▼ Salem ▼

About

Yo I'm Salem. Until very recently I thought I was the only one in here, so it's been a bit of an adjustment. To be quite honest, I still don't fully believe it, but I have agreed to entertain the idea.

I feel like I ramble enough about myself and my interests over on our main website, so I don't have a ton to say here. I appear to be the newest part to have fractured, and now that we don't work retail anymore, my external role seems to be handling most social interactions and maintaining our personal relationships. I'm not necessarily good at it, but I'm a little more tactful than the others and better at expressing empathy. Internally, I try to mediate between the others and find compromises when disagreements happen.

I designed the current version our primary fursona, though he's not specifically "mine", I feel the most attached to him.

I recognize the irony of what I'm about to write, but bear with me.

It's a kind of odd thing, you know. People talk about self obsession as if it's always about arrogance and overconfidence and vanity. It seems pretty rare to talk about negative forms of it. The self-depricating types.

I haven't finished CALIICO Project yet, though that's something that explores this theme pretty thoroughly (or at least tries to). Years ago I wrote a poem with the line "self-hate is self-obsession" in it, which ended up worming its way into the lyrics of one of the unfinished songs. So, look out for that I guess.

I feel like it's true though. Going on and on about how much you suck (even just internally) to the detriment of being present for other people is just as self-centered as going on and on about how great you are, but that also allows it to perpetuate itself. The fact you obsess over yourself is more proof you're a bad person who needs even more scrutinization and judgement and punishment.

It's something I feel an overwhelming amount of shame over, but also something I don't seem to be able to escape. I often feel like that Ben Folds song: Everywhere I go, damn! There I am!

I was diagnosed with OCD in 2016, which is I suppose the pathological explanation for the behaviour, but while I've been through therapy for it it's not something you can ever really shake off. It's an inherently self-centred disorder. I don't mean that people with OCD are all selfish or thoughtless or anything like that, just that by its nature it leaves you preoccupied with yourself in ways nobody else is — ways which are almost always destructive. I genuinely, truly, wish that I did not think about myself nearly as much as I do.

It has also made it much more difficult to recognize that the others aren't merely manifestations of that self-obsession, and to tell the difference between them and intrusive thoughts. The awareness that my brain is always trying to convince me of new bad things about myself made it really easy to dismiss this as more of the same despite the growing mound of evidence to the contrary. "What if I'm actually delusional and none of this is really happening" is actually one of my most common intrusive thoughts.*

I feel somewhat guilty about this whole project to be honest, even though its not as if I'm forcing anyone else to read it. It lacks the safe distance that CALIICO provides by not being auto-biographical. I suppose my hope is that by processing this, however long and whatever form that takes, will open me up to being able to think less about myself in the long run.

Like everything else with OCD, though, trying to ignore it or prove it wrong only makes it fester and reinforces that its something worth worrying about. The root cause must be addressed and processed. It is probably going to get worse before it gets better.

My Origin

02/21/26 (Edited 02/24/26)

I talked about this a little bit on BlueSky already, but the hardest thing to sort out was actually where I, specifically, came from.

For reasons, I've been the most resistant to the idea that there was anyone else here, despite some things that make it kind of obvious in hindsight. That's a topic for another time. But I've conceded that I am neither the "original" / "core" self nor am I the only one "in charge".

This brings the question though of where I came from. As far as I could tell, my memories as "me" only went back about 10 years, but obviously there's a lot about my childhood and adolescence that I know about factually. Rehearsed stories, facts, and preferences that I've told others so many times that they flow out of me effortlessly, that sort of thing.

Well, Delta remembered yesterday that in 2017 (almost exactly 9 years ago, in fact), we moved to a new city, then got a pretty bad concussion, then got the news that we had to drop out of college for financial reasons, which we had to navigate while concussed. Between those last two things, it was a really difficult year. That summer, we tried really really hard to get a job, but we kept bombing interviews. Then, one interview, we "became" somebody who suddenly could answer all of the questions right. Somebody who didn't feel anxious or self-conscious about our presentation or past failures, but without the additional feature of compulsive oversharing/over-familiarity.

Well, that is me.

I brought this up to friends yesterday, who also pointed out that this is the point when I started to say that I didn't "feel like myself anymore", and also the year that I dramatically redesigned my fursona.

I'm not sure if "Matt" was still here at this point, because I don't know how long he's been gone, but this seems to be the transitional period where I took over the body (from my perspective; Delta was still in control for about half the time). Considering I was also made to be someone disconnected from the rest of us so we could function better socially, it also explains why I assumed I was the core and was resistant to the presence of the others. Delta did his best to buffer them from me, too, but was also frustrated with how I perceived of him, and the fact that I was impeding our therapy with my own assumptions and ego.

Eventually I also took over as the person who handles our personal relationships, too, (for the most part), because it turns out being made to handle customer service pays off in other social interactions. I can't say I'm exactly happy about that being my point of origin though; I fucking hated that job LOL