(very long) please help me untangle this...what do you see?

[effeteifrit.livejournal.com]

Ahhh...

I would post this to the new account I made, but generally it seems to fit this one better.

I'm having a problem with my breasts...can I say that? Recently I came to the re-realization that I might be multiple, and so...I'm trying to factor this in to what I'm experiencing.

I would rather just be trans and *not* multiple...

Or maybe I'm not multiple and I'm really a man and I'm just in denial.

Denial lasts for however long you can tolerate it, I suppose.

Today my mom made me feel a little uncomfortable by pointing out that the tank top I was wearing was thin enough to see through. I was about to take a shower earlier and looked at my breasts in the mirror, and my nipples and areolas stand out from my breasts. I mean, really stand out. Even unerect, they stand out about 5/8". I suppose it wouldn't be a problem if I could wear a bra, or if I wore thicker clothing, or if my nipples weren't brown. (Racerback tanks don't allow for bras.)

The thing is, I like gauzy clothing. At least in tank tops. I don't know any males who worry about their nipples showing through their shirts.

*sigh* My attention was brought to the gender thing earlier today when I saw a man, he wasn't very tall, with black and grey hair and some kind of bag relating to an ecology group (I think). His hair was straight and fell down to about his waist. He could have been trans. I thought he was very...pretty. I also, from his facial features, gauged that it was likely he was American Indian. I mentioned this to my mom, and the fact that when I see good-looking men, it makes me want to transition. Actually, I think I said, "whenever I see a good looking man, it makes me want to transition," although this was a somewhat inaccurate statement. I connected this with the thought that I've decided not to transition because I've feared that in doing so, I will lose my beauty. If I could transition and remain beautiful, that's one block down.

note: My mother and I had a drawn-out conversation about how if I was male, she would still be thinking that what I was thinking was a pathology. I compared it to the thought, if I was a genderqueer male and whenever I saw a butch woman it made me want to transition--because it would mean that one could transition and wouldn't have to be a stereotypical woman, and the thought of being a stereotypical woman was the only thing that was holding him back from transition.

I'm thinking again about going into a Human Sexuality Master's at XX. Or Gender Studies, if I can find it elsewhere. I'm quite interested in the construction and maintenance of masculinity. There's supposed to be a teacher at the College of X that shares my interest in subcultures, transgenderedness, resistance, and agency--navigating the power grid of society. I picked up a book from M's today on the sociology of gender, and I'm going to gauge from this whether I *really* want to go into a sociology program at the University of X, as the book is supposed to cover recent sociological thought on gender.

Anyway, my mom, she asked me whether what I said meant that I envied that person's body, if I would like to have that person's body. I said I wouldn't mind it. She said that "sounded like a pathology." I've learned to expect stuff like this from her whenever I mention gender and wanting to transition. She followed up on this by saying that it sounds like what I'm experiencing goes deeper than gender, and that I should mention it to my psychiatrist. I will and am mentioning it to my psychiatrist.

My breasts aren't necessarily a bad thing, except when attention is called to them, and I have to take care to keep people from seeing them or otherwise feel exposed and like I could be harassed or assaulted. I don't know why the mounds behind my nipples seem to have gotten bigger, but it may be related to prolactin increases decreasing my estrogen. I've noticed more coarse and/or long hairs on my face recently--I'm even developing a patch of sideburn on one side that I've had to trim. The primary and most immediate thing I'm worried about in regards to transition is the acne. *sighs* I know this shouldn't be what I'm worried about, but it is. I suppose I can go back on topical erythromycin until it clears up. I just don't want to go through puberty again.

Maybe I think this because I had a hard time going through puberty, socially, the first time. Was it traumatic for me? I don't remember. I remember that I thought my breast buds were tumors...

