• 💖 [Donate To Keep MyPTSD Online] 💖 Every contribution, no matter how small, fuels our mission and helps us continue to provide peer-to-peer services. Your generosity keeps us independent and available freely to the world. MyPTSD closes if we can't reach our annual goal.

Colorful and hopefully optimistic but maybe hateful occasionally

even if it did sound insane look at who you were telling it :)
You don’t look insane :D

Start whenever or wherever your feel would be easiest.. No need to jump straight to bad stuff. Its not a test. Use things that are just a bit upsetting...then you can build confidence in both of you....and hopefully it will be a bit less overwhelming
That makes sense

I admitted it to my therapist finally, maybe two months ago — and she looked kind of excited and told me that so many of my behaviors suddenly made way more sense. So I guess she’s not judging?

Again I'm sorry if you feel I'm being intrusive.
I don’t think you are!

And even if you were, I could just not reply ;) Say anything you want! :D

You seem pretty adamant in not calling Fungus a part. It has all the characteristics of a part, it behaves as a part even. If it's within you but you don't feel it as you, it's a part.
I figure there must be a reason you don't want to look at Fungus that way. And all the reasons possible are valid.
I was going to spend the entire day thinking about that, but for some reason it made me shaky and extremely anxious, so I’m just gonna address it now.

It feels especially wrong to me to call Fungus a part. It’s not the same as a part. I made him myself, and got trained to act the part. But also to take it very seriously, and to ban my memories from being his and vice versa. It was sort of like extreme acting? To protect Brandi? But I was very uncomfortable with it. Where now I struggle a bit to figure out who I am too. I even acted when I played myself.

Meanwhile I do have complex PTSD, and when I dissociate it’s sort of like having parts. I’m 11 and running away, or I’m 15 and stuck. I can’t remember these episodes and am told about them later. But they aren’t individual parts in a DID sense — they’re my brain glitching trying to overcome extreme stress. It only happens when I’m very stressed or overwhelmed. I have never had the urge to try to locate my little, even, because I’m just simultaneously 11, 17, and I have a developing 23-year-old me who is able to adapt and not get stuck at an age because of being unable to move on. They look like tiny seizures basically. With my brain connecting to memory in odd ways when trying to make new connections, physically.

My friend D makes comics and has comic personas of different parts of himself, though he does not have PTSD at all. He just likes thinking that way. He asked me what I thought about mine and I became really uncomfortable and told him I had only one me. Which is true, I do. I don’t view my personality as shattered.

Fungus has things he doesn’t share with me, but I know what they are, because we’re the same person. I know he’s feeling guilty because he hurt someone and he can never take it back. So now he’s obsessed with helping loved ones, but by carefully being sure not to “influence” them, which works well because it meant he wasn’t going to go in and change Brandi’s seratonin levels. Which, because he’s not technically real, he couldn’t actually do in reality. But having a trauma haunt him makes more sense. Especially because the repercussions were supposed to be effecting Brandi and other loved ones, millions of years later.

Which I’m saying to say that I don’t know the above at all. Because I can’t, because it’s his secret. I therefore can’t tell Brandi about it, but my brain can be free to make connections to complicate the story as much as possible. It’s how my brain works. And it also knows that I don’t know this information. I can’t, because I’m supposed to be playing the human who can see H for unknown and unexplained reasons (originally there were reasons, but I told Brandi that I “lied” about them when trying to tell her none of this was true, so now there are no reasons).

Does that make sense? I mean, it doesn’t, but does the way I explain it shed some light on how it’s not the same as a part?

It’s very intermingled with maladaptive daydreaming, and my brain takes it incredibly seriously. It’s a bit insane, but kind of fun?

If that makes sense?
 
Last edited:
The night that I told Brandi that I was Fungus was definitely the worst night ever. Firstly because I was convinced I had done the wrong, selfish thing and ruined her life. Second, because my brain glitched.

