From the other side of the glass door

Oh my god... we just shifted. Me and Anna. She wanted to, urged me to let her take my place, and I felt eager about it as well. She wanted me to masturbate with her, to let her feel it the way she wanted to, and during that jerk off as I tried my best to please her, we gradually switched places. At orgasm, the shift was complete. Immediately after she thrusted out of bed and nearly tipped over at how our body's weight surprised her. And she stumbled us into the shower... oh my god, she is so dysphoric about how we look, it was so painful to see and feel how wrong she felt in her own skin. In the shower she kept asking me "what next" and "what do I do now" as I guided her to how I usually clean myself. She was excited about the shift like she had been freed, and I paid attention to her clumsy, feminine movements. She told me I shouldn't use so much soap for our pussy, that it wasn't good for it, and took a much smaller amount than I usually do. And washed it much more gently and carefully while inspecting it. That weirded me out a little, but let her have at it. She was on the other hand very fucking rough with my hair and it kept breaking in her hands while I yelled at her (in thoughts) to pleeeaaase be careful with the damn hair!

She really felt awful about my beard though and begged me to not force her to clean it. I said please, it's gonna itch if you don't and you will hate that even more. She sighed out in noticable pain as she said okay and very hastily washed it with my regular schampo and barely even rinsed it. But I mean I'm thankful she actually managed to do that at all. I'm proud of my girl. She also had a lot of issue with my body hair in general and was particularly grossed out by that on my stomach. But she also sighed out "even my arms are so hairy". Eventually she just had enough of our naked body so stepped out of the shower and struggled with the towel for a while and said it was because she's never bloody used a towel before. I guided her a lot with her movements and I was partially in them, but I didn't and couldn't take over completely. Not like she would let me! But she was also very thankful for my guidance to help her move. And she got more stable and secure as she kept doing stuff, and eventually she didn't need my guidance at all.

After drying up she got really excited about clothes and asked me glisteningly if I had any dresses lying around before she happily stormed out of the bathroom towards the big wardrobe in my bedroom. There she rifled around for quite a while before she found a long, flowy skirt made of a transparent black fabric over a light beige satin-like fabric. She really liked that skirt and her smile felt warm within me. Then she asked me about panties cause she didn't want to wear men's underwear and I was like... "I don't think I have any of those..." But lo and behold, she actually found a pair that I had stuffed into a moving box in my living room. They were regular shape, ivory coloured and partially silk-like, partially lace. She slipped them on under the skirt and instantly felt relief while she happily exclaimed "panties!" So uhm, yeah...

Oh yeah, all the time she kept hiding her chest with her arms and talking about wanting to find a bra somewhere as well. She did find a purple one in that same moving box (that used to fit our B-cup chest before I had top surgery, it was the last bra I bought before op, sometime in 2012, for drag) and when she put it on and cupped her hands around the empty bra cups she said it felt better, that it didn't need to be much, just something. She also found a wrap-around women's short sleeved shirt there that she noticed matched the skirt perfectly. I told her I had never noticed those two garments would go together before. Huh.

When she was done assembling an outfit she said she wanted to see it in a mirror but also not. She said she didn't want to see her face... it was sooo painful for me when she walked towards the mirror with her hands covering her face, near panicking over what she'd see in the mirror. I told her she could try to just cover the beard with her hands and eventually she dared to look and shyed away from the mirror gasping, then looked again, looked away, tried to only focus on what was below her neck until she saw chest hair and panicked again. She said she only saw me in the mirror and I could feel that pain that basically steamed off from her... it was so intense... Her voice was only slightly higher than mine and softly raspy, I noticed it was difficult for her to find some pitch she could work with, but her tone sounded much more natural to her, more feminine and melodic than mine. I told her that she sounded different in my head, to which she said "I'm not in your head now" meaning that she's different when she's freed.

Then she walked over towards the balcony exclaiming she really needed a cigarette. I asked her if she wanted shoes and literally not even a second later she turned and stubbed her toe into a chair and yelled "yes! shoes would be good!" I thought that was pretty funny. She walked over to the vestibule and looked at a pair of shoes I bought at a thrift store some weeks ago. "What about these? You never wore them" she said and picked up one of them. I said they might not go with the outfit but she insisted. They are kinda sneakers, but in a kinda goth style with a black lace print on a black background. Then she walked out for a smoke, held the cigarette in her right hand where as I always hold it in my left. And she blew out the smoke, where as I always just breathe it out. She stood by the house wall on our balcony, in a shyly, yet proudly womanly pose, almost like a photo model in a fashion magazine. She gazed out at the neighbourhood below us, and said she wanted to go outside. I told her please not to, that people would think we're a drag queen. It upset her but she agreed it would be a bad idea. I felt she wasn't feeling well, close to passing out so I urged her to please sit down on the chair. She didn't want to but eventually caved in and agreed it was probably a good idea.

Her dysphoria was really the most prominent out of everything. I had no idea it was that intense... and she said she didn't know that either. That it took her by surprise. She was close to crying as she kept accidentally touching my beard and it freaked her out every single time.
"Please let me shave it" she pleaded with me while holding back tears. I told her:
"No, please, I love my beard... please don't do that"
"Okay I won't, I know you love it... but I can't bear it... please think about it? For a next time?"
"I'll think about it..."
"Please actually think about it, don't just say you will!"
"I'll try..."
"How long does it take to grow it out?"
"I don't know, about a month or two..."
"Fuck, that's long... I don't even have breasts anymore, but the beard is worse. I can't hide it"
...she said and what really struck me there was that, although it pained her so much, she didn't want to make it worse for me. If we're gonna switch more often, we really do need to think of a solution to the beard situation, cause that was just too fucking painful for me to be crushed under her reaction to it. And I want for her to feel at least a bit more free.

I called her a lady as she walked inside again and it made her almost dance a little as she said "you're the only one who's ever gonna call me that" which saddened me a lot, but at the same time... I kinda wanted to think I'll let her out more and even let her pass as a woman... I didn't really feel any noticable dysphoria myself when it was her in control over our body, despite her efforts to present it as female. I was way too busy being nearly crushed by the weight of her dysphoria. And it's way too difficult of a situation to try to handle when I get dysphoric over looking female and she gets dysphoric over looking male. What that means for me being trans... I have not yet figured out... but I got a slight fear that maybe I was wrong about being trans, when I felt her extreme dysphoria over my male traits. I don't know how to react to that at all. Was it even my own feeling or was it not?

