Little bit afraid

[Violet]

I know I'd certainly feel better and more secure if I were a more integrated personality. Instead of having all of these half-persons in my head and never knowing what or when one of them is going to get up & insert their commentary into my head. I have the feeling that I feel 'split up' in this way because I have suppressed part of myself. I always prided myself on being rational, coldly logical, and having no use for emotion. Because emotions hurt me deeply, and logic always seemed safer and truer. I peeled the emotional part of myself away, assigning it to the secret girl I couldn't let out of my head. Of course this was a foolish thing to do; you can't eliminate your feelings and it's damaging even to try. But I spent near a decade in a crystal shell of deliberate emotionlessness, even as my mood swings grew more and more violent. Looking back I think Violet was always trying to provide me with the balance I needed, but I wouldn't let her out of fear of what letting her into my self would mean. I was more comfortable with the Worm than I was with her.

My aspect of myself as 'V' the androgyne has only appeared since I have begun balancing and integrating my self, since I stopped doing hard drugs, started taking herbal meds, and refused to listen to the Worm's pathetic attempts to make me kill myself. Zie has a very quiet voice which always tells me exactly what I need to hear right in the moment. I think zie may be a whole me, who has no need for such fantasies as being a male and female half-person. Just starting to develop zirself. Let's hope.

I hope these fragmented, rambling commentaries have been at least some slight amount of help to those who are seeking an answer. The only advice I can offer is what I have foun from personal experience.

[Katy-Jane]

Hi girls,

great to read so many wonderful thoughts!

I felt I'd like to update you on this thread, CJ used the phrase "slowly unfolding" above, which descirbes really well what is happening to me. Every few days, my feelings seem to settle a little more, and I am discovering a level of self-respect that at last includes all of who I am. At this point, I have to say a massive thankyou to all of you girls, who are just the best friends anyone could have on a journey like this .

The journey analogy gets used alot, I guess because it's a good one, and in the last week or so since starting the thread, I am able to face mine with more dignity than I thought possible, thanks primarily to the support this forum has given me.

Elizabeth was enquiring a little more into how things actually feel inside, and I'll try and describe them from my point of view as best I can. They are very much new to me though, so maybe I'll be able to do it better in a few weeks time! Anyway, here goes!

I would say that in my head, Katy-Jane is a personality, but she's not a separate one. Elizabeth, you used the phrase "distinct female personality", and I'm not sure if that is quite how it feels in my case. Female yes perhaps, but not really distinct, still part of the one personality that is me. I think maybe it is just my way of accessing that side of my personality. When I think of KJ she makes me feel warm, and re-assured. She is confident and strong, in areas where I (in male mode) am not. Her strength is quite different though, not at all "in your face" but very steadfast and always quietly confident.

I think some of this may sound familiar to Virginia. When I think of it now in fact, Katy-Jane has just the qualities needed to perform a piece of music that she has only just learned, in front of people (which, if you recall, is what started all this!). Where as the male me would want to be better than the others, not look foolish, and generally appear to be cool to those watching, KJ was happy to say "look, I just learned this, I'm going to do my best at it, and if it all goes wrong and I look a little silly, I'm strong enough inside to deal with that".

I wish I could put it more clearly, and I'm confident that in time I will be able to. It feels a bit at the moment like I have just been born (aren't cliches great! ), at last accepting a side of me I have represed, ignored or fought for so long. With all the things I have learned here, and the support I've received, I have been able to discuss things with my SO for the very first time, and she has been wonderful. It's so cool to read all your thoughts on all of this.

hugs,

Katy-Jane

[Katy-Jane]

Hi (again!) girls,

it's been a couple of hours since I wrote the post above, and a couple more things have occurred to me since. Mainly, on the issue of whether Katy-Jane is a separate personality. I certainly don't feel like two personalities inside my head, but I can think of Katy, react to her, and feel certain things about her, which does seem to imply a certain "separateness". Perhaps the analogy of having two arms, but part of one body is a good one here?

I have concluded (you won't be surprised to hear!), that it's still to early in the journey for me to be able to expalin this properly, but I can wait, I'm enjoying the travelling, just for it's own sake.

hugs,

KJ

[CJ]

Hi all,

Katy Jane wrote: I'm enjoying the travelling, just for its own sake.



Love,
CJ

[Anita]

Elizabeth asked a question in her post, way above, about how the sense of self was different in my description, than it was with her. She was looking for clarification. She felt that her male personality had always been a false front to who she really was.

I still can't say that my male personality was a false front. I know that I suppressed parts of that act that felt too girly, but I didn't think of those parts as a "girl within," at the time. Even when I crossdressed as a teen, it didn't feel like I was a different person at all. I knew how to imitate a girl in the mirror, and that was as far as it went.

In my thirties, I did discover a "girl within," that came out in spontaneous, no-edit writings that I did at the time. I was experimenting with writing a question to myself, and then writing the answer as fast as possible, trying to get out of the way and let the subconscious speak. To my surprise I found several different women's "voices" speaking back to me on certain questions.

Talk about a surprise! I was prepared to get some different material out of my subconscious--that was the whole point. But it did not make me happy or comfortable to see something this radical come out of me.

This experiment did not lead to any outward signs. I never even thought of going back to any CDing, I wasn't gay, so I shrugged my shoulders. Some part of me felt female--interesting, but it wasn't useful in any way that I could see. "She" did come out after that with girlfriends that I trusted, but this was VERY rare.

It was a spontaneous heat-of-the-moment kind of thing, and we would never talk about it afterward. Not so much that it was embarrassing as that it was such a powerful experience that we didn't want to break the spell by talking, I suppose. These particular gals were good at tapping into some "inner male," at that point, too, and it was not something that they felt was OK until I opened the door first. I never planned it, but it worked for us when it did happen.

And now? Anita still comes from a different place than "I" do. There are more parts that we share as time goes on, but it's nearly always me acting out more of Anita in my male life--seldom the other way around. There is an "otherness" about her that was unsettling at first.

I also felt like I was being taken over by this new aspect of myself, and that angered me. Like any new relationship, it obssessed me for a few months. Then I got a handle on it, and found balance with it. But for awhile, it felt like "her" needs were running the show. She'd been cooped up inside of me for who knows how many years, and she was out to make up for lost time! I don't miss THOSE days.

So all this sounds crazy, and maybe it is. I like having access to another point of view, and my femme self is different enough to give me that. If she is just another part of me, then I have to say that I could never find any other way to access that part, up until this happened. And I could never have imagined how different I would speak and act when presenting this part of me. That's as close as I can come to describing it all.

Violet--
Your post sounded like you went through some brutal times behind all of this. I'm glad you're writing of having come through to the other side now.