Chapter 1.
It took us a long time to understand that we are not one person. At first, we thought we had bipolar disorder with extremely minor manic episodes. We were often tired, tearful, than again better, even childishly euphoric. The only thing missing for such a diagnosis to make sense was for us to make impulsive, irrational choices, during those moments of childish happiness. The only behavior closest to one that could be included in the category of manic was that when we felt okay, we had more energy to study, so we spent more time in reading textbooks. However those times were not several hours of continuous work – which suggested it was not a symptom of an even very small mania. However, if not that… We struggled to figure out why we happened to feel so variously reacting to similar stimuli. For a long time we were afraid to consider that maybe something had happened in our early development and that we had never become one person, as everyone assumed.
The time on the Internet helped us a lot. It was on YouTube that we saw a video, where one of the systems shared their experience. And among all the teasers that appeared on our screen, we decided to click that one and devote ourselves to acknowledging the content of this particular channel. We watched one video after another until we felt we understood the most important things that this System wanted to share. At first, we thought we were just curious and wanted to better understand and support other systems, but then a few months later one night we dared to consider that we had watched these videos for ourselves.
We were afraid to accept this idea, because all the years we had been taught that self-diagnosing is wrong, that what you think is true about yourself, is worth mockery until empirical proof. Maybe this belief caused me such a big problem accepting people who considered themselves transsexual. I was absolutely confident that if someone represented the textbook example of gender dysphoria, I would have no problem using their preferred pronouns, even if they were inconsistent with the gender implied by appearance. After all, these people were simply born with a brain that did not match their sex, which could be proven posthumously by a scientific analysis of this organ. We would have empirical proof that someone was trans. My difficulties were caused by the fact that the people I met could not be easily and unambiguously diagnosed. One of these people throughout our quite intimate acquaintance seemed to me to behave in a way consistent with the gender assigned at birth, I remember how she spent a lot of time emphasizing the feminine body attributes with her outfit – and yet one day we meet to refresh our acquaintance and we get information that this person is trans, has a different name,different pronouns and that we are now required to change our way of speaking without hesitation…
We have not changed it…
Yet…
We are waiting to find out whether this decision was a way to escape from the burden of having the characteristics of the assigned gender, or whether it was a manifestation of long-lasting processes that had been repressed due to trauma.
Perhaps we should have no problem accepting right away that if this person considers himself to be a person of a different gender, they are a person of the gender they feel like. We wondered for a long time why changing pronouns in speech is so difficult for us. Our first theory was that maybe we dislike changes… However now I am more and more convinced that our world has never been a world in which what is true to you had the right to be accepted as true. Perhaps I was and still am bitter that if I had said that there were many of us and that I would like each of us to be able to introduce themselves, I would not be believed even by the people closest to me, even by those people who expect me to accept them, giving as an argument only the fact that they believe that they identify themselves as such and such a person. They would never believe me without a diagnosis, so why do they expect me to take their self-diagnosis at face value?
My suggestion that the gender identity may be a inflicted by trauma is also considered to be impolite. Nevertheless, analyzing our case I concluded that gender identity is not simply a biological phenomenon, but also a psychological one. As I mentioned, the theory of the biological basis of transgenderism may be grounded on the assumption that there is a “sex of the brain” and that this sex may be incompatible with the “sex of the body” – whatever that means – that there are areas of the brain that vary, for example, in size depending on the hormones in which the fetal brain has been immersed, directly dictating which gender a person feels like. However, it is difficult for me to apply this theory to our case – because what size would specific areas of the brain be if one of us feels like a woman, the other a man? There is no way the brain could change so quickly, and honestly I am not sure if the person we would merge into – if we ever would – would have the same sex that we would have had if not for the childhood trauma. Which leads me to the conclusion that what we learned to associate with certain sex, affected how the sense gender developed in each of us. I have no undeniable evidence, but I expect that what we have learned about being a woman and being a man may have caused Opera to be formed as a man as part of processes that we absolutely cannot comprehend. Following this lead, one can come to the conclusion that some people in therapy could change their beliefs about their gender and this conclusion… is not easy for me to refute and is probably one of the factors preventing me from enthusiastically changing the pronouns of others to their preferred ones.
