I’m Joanna.
I am what you would call “The Host” or “The Protector.” I was born in 1995. I had a near-death experience. I woke up as Joanna. I stood there with Erik looking at my body while the two boys (dumb fucks) poured water down my throat to keep me alive.
When I woke, I was me. Every dip shit under the sun insisted on calling me Angela. Later that would stop, and they called me slut and whore. My last Owner whistled at me like a dog. I still respond to whistles as if they are my name.
I am the one who bore the brunt of the trauma. I’m the one who was raped on 9/11.
Are you ready for this? I’m the one with PTSD and Borderline Personality Disorder. I’m the one who took it all and endured it.
When I started emerging spring and summer 2022, we could all pass between my mentally ill mind and their healthier minds. We could feel each mental illness sink back into my mind. We could, if only for a few hours, step into a place where we had no mental illness or trauma. And we got to SEE what a life without trauma would look like.
We started to believe in it.
Our Multiple Personalities is what showed us another life. And when we tasted that, we wanted it. At first, they pushed me down. They took me over.
We fought.
They fought over who would lead and host.
My Number #1 watched it all.
I am the one who, to protect each and every one of them, I buried them away from the pain so I could take it. And it was my untainted Alters who rose back from my subconscious and nursed me back to health.
That is what goes on in my mind, every day. Imagination is the Mother. She leads the healing way and checks in with all of us. Make sure we’re all okay. We nurture Angel. Help her with her voice. Kallan is the Warrior. She fights. And Bergen…
“I’m the Bard!”
I roll my eyes and get on with it.
Yes. Bergen is the Bard. Because we need fucking music and jolly lute playing while we sort out our skeletons!
The doors. The Mind Maze.
If the subconscious had a second floor, it would be the Mind Maze. This maze is where all the doors of memory are. In this maze, a door is open, closed, or closed and locked. The worst doors are lost and forgotten.
An open door is a recent memory or a memory often visited. A closed door is a memory that needs to be accessed, but is available to the conscious mind. The locked doors… those are in the back. Those are trauma doors we’re not yet ready to dig out and remember. Behind those doors, demons and monsters lurk terrorizing a version of Angel.
Behind every locked door is a version of Angel who needed to be saved and rescued. The forgotten doors… Those… Are the life altering memories. Bad ones. So bad that you forgot they’re even there. But our subconscious takes clues from each door and they leave them around your conscious mind. They embed these clues into dreams, quirks, odd behaviors like nail biting and leg twitching.
Because somewhere, your subconscious remembers. And they’re trying to talk to you.