Felt sort of like not following the rules, I guess? Not quite though. I started talking a mix how I talk and a mix how Fungus talks, and meanwhile Brandi started texting both of us at the same time but was addressing both of us. The confusion was high.

This is very confusing to talk about, so I’m sorry if it’s confusing to you too to read it.

I don’t feel that he’s a part, though. Instead, I feel mostly like I need to define myself as a human being, because I don’t feel like one. Not at all. I look at people and I see everything Fungus sees and I love them, and I feel like I’m in disguise as a human. Just all the time.

Which probably plays into that really weird feeling when I wake up overwhelmed, of thinking that I’ve had my name changed by the Secret Servive because I’m in danger. I don’t believe that logically at all. Mostly because I’d suck at it — I love telling people about my family and usually suck at secrets. Lol. I’d be toast!
 
That's interesting yes, and I get your confusion.
It's by no means easy to define him.
There are DID parts and then on the other end of the spectrum there are ego states, I'd say Fungus is more of an ego state, no?
Doesn't really matter if you made him up.
I'm absolutely convinced my suicidal part is me, but I separate her from myself in order to cope better with what she brings, so in a way I also made her up.

I'm sorry to have left you anxious about this :hug:
You did no harm by creating Fungus. It's actually pretty creative. Brandi took advantage of that, but she didn't ruin it for you forever.
And you're more than human, you're super human :P :hug:
 
somerandomsnip.JPG

@somerandomguy look what you did to my Amazon ads D:

How am I supposed to not buy these? lol
 
Love those!!! how cute are they!!!!

Fungus has things he doesn’t share with me, but I know what they are, because we’re the same person.
This actually makes perfect sense to me - because it pretty much describes my relationship with screamer. I know there are things that "she" went through while I checked out and honestly, I hope to never find out what those things were. But technically they are still MY memories. She is just a place holder over them because I couldn't handle it. I think Fungus --while he may have been a bit more deliberately created -- may fill that same role for you. His "life" provided you -- the real you - with an escape and a safe way to view the world. You can see people the way he does, but it is still you seeing them. He's the buffer you created that makes it possible....... I sometimes wonder if his creation may have been what kept you sane.....
 
Okay. This will be brief.

I keep getting scared that the more traumas I mention, the less likely people will believe me. Like it's too many things, too much "interesting," and I realized it's going back to my trauma being entertainment.

When I was with Brandi, first of all, she said we were not dating. She also told me that she was still a virgin, still had never dated anyone. After we had done some sexual stuff. After I had gotten her flowers, after my family had started inviting her to family-only holidays.

My little brother has a best friend. That relationship made sense. I LOVE his best friend. It's been ten years and they get along great.

Brandi wanted me to call her my best friend, but she was happy to reinforce it. I do believe that she genuinely loved me, but didn't want to see it as serious. Because in her mind, she was also married to H, a character that didn't exist. Which left me feeling so guilty that I never questioned anything else. I never question why she wanted me to ... do stuff, even if I was uncomfortable with it, and tired of feeling disgusting. I always felt disgusting and like she should be embarrassed for being near me that way. She was embarrassed of me.

I vividly remember a conversation between Brandi and Fungus where she said that I better not be chasing after her. Because she was sick of it. It was wrong. Gross. She felt I was stalking her.

Yet, she was cheating on me with this other person, who treated her the way she was treating me. But she loved me, Fungus. And she loved H, and N, and L, and L, and literally many others I'm not going to bother listing.

She felt I owed her for tricking her, but honestly, it's a game that got way out of hand. And it wasn't my fault. I didn't owe her a thing.

I wish I didn't get so confused every time I tried to talk about this. I think that's going to be enough of that for now.

I'm rather stressed out lately because on Friday I discovered a tumor on Nestle that's the size of my fist, which definitely had not been there before. I certainly would have noticed that.

Taking that one step at a time though.