It seems it all does not matter… I will in the end accept the new way of speaking, I will stop arguing, because… what would be the point of that? Whether I have rational grounds for doubt, or whether I am just bitter that they demand the right to be themselves when I cannot be myself, is insignificant. Even if we are not accepted by them as the System, me or the others masking as me, have far more benefit from shelving our bitterness deep in us than from demanding equal hardship of getting empirical evidence from everyone. I take their word for it when they say they are a certain gender, they do not take my word for it when I say that there are more of us – I swallow hypocrisy like pills and let the sweet contradiction saturate my bitter dreams… and everyone is happy.
It is good that at least I believe that my experiences are true, that I am not just making up some nonsense for attention – which is no obvious thing. It took us years of practice to get rid of this disgusting habit. We used to doubt ourselves almost all the time. We tried milk a dozen times before we decided that definitely kind of tasted like spoiled, instead of just staying home we made ourselves got up a few times to make sure that we were indeed too sick to go to school, we went back to check if the closed door were undeniably closed because we were afraid of being yelled at if it turned out that it was open after all, we reached into our pockets every few steps to confirm, that our things were still there…
It was tiring.
Unfortunately, we have not been able to get rid of some of these habits. We are still afraid of losing something, because we hear the voice of our parents shouting at us for stupidity.
It was amazing to one time hear that nothing happened when at our friend’s house we dumped a plate full of food. I remember how Opera disconnected us from our emotions to save us from pain. At that time, none of us knew that it was him, we thought that we were just a moody teenager. Knowing who is with me now, looking into the past, I can conclude who appeared when. I remember the indifference, the silence, the heaviness in my head, the feeling of time passing quickly and mindlessly, the pallor and vagueness of all sensations, I remember the feeling that it was not me who was writing this – our Host. I can guess quite precisely who appeared when, and when I ask him he agrees it might have been him.
Opera has always been very good at disconnecting us from the body – it was probably in response to this need that he was formed. Thanks to him, we even when we were nauseous due to stress we could finish our meal, thanks to him, even when our parents were having a silent war, we could pretend that everything was fine and escape being forced to eat under the guise of saving us from anorexia. When he is in the body, most things have no taste. And for a long time I thought that he was no more complicated. I was surprised when I watched him as he was in charge of the body. The longer he has been a part of our life the more and more he developed. He began to appear not only when we needed to disassociate, he was there not because we needed him, but because he wanted to be here. Because of him, in our native language I started referring to us as though we were a group of more than one gender – when I was unaware of who Opera was, I thought he would only appear occasionally, like some of us do, and… since the people who played an important role in making every day decisions identified as women, I decided that there was no problem not taking him into account. I was wrong and I am glad that he is with us after all.
It taught me a bit of humility in my approach towards us – at first I had the impression that since everyone is a part of me, I knew them well, and maybe I could even speak on their behalf. Truth be told, if they were just my persona, my mask, such an assumption would probably make sense – facades for the sake of courtesy are the property of the person who uses them, they can accept them and abandon them whenever they like, they can change their image depending on their needs – I do not have such freedom. Not that I cannot lie and pretend – I suck at coming up with untruthful stories, but acting… is my forte – when my behavior changes because someone else has taken over the body, that is no acting.
I do not always control who will show up and when, often saying their name helps me call someone, but it is asking a favor – a long time ago I stopped thinking of it as ordering them. I cannot force someone to show up, I need them to want it.
And that is why I often worry about what would happen if someone wanted a prof of our existence. Would I be able to cause so many switches to make everyone say hello, would it not end in my pretending to be everyone else? What makes things even more confusing is that around most people, most of the time I cannot even tell who is talking. And it bothered me that I could not understand why when we are alone I know who is in charge of the body, who is close, who is somewhere in the back of mind, and as soon as we interact with someone else, it seems as though all the colors have been blended into one muddy paint.
