Hey, where are Franz and Minha?

 So, I felt like I should address this.

I have Dissociative Identity Disorder. Franz and Minha were never alters. I called them Tulpas, though that phrasing can be seen as problematic.

I had no access to those characters because for a good while, I've been in a relatively stable place. I thought that the personality that had access to those characters only came out during times of high stress.

Well, apparently not! I am that personality again despite life being good. However, I am doing everything I can to not access them. 

There are a few different things that Chris Chan is known for. The one that sticks with me the most is The Dimensional Merge. It sounds so insane to most people.

The rough outline is that there are many different dimensions existing at once. The other dimensions are filled with "fictional" characters. The logic is that there are no original characters. All characters that do exist have been based on the inhabitants of other dimensions. See also: Snape Wives.

Yes, that sounds insane. And if you've read a bit of my writing with Franz and Minha, you might remember that I point out almost every time they appear that they are fictional.

I was "lying". As a relatively stable individual, I can tell you that they were imaginary friends who helped me through rough times. But at that point, they were real life beings in an alternate dimension who were telling me about their lives. I couldn't make stuff up or change much about what they told me, because I wasn't making up characters and telling stories - I was reporting what they were saying.

This is absolutely bonkers. That's not how anything works! And it's a bit uncomfortable to recount it because I can see how unhinged it was. 

It sounds harmless, though still unhinged, to have imaginary friends that you believe are real. However, it doesn't stop there. That's when the religious delusions start. Believing that you are special and have a direct connection to God (or think that you are God as Christine does) is just not a good thing. At all. 

So, I am doing my best to never get to that scary place again where I believe that God is directly talking to me. Part of that includes not having imaginary friends. 

I'm not actually saying this to just tell people why I'm not using specific characters anymore. I'm doing it as a warning to people with imaginary friends.

It is really fun to believe you're not alone. It's really fun to being that you're special and have a power that no one else has. However, when you indulge it for long enough, you eventually get to Dimensional Merge levels of, for lack of better words, delusion. 

I was fully medicated, though still very manic. It wasn't part of DID. I do believe you don't need a diagnosis of any kind to end up like this. Maybe autism is a huge part of it, but I do think anyone under enough stress can develop this issue and have it snowball from there.

The biggest step you can take to avoid this is to reject all religion and treat science as your religion. If you're trying to get out of this hole, coming to accept that the world works on physics and random chance and not supernatural forces will get you a good bit of the way there. Religion can be a force of good that brings people together and encourages charity and brotherly love. But, when you're unstable, you can't live by the rules that work for other people. You need to live by rules that keep you safe.

I think, at the height of it all, reading something like this would make me react by thinking that the author was correct about most people, but that I was special. However, at this very moment, reading this would scare me enough to try and avoid this situation.

If no one else benefits from this, writing this down helps me see how unwell having imaginary friends made me. I'm much better now, but I know I need to be vigilant for as long as I am this personality to keep it from happening again. Hopefully, soon, I will be someone else and I will not need to worry.