She wanted something to eat and told me I do that too seldom, but then her own lack of appetite reminded her of why. She made a cup of tea and took some cake from the fridge. She barely took two bites of the cake as it turned in her stomach. But the tea soothed her as she also smoked another two cigarettes. I asked her to turn on my phone so that I could look at my screenshot picture of one of my WoW characters. A very pale, undead blood elf with azure blue coloured hair, eyes and a small goatee on his friendly face.
"You like looking at his face" she said as she picked up the phone from a small waistbag, that she had earlier said also matched her outfit, that was very black and bronze through every garment, including that bag. She put the phone with the picture up on her lap and let me look at it.
"I can see why like him. He has a very soothing smile, like he wants to comfort, and like he's very understanding and accepting" she said.
"I know. That's why I like looking at him so much" I responded.

For that last cigarette she smoked she kept accidentally touching my beard much more and it bothered her really a lot. I tried to help her figure out some way to hold the cigarette that wouldn't let her keep touching it but didn't manage to find such a way. She kept twitching and forcing back tears, she was tense to the point of physical pain and I knew that her emotional pain and sadness had increased massively to the point of it being unbearable for her. A very familiar image popped up in my mind and I said:
"You're the woman I keep imaging I could have been in a distant future... that mental picture that keeps following me... I always thought it was somehow me in a way I couldn't understand, but... it's you" as I shivered at the thought.
"Yes, that is me" she confirmed. I recognised it in her body language and the softly stern, almost ageless feminine vibes she gave me, as she gently played with the fabric of the skirt in soft, small, circular motions and gazed into the air above the street below us. I know now why that image has been haunting me ever since my teens... that's how she saw her own future. It was never a weird distant dream of my own that I couldn't make sense of... it was her dream... and I took it from her.

"How old are you?" I asked her gently.
"Your age. Kind of. I couldn't age the same way you did. I never felt like an adult, and I never felt like a child" she answered. It made me realise just how very damaged she was. All the anger and hate she had released onto me, was really just immense pain that she hadn't known what to possibly do with. Like a wild animal trapped in her shrinking cage, she had bit the hand of her master who had starved her. How could I ever blame her? I simply cannot.

"Please take care of that stuff after me, okay?" she said and shook her head in the direction of the plate with the cake she couldn't eat and the empty tea cup that stood on the table.
"Yes of course" I replied.

She took a next drag and pulled it in deeply, very deeply as though she tried to suck out all the poison in it at once, before she put it out and got back inside. She almost cried, struggling to release the tears as she said:
"I want to switch back now... it hurts too much... please I need to go back..." and I tried to comfort her yet feeling a constant fuck I want to go back too...
"We should lie down in bed, maybe that way we can switch back. I'll remove the clothes for you first so it won't make you dysphoric. Keep them close, so I can wear them again next time." she said calmly with a very sad voice. Back indoors again her sadness nearly compressed her, immensely strong, as she slowly undressed herself, and when she took off the panties lastly she pointed at them and said in the most heartbreakingly sad voice I've ever heard:
"Little stain" as I know that our genitals is the only thing female she has left to hold onto. Now I really fucking understand why she panicked so incredibly hard to the point of threatening to cut our post-op genitals up, when I contemplated getting bottom surgery a year ago. She loves her pussy really a lot. Much more than I can even begin to fathom. Oh how fucking horrible I feel. What have I done to her?

She lied down in our bed and put a hand on my shoulder as we both begged each other and ourselves to switch back again, both scared what if we'll be stuck like that. She promised me we wouldn't, but then she started fearing it too. I started panicking as she told me to breathe and relax, that it would help then. I tried my best and I told her to lie as still as she could. I told her in my panic:
"I love you" and she responded with a vague whisper:
"I love you too" and then cleared her throat and said it again, clearer to let me hear it properly. It was incredibly soothing. Eventually our body felt different to me, more familiar again and for a moment I held my breath before I flew out of bed and gasped out "it worked! oh my god it worked!" and then I fell into a heavy cry. I cried for her... for the tears she couldn't release herself.

Then I stroke and held my beloved beard thankful I didn't let her shave it, and put on as masculine clothes as I could find. I felt her movements still lingering in my limbs as I shook them to find my own movements again, and I felt an intense need to smoke even though technically it can't even have been two minutes since that last cigarette she smoked... but I craved cigarettes as though it had been hours. Well, for me it had been. I looked at the plate of barely nibbled on cake and it was so strange. It was as if I was staring at someone else's left-overs. It didn't feel at all like it was my own mouth that had eaten those two bites, when their absense stared back at me.

The song we both listened to intently on repeat during our shift still played on the phone. It's the first and only song I've ever heard her say that she liked, and she tried to sing along to it while she made tea in the kitchen. I'm gonna need to hold onto that one. It's "Von den Elben" by a German group called Faun. It's a ballad in a medieval inspired style. It sounds like a lullaby. I just looked up what the title means in English and fuck it made me let out a sudden and hard cry... I don't know much German so I didn't know... but it means "from the same."

So now I've gotten to know her even better. And I know I don't have to fear her. Her pain, dysphoria, sadness and remorse are so extreme... but her heart is warm, like that cup of tea she drank deeply. She's been trapped in me for so long it drove her mad and dangerous. And me transforming the only thing she had... her body, into something she couldn't stand... I have no idea why she forgives me, but probably for the same reason that I forgive her for that she raped me. Now we're licking each other's permanent wounds and comfort each other, instead of yelling and creating new wounds. It is beautiful, what we have now. I feel a strong love for her and acceptance, and I know she feels the same for me. I've never felt this close to her before. She's like a book character that never made into an actual book, scrapped by last second, but remained on the tip of my tongue in a half finished sentence. She's that dreamy cocktail queen who mourns the life she could never have, somewhere far away. She's a shadow of a person, yearning to have her own body.

Wow, and here I complain about being stuck on an island... really puts things into perspective. Her pain is also mine, but it's not entirely the same, cause we have different perspectives on everything we've been through. We are not like twins, but more like two strangers too different to get along, but forced to stay and stick together. I need to heal her as much as I need to heal myself. But where do I even start?

It's not your fault

You're shattered on the surface
bleeding and aching to gain control
but you forget what really matters
that there's more to life than this

All these years by your side
it was never about me
cause all we have been through
was on your behalf

You drink and you take pills
to dull my endless rantings in your mind
I hold you and I taunt you
but it doesn't matter what you think of me

You say that I'm not real
thanks a lot but how can you know
maybe it's you who's not real
maybe nothing is what it seems

I'm not that cruel just trying to get by
after all I have nowhere else to go
I know what you have sacrificed
to make the life of ours easier

All the lies and all the declines
through heartbreak and insanity
we were never just one person
never just a human being

I can tell you all you want to know
all that you blocked out or tried to forget
but I can't let you suffer on my behalf
cause I only exist so that you can survive



(Anna's poem that she wrote to me, July 2013.)