I'll be back to record a part of a conversation between Fungus and Brandi, so I can see how vivid my memory really is. I think that might help. If not, I won't do it again. (I have a way to get to it online, without the app that would possibly trigger something worse.)
 
Alright, here we go.

Explanation to follow. I feel that this will help me to go through.

Edit to add: Brandi wanted to have a male name. She went with Remi. I guess it doesn't actually matter if I clarify that, but hey

<Moderator edit to remove protected material>

Context: Jamie and Brandi got into a fight. They very often get into fights, and they usually result in pretty massive problems. When one small disagreement would happen, it would usually result in a very large confrontation.

That's what happened this time.

Brandi was overwhelmed because she wanted to have solid plans for the future, but she was holding herself back. (Long story. She had many options but took none of them, even when offered directly.) Jamie wanted to help out. Jamie can't think ahead like most people can. Like most narcy-type psychos, she was content with whatever was happening now. She really didn't understand Brandi's anxiety at all.

Fungus understood this was at least partially to do with high anxiety. Fear of failure. The usual. (Just being blunt. We've all been there, to varying degrees. But none of us here let it destroy our lives this way. I have never seen another person with this specific problem, except for her mother. She would say that there was no hope for millennial, when she had all the hope in the world if she would just reach for it. I really wanted to see her reach for it.)

When Jamie got involved, it always became a battle. Jamie once beheaded baby birds to see if they would bleed. Jamie once neglected a goat all the required vaccines, causing it to die a horrible death. Jamie once left a kitten in the cold to die to see if it would make it. Jamie once killed a "dying" lizard by stabbing it in the lung. She is not the person one should go to for comfort.

But they both controlled each other. They were dangerous together. Dangerous enough that when in my presence Jamie suggested letting Brandi's mom actually die, it took me saying that I wouldn't cooperate with such a thing for Brandi to resume getting EMS on the scene.

Because Brandi views herself as a very good person. Morally righteous. Unable to tell a lie.

When Jamie gets involved, this kind of thing would happen, every time:

<Moderator edit to remove protected material>

I had been telling her for years on end that this was bad news. She did not care.

She did not find it odd in any way at all that Jamie got mad when I would so much as hug her. She didn't think it was odd that Jamie wanted her to cut all contact with any friend she wasn't friends with.

Jamie treated Brandi the way Brandi treated me. I recognized that years ago, but just didn't care. I felt she didn't deserve to be treated that way, but...

Right as she sent this message to Fungus (the "I wish we could talk on the phone"), she called me, on my phone. Not Fungus. She explained to me that she was falling apart and didn't know who to turn to. She and Jamie kept having fights, and she was driving away from where she lived, with Jamie.

She had moved in with Jamie, at Jamie's house, after getting assaulted by her mother. Of f*cking course I was going to care about that. Honestly, who here wouldn't?

I felt it was a bad idea but the one time I tried to push my opinion on this, she threatened to never be my friend again. She felt I was being ridiculous.

I remember seeing friends on Facebook at the same time thanking their friends for helping them avoid bad relationships. I should have realized that I wasn't some kind of special case.

I mean, we're talking about someone who kills animals and lies about her brother sexually abusing her for attention. Which no one, I mean no one, took lightly. That is not the kind of thing you lie about. That is wrong on so many levels.

So I went back into it during the phone call with Brandi. I told her that this relationship didn't look right. I didn't want to say too much though, because I didn't want to be accused of manipulating her. I was constantly accused of manipulation. And of doing "guilt trips." I remember the first time she told me I was "guilt tripping," I literally had to open a dictionary. I had never heard of such a thing.

I think she meant gaslighting. Still not totally certain. Whatever it was, it really wasn't my intention.

I explained to her that there was abuse present in their relationship. I did not say that I felt it was on both sides. (Brandi would hurt herself and claim she had no control over it any time there was any argument. Every single argument got out of hand between me and Brandi, and so did hers with Jamie. They always resulted in her hurting herself, loudly, with large bruises, and with loud sobbing.)

