☢ A Self Called Nowhere ☢
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About "Me"
We are the Wasteland System, but all of us will also respond to Salem. Friends can use our IRL name. We are a 29 year old gay man and generally use he/it pronouns, though female parts prefer she/it when being addressed directly. We are a multimedia artist with a soon-to-be-completed MS in Linguistics.
This is a space for us to make sense of ourself. It hosts our sketch diary and long-form blog posts (see log above). We also have side accounts on BlueSky and Tumblr.
You may ask questions, but please do not give us unsolicited psychiatric or medical advice. We cannot do the same for you, either; we are not an expert we are just some guy.
Known parts include Salem, Delta, and Topaz, who handle the majority of socialization and day-to-day functioning, as well as Obsidian, Jade, Luke, Rin, Kitty, Kat, Blue, and Silver. More parts may become known over time. Salem, Delta, Topaz, Jade, Rin, and Kitty are okay to talk to directly, but questions/comments can be relayed to the others.
We don't use plural or multiple as an identity label, but we may refer to ourself as a system. All of us prefer to be seen as autonomous parts of one person rather than separate people, or don't care at all how we're perceived. Collectively we are also uncomfortable being seen as human; we are a feline.
We are currently receiving professional treatment. Our current diagnostic impression is Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), but we have not yet had a full evaluation (this will hopefully happen later this year). Right now, we are working on system stablization, including improving communication and cooperation between parts. This blog focuses on exploring our DID in a creative way as an extension of our therapy work, but we also have other comorbid neurodivergencies and mental illness which were already diagnosed (notably AuDHD and OCD).
Warning for dissociationposting and potentially upsetting content — trauma, extreme bullying, self harm, suicide attempts, eating disorders, sexual assault, and other mental health struggles may come up.
Our Untangling
We've been living with severe dissociation and other mental health struggles for most of our life. In January 2026, we had a bit of a breakthrough moment, and what was meant to be a single comic to humourosly depict the experience quickly turned into several more comics and now a website.
We've attempted journaling, sketch diaries, and other forms of art therapy in the past, but we would always end up getting frustrated by conflicting thoughts, feelings, and even memories. It would immediately become an overwhelming mess and we wouldn't be able to keep up with it. Now, we think we understand why.
Let's use a metaphore. Imagine a spool of thread. Most spools can roll along a surface with no problems and keep all of their thread together.
Now imagine that this particular spool is rolled along a rough surface that slowly wears it down. Eventually, it gets enough wear that its thread starts to become loose, which causes even more friction in its movement. Then, it hits a particularly sharp obstacle which slices through part of the thread, and suddenly it doesn't even have a continuous strand anymore.
But still, the spool has to keep rolling. But the further it goes the more sharp obstacles the spool hits, and the thread becomes even more segmented. Over time they fray and tangle and tie themselves into knots. Part of it may even get left behind. What was once one long thread is now a lot of smaller threads, but they're so tangled up that they can't tell which is which, and their own damage is worsening that of the others.
Even when placed on a smooth surface, this spool can barely roll at all. When the surface inevitably becomes rough again, it is so difficult to keep moving that it just wants to stop completely.
The first step was surprisingly — unnervingly, even — easy, but also somewhat counterintuitive: identify the threads for what they are rather than trying to treat them like they're still one single strand, and then slowly start to pull them apart so they can be understood. This is what we're trying to do here.
Just getting this far has quelled a lot of our internal chaos and we feel like we can think much clearer than we have in a long time, but it seems that this is only the beginning. There is still quite a bit of inner dysfunction, unaddressed problems, and interference from other comorbid conditions.