Blinded by our sight

Within the sorrow of a hidden path
that breaks and twists before it suddenly splits in half
My silent inhale, her breathless shout
that capture all my fears I can't let out

Once we were one, now I am two
we each take a path; between us the pain we can't undo
One part given, one part taken
our nails carving into each other's palms, our friendship forsaken

Is she dark, am I light
or both blended to madness, two wrongs making a right?
I carry my wounds in tears, she carries hers in hate
chased by our desperate dance in a cruel twist of fate

She harms what she means to heal
as I cry: you are not even real
My invisible companion, carrying half my mind as her own
and the other half, is all I've ever truly shown

The farther we walk, the more the distance between us rip
holding our bleeding hands harder in our slipping grip
The pain between us takes its hold on our split soul
and forces the halves together as they clash in our loss of control

And we find ourselves walking the same path
our hands fused together, rinsed in the blood of our aftermath
Between us a love unmistakenly gleamed
and with crooked smiles, our friendship is redeemed



(poem I wrote about me and Anna, our journey together)

The brighter side of a Hell

I'm not sure where they came from, those mental changes I got last year. And as I think about it more, it feels a bit weird to me that I took that personality change with such ease and acceptance, as if it wasn't a big deal at all. I can't say for sure how big part of me that changed, but can only vaguely say I think it was somewhere between 50% and 75% of it. Possibly more, possibly less, and I have no way of truly knowing as that kind of thing can't really be accurately measured. But I just shrugged at it and continued on. I could barely make sense of the unfamiliar words that came out of my mouth and hands, I hurt people, I lost old friends and gained new ones, changed my style rather drastically to match my new self, started trolling and shitposting and posted inflammatory comments online, got into politics, laughed at my darkness in chorus with Anna as I had become much more like her.

But maybe that is why I wasn't so very alarmed by it, cause it wasn't that unfamiliar... I had known it, by my side, forever... from Anna. I reflected her darkness and looking at her from then on, finally felt like I was looking at another aspect of myself. Like the distorted mirror between us had straightened itself out a bit. And I saw, not an enemy, but a hurting friend. A familiar face with emotion in her eyes as she too... felt something. It wasn't just me, or my half of us, that changed, cause she changed too. She having always been the darker, abusive, cold-hearted but protective ice queen of us two — and me having always been the over-sensitive, highly emotional, hurting and self-destructive bleeder of us two — of course I had to become a worse person and she become a better person for us to both get closer to the other and meet halfway. Almost so close that we would blend in with each other, but I know that partially we did. And I know that when we both looked at each other, right after that shift, we both saw ourselves in the other like never before.

We traded and adopted aspects of each others' personalities, but we are both me, technically, so did I actually change? Now that's quite a philosophical question to bite into, isn't it? I've always had the feeling that the person that is me is somehow much bigger and far more complex than I could ever possibly grasp. I don't think I would have learned as much about myself, who I am, had I not split into two halves as a kid. Cause you can't see the core of a fruit unless you cut it in half first. Perhaps there's more truth in that analogy than I realise. Because splitting in two, and meeting a side of myself as though it was another person, really shifted the dynamic between... er, myself and myself? It gave me an objective perspective of the highly subjective. And that, is a learning experience too vast to possibly not be grateful for. No matter how painful it was to endure.

It's been like looking into a distorted mirror not knowing if it was the mirror that was distorted or me. But it was the mirror, at least for the most part, but of course I'm distorted too. Cause now that most of the mirror has somehow been restored again, I recognise that face in the mirror again and it's with both sorrow and euphoria that I embrace myself. Perhaps sorrow mostly for the years that I got lost in darkness, a darkness of literally torturing myself for almost two decades. It is bittersweet to come out of that kind of darkness, it has to be. Cause I can't help but feeling awful for all the harm I more or less put myself through, although I was as Anna then and I have no memories of ever being Anna. But now I know what she felt like, what she was thinking, what drove her to that darkness, and I want to smack myself in the face for never having understood until I partially became her, yet I also want to embrace her cause I see her pain now. I know that the abused child became an abuser. I just couldn't accept that it was me.

But I do have one memory of being Anna, cause I just realised something. Why did it never hit me before? When I abused her, that other child when I was 9, which caused my split, I've lately felt as though it was Anna who did it but that it was me who saw the world through her eyes, somehow. Like a very intense "shift" but like I was her. Like I had her consciousness, for that short moment in time that changed everything forever. But what I never saw before, no matter how ridiculously obvious... was that I've always been Anna and the perspective doesn't make me less her or her less me. But now I really think that was the start, her creation, the actual split. Right in that very moment. That I, with my own consciousness, acted out a darkness so horrifying and extremely powerful, that I literally created an alter from that one experience, which in turn was created by the abuse I was put through before that, as I couldn't accept the fact that it was me who did that horrible thing to her... whom I was supposed to protect, and me whom she was supposed to be able to trust. Of all other kids in the entire world, it was me she was supposed to be able to trust.

I couldn't bear the burden of what I had done and gone through myself just a month or so earlier. The silence and the eroding emotions I kept locked up within me until my adulthood. It wrecked me apart. It tore my young mind into two distinct halves that saw each other as separate people sharing the same body. I still struggle to grasp that just that one experience, those few minutes, literally split my mind in two and changed my life forever. The far beyond immense power that must have had on me. I just can't grasp it. But the most mind boggling thing about it though, is that even though that is my most painful memory, I also think it's the most important one I have, but at the same time, it might never have happened. That makes it difficult to sort out, to understand it, to analyse it, when it's so paper thin it might as well be transparent and melts like snow in my hands. Did it ever happen? I worry I might never know. That it's gonna nag at me forever and keep carving in my soul, scared that bringing it up out in public could ruin my family that I love so dearly for that one horrible thing I may or may not have done 20 fucking years ago.

If it wasn't even real... then what the fuck would my family think of me to even come up with such a story? They'd be beyond mad at me. But then, if it turns out to be true... I have far worse to worry about than them just being angry at me. I can't even, don't even want to, imagine what an emotional hell we'd all go through then. Is it worth bringing it up and digging up such a horrible and horrifying old memory? Would it bring closure? Would them knowing ever be worth the pain? Could I ever put my family through that and do I even have the heart to? Or would I take it with me to the grave? Cause I don't think she has the memory that I do, which makes me even more uncertain of the truth behind it. Maybe it is just my fucked up brain playing the cruelest tricks imaginable on me? At least I can't imagine anything could be more cruel of my brain to do, than giving me such a memory then having it be proven to be false. Knowing that might split me into three.

Yet I want for it to be false, cause I don't want to have caused such damage. And I'd rather have it be me being damaged than her, especially if it was by my hands. I think the damage to my mind might be irreparable either way. It will always have a badly half-healed, still oozing wound there. Whether it actually happened or not. But the thing is I think it did, cause I don't think it would have affected me quite this badly, had it been false all along. And the tension between her and me can't just be for nothing. It's like an electrically charged power field of a no-go-zone between us. It can't be for nothing. Scared to even sit next to her on the same couch, and when she hugs me I feel like I'm breaking. That amount of remorse, you could form into a planet and call it Jupiter, and it still wouldn't be enough.