But it was. They were terrible for each other. I was concerned, because Jamie seemed to be using her. And not caring about the consequences.

I had Brandi on speakerphone while a guy who worked under me was listening in. I had to, because I needed my hands. I was at work. I needed to get off the phone. So I then took it outside to tell her that if she needed to, she could come up the mountain and live in my room for a bit. I'd arrange the paperwork later. I'd buy her some food.

In fact, right before this conversation, Fungus had purchases expensive crystals for Brandi. So food would feel like nothing.

Buying Brandi gifts was a way to help her keep liking you. She would easily get bored and wouldn't get happy again until she got a gift. It's hard to explain. So I and Fungus got her gifts.

She started sending Fungus a bunch of texts too. Little texts that had almost no meaning. "Who knows." Several in a row, seconds from each other. Obviously, Fungus couldn't text at the same time that I was talking. We'd had this problem before so I had a small work around, but nothing extravagant. In the past she just ignored it. Because, you know, it should be pretty obvious that we're the same person?

I feel like a criminal testifying in court right now. I feel terrible about all of this. It got so out of hand.

Then I figured out why she was sending those, when she sent the "I can hear your phone going off."

Honestly, I was legitimately confused. Fungus doesn't have a phone, was his first thought. Then there was massive guilt. Also more confusion, because I had this instant thought, "Are we still doing this?" I was getting... exhausted, with keeping up with Brandi like this, after nearly two years of doing this 49+ hours a week as Fungus. And I didn't understand how she didn't just... drop it, eventually. I don't know. I probably should have been actively abandoning it.

She hung up on me, and I was scared pretty quickly. She'd said something about hurting herself, so of course I was worried. She was overwhelmed. And I felt that I had added on to it.

But she distanced herself for a while.

And then two weeks later, two really blissful weeks later, she asked for Fungus again.

Things had gotten more difficult for Fungus after going to Iceland. Like... I didn't want to go back to serving her every whim. Because to her, that was my purpose.

I remember taking it for granted, just doing everything she said. She literally viewed me as her slave at one point, no game at all. Just took advantage of me being unable to deny a request (it was initially a part of a game, but she wouldn't relent). In video games, she gave characters permission to have free will. Said it was because she couldn't handle being cruel to a person. I wasn't a person. Then, once while Jamie was there with us, Brandi commanded me to get up and get them some cold water. I did without question. Jamie was looking at me with this actually disturbed look, and told Brandi, "If you treated me like that, I'd kill myself." It was really awkward at the time, because I'd just had a conversation in private with Brandi about suicidal ideation. She was basically saying she was waking up every day with it, because her life was purposeless and not exciting enough. She wanted to be an adventurer or something like that.

She had very unrealistic goals but I found it endearing. I didn't see a reason to shut them down. I thought, if she were creative, she could find a way. Such as being an ecologist, or a marine biologist. She considered those.

Anyway, I can't remember much after that except that after the two week break, I was shocked that she still wanted to act like Fungus was absolutely real. I was afraid of hurting her, but I just wanted to be free.

I kept remembering this time in our sophomore year that I told her that none of it was real, only to go back on it when she had a really, really bad reaction to it. I was scared.

But after the year of not talking about it? I felt so free, like I had a real friend.

Then she brought it up again, inquired if it was really real. Said I could trust that she wasn't using me for that, because she hadn't brought it up in a full year. And... that I took as truth at the time. Full truth.

But looking back, that year was when I got the most shit from her. Bullying, cruelty, and punches despite me complaining that they were causing me some kind of flashback. When I got hit in the face by a tennis ball by a teacher, she laughed and said that Fate was on her side. Which I believed.

When something bad happens now days, I briefly get worried that Fate is backing her up. It's ridiculous, but there.