I wrote something on another group that I want to copy here. I wasn't going to, but I feel it's relevant, and could be interpreted or analyzed in a different way than what I'm doing. In the alternate, or one of the alternate, analyses, what I'm going through is not multiplicity at all, but denial--and the segmenting off of different parts of myself. The feminine part of myself trying desperately not to be submerged by the masculine--and this showing up in my life by my wanting to do things like buy silk scarves and other symbols of femininity like skirts and the Yemaya wand I wanted to get--to symbolize by investment in expensive items my dedication to my femininity. But womanhood cannot be bought. Here is the clip:

I'm not a clinician, but I've been in the psychiatry system as an outpatient for...eight years? Neither is my case similar to the one you're describing, but I thought maybe I might be of some help in creating a kind of map of the territory--or at least a piece of the map.

I've been talking to my psychiatrist recently about DID (or more specifically "multiplicity"), though I suspected from early on in my treatment that I had it because I would telepathically talk to an invisible being I thought was a ghost or spirit--I thought I was psychic. There were actually more than one, but he was the only one I would let into my body and act as. When I was young I thought I was a girl and didn't mind the idea of becoming a woman, until I learned what that entailed. When I was about 14 I wanted to be my (female) friend's boyfriend, after that I tried to be a dyke (even though I was bisexual), after that I was transmale identified, then FTM transgender identified until I tried the Real Life Experience for myself and found myself flashing back and forth between genders, now I'm identified by others as genderqueer, though I haven't jumped at taking on the label for myself--because that would be admitting that part of me is feminine. I also haven't quite moved beyond the masculine/feminine, male/female model yet, though I know that they don't contain the totality of possibility.

I've experienced quite...pronounced gender shifts, and it's just something I live with. I also change my mind frequently and often find myself just as convicted when I come to one decision as when I come to one opposing it...I also sometimes have memory blocks, or "flitting memories"--like I'll be thinking of the next thing I'm going to say and then suddenly it'll be gone. My train of thought just disappears. I don't know if this happens to me more than normal. It could be related to anxiety--I'm diagnosed with OCD and my current psychiatrist is also leaning towards schizoaffective disorder. I also tend to try to get things done quickly, so I can't change my mind about it and deny it to myself later. This happens particularly with items like feminine clothing, though sometimes I want to give a gift to that part of myself, find myself thinking "she might like this." (That's just what I was doing in a store the other day; I didn't put it into those words, then.) I also tend to have thoughts that come to me in the form of someone else speaking to me.

Not everyone who lives as multiple has gone through trauma, but in my case I began silently talking with my 'ghost' friend (yes, it does sound like an externalized animus) around the time I became very isolated from my peers, in a class that I can't remember much of, but in which I remember sexual harassment, mass teasing, lack of support from the teacher, emotional and physical abuse from my "friends"--until I left those people I had considered friends, thinking it was better to be not treated at all than treated badly. This was when I was about 12.

I would often be distracted by these 'spirits' in high school, though I still managed to get excellent grades, although my GPA declined the older I got--as I learned that there was life outside of school and being a student, and I became increasingly cognizant of not knowing who I was. I went through a severe depression from the age of about 14-15 (though I remember thinking there was nothing wrong--my parents say I used to come home and cry every day, but I don't remember this) and I started antidepressant medication at about 15 or 16, because I was becoming increasingly hostile.

This overlaps with the period I was letting the 'ghost' into my body, though the ghost wasn't the hostile one--I was. When I started antidepressants I went through a merger between myself and the ghost (who I thought was part of myself and so it wouldn't matter), because I was in love with him and because with the antidepressants I couldn't hear him so easily anymore.

If the kid you're dealing with is multiple, it might be best to negotiate with the different personalities first, before giving him medication which could shut down his contact. I was on Paxil first, then Luvox, and both of them effectively shut down my internal communication and left me without closure--as my 'spirit friends' were taken away from me without warning.

I'm not sure that in "X's" case the hypothetical others are friendly or not--I'm not even sure if he's aware of them or not. It's quite possible to shift between personalities and not be aware of it. I did/have done this, for quite a long time; and it could be argued that I still do; that when I think to myself that I'm not multiple and go for months disregarding it, all I'm doing is not being overly conscious of my gender and personality shifts. I can not pay attention to it, but this doesn't mean it goes away.