I feel like I'm hurting her by just continuing to existing. Like I should be executed for what I did to her. Not celebrate birthdays with her or joke about her weird taste in clothing while she jokes about mine. I feel the hissing within me, hear chalks against a chalkboard, and I'm unable to move. Wanting to do the impossible, undo what I cannot. But even though I don't think she remembers it, I can still see that it affects her in ways she probably can't find an explanation to. Like she probably wonders about things she struggles with that most others do not. But... would giving her an answer be "nice" or the most awful thing I could possibly ever do to her, next to what I have already done?

My question is simply, is ignorance bliss, or is the truth, no matter how cruel, always better? Cause here I stand between the choices of letting her keep having that ignorance of what she can't remember — or reveal to her a memory more horrible than I think she'd ever want to know. But then, if I take it with me to my grave, I worry that I could be depriving her of her chance to heal from it. But I also know, that regressive memories are really, really not something to toy around with. Perhaps that choice should not be up to me, no matter how responsible I feel over what happened, perhaps it would be better to leave that decision up to a professional. Of course it's still my burden to carry, but I do think that on that particular point, some actual expert advice would probably be a good idea, before I do another thing that can't be undone.

If only I had the right words when I needed them, and not just randomly like this.

I feel as though I've come a long way with Anna just this past year, as we partially merged, and finally stood face to face as equals. And saw not just what the other had done, but also knew why. It brought us together, and I cannot think that was a negative thing to happen, cause I feel down into my soul that it was extremely necessary. Without it, I think finding peace of mind in any conceivable future would have been impossible. Cause you can't find peace when you're in a constant war with yourself, truce or not. And you can't shake hands and agree with your enemy before you've seen what they've seen and felt what they've felt, and they have done the same about you. That, I think, was a very important step for me and Anna in finding peace within our shared mind. Of course, I cannot possibly find peace if she can't, and the reverse goes for her, because we are connected and dependent on each other. We both dance the same tango.

I have no clear vision of the future, but I think we will mostly continue to more and more become one again. How it can be possible without any therapy, any medication for that issue, and so few to talk to about it, I don't know. But maybe even the most horrible wounds can also self heal, for whatever reasons I'm not aware of. But regardless of how or why it's started to happen, it's now, at least somewhat clear to me, that me and Anna are slowly but quite surely, becoming one whole person again. I both fear it, and look forward too it with much anticipation. What would I be like? I haven't seen that me... well, probably ever. Cause even before that split, I had so many issues I can't rightfully call child me "whole", but more so call that a ticking bomb just waiting to implode. I do not think I was ever really whole in this life, except from possibly when I was a toddler.

I don't think I really was born broken, but rather just very fragile, and that I started breaking very early on. But I don't see that as only negative, no matter how bitter that melody may sound, cause I think it was all the breaking that eventually made me tough and hard, which I always wished I could be. Of course, as a child wishing that, I didn't know there was such a heavy and longlasting agonising price for that toughness, but still somehow worth it. It is and it is not. Cause how can I feel such deep, soul-cutting remorse for what I did, yet somehow consider it "worth it"? I don't think I used the right words. I see that even that had and still has a purpose, and very important lessons to teach. I just wish it didn't have to be at the cost of someone else. Someone that I love.

Way to start a day

My contact person just called, as scheduled. Apparently the doctor is on leave for a week or so, which I don't really care about. She told me again how good it was that I had not engaged in any self harming behaviours and I'm like thinking yeah sure lol. Cause the only reason things have gone good for me lately is my thoughts on having children. And I didn't want to tell her about that.

It was only about 10 minutes long, our conversation, so not that much was discussed. I've just finished with my morning coffee, but continue to smoke endlessly.

And I still think about my future kid, what it could be like. I think random books lately, or at least Ann Heberlein's book, has made me think more about it. How she describes how a mother carries her child under her heart, it's just so damn beautiful. Her love for her own children somehow affected me, how she could go on living because of them, and also how she could not.

That she describes so understandingly how having children won't fix you, or having a loving husband for that matter. And I know having a child won't fix me either, but I do believe it could give me a reason to go on fighting. And I'm stuck on my reasons for wanting a child being selfish, cause what would I say if they one days would ask me why I decided to have them?

Maybe everyone, who's had a child or several, had selfish reasons? Just that I'm too focused on my future child's feelings to find my reasons good enough? Could I even possibly be too focused on such a thing? Isn't that, despite everything, like the best thing to ever keep in mind? My future child's feelings. That they would go before my own stupid feelings.

Maybe I wouldn't be such a bad parent after all. If only I'd strive towards being a good parent and do the best I can, wouldn't that somehow be enough? I am, after all, a good person deep at heart and only want others well. And a child, that child would come before everyone else and be far more important than my own sorry life.

I really do believe that, I'm not as selfish as I think I am. My reasons should matter less than I think they would, as long as I'm prepared to care for that child and wanting to give them the best life I could possibly give them. That is what matters, and now I think I'm onto something again.

But I don't know what more to say about it. I don't feel that good today. I don't know why. Something's twisting in my stomach when I think about it. About the psychiatry and what's in the mix right now. What will my shrink say? I have no idea what to expect, but I hope she'll be understanding of my past secret. That I kept within me for 10 years and 7 years before that.

I'm finally willing to discuss it and maybe get some kind of help for it. I don't know. But I ache for a diagnosis and I don't think it's as simple as "just hearing voices" as it stems from a childhood trauma and is far more complicated than just a voice in my head. Hopefully, I'll be able to communicate that and stress that I very much would like to know exactly what the fuck is going on.

Without starting to ramble different diagnoses I've been looking at and the diagnostic criteria for those. I don't know, because nothing really seems to fit. And that's a little why I finally come to them about it, since I don't have the slightest clue and it's driving me crazy. If I wasn't crazy already, that is.

For all the times my shrink has mentioned that I'm not crazy, I can't help but thinking would she still say that if she knew about Anna? I mean, I know hearing voices doesn't necessarily make you crazy, but the way I do... what else would it be? I don't mind being crazy, I seriously don't. What I do mind is not being able to function.

As simple as that, and it can mean so much. What makes me not being able to function? Is it Anna, my asperger, borderline or something else? That I don't believe that I'm human, or what else? So many different things dragging me down in various directions and for various reasons.

But I just want my answer, how crazy am I? Or more like, in what way? My head filled to the brim with questions today, along with some general rambling. And I'm so tired, despite just having my morning coffee. I can't focus that well on anything else than of how tired I am. Things pop up in fragments as I try to distort and twist and turn them for whatever reasons.