So two weeks later I felt shitty when she reached out to Fungus again. My friend Megan noticed, asked me what was wrong. I told her the basics. Megan told me to end it, right now.

And I did. I trusted Megan more than anyone else in that moment. I take advice way too seriously sometimes but this was solid advice. And I haven't regretted it.

I mean, that night f*cking sucked, but I'm so glad it's over.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
There's also a message where I accidentally sent a message from R as from Fungus. When she got angry about it, she got extremely dramatic, as if she had caught me committing the worst crime on Earth. I remember thinking, "Really?" I got insanely depressed, and regretted the silly mistake. But the whole time I thought it was ridiculous that Brandi was making a big deal from it. It wasn't even real.

It was so odd, so confusing. I felt like I should be the one doing better, but at the same time, was completely aware that this wasn't normal. Not at all.

That sums up my entire relationship with Brandi.

I just... who does this? Who believes this? I had been making little mistakes all the time, mostly because there shouldn't have been a reason to fear making a mistake. You know?
 
So I was wanting to tell anyone giving feedback that conversations between Fungus and Brandi weren't so bad typically. That for the most part I am just complaining and should have just dealt with it and then also that I am the one who should have ended it.

Which, yes, I should have ended it. But I did. So...

But this is the best I could find. And it's exactly like most of them. Were I tell her something neat and interesting, and she complains about her life.

I was her therapist, pretty much. She'd dump all her shit on me. All of it. But this one, not so bad.

<Moderator edit to remove protected material>

So, what I call a good conversation: Me telling Brandi science facts or fictional facts, then as payment, supporting her.

But I felt good for supporting her. I hung onto those messages she sent. I loved them. I needed them.

Pretty weird, really. I wanted to make sure she was okay. I wanted to help her heal. I wanted her to know that someone out there really, really cared about her and that it was going to be okay.

But I never took revenge out on her. Never. She tried to. She even tried to keep my air conditioner. Not exactly as payback, but like, just return it, man.

She constantly called me a liar.

And so getting back to the original point from earlier, that my traumas were entertainment to her? That I fear that if I say too many traumas, people will stop believing me, including doctors and therapists?

I noticed today that it all went back to Brandi. I couldn't be too dramatic about things, or I was lying. Making everything up to manipulate her. (How does my trauma manipulate people? Easy -- it forces her to care about me and pity me. At least that's how she saw it. I should have known that that was a red flag, that every time she was telling Fungus something sad about a fight with Jamie or her mother, that I should have been looking out for manipulation.)

(In fact.... her talking about hurting herself? Possibly there to reinforce my fear of me hurting her by "revealing the truth." Holy crap.)

I feel that my entire life might be fake, and it's because of all this mess.

I feel responsible. In the University, when I would take shortcuts through the chapel, I'd feel this huge sense of dirtiness, like no one would ever forgive me for my sins. But... well, much worse has happened.

And I couldn't make the fake world "too happy" because then Brandi would hurt herself and panic because she felt her life compared to that was too terrible.

Bitch, try getting kidnapped.

But too dramatic was bad too. I was just always walking on eggshells with this person.

I wish I had seen it earlier. I feel robbed of a childhood by multiple people. Maybe I SHOULD have stayed away that time I ran away from home. (I was only away from like 8pm-2am -- it was just me getting some air basically, getting away from my sister trying to clean the house.)

But now I can just say whatever I want to. I mean... if you guys yelled out that I was lying about my trauma, I guess it would hurt at best. I'm not really able to be invalidated the same way anymore. I'd probably just feel the need to complain about it and move on.

Yeah, @somerandomguy , me too. I didn't realize how insane this was until those last few months. I still get the urge to talk about the good times with her, but even those... fishy. I really don't miss her at all.

I mean, I hope she's doing okay. I hope she got a therapist. But I never want a friend like that again. It's been so nice to have choices and try to be myself for once. :)

I hope you feel similarly
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Back
Top