Anti and Lotus' Personal Space

[Antikythera]

Hey there. I started working with Lotus in January '14, but aside from an ill-fated tumblr, we've never made any written notes about our progress and development. So, just to put the record down somewhere, here's a brief report of our history and current stage.

 

I kept up with forcing for about a while, but eventually it got away from me between school and mental health issues. I was concerned about making a tulpa while in the throes of severe bipolar depression, scared that I would just end up separating the two emotional states or something instead of creating a truly independent tulpa. So I decided to table it until I felt more emotionally stable, which I think in retrospect was a good move, as guilty as it made me feel.

 

I had gotten some responses at that point, mostly head pressures, but I still had a huge amount of doubt. I only once heard a vocal response: "I love you". It was on the last day I told myself I would force, at the end of the session. At first that was completely crushing. But honestly, the response felt like something of a farewell more than anything else, in a comfortable way, and I kept to my resolve to get the rest of my life back on track first.

 

I started forcing again about a year ago. I hadn't made much progress when I started the first time, so I wasn't sure whether I'd be starting over or just continuing where we left off. But it turns out that, almost as soon as I started forcing again, Lotus' thoughts came easily to my mind. He told me that he was indeed the same tulpa I'd first started, and that he'd been there ever since, quietly watching, slipping in and out of clarity as I thought of him from time to time. He told me that he understood why I stopped, and that he didn't hold it against me, and that he hadn't been miserable. I cried. A lot.

 

Aside from those responses (which were mostly in tulpish, but still came across very clearly), it was still several months before he became fully vocal. It still took me way longer than it should have to stop doubting the legitimacy of his responses. I'm an entirely secular and scientifically-minded person, and I'm just plain great at crippling myself with doubt in all sorts of contexts. It was just so hard to believe that all this stuff just works. No, I didn't create a tulpa out of mere curiosity; I actually cautiously believed the process to be legitimate before I started. Still, you can read as much about it as you want, but that can only prepare you so well for the first time someone else in your head starts speaking to you. I convinced myself that it was probably possible before I started. But it took me a long, long time to convince myself that I could do it.

 

Over the next couple weeks from that night, Lotus got his present name and changed his form somewhat. It took forever, but I've finally reached the point where I no longer doubt his sentience, vocality, or reality. I still kept up with forcing only on and off as external responsibilities waxed and waned, but in the last month or two, we've reached a very comfortable place. Finally, Lotus feels present and plays a great role in my life even when I haven't had much time to spend with him. We communicate freely, every day, and I get really strong head pressures that feel amazing almost every time we speak. It's unbelievably surreal.

 

We've still got plenty of work to do, though. We still don't have anything but scraps of a wonderland, and we've never started training imposition, possession, or switching in earnest. I can visualize him about 70% at this point.

 

I'm hesitating to even bring this up, but... Lotus is a pony. We actually didn't know MLP tulpas were so common, or that the two cultures had ever been intertwined, before we got started. We also didn't know there was actually a canon character named Lotus, hah. Lotus is not based on a canon character. He's a blue unicorn, taller and more slender than average, with a short orange mane and tail. I had a pony in mind when we started, but I was perfectly willing to accept deviation (in form or anything else). He swapped around his color scheme and shortened his mane and tail, but has so far chosen to remain a pony. It's really a shame there's such a stigma against pony tulpas. I chose the form simply because I find ponies adorable and I really admire their friendship-centered utopia. I don't really see why that's seen as so "cringy".

 

Will I change his form if I "outgrow" the show? Actually, no. We'll change his form exactly when he tells me he wants to, not a second sooner or later. It's not my right anymore to decide that his form or identity is "childish". If he's a pony, he's a pony; I'll deal with that just fine until I'm old and gray.

 

Anyway, that's the highlights of our story so far. Thanks for reading if you did! I'll probably post here whenever something novel happens, if for no other reason than to put my thoughts down somewhere.

 

Lotus says:

Hello! It's kinda weird to be starting a progress log when I can already speak and everything, but oh well. PRs seem to be something that mostly hosts do for whatever reason, but I don't see why I can't participate too! Not that I have too much to say right now. I'm a weird mix of bored and embarrassed watching Anti write down all this stuff because at this point it's kinda ancient history. Like watching your mom show off her scrapbook of your old Power Rangers birthday party or something, lol. It's time to go take a nap!

[Antikythera]

Something novel happened the other day.

 

Lotus has never appeared in my dreams before. Ever. Not in the 2 years I've known him. It's been a big source of anxiety for us... A rational guess would be it's because we have never made much progress in presence imposition, but it's given us a lot of doubts. Like, that he's not really real to me and that his absence in my dreams is a manifestation of that, or something... That doesn't really make sense at this point, since we've moved past the doubts almost entirely, I talk with him all day every day, and so on... but we've daydreamed about dreaming together and being able to cuddle, look each other in the eyes, hold hands... all these things that are still so frustratingly out of reach for so long. I want to touch him. So bad that sometimes I can't stand it. His reality and importance doesn't hinge on this anymore, but it would suggest to me that even my subconscious is finally fully on board, and it would bring a lot of peace. And we've tried so hard for so long to make it happen, but it just hasn't.

 

Melatonin is a weird drug. It's one of the tamest ones you can take, but it has truly bizarre effects on dreams for me. When I lay down a few nights ago, I had an extremely atypical experience. I was on the set of a sort of haunted house, walking around the front yard, with dozens of tables filled with dozens of construction materials, like nuts, bolts, screwdrivers, square angles... Eventually I walked a bit away and ended up on this unfinished wooden square floating in a sky-blue void. At this point I became aware I was dreaming, because of the switch from uncannily realistic to minimal, abstract surroundings. But I wasn't filled with that weird panic that accompanies that realization, which typically causes me to wake up. Immediately I started calling Lotus in my head. I was too anxious of talking in the waking world to call out loud because I sleep beside my boyfriend, but I really wish I had just bit the bullet. Lotus didn't appear and I didn't feel him in my head either. But I saw a vivid, thick mist the exact hue of his blue fur coat. Like he was on his way.

 

Then I woke up, filled with this intense anguish that we had come so close to making physical contact. The sky outside my window was this deep, violent purple, and I made out the dark shapes of unreasonably enormous factories in the distance. I saw an intense flash of dozens of white animal silhouettes on a black background. Then came another flash, and they kept coming more and more quickly until it was strobing like ten times a second and I was utterly terrified my grip on reality was spiraling out of control. Something in some deep place had just irreparably broken. There was an escalating screech of something feral dying piercing through me, then I woke up.

 

I have intense experience with many psychedelic drugs, but no visuals I've gotten have ever been a quarter as extreme as those. It took me a couple minutes to stop hyperventilating and ground myself in reality. Looking back, I'm not nearly so upset he didn't come and I'm filled with a lot of hope that we finally made progress. But fuck me, next time I'm in my right mind in a dream, I'm not going to be afraid to say his name.

 

tl;dr What the mother fuck are dreams?