And then I understood that it actually made sense, that what would not make sense was if our psyche developed several personalities instead of one as a survival mechanism, to make us pretend better in an environment that requires constant adjustment of tactics, but was unable to hide the fact that we are constantly changing who we are. Especially since, fortunately for us, we share memories, which makes it a lot easier to blur our personalities into one pulp for the duration of interaction, so that no one would guess who is when. We will probably never find enough courage in ourselves to be ourselves in front of others. Anyway, I have to agree with some of them, it would be foolish. The very fact that we are writing this now is madness…
And yet there is one person to whom we have managed to open up. We met him in high school, we went to the same university, arranged a swap so that we could have classes together, and this way our acquaintance had been going on for several years now. He probably had many clues that we had a disorder, but I never expected him to suspect anything. Truth be told, no one has managed to figure us out, and if we never wanted for someone to know, they would not have been able to find the right lead. We could have kept it a secret until the day we die, but no matter how difficult it was or how stupid it seemed, we wanted someone to know who we were. So slowly, step by step, we started to act more and more individually, which turned out to be surprisingly difficult habit to maintain. I remember that before a meeting, Opera and I were close to the front, Opera wanted to show himself, and I encouraged him, and yet when we saw our friend, our most standard voice came out of our mouth, reminiscent of mine, but not belonging to me nor to Opera. On one occasion, however, we managed for Opera to stay “in charge”, despite Artur’s presence. Our voice lowered, became quiet and calm, the words from our mouths were rich in the sounds that in our native language did not clearly suggest our pronouns, I remember how inappropriate speaking with female pronouns felt, I remember the feeling that our body should look different – and then I knew we did it.
The third person he met was Lily. She usually appeared spontaneously when we stumbled upon something we liked very much or when we disliked something strongly. I know that she likes to be in the body and it is hard to miss when she appears – when we let her do whatever she wants, she often stretches our arms and does a little dance with every step, her attention jumps from one interesting thing to another, her voice in the inner world is very high, she often lisps and deliberately confuses the pronunciation. Looking back, I realized that she had been with us for a very long time, although we never understood her. I remember that sometimes when we were having a lot of fun, we were as though we forgot about the consequences and started doing incredibly stupid things – we hated this state. At first it was a lot of fun, but then usually we did hurt someone or break something. Then we belittled ourselves and promised that we would never let the happiness take control. Then it was fun again, we have given into the fun atmosphere, we forgot our common sense and a moment later we cried regretting a moment of fun. The best thing that came out of realizing Lily’s presence was that we learned to have a great time without experiencing that feeling of becoming someone who could not be stopped. Now we know when Lily is coming and it is easier for us to keep ourselves safe – now, usually, when we are not alone, someone is with her to take over the body if things get dangerous, or to explore something that interests her while she is just watching – so we can avoid the tragedy that always happens when someone knocks us from the heights of excitement to the bottom. We always take it the worst when in the turning moment she is in the body – we cannot defend ourselves, all the words hurt us a thousand times, we want to grab our heads, hide inside ourselves and cry. She is the funniest and happiest of us all, but because she experiences all her emotions so intensely, she is also the most sensitive of all of us.
And yet we need it. Otherwise, she would not be with us. Therefore, as much as we can, we try to let her have as much fun as we can, while trying to protect her as best we can.
However, you would make the same mistake as I did if you thought that everything she is is a cheerful child who was created to ensure happiness for the body and compensate for the lost care-free childhood – she once shouted at me to stop treating her so superficially – then I also looked at how she imagined herself at that moment and I saw her curled up, in tears, quietly screaming. I realized how wrongly I thought of everyone except myself. At first , it seemed to me that I was the “basic”, most important personality, and the rest of us were some kind of compensation, a fragment of personality that “detached” from my personality, it seemed to me that I had some control over who appeared when and that I could push away someone when I wanted – Lily’s shouted words taught me more humility,I understood that each of us exists as their own being, just like I do, full of our own complexities and contradictions.
After getting to know Lily better, she turned out not to be a simple-minded, naïve and happy. To her belonged our greatest despairs, together with the greatest excitements. All the downfalls made her mature and somehow sad. This prevented her from being an ordinary five-year-old child she felt she was – this and the fact that like all of us, she knew all the memories of the body. She knew what all adult grievances were, she had memories of all the tragic things we went through, and she knew what adult playtime was. I wondered for a long time whether it was right to let her have sex, or whether it would be better if she was not anywhere close during our encounters – it was while I was thinking that my biggest argument with her began, after which I understood that being a “host” – the personality that spends the most time in the body, who everyone else impersonates when necessary – does not give me any right to claim,that I have any power over others. If she wants to have sex with our boyfriend, I have no reason to forbid her other than to have a definite control.
Our mother most likely would have loved to forbid her. She loved to take control of our lives. And yes, she could prevent us from meeting our beloved, pretending that she only cared about our safety. We were not able to resist her in any effective way at the time. And apparently we still cannot, or at least that is what I conclude from our dreams.
