Returning to My Multitudes

When I was a child, I lived in a universe inside my own head.

It wasn’t daydreaming, not really. It was inhabiting. I could slip into stories, into fantasies, into whole constructed lives with ease. One day I was a magical princess, the next a singer, the next the President of the United States. I didn’t just imagine them - I was living them. Entire days would pass with me moving through these roles, narrating scenes, improvising dialogue, and watching the internal movie unfold.

Books amplified it. When I read, the words didn’t stay flat on the page. They weren’t just stories rising up around me - I went into them. I stepped inside as if through a doorway, living as my own character or sometimes taking on the skin of one already written. The book became my world, and for the hours I was inside it, nothing else existed.

And movies - oh, I am the ultimate movie watcher when they’re done well. My whole life of immersion makes me excel at catching patterns, at reading emotion, at locking into the pulse of a story. If the film is told just right, I don’t just watch it - I exist in it. From the opening scene to the end credits, I live inside the world the director has built. It isn’t background noise, it’s an event, an experience I plan for and give myself over to completely.

That was my multitude.

Losing the Map

Somewhere along the line, I lost the way back.

Maybe it was my mom, maybe it was living on the road, maybe it was the long accumulation of survival. But slowly, painfully, I lost the ability to access my multitudes at will. The door closed.

Every now and then I’d find myself back there by accident - stoned, drunk, or lost in a dream - but it was never steady. Like waking up in a foreign city where I didn’t speak the language, I could stumble through but never truly belong. I could see faint outlines of the world I’d built, but I couldn’t orient myself. I couldn’t offer anything back.

The home I longed for was with me all along. And I couldn’t get in.

The Mask Breaks

And then - years later- the mask broke.

Anyone who’s lived in survival mode knows about the mask. The constant effort to perform normal, to keep the world from chewing you alive. The mask is functional. It keeps you safe. But it also strangles you, quietly, until you forget your own voice.

When mine cracked, the multitudes began bleeding back in around the edges. At first I thought I was losing my mind.

Then I realized I was finding it.

The road signs translated again.

The language of my inner world came rushing back. I was no longer a stranger in the city of myself.

Coming back felt like recognizing landmarks in a place I thought was destroyed. The streets weren’t new—they were mine all along.

The Universe Inside

My internal world is massive. A giant video game world with no map, no end, infinite expansions.

As a kid, I explored it daily. As an adult, I thought I’d been locked out forever.

Now, I realize I was only exiled temporarily.

And it isn’t just a playground. It’s a compilation of everything I see and feel—movies, books, moments, conversations, pain, joy. All of it lives there, layered and recombined. My multitudes are archives and playgrounds and laboratories, all at once.

Maybe that’s what Walt Whitman meant when he wrote, “I am large, I contain multitudes.” People quote it as poetry. I live it as fact.

Souls, Shared

Sometimes I imagine it’s like The Good Place—that when we die, our multitudes break apart into energy, and that energy seeks out others to help them build theirs.

Maybe that’s the point of it all: that the worlds inside us aren’t isolated—they’re doorways. My multitude touches yours, yours touches mine, and together we build something bigger.

That doesn’t sound so far from faith, or from science, either. Energy doesn’t disappear. Stories don’t vanish. Maybe what we’re really doing is lending each other bricks for the palaces inside.

AuDHD and the Split Self

Part of me wonders if this is just how my AuDHD brain was wired all along. Two sides of me. Two lives. One outer mask, one inner multitude.

For years, I lived cut off from myself, moving through the world like an exile. But when the mask shattered, the exiled half came home. Suddenly the split wasn’t fracture - it was reunion.

And the truth is, I don’t care anymore whether people call it crazy.

Returning

Maybe I am crazy. Maybe Whitman was too. Maybe all the most creative people are. Maybe we really do house universes inside ourselves -figuratively, literally, or both. Who knows?

What I know is this: I am not lost anymore. The multitudes are back, and I am walking their streets again.

It’s like returning home after decades away, only to realize the home was with me all along.

And my multitude? You’re already there. If I’ve ever seen your name, your face, heard your voice - you’ve already got a signpost up or a flyer. If we’ve met, you’ve walked right through my movie scene, and I’ve already begun taking notes for later. If you’ve chosen to add your voice to the script, I’ve given you near full freedom, and I adore improvisation.

It took too far long for my taste, but I’m back in my own director’s chair now, and this time the script is mine.

Author Note: I’m building a trauma-informed emotional app that actually gives a damn and writing up the receipts of a life built without instructions for my AuDHD. ❤️ Help me create it (without burning out): https://bit.ly/BettyFund