The multiple personality thing kicked back up as I went in to secure a path to testosterone, and I realized that if I was multiple, I couldn't make the decision to make the body male on my own. A feminine voice in me had kicked up saying that I had no right to this body, and at times, when she was I, freaked out about what we were planning to do with/to the body. The negotiation was that we could crossdress and have masculine identities, but we would keep our feminine beauty.

Right now I have four recognized personality states. A childlike female/androgynous one, a male/spirit one, a masculine/female one, and a male/shadow one. There is much more to them than that, and they may not be the only ones, but I think I've written enough. :) Don't give any identifying information about me (like my diagnoses, my genders, or the particulars of my history) to "X", all right? This is just for your edification.

Sorry I write so much...it's a kind of compulsion. :)

I should learn how to do block quotes...let me try. As I was reading over this the other night I was thinking that it's possible that I'm not multiple but that I'm simply trans and in denial of that. Reading it with the eye of one of the other members of the board I posted this to, I do seem to come to that conclusion--that is, if you disbelieve that multiplicity is a real and viable--or even just possible--way to live one's life, then the conclusion one reaches is that I externalized that part of me which I was not ready to accept (that part being my animus). Other parts which may be segmented off because of my distaste for them and loath to accept them as myself, include the positionality from which I'm writing now.

This persona I've termed "B2", and I was first keyed in to the concept that I might be acting as him earlier today when I saw the nice-looking guy and felt an affinity with him and wanted to transition. At about that time I began querying who it was I was thinking as. B2 is the "male/shadow" persona I've identified in the above; the one who was angry at "God", and was driven towards dark spirituality, and countering repression with feelings of superiority (which is something I, as Bp., have tried to counteract). He also holds a good amount of rage. I was able to alleviate this rage in XX by identifying as male--as B2, or I, was jealous of what other men had, or recieved, without even trying for it. Things such as "recognition as male".

But overall, I think the framework of multiplicity may be oversimplifying what is actually happening. I think I need to say what's actually going on with me, and I think I need help in deciphering it (its symbolic language) in a way that will result in my having one personality which can make one decision on what to do with my life. Or maybe that's just me, speaking as B2, wanting to eradicate my feminine and child selves. There is a power struggle going on here over who will be recognized. My feminine self seems to be desperately trying to make a mark in my life in things such as clothing.

When we go out dressed as female, we are treated as female, and if we've happened to shift into a masculine-identified persona (as we often do), it's difficult to stand being seen by the world--or by those closest to us--as a woman. While I may understand that wearing feminine clothes does not make me a woman, my mother seems happy to pretend that this is so. Today on the way out of the hospital she started picking at my hair. I have OCD and a germ phobia, and she had just touched the elevator button with that same hand, then started messing in my hair, and I pushed her away and asked her why she was doing that. It made me uncomfortable on an OCD level, and it made me uncomfortable on a gender level. I want to say that "I hate being considered as female!" But I know that at another time, I may not feel this way.

Or it's possible that as time goes on, I may be feeling this way more and more. I've heard from other people that the farther one goes in transition, the more one becomes identified with one's target gender, and the less one can tolerate being seen in the former gender.

I've also heard from people that although I may not stay genderqueer forever, it may do me some good to recognize that at this point I *am* genderqueer. And that this is not to say anything about what has been in the past or what will be in the future but simply to be in what is, now. Meaning that, I still have something of an identity as feminine, as well as an identity in masculinity.

The identity I'm in now, B2, is really one of my more masculine personas. Earlier today, my mom recognized that I looked harsher than normal, and her friend noticed that I looked upset about something, or possibly angry. I really don't know how I looked, though I did see myself in a mirror. I suppose I did not look happy. How the fuck can I be happy when no one acknowledges that I exist?

Anyway, I looked in two bookstores today. One of them had a very good selection of books on gender, sexuality and transgender subjects. I will be going back there--I ended up spending $40 on books instead of buying the symbolic scarf, today.

We'll see how I feel tomorrow. Instead of calling people over to this journal, I'll friendslock this post and mirror it at transgender.