Three

A lot of providers have a model for what "multiple" is supposed to look like -- a bunch of "people" with, like, ages and genders and "people issues". We're not like that: we're a huge cooperation of loops of distinct, individual self-awareness -- "I am me" loops. — [newline] — We range from being tiny to quite substantial and able to cope with adult life. Many of us have really peculiar identities: holes burned in the fabric of being; plankton (we like eating); the marble torso of an ancient hero who shows his pain by how broken and frozen he is; wisps of floating mutable colors and scraps of beingness who is whoever you would like her to be; three/nine of us (the numbers shift) who are how we turn challenges upside down to see them differently to get at wildly different approaches to those challenges; one of us who is simply the skill of writing, be it long hand or computer writing; many of us who are collectively a software and process engineering group; others of us who are so bitterly sad that all we can bear to do is sleep; that's just part of the list, and Criss takes us all in stride. Previous providers have had a lot of trouble with comprehending even as "personlike" an inside one as our marble hero, never mind the enormous school of fish who in difficult emotional circumstances become a basementful of pebbles and sand.
-- Anonymous Three