I am a unique child of God

I was an abused child. Emotionally, psychologically, spiritually, sexually, and physically. I'll leave the details to your imagination.

I developed a very strong, aggressive, 'butch' personality which solidified when I was twelve. I'm talking; carrying a switchblade knife and selling drugs at thirteen kind of butch. I was only 5'3" tall but was mean enough to back down people a foot taller just because I exuded 'mean'. No one wants to jump on some little guy that is going to keep going like the energizer bunny. There was no room for any compassion. You either met my criteria for 'tough' or you were useless. I wasn't evil, simply devoid of compassion.

In my late thirties that personality started showing cracks; the oak breaks where the willow bends. At one point I woke up and he was gone. I remembered most of my life as if I'd watched a video (and no, I didn't come to this realization after seeing 'fifty first dates'!). I didn't know how to drive or act. I had the emotional maturity of a nine or ten year old girl. I thought of him (my other personality) then and now as a twin brother who took the beatings while I was hidden under the table crying. After about two or three months he started coming back and eventually completely took back over. I went back to sleep. There were a few cracks through which I peeked over the next decade, but he was still firmly in control, which was fine with me.

About six years ago I woke up again. Literally. I woke up one morning and he was gone. I thought for the longest time that maybe he'd come back again, but he never did. Of the three or four times I've attempted suicide or have seriously considered it, the majority have been because I have been unable to accept myself; that I simply could not, and sometimes cannot, accept who I am. I could not sleep for three days that time six years ago when I woke up. I could not keep my thoughts off the gun cabinet. I did not wake up nor did I stay awake of free choice.

I had my own private ceremony for him a few years back, grieving over the loss of my brother. People ask how I know that I won't go back to sleep one day and not wake up again. You 'heal' DID by merging the personalities. I've done this. I learned to drive again on my own. I started cursing like a marine after about a year or so as one of his traits bubbled up to the surface but I curtailed that. I have merged from him what I am willing to accept into me, but on my terms. His characteristics do not define me, but I have allowed myself to grow with them.

During my life I never experienced what most ts women do; that sense of being in the wrong body. I just woke up in the wrong body, but when he was in charge, he was very very happy with his body. I've accepted most of my life now, although to be quite honest there are parts where I accept that I may have lost detail or have simply fabricated something out of childhood fear. I try to walk the path before me.

My sense of a 'fluctuating gender' is much different than the average persons because my personalities were so clearly defined, probably by both the trauma of my childhood and a certain level of mental illness. I've had psychiatrists and therapists tell me that what I have experienced is a lie. They don't believe me. DID means the two personalities are completely separate I'm told, so I must be something else. Well, yes, of course I'm something else! But I can only describe myself given the English language. If we meet we can try ASL or hug therapy or something. Until then English is the best I can do and what I've written above is as close to my reality as i can accomplish given the barriers of language. I always find the arrogance of professionals in the therapeutic industry to be laughable. As Bobbi said earlier, we aren't a binary species.

Because we are, as a culture, too ignorant to understand chaos theory we refuse to believe it. Mental health professionals refuse to believe that I can be completely unique, insisting on categorizing me into neat boxes. This is analogous to insisting that all trees must be look exactly like one of twelve prototypical trees. That all zebra stripes must be identical to one of eighteen 'model' zebras. 

I am a completely unique tool, forged of a unique blend of material and experience and formed and polished by God in His workshop. There can be only one!

I was not designed to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest. ― Henry David Thoreau, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience