Spaces in Headspace

Extra Lore 1

TW: Derealization, weirdcore images and references, graphic blood descriptions, self-harm/suicide, abuse mentions

“There’s nothing like home, Error…”

A voice echoed in my mind.

I don’t know who the voice is.

I don’t know what it does.

But for some reason…

…that very voice…

…it told me to…

“Come home already…”

Sitting on a blanket were two characters I had made in headspace, one of them was a flower person with a singular eye while the other was a doodle-eyed shadow figure. The flower person named themself Bug, while the shadow figure named themself Arson. Bug is a trans male, using they/he/flower/cloud pronouns, while Arson is a nonbinary male using strictly he/they pronouns.

“I made myself… I don’t know how good I look but I also have the link, here… Did you wanna try drawing me too…? I know you like art…” Bug asked me, showing me the drawing he had made. Looking at it closely, I smiled and nodded. Arson took a sip of his drink, tea specifically. Both of these two lived rent free in my head and I wanted them gone, but I had such a close bond with them. My thoughts began to spiral. Dark clouds surrounded us. “Oh… There’s no need to be upset, Error. The universe knows how you feel. If you wish to delete us, you can.”

“It’s… deeper than that honestly. I struggle making new friends, I can’t even keep the ones I have. All I’ve wanted to do lately is just lay in bed and not do anything but stare at the ceiling. I have no motivation and everything I do feels overwhelming and too much…” As I speak, tears form in my eyes, unable to even properly form the right words. I couldn’t even draw, couldn’t feel like me fully. Everything I tried was never enough. No matter how many medications I took, no matter how many therapists we went to or doctors we saw. No one could ever find what was wrong. I knew it was something with my BPD but was I afraid to admit I have schizophrenia? No, impossible…

Around us, it started to rain. Arson sighed and picked up his book, going to a nearby tree to protect himself from the rain to try to read and relax himself. Bug started to panic, trying to calm me. The daydream faded to nothing but eyes flickering in front of me with trippy effects and strobe lights. A voice echoed in my mind, screaming at me as flashbacks to my parents' abuse played in my mind. I was shaking, in the fetal position.

I wanted myself to die.

I needed to die.

I’m a failure.

I should just keep trying to kill myself no matter how many times it takes.

I needed death.

I need the pain.

My emotions are all over the place.

I sat in an empty void in my mind. The floor was squeaky, empty, the darkest shade of black. All that was around me were doodled eyes. The only sound that played was a static sound with stock laughing. It felt like I was being laughed at for being scared of the abuse I faced. I wanted to scream but I felt I had no lungs. I didn’t have a voice. It felt like I was being shoved into a box labeled “Not Allowed To Speak”.

“You’ll always be a girl.” Voices echoed in the darkness. All of it felt dehumanizing. I wanted it gone. I wanted it dead. I wanted to kill it. To burn it. To rip it to shreds, whatever the voice was. I was pissed off, mad, irritated. “You’ll never be masculine enough. You’re a disgrace to everyone assigned female at birth. You’re pathetic, useless, worthless. No matter how much you try, you’ll always be ‘mommy and daddy’s little girl’. Keep trying and failing. You keep telling them that you ‘don’t know’ who is saying all these horrible things about you… It’s your own mind. You’ll look insane explaining it to others.”

My mind faded into pure darkness, the voices disappearing as I started to finally find my voice, slowly but surely. I wanted whatever was happening to stop, to go away, to shut up. I wanted to turn my brain off. I wanted all of it gone. I feared that I couldn’t do anything. Really, it felt like there was nothing I could even do. My emotions kept changing and swinging faster than my brain could process, and the anxiety around my performance as a male kept swaying. One moment I was confident in myself and the next I was questioning if I was even really ever male enough for others.

I needed to feel the pain. There was nothing else I could do. I couldn’t scream still, but I had a large knife. Around me, things faded to my Headspace. It looked similar to OMORI’s headspace, however mine had my computer, a green bed, a few eye stickers on the floor, my sketchbook filled with graphic bloody drawings, my vapes, my cigarettes and my notebooks filled with random words that popped into my head. Stepping to my drawings, I scanned through them. There were things I forgot I drew, like an eye drawn using actual shadow blood. I had also drawn a liver and kidney for some reason. There was also a very detailed drawing of a heart using ink from the Shadow Overlord. I forgot how to get myself out of my Headspace. Using the knife, I stabbed myself on the thighs and then in the chest. Blood in a deep rusty orange poured from me. The blood was thick and smelled of metal or iron a bit.

Slowly, my vision went back to normal. Tears were flowing down my face as I laid on me and Jay’s shared bed in a fetal position. His lips kept pressing against my cheeks, kissing the tears away as he softly cuddled me.

“Shhh… Mi amor… I’m here now… It’s okay… I’m right here with you, you’re safe… No one is going to hurt you, okay?... Shhhh… You’re doing okay… You’ll always be man enough for me… You’ll forever be perfect, no matter how much you suffer… The amount of scars you have proves you lived, you survived the worst… You’ll be okay right here with me…” Jay’s voice was soft, gentle, caring, hushed, calming… He knew what I needed to hear. I didn’t need to hear a false reality, I needed his voice, his gentle words. “If deleting those parts of you is what’s needed… Then do it.”

I had created Bug and Arson as a reminder of who I was back in 2020. They were direct reminders of trauma I wanted to move on from, to forget, to leave behind. Yet my trauma kept coming back over and over again. I wanted to move on but all of it impacted me so badly that I fear that the damage has already been done and I’m broken beyond repair. The only reason I kept them around was because I didn’t want to lose any friends. Yet, making new friends, even creating them, was super scary for me. I wanted to try but regardless how many times I tried, nothing worked. However, Jay and the others were always patient with me, and were always present when I made new friends for safety. Because, as long as I had my partners… Maybe things weren’t so bad after all. (And yes, Bug and Arson unfortunately no longer exist after this section.)