why we want final fusion

i understand why final fusion is so controversial in DID spaces, but i wish it wasn't.

first, on the stigma, if you so wanted to call it that:

i view the stigma against final fusion as being primarily driven by two things:

1. a reaction to media narratives on final fusion being the only healthy outcome for DID. time and time again, this seems to be the most common "ending" to DID narratives - the trauma is resolved, the person simply Stops Being Plural, and everything is fine. in contrast, i can only think of maybe 2 pieces of media at all (both autobiographies) that doesn't end with final fusion. to systems that don't want this for themselves, i can understand the frustration. it sucks to feel like the way you exist isn't how it's supposed to be.

>2. the ever-too-human fear of annihilation. to many individuals, the idea of not being a system means the destruction of everything they know about themselves and the world. to not be a system means to not exist. of course, that's not what fusion means - no individual alter can simply stop existing as much as you can psychically lobotomize any other part of your brain - but, well, media narratives (and therapists misinformed by these narratives) don't exactly help with that, do they?

with that said, here's why we want final fusion. this is not a condemnation of other experiences, this is solely our perception on how we understand our own plurality and the way the collective generally wants to move forward.

we first and foremost categorically reject the idea of final fusion as any sort of death, destruction, repression, or suicide of any individual parts or of the system as a whole. nobody is dying and nobody is going away. you cannot simply think away an alter. if it were that easy, i'm sure there would be a lot less people living with structural dissociation.

our view of the matter is that, rather than destroying or excluding parts, final fusion represents the opposite; allowing every alter the ability to be present in our collective life. final fusion, to us, is about breaking down the barriers that take away our ability to be present at every point in our lives.

to break out some concepts from the haunted self:

our traumatized, emotional alters are very obviously not living full lives. they are preserved in a moment of terror that does not end. they don't get to know the pleasure that our adult life brings. they don't get to know the relief we, the adults & ANPs, feel. they don't know that they have more friends than they could ever know what to deal with. they can't see the love that surrounds us. final fusion, for these parts, means destroying the barriers that keep them psychologically trapped during our lowest lows.

what about the other parts, the ANPs, the hosts, the adults?

while they're not as obviously stuck as the actively traumatized parts, we're still not living a full life, either. in order to maintain ourselves as ANP, we need to remain phobic of our traumatized parts. or, to put it another way, we cannot exist as we are without rejecting our traumatized children. we cannot keep the stability we have without avoiding, distancing ourselves from the overwhelming terror of those children. without these dissociative barriers, we do not exist at all.

how much of our lives have we, the ANPs, missed out on in trying to manage these barriers?