Fusion is controversial to the plural community and I understand why...but I'm tired of it. I'm tired of being controversial for who I am.

Throughout all of my time in the plural community, I can hardly recall any discussion of integration/fusion that didn't include almost every single controversy tacked into it. It can rarely be spoken about without all sorts of spoilers and trigger warnings in the first place. I get it, but it's tiring.

I was already tired of hearing a mile-long list of controversies tacked into anything about DID from non-DID havers. In general, I think I'm just tired of how plural experiences are treated overall — like there always needs to be a pin in it. "By the way, here's the dirty laundry list of every wrongdoing and discourse from the past related to this."

Is it really so necessary?

Final fusion isn't right for everyone. It's not even achievable for everyone! That's well acknowledged, and we're fully supportive of all avenues of recovery and living. Some plurals find the idea of going through final fusion viscerally upsetting...and that's perfectly okay. It's just not for them!

But it is for some. It is for us.

I rarely see other plurals sit down and talk to those of us who have pursued and achieved final fusion. What I have seen is people like me being driven away...like we're an eyesore or something. Like our experiences don't matter anymore. Like the plural community can only be so inclusive because many want to draw the line at us. Like our choice to integrate was some sort of betrayal to the very idea of plurality, as if we can't possibly still identify with that. As if our past experiences with systemhood don't hold anymore value.

It's hard to just exist when you have to slap a warning label onto yourself as if you're some sort of spicy fanfiction. "Don't like, don't read!"

In plural spaces, you have to dig until your nails are bleeding to find any mention of integration that isn't lambasted with groans and misinformation and thinly veiled disgust. I have seen plurals claim that final fusion isn't real or even possible (it is), that it's a form of suicide (it isn't), that barely anyone can achieve it (wrong)... There are so many stereotypes pinned onto us. We have seen people claim that we must've been manipulated by our therapist (who never even suggested fusion to us), that we must see plurality as a disorder needing to be 'cured' (wrong), or that we must hate our system (rude)...

I've heard it all before. If it wasn't at my fusion it was at my plurality, and if it wasn't at my plurality it was at my DID, and if it wasn't at my DID it was at my trauma, and so on. It's been done again and again. It's not new.

Is it any wonder that we're tired?