chrysalis

Things are changing in T-E-C land.

We’re going through a transition. Well, probably more than one.

Something about our health feels very wrong. And yeah, maybe that’s to be expected – we do have a handful of serious medical problems. But this is different. So far, there have been tests, doctors, and more tests, but no definitive explanation for why we feel so exhausted all the time. At this point, most of us are ready for it to be anything as long as we get an answer.

We’re so stressed that we’ve pulled out a ton of our hair (thank you, trichotillomania) and have had the first new alter in almost 20 years pop up. That alter’s name is Angel, and they are here to help us through any transition, up to and including death.

No, we’re not planning or wanting to die. That’s just how great we’ve been feeling lately. It feels like we’re being overly melodramatic, so we haven’t talked about it much, including in therapy. We probably should.

But that’s not the only change happening. We’re… shifting, as a system. Becoming more integrated, for one. No, not fused, we’re still a we. But the lines are blurrier, and there are a lot more co-conscious moments. Which sounds like it should be a good thing, but it isn’t helping with the exhaustion any.  It seems to take extra power to run multiple CPU cores at once. 😉

This would normally be the time of year when we elect our ruling council for the next 12 months. T-E-C has been a representative democracy for decades. But now, we’re questioning if its time to move away from the council into more direct democracy. That would be a rather monumental change in how we run things. It comes with lots of questions – do alters that only front once in a while get the same voting power as our host and other regular fronters? What about alters that are still stuck in trauma time – should they be allowed to vote if they aren’t even fully present in the real, modern world? It would certainly re-prioritize getting them out of trauma time, which is almost certainly a good thing….

And then there is the whole host thing. For the last few years, its largely been the Saoirse show. But that’s been killing us. Saoirse is good at many things, but self-care is not one of them. Saoirse is a workaholic who has no sense of balance. But, Saoirse also makes our paycheck appear. Usually anyway. Right now we’re so exhausted we can’t work. This blog entry is actually the product of multiple authors over the course of days.

Back to the host question, Saoirse is the host simply because when Janet stepped down a few years ago, no one else stepped up. There’s a lot to be said for doing a job no one wants, but we’ve realized there HAS to be a change. We’re just not sure how to go about it. As much as Saoirse complains, they (that’s a non-binary they) have gotten quite accustomed to being the host and are resisting efforts to change the regime… but, with the possible exception of Janet, everyone else is ready for Saoirse to take a less active role.

Who will take over as host if Saoirse is made to step down? We’re not sure. Not all of this is entirely based on conscious choice.

And we just fell asleep at our desk for the last 30ish minutes.  Time to post and move on. To be continued…