In the past, we could not remember many of our dreams, we woke up not remembering any pictures, but after we started taking medication, from time to time we could remember a dream, and even if we did not remember the content of the dream, at least what emotions accompanied us – then we noticed that surprisingly often we were accompanied by a motif in which we shouted and tried to tell our mother about our truth, tried to convince her that some things she has done has been a mistake – but it never helped. I do not know exactly what we should do about this dream. Is it a mere statement of fact? Is it trying to force us to change our approach?
What should we do?
Even our subconscious knows perfectly well that throughout our lives telling the truth has not been the best solution.
All childhood we confided in the thought that we needed to adapt to what was expected of us. However, it was difficult to always know what that was. We were rewarded for being joyful, telling fun stories – everything that made parents feel good. But when arguing-time happened or someone decided to hold a grudge against others, being excited and trying to win over the family was too painful – we had to hide and deal with our feelings on our own.
It took many years of our childhood before we dared to shout back at one of our parents – aggressive physical or verbal fights were never among our favorite activities. However, it turned out to be an effective solution, as long as it was used only for the time when we were attacked. Attacking all the time to defend was no working strategy – then our parents would reject us. Truth be told, since childhood our parents have been persuading us to let our emotions out, to punch a pillow, to be more expressive instead of suppressing everything – but when we listened to their advice and stood up to them, when they hurt us, we were punished – never beaten or tortured, it was enough that they stopped talking to us, stopped paying attention to us. We could not rise as one as a rebellious teenager. We had to be fierce and insensitive for a moment, just enough not to show we were not helpless.
That night, when we allowed ourselves to suppose that there were many of us, we understood that there was one of us who could respond to this need brilliantly. It took her a long time to decide on a name – some of us, as soon as they made ourselves known, knew what they wanted to be called. For example, Opera first made itself known when we were at a meeting with friends. At first I thought we were so withdrawn because we felt uncomfortable around new people, but when I asked who was now, instead of hearing the voice of someone I already knew, he spoke up, giving his name right away.
I admit at first I was a bit scared. It is true that every new person who appears makes me a little uneasy. I wonder if this is really someone new, or maybe we invented someone? Was someone formed because our mental state has gotten worse? However, when someone makes themselves known, it is impossible to pretend that there is enough of us without significantly lying to all of us. No matter how frightened I was by the presence of someone new, I had to accept them among us and acknowledge their right to be.
Kora appeared to us just as violently as Opera, about her I hope to tell you more. Our acquaintance with her was preceded by a series of embarrassing memories and imagined situations – which happened since a long time, but never with such intensity. Once in a while, without warning, we remembered something that happened or something we thought, and that we definitely did not want anyone from the outside to know. However, it often seemed to us that one moment of inattention and something like in this thought could happen, that we would not be able to stop ourselves, that nothing would stand in the way between the thought and the deed or word. These images caused almost physical pain on us, as real as a stabbing or a blow to the head. Usually, however, one or two happened, and then nothing for a long time. But that time painful thoughts were like a storm, happening one after another, forcing us to flinch each time and to lean against the nearest wall. We dared to ask if there was anyone who was sending these thoughts to us, wanting a desperate rescue from the attacks. An extremely brutal, hostile voice spoke, introducing herself as Kora.
These two knew from the very beginning what they wanted to be called, which, together with the unusual nature of their names, makes me wonder if their names have any special symbolic meaning – then I realize that neither I nor they have the faintest idea what our subconscious meant when it gave them these ideas.
It took me and Alexandra several days before we decided on something specific. I never really chose any “typical” name. I thought about choosing one or leaving the name of the system – Agatha – but none of the options suited me until I felt that I was comfortable with the name of my function – the Host. I knew about Alexandra that she was looking for a name commonly used in our country, that she imagined this name as quite long, matching her distinguished attitude. I used all sorts of names that came to my mind for her, until she finally told me that of them all, the name Alessandra fits best, but not its diminutive version.
I learned quite early that although she is quite active in the inner world, she does not like to be in the body. One of the traits that allowed her to win verbal arguments for us so effectively was her absolute lack of commitment to what she said or anything else around her. This turned out to be very useful, because it allowed her to fight back without feeling much anger, grief or pain when the opponent tried to hurt us. Her whole experience in the body was as hollow as that moment of arguing – she spoke words, did what she had to, but few could affect her, and not just when we needed it – during joyful moments, or when we were safe, and able to switch and be ourselves, she was just as distant. When I asked her what was her greatest joy, she said seeing Lily happy and care free. Then we found our thread of understanding – we both really wanted to protect the happiest and most delicate of us.
