I had lived my entire life with DID, but I never understood what being plural was like until after we fused.

After the separation slowly dissipated, we were just all there, facing each other for the first time with no walls. We mixed and stirred together to become everything that all of us were, all at once. We were simultaneously all still individual, but also each other as individuals, and then all of us together as one.

After final fusion, for the first time, we actually felt all of the parts that exist together inside of this body. We finally felt like a system in the plainest usage of the word — a set of individual parts fluidly moving and working together to make up one whole.

I never had that before, back with the DID. What I had was separation, dissociation, walls, barriers, and mazes. I had what was me and what was not me. We felt unbearably alone despite sharing a body with so many.

In a way, it was a lot like having a pen pal. Even when we were able to communicate and cooperate so well, the distance was palpable. We never truly knew or understood what the others were doing or thinking or feeling at any given time. That's hard when you love your system so damn much.

We were constantly playing catch up with each other and our life. Our life hardly felt like it belonged to all of us even though it technically did. How was it supposed to be our life if we couldn't all be there to experience it whenever or as much as we wanted?

We didn't feel plural at all. We felt fragmented. Divided. Broken up.

Final fusion mended that for us.

Now we're all present all at once! All of that involuntary separation is completely gone. We finally feel our own plurality, our multitudes on the inside. We're now able to share this life in the way that we wanted so badly, with all of the context. We're able to do it both as the individual parts and as all the parts being one!

Isn't plurality all about being "many as one"? Does that change because I'm now "one as many"? Does the many-ness stop applying if the one-ness overtakes it? I don't see how. But, at the end of the day, it's just a label. What really matters is that we're happy...and we are!

From the inside, a chorus of cheers — "I'm so happy to be all of me!"