Being "squished" is maybe one of the most painful experiences we know of. It feels as if you are cookie cutter shapes, cardboard cutouts with animatronics running through a life. You feel like nothing you do can distinguish you from your fellows, as if you are a hive of undifferentiated bees buzzing around aimlessly here or there. Everything becomes about ten times harder than it should be.
You'd love to do different things from your fellow system members. You'd like to have differing tastes in music and TV. But you can't remember what types of music you used to like and while you're listening to that music you're constantly second-guessing yourselves. "Is this the music that I like? Or am I really just pretending to like it? Do I even like music at all? Who am I anyway?" Because you feel like you're not real, like you're just a fragment after all. Maybe psychologists had it right all along.
Your opinions on matters meet the same axe. You suddenly can't remember exactly what your oppinion on a certain topic. And if you happen to have an oppinion that differs from what seems to be the collective norm you bury it because you're embarrassed. You're embarrassed that you have oppinions because that'd single you out as different, or perhaps because you happen to be friends with people who will run and hide *even if they know you're plural* because of your separate oppinions and god forbid if you have oppinions that differ on their pet subjects.
If you are squished you tend to doubt your own reality. Your homeworld *if you have one* becomes hazy. Communication goes down to a faint whisper. People only speak if spoken to and then it is in whispers. It is as if being yourselves is a forbidden pleasure. And if for a little bit you do try to be yourselves it feels like you've done a bad thing, as if you are going to be caught at any moment with your hand in the cookie jar or something. It's a very disconcerting feeling.
Being squished is tiring. It is an illness of sorts. You feel spiritually sick, sad, tired. You long for the way things were. You long for the days when you didn't have to hide your feelings and oppinions, didn't have to hide who you were. Perhaps you even long for the days when you were sure you were what you think you are. And you try to restrict your mood. God or gods forbid if you break down, if you admit that you are furious with people, if you show anything to the world other than the happy, giving, angelic face they ever see. God and gods forbid if you're not always in the mood to give. If you speak up and say "No! I can't help you! Grow up and get a life!" to some people, you're a terrible person. God forbid that you can't give enough to the people you care the most for because you don't even have the energy to help yourself. Schoolwork suffers although perhaps you're still in good standing in the course. You are stressed, frayed, on the verge of screaming.
You have chances during the day perhaps, chances to be yourselves but you don't take them. You are so tired from trying to be people's ear and shoulder that you sleep all day. And if you don't you're too scared to let down your guard, too embarrassed about what'll happen, too afraid that you won't want to put the walls back up and go back to hiding. You're scared of the odd looks you'll get from close friends and family if one day you like hamburgers and the next you don't, if you like music one day and don't so much the next. You're terrified you'll enjoy what happens when you let go. But at the same time you want to let go, to stop pretending a lie. You want to learn about where you come from. You want to learn what it really is instead of what some people who wind up executing folks by firing squad tell you it is. You want to write differently, to admit you have different moods, to figure out which people are really there and which were "discovered" by the boyfriend of one of the system's members perhaps or perhaps added there by someone or someones who are no longer in your lives. You want to be yourselves. And you know, deep in your heart, that you aren't being true to yourselves. You feel this constant deep sense of longing, this deep sense of wanting, this feeling that something is being denied. It's something that food won't fix, material things won't fix and even a pet won't fix. You're the only people who can fix this but you are just so damn tired and embarrassed and you haven't a clue how in the hell to go about doing it.
We have some ideas on what causes squishing. We're putting them in a list below.
At times like this it feels like it'd be easier to hide. So we wound up having an impromptu housemeeting to try to figure out how to unsquish. The suggestions which were offered at that meeting seemed rather bleak. But sugar-coating was never something we did well. So here are the desperate and not suggestions we thought of. If any of the readers of this page have any other suggestions to add to the list, please email us at car taala at dreamshore dot net and we will add your suggestions.