She helped Lily when she was delighted with something and comforted us when we were overwhelmed by emotions.
I remember one day when we came back from a walk with a friend grieving – it seemed to us that our friend was jealous hearing our story, when we just wanted to be free and talk about what we loved without internal censorship. We knew from previous experience that there was little we could do about someone’s jealousy. It was impossible to win that fight for someone. Dimming our glow usually did not help much either, and besides, we did not want to force ourselves to spend time with someone if we had to beware our every step. We understood that in this situation, in order to protect ourselves from envy, we would probably have to go no contact, at least until for a change it would be our friend who proposed a meeting.
We had lost friends to protect ourselves more than once, so we were used to it, but the thought of breaking up still hurt. We did not want to talk about our pain to our parents, because in their case we never knew when will they decide to use the information of something being important to us, against us. We tried to tell them as little as possible. We returned home, no one there, our legs bent and we fell on the bed weak, we touched our neck, gently embracing our cheek in a gesture that, as it turned out, could brilliantly calm us down, and we started crying. From a habit that we developed some time ago, we began to talk to ourselves as if the one who was crying was someone else than the one who was calming down. At that time, we still claimed that it was just an internal dialogue. In the past, we would not have allowed ourselves to do such a thing under any circumstances – our parents taught us that talking to ourselves is a symptom of mental illness, and we did not want to be considered “crazy”, so we stopped the need to address each other in the third person. Eventually, however, we learned how much it helps us organize our thoughts. Now I feel that these may have been early hints that I have not been alone. That this way Aleksandra helped me and Lily when no one knew who any of these people were.
However, it is not the case that everyone among us help us adapt better to the environment. As I mentioned, some people appear not because they are the most competent person in certain types of situations. One might argue that Lily was meant to help us please people (which she did for a long time before we discovered shallow friendships based on pleasing others only made break ups more disappointing), but it could also be argued that she is a recompensation for the fact that none of us has lived a happy childhood. Similarly in Kora’s case it is difficult to see what social benefits her presence would add. She does not help us in contacts – we think it would be better if she did not express her opinions in front of most people, because they think we are a decent girl. We do not need her for defense, because firstly, Aleksandra and Opera defend us sufficiently, and secondly, if someone hurts us, she tends to do everything to intensify the pain instead of avoiding it. Most likely, it seems to us that one of us must have accepted the nasty feelings that came up when we were hated and when we hated ourselves. The rest of us, as far as I know, want the best for us, she is the only one who speaks out loud about her anger towards us and others – anger that has appeared, is present and will appear many times in the future, from which none of us can really escape. Fortunately, she has never hurt us in any significant way, which may be due to the fact that she has never been and probably never will really be alone with our body – we all know what is happening and at any moment one of us would intervene. Her most dangerous behavior that we know of is most evident during our sexual experiences. Sometimes she acts on impulse, before anyone has time to realize that we are striving for behaviors that will cause us a lot of pain. If it was up to her, she would probably choose the worst possible sexual partner just to cause us maximum pain and humiliation. However, it is good that the world we naturally immerse ourselves is vanilla-flavored and it is difficult to persuade someone to behave more aggressively…
Most of our decisions are collective, though not everyone is equally decisive. There are those we do not know very well, who do not come up very often, and those I have mentioned are not all of us.
I used to think that because someone is a part of me, everything about them is available to me – now I know that we need to get to know each other as strangers do when they meet. We are able to learn a little thanks to internal conversation, but we have noticed that nothing helps us to get to know each other like when someone acts in the body. That is why we decided that everyone will try to find their own style. But it turned out that it is difficult for someone to even dress in their own way, because most often a moment later someone else appears who would imagine themselves differently. That is why most of the time we dress alike, so that no one from the outside manages to even start suspecting that we are different.
We ourselves have lived most of our lives in the belief that we are “like every other kid”
Even if we came across information that early trauma can interfere with the development of personality, we would assume that it does not apply to us, since we cannot remember any trauma that could change us in such a way. Even now, when we try to determine what was the factor, we cannot recall any specific event. Nevertheless, the effects seem to speak the truth. Who we are now seems to be a proof that something went very wrong during our maturation.