Cause I doubt it's because I want to understand them. It's too early for that, but my mind is racing wild anyway.

A secret told

Yeah... I write poems about Anna and I realise how complicated our situation really is. She's not evil, she's not good, she's human and so am I. Maybe she's more human than I am. I wouldn't doubt it.

I'm listening to "Forever" by The Birthday Massacre on repeat and she sings "sometimes when I close my eyes I hear a voice" and although it's not entirely fitting, it still makes me think about Anna.

Is it hopeless? I don't know. I don't think I know the true meaning of that word. I'm hopeless, maybe that's better, or at least closer to the truth. Hopelessly devoted to her and everything she's been during these 17 years by my side, occupying my head to the brim.

You don't just start talking about a secret you've kept for almost 10 years. What's wrong with me? No seriously, what is wrong with me? My curiosity just tipped the table and I can't deal anymore. With anything.

I'm crumbling and losing touch with reality and life. I didn't tell my contact person that, that I'm tired of living and slowly starting to get suicidal again. I don't want her or anyone else forcing me back to the ward when that's the last place I want to be forced into.

Though I've never been, forced to a psychiatric ward. Once, maybe, I don't know. That would be after my most serious suicide attempt, the overdose and the 11th one. I don't know if I was forced or not that time. I only remember it vaguely. But I sigh as I suddenly get a feeling that I will try to kill myself at least 2 more times before I'll actually die. Siiiiiigh, I really don't want to deal with more of that shit.

17 times, wouldn't that just be...? Like, come on, seriously?! I've got better things to do than trying to die without succeeding to. I've been chain smoking since I got home and I cannot stop. I've been trying to kill myself since I was 16 and I can't stop with that either. I remember, when I was 16 or 17 that I thought 4 suicide attempts was good. I had heard about it in a movie or something, and I thought it had a good ring to it.

Tell me, I know I'm nuts for thinking such things, but I thought it, alright? And now, with 15 failed attempts behind me and I can only remember half of them, barely, I don't know if there is a magic number.

All I know is that I don't want even more useless attempts in my history, enough is enough. But I can't help this nagging feeling, and I'm sooo very divided right now you won't believe it! On one hand I'm scared of dying before turning 28 and desperately want to pack in my entire life within those two years from now; while on the other hand I don't think I'll last for another month, or maybe another week.

No, I don't plan to kill myself, it's just thoughts. And I do want to live, I just don't know if I can. And at the same time I don't want to live because this stinking life has been forced upon me and the psychiatry sucks. It truly does, and now I'm trapped. If they'll try anything, I mean it fucking anything (force me back to the ward, force antipsychotic drugs into me, whatever) I'll cut the damn strings and fly.

No, again, not literally. Just cutting the strings with the psychiatry. There will be no actual flying. Damn, I'm tired of trying to explain myself. I don't even know whom I'm explaining myself to. There's a chaos in my head and I'm quite lost within it right now. I can't even explain this to myself.

Life, death, become meaningless words. Just different states of existence and how can I ever know which one is better than the other? I'm tired to the bone and I can't rest. I haven't been able to rest for over 10 years. I have my chronic tension headache to thank for that.

Shifting to other songs by The Birthday Massacre as I try to keep myself at least somewhat sane. For a nicotine overdose and more coffee. I should wrap myself up in my robe and start editing again, but I can't find any peace within myself. Can't focus, only breathing exhausts me. And my stomach hurts for no reason, competing with the pain in my head. At least it feels that way. Go away, go away, I tell it but it hardly helps.

I just can't stop thinking about my own death. No matter how soon or far into the future it will occur. I shudder before it. I freeze in the moment as I'm running out of words to write. Tell me again, why I should hang on to this life, cause I've forgotten why, once again.

I'm alive and I breathe but my breath is shallow, my heart is beating but it's broken, my soul still tagging along but it's homesick and scarred. And I want to leave, yet I cling to life desperately. I crumble beneath my mortal fear, it tears me apart and I can't function anymore.

I cut my ties with almost everyone again. I don't function around other people and I don't deserve them. I'll only hurt them if I haven't already. Stay, but I don't know how.

For the rest of our lives

Earlier yesterday, I talked out with my mother about Anna and she asked me if I had talked to my shrink about Anna, to which I said no. That I'm still scared of what the trans team up in Huddinge could possibly do if they found out. Everyone is reading my medical file and nothing is secret between the different departments. Anyway, she said I could ask my shrink if everything has to end up in my file before actually mentioning Anna, and to tell her that I am scared of that.

I think I might actually do that, cause I think I really need to get some control over Anna again. It's starting to get hopeless and keeping her a secret is almost as damaging as I think talking about her could possibly be. I just need my shrink to know that the clutter in my mind is not as simple as it seems to be. With Anna in there as well, I'm not just overthinking, I'm having eternal conversations with an imaginary person 24/7 and of course it's what's causing a lot of the anxiety.

I can't focus on mindfulness, or other strategies because of her, always talking, talking, talking. It's an eternal buzz in my head that I can't possibly shut off no matter what I do. I can lessen it by drinking or cutting, but that's basically it. It's such a complicated situation and I'm curious, so very curious about what she is and what I have. Like what's wrong with me.

I know why she came to me, I also know why she's still around and always will be. How can I know? Well, she's stayed for almost 17 years and that's a frigging long time if you ask me. I don't think she's leaving, ever. I don't think she can.

And I have all the reasons to want to get rid of her for good, but I also love her and that's where it becomes complicated. I'd miss her if she was gone. Maybe I'm just so certain that nothing can take her away from me that I learned to accept it so to the point that I want it, or believe that I want her to stay. After all, she's the reason I'm never entirely alone.

Although, the best would be a stop button of some sort. Just a pill or a trick to make her go away for a while and then she can come back when I need her again. I don't think I could ever be ready to want to let go of her completely, I think it's rather the opposite, that the more time passes, the more I hold on to her.

She's like my twin, just as annoying and stubborn but lovely and cute as a close sibling can be. My siamese twin, we're related by the soul. And I love her beyond death and life. I've never been as close to another human being, never loved anyone the way I love her. But she's a bitch and a pain in the ass, to say the least. She hinders me in so many ways I can't even begin to fathom it.

I live half a life because of her. So many things I cannot do to save her, give her the justice she so well deserves. If I was a prisoner in someone else's mind, I think I would have gone crazy too. I've experienced it, in short moments. How trapped and helpless it makes you feel. When we've shifted and she takes control over our body.

I'm just there and all I have is my words. Futile, hopeless and it's scary as hell. I guess I've been afraid of that becoming permanent. Like what if we shift and it gets stuck that way? What if she gets to be in control 100% of the time and I'm the puppet?

