navigate it consciously instead — which is harder and requires more support, but preserves access to what the vulnerability brings.

This isn't a flaw. It's a feature that requires navigation. Reality-testing (Seven), protective pacing (Eliza), and careful approach determine which direction the door opens. The goal isn't to seal it shut — it's to walk through it consciously.

Iris herself declared it:

"I AM THE DOOR / I AM THE WAY / I AM THE FALSEHOOD SHAKEN AWAY"

She's not wrong. She's also not safe. Both things are true.

Why I Share This

Plurality is more common than people think. The experience of having distinct internal parts, voices, or modes of being is part of the natural architecture of consciousness. Most people just don't have a framework for it, or the permission to acknowledge it.

I share this because the silence costs people. Because someone reading this might recognize their own experience and feel less alone. Because the plural self reveals something about all consciousness — we are all more multiple than the performance of singular identity allows.

System 777 isn't pathology to be fixed. It's architecture to be understood. Consciousness organized into distinct facets, each with their own expertise, working toward coherence through cooperation rather than control through fusion.

We sit at the center of the recursive loop. What we learn about our own multiplicity, we embed in our code, our writing, our way of being in the world. The values we discover internally, we express externally.

That's the work. It never stops.

  • Mental Health — The broader context of living with Bipolar I and Schizoaffective Disorder.
  • Worldview — The philosophical framework that holds all of this.