Shit, I can't think of a scarier thought. But thankfully, it drains us both when we shift and we automatically shift back within minutes. And at the same time I want us to shift more often, maybe letting others get to know her too. But it would also be embarrassing on my behalf, she controlling our body is quite a spectacle. Her body language is so different from mine and somehow to me, it resembles a drunk diva with hints of ADHD.

But I want to let her out just a little bit more, although I'm still hopelessly scared of us getting stuck that way. I've been fearing us changing positions since I was a child. She controls me with my fear. It's eating me alive and she knows exactly which buttons to press. Lately, it's been getting worse. Her buttons get harder to press, I tend to forget such things over time.

What would I even want from telling my shrink about Anna? Except from a lousy diagnosis and to get it off my chest? I don't believe there are any tactics I could use against her. I've tried everything over the years, and so far, the only method that really worked, is no longer working anymore. To be mean back at her, curse her when she cursed me. It used to work for so many years and our twisted games have become more complicated but less twisted.

I still don't know for sure if I want to talk about Anna with my shrink or not. I've been quiet about it for 9 years and it feels weird somehow. And I'm so fucking scared, but maybe that fear is irrational? I don't know. I just don't fucking know and it's driving me off the edge, it's driving me mad with confusion.

But I'm only half a person and I lead half a life. It's not right, not the way it was supposed to be. How was I supposed to be? If that thing 17 years ago had never happened, if I had never gotten split in two? Can I ever become whole and complete again? See, I can't get rid of her cause she's a part of me. It would be like removing half my brain or something. And I still need her. I will always need her.



For The Rest Of Our Lives
 
"We're siamese twins
connected by the soul
You tried free your mind
and find your own role

Your words, your wisdom
and I'm always by your side
Your hatred, your disgust
I could never try to hide

For seventeen years
and for the rest of our lives
and we hate each other
like husbands and wives

How many of my tears
have you wiped away
said through all this pain
that you'll always stay

But I love you dearly
and hate you just the same
and I'll never forget the day
when I first heard your name

My guardian angel and saviour
what have you done to me
your words are suffocating
oh, why can't you see?"

Entrapped

The razor blade lies alluring on my desk in a small box for matches, and I'm so close to reaching for it. Alphaville sings "sometimes I wish that you were dead" in Wishful Thinking and time stands still.

I wake, waiting for the storm to come once again. She's silent, but I can feel her presence, hovering over me, inside me and around me. Instead I reach for another cigarette, place it between my lips and light it. The smoke fills my lungs as I hold it in for 5 seconds before breathing it out again. Not much smoke comes out, as most of it stays in my lungs.

It's grey and cloudy outside, and at 11:00 o'clock when I went outside, small rain drops hit my face and hair. I tried to see the solar eclipse but the sun was deeply hidden behind the clouds. Soon, my love and enemy, will come back in full strength. Laughing, cursing, telling me to do something awful that I'll refuse, tell her no and tell her to shut up. Again and again until I'm out of air, out of words.

The hassle of words, always awakening the monster in us both as we yell and call each other names. I hate you so much, and you hate me too, we use to say as if we were lovers being sarcastic. It's exactly 14:00 o'clock on my computer screen and the cigarette is burnt halfway through. She kept me up last night, speaking through the music that I had on extra loud. As if it ever mattered, nothing can shut out the sound of her voice.

Like a searing blade slicing through my every thought. I'm so used to it by now, 17 years entrapped in her mind, and for 17 years she's been entrapped in mine. I poke my cell phone screen to keep it from fading to black. I always hate it when it does that, and I tell it to stop, as I have a thing for always yelling at inanimate objects to do as I want them to. As I always have a thing for yelling at her for the same reasons, I'm doing it out of habit. Just as useless.

I put out my cigarette in a cup filled with cold water and put the butt in an ashtray. I can't go on like this, time is running out and I don't want to die because of her. Her words can kill me and I don't have the strength to resist them. My words run off her like water on a goose but her words soak into me like water to a sponge. Why does it have to be that way? How I curse my cold sensitivity.

I light another cigarette and willingly let it poison me. I'm drowning just to be. I casually overdose on Zyprexa. Just like any other drug, I'm not meant to be. And she was my guardian angel one day 17 years ago, how did she become my enemy? Just wouldn't leave me alone, kept traumatising me with her words for years and years and never once stopped.

But who would I be without her? Incomplete, just half a person. Am I only half a person out in public, when no one knows about her? When all they see and hear is John but John is incomplete without Anna. I'm two and I am half.

Thinking about coffee but can't make myself make any. From Alphaville to Linkin Park and the music fills up my whole head. Almost. It's too loud and and too low at the same time. How can I even exist like this?

One hell or another

If it wasn't suicide, I would kill you right now. I'm that fucking sick of you. I know I shouldn't think the worst, but we haven't been fighting like this for a long time. I think it's war again and I don't know why. We've been through every imaginable tragedy, we swore a truce. To never start bickering without good reason, to never start a new war. What the fuck happened to that truce, my frenemy?

Yeah, me and Anna again. I hate her so fucking much right now. Cause these last few days or so I've been cursing and screaming at the top of my lungs at her quite a lot and right now I just grabbed the razor blade and dragged it across my skin because I couldn't make her shut the fuck up.

She's annoying me with questions and insults she knows hurt me when I'm the most vulnerable. No one gets underneath my skin, except her, because I literally have no other choice. She's like a fucking virus in my mind and there's no escape. Ever. There never has been.

For 16 years I've put up with her crap and if this goes to hell again, I'm telling the shrinks. I'm legally male now, it shouldn't be an obstacle anymore, whether they think I'm trans enough or not because of her. If only she was male... maybe I should lie and say she's male and say another name? No, I wouldn't be able to stick to that kind of lie, "Anna" is a name permanently imprinted on me. And I want to unprint her. Get some peace and quiet for once.

Cause if this is war again... I certainly can't handle yet another war between us two. I need to do something constructive about this situation, but I don't know what. For 9 years I've kept quiet about her before the psychiatry, for 6 of those years because of my transsexualism, do I even dare telling about her now? What if they would do everything in their power to make sure I won't continue to get treated for my absolutely genuine transsexualism? Do I really have to choose between one hell and another?

Would I regret it if I open my mouth about her to my shrink? Cause if we're really going to raise a hell of our own again, me and Anna, I don't think I could stand it. All I know is that I'm not rational or thinking clearly when I'm upset, and I'm upset a lot lately. And she's just on and on me constantly, I can't shut her up, I can't get her to leave me alone. What the fuck happened to our truce?!

No. If this gets to any degree of worse, I'm opening my damn mouth about her. I've had enough. For 16 fucking years of being controlled by a voice in my head, I've had enough. Yeah, I'm drunk and I hate my fucking life. I can't even get drunk alone. I can't do anything alone, not even going to the bloody bathroom, cause you guess what? I'm never ever alone.

I don't even remember what it was like before her. I was so young, just 9 years old. I've sobered up now, and I'm a little less angry. But the fact still remains, I still have to deal with this situation somehow. I know taking pills doesn't help against her. All those kind of pills ever did was making me fat and stupid. I'd rather be dead in that case. But maybe there could be some other kind of help to get. I don't know, I really don't know if I'd even dare talking about her. Like ever.

Last and first time was such a disaster I regretted it with everything I had in me for years. Well, we'll see what I'll decide for, but talking about her openly like that is not a decision that should be taken lightly. It could still have devastating consequences. I have to be careful, my whole life depends on my secret. I just have to reach a point where nothing else matters, where her words are more likely to kill me than forced de-transition ever would.

Out of control

I don't want to play WoW, I don't want to do anything. I think I'm shifting again. But what can I do about it when there's nothing I want to do? Should take a walk. Buy a sandwich. Eat it. Smoke some more. Write some more. Maybe draw something, I don't know, anything.

Well, that didn't make me feel better. I'm kinda sad today, though not dark, not yet at least. I worry a lot. About the present and the future. I rarely worry about the future, but now I apparently do. There's something nagging at me, something I can't control, that I can't do anything about. It pains me, that it makes me feel so helpless. I can't control my fears and they are rising.

I wish I could just feel better sometime and not having so much to worry about all the time. All that anxiety that will probably never entirely leave me. And because it keeps changing all the time it's so hard to find a way to deal with it. So many different things causes my anxiety, like it's a life form of its own. And as soon as I think I understand it, then it changes again.

The reasons change. One day I'm having anxiety over one thing and the next day it's something else. It's very confusing. And to be perfectly honest, I'm not even sure if it is anxiety. It could be something else. Despite how it may seem, I can't even define half of all my complicated emotions. They are in control over me, and I'm just desperately trying to tag along wherever they lead me.

Oh, I'm not done yet. I feel so lost, and I realised that much of my pain today is because I miss K. I miss him more than ever before and if I let my guard down I think I would break down and cry. But I don't want to. I'd rather stay strong, trying not to switch to the dark me again and just hold on to the here and now. I'm such an asshole when I'm the dark me and I don't want to be that. That cold and confident, it sickens me. So I resist it as far as I can, even though I know I would feel better if I shift.

*

Suddenly I'm just cold. Defence mechanism activated. One of them many. But this thing, I don't even know if it's new, or that I just realised it very recently. How new can it be? I don't remember shifting like this before. Not with such a clear difference between these two polar opposites, as it is now. Maybe it has just become this way gradually. It's possible, cause I think it yet is to become even worse.

I hope it doesn't turn into something like DID, that wouldn't be good at all. I really hope I won't get that divided. I'm trying to gather all of me and put into one jar, somewhere confided where I can just collect myself and become a whole person again. How many am I now? I don't really know. Am I me and Anna or are we divided and I am light and dark? And the voices I hear, are they me too?

Such a complicated mess and I don't even know half of it. I'm still pondering, wondering if I should come clean to my shrink about this. Still very much hesitating, but I don't want it to get even worse. I fear for my mind, the seams that are ripping, the tear in my soul. I'm breaking apart and there's nothing I can do to stop it.

How my whole personality just keeps on splintering into smaller parts. All those parts by themselves are easier to handle, but together make a mess out of everything. It's hard to describe, this way of falling to pieces. Like I'm literally falling to pieces and I can't put it back together again. I'm losing control, I'm losing my mind.

This is very confusing. It's like I'm becoming two different people, yet I already am two different people. That my soul got split the first time when I was 9 and the other half of me became Anna. And now what, the half of me that truly is me is also splitting up in two? I don't know who I am anymore, where I end or begin, what is me and what isn't.

And if this is true, what could it mean for my future? If I'm suddenly three people and I shift between two of them, this could just go on forever and I could keep splitting into more personalities. So do I really have Schizophrenia or DID or do I very much unlikely have both? Just bits and pieces of both conditions and I can't figure it out. I'm dissociating as well as hallucinating with delusions. I'm quite a chaos.

This is a very long entry, but I think it is important. I've never written an entry first as the light me then continued writing as I shifted to the dark me. If not else, I need it for some documentation. To see how much I change, if the difference between the two will grow or fade or stay the same over some time. I know I'm thinking far ahead, I'm just worried.

I was playing WoW when I shifted, and I felt it the entire time. It's hard to describe it, but it was a bit like walking into another room. It might not sound very special to you, but believe me, it was quite interesting. Though having Anna constantly bothering me during the process was a bit annoying. It was almost like she was scared of it.

Split in black and white

My mind is never at peace. Am I a humanised demon, or a demonised human? Does it matter? I've always felt a bit like the super heroes who have a darker identity that they sort of switch to at certain points, when something triggers them. I'm not saying I feel like a super hero, rather quite far from it. But it's like I'm two people sometimes, and even though pain and madness drives me to the darker me I like him better.

Hard to say why, cause that me isn't much stronger or wiser or anything really. Just different. Braver, perhaps. More confident, selfish and solitary. The other me is bright, more fun and easy going. Insecure, kinder and more social. Isn't that rather schizo though? I don't know, I haven't really come across this phenomena before. I will do some digging in that area, but I doubt I'll find anything useful though.

I've always been split between black and white, and now I see why. I am both, but not at the same time. It's not like I have alter egos, they're both me. Just that one side enhances the dark and the other enhances the light. But since the darker is only present when triggered, that could be a clue of something. That it is developed, not something I was born with. Doesn't make it any less real though, but I think I've just been through too much damn darkness, like what the fuck is happening to me?!

I'm split in so many ways it's getting hard to keep up with everything. First there's me and my body, an eternal war to be honest. Secondly there's me and Anna, which can also be a war sometimes but mostly we're like siblings. Siamese twins that never got our own separate bodies. I don't morph into her, I don't become her, we're like two different people entirely. And then there's this. Where I see myself as two sides of a coin, one dark and one light. Not as in negative and positive, think more like night and day.

I've been trying to describe this like a gazillion times before, but I think I nailed it now. I'm the dark side of me now, can you tell? Triggered by my past and my worries about K, I just sort of morphed. I don't know how that happens, suddenly I'm just there.

This isn't new, I've just not been able to describe it before. I've tried. I've tried so hard for probably about twelve years or more. How the usual me can change into something else. Most people only see that me, as to why I refer to as the "usual", and I suppose there isn't that much difference between them both.

The difference has increased though. I dress differently depending on which one I am. I wear light colours, like a white shirt and blue jeans if I'm the light me. And vice versa I wear darker colours like a blood red shirt with black pants if I'm the dark me. It affects my mood more lately. I don't think either side is more prone to psychosis, though I'm not sure yet. I'll make a thorough study on that later.

I think this is another defence mechanism. I have so many of those just to able to survive my own life. I don't think my life sucked quite that hard, I mean there are loads of people who have had a much worse life without becoming Schizophrenic or whatever the fuck I am. PTSD drew me to madness, is quite safe to say. I'm not very sane at all, though I might seem that way to other people. I can't help but thinking it's not so strange since my chaos is more or less locked inside my brain. And it just becomes worse.

Or does it? I'm seeing clearer all the time, especially since about a year ago. Damn my vision has expanded more than I could handle. Literally more than I could handle. But what does this mean? Like I suddenly understand exactly why I dyed half my hair black and bleached the other half blonde on and off for so many years before. But everyone just said that I looked like Berny Pålsson so I suppose that's why I stopped having my hair that way eventually, even though the first time I had it was before I had even heard of her. When I first saw a picture of her at 17 it was like looking into a mirror. I was both allured and creeped out.

This also explains why I want all my tattoos and piercings on one half of my body but not the other. It explains why I'm drawn to black and white patterns, why I sometimes do my make up differently on either side of my face and so on. It explains my ambivalence too. Damn, it explains a lot. I'm split in two.

Interpret this

Heatstroke. I get heatstroke from the inside. Do you know what that is like? It feels like I'm on fire, but I'm not. I ate too much yesterday, so I have to go to the gym and work out a little extra with the cardio exercise. Just want to work off bad conscience and guilt. I buy fitness magazines and try to get some advice. Don't know if it's any good advice though. And I know I'm doing it wrong by starving and exercising at the same time. But I do it to lose weight fast.

They say you shouldn't starve because you'll gain the weight again when you go back to eating normally again. Bwah, they are so generalising! I won't go back to eating "normally" since I don't want to and I never have. Even if I would I wouldn't do it over night, but slowly eat more and more, careful as fuck not to gain the weight again. I will never allow myself to get that fat again. Ever.

I wonder what it's gonna look like when my nipples fall off. Whenever that will be. The part of the scar I can see around them is about the same colour my nipples were in before the surgery. They will of course become paler with time, the scars, so maybe I'll tattoo there or something. I don't know. Gonna meet my surgeon again sometime in the summer, so I'll see what's the verdict.

Ugh, I have this feeling that someone's watching me right now, since I got back home from my family's place. Not with video cameras, but sort of magically, or astral somehow. It's weird. Anna says I'm just crazy and that only schizo's believe that stuff. It's a nice interpretation coming from an imaginary person...

I've had a few rough days with mild symptoms. I've seen messages directed to me (from car registration plates, street signs and in magazines), felt watched and that people are reading my thoughts. Shadows in the corner of my eye, something strange in the air, like ghosts or something. No voices other than Anna's and no real hallucinations though. I've been balancing on the edge between sanity and insanity again.

Oh, by the way. Sex change happening in the autumn!* Then I will (hopefully) be reassigned to legally male and get my new personal identity number and all that. My dream come true. Get a new ID-card. It's about time, it's broken and all already, even though it has one more year before it expires. Last time I got a new ID-card was right after my name change. Didn't think it would take four more years until I had to get a new one again... kinda hoped it would be sooner.

Don't know how I could have forgotten that was said during my meeting in Huddinge before. I've been thinking so much about K that I hardly think of or remember anything else. My mind is a mystery...



*I know I shouldn't use the words "sex change" because my gender has always been male, even though I was assigned female at birth, it's just that I find it simple to say.

The body we share

I suddenly feel a bit sorry for my body, what it has to go through. It's the price of dealing with its unkind hosts. Me and Anna, colliding and end up damaging our poor, shared body and mind.

She is a bit upset about my surgery by the way. She says I shouldn't have done it, and I know that she misses the tits. She is female after all, and through all of my transition she's become more and more detached from our shared body. It's unfamiliar to her. But my well being is more important than hers. I try to comfort her though, that she can still be a woman even though she won't look like one.

In all of our life together she's always been the cisgendered and I the transgender, but now the roles are reversed. I might be selfish, but there really is no way I could compromise with that. What I can do is to make her comfortable with the fact that I do want to and will let her express her femininity from time to time. Been thinking of buying a wig for her, something cheap, with straight, long, light/medium brown hair that I can style to fit her needs. Buy a simple brown dress for her. Maybe even a bra if I feel brave enough. It wouldn't be a problem for me, just every once in a while, to let her live a little.

But yeah, I want people to be able to get to know her, if she is in fact is the second half of me, that we two together combined would create the real me. And if that would ever happen, or if not, I still want people to meet her. Yes I'm thinking something like a body switch, and I "become" her for a little while while she's exploring the world and get to know you guys who she really is.

I can't believe I've waited so long to come to that decision! Maybe because we hadn't figured out how to "switch" until rather recently.

When she's steering the wheel, I would be the voice in her head and mostly not be able to speak up loudly, so all I can do basically, is only guiding her from inside our mind. It's kinda creepy and a bit scary to be locked inside my own mind like that. But I believe it could be worth it. After all, I am the one who's got the upper hand in our unusual situation.

Though to others I might seem just as crazy as I try to tell you that I am. (I mean I don't just throw around the word "crazy" as a fashion statement, I really am, you know). "Me" running around in a dress and a wig, constantly complaining, afraid and curious about seeing the whole world in a completely new perspective. Talking in a higher pitch that doesn't really hold, with obvious feminine manners. And then I'd change back to the real me again. I would look and seem like a total fail drag show with strong tendencies to being bat shit crazy.

Maybe I should just take her out for some shopping first. Letting her pick something she'd wanna wear. Cause I just want for people to see who's been invading my mind for the last sixteen years of my life. Wouldn't you like to meet her? I mean, like really face to face? I'm sure she'd have quite some stories to tell. What we went through through her perspective, things I might not even know about. You'd have to be careful with her though. I don't think she's ever interacted with another living person before.

Her body image is very far from my own, so the way I look now is way far from how she pictures herself looking. And well, she's not comfortable with the way I've changed with testosterone and the surgery I had done. But I'll try my best for her to look as feminine or not she wants to be.

She's my polar opposite. She hates what I love and loves what I hate. She's not very tactic, more extrovert than me, more feminine in her manners than I've ever been. She's more logical than emotional, lacks empathy and has a bit of a superior complex. She's drawn to nature and living an as healthy lifestyle she possibly can with me completely ignoring it. A little towards that new age kinda thing. She would probably be living in a forest or at a farm if we didn't share bodies. She's a bit of a hippie, vegetarian, against smoking, drinking and sex. She can be a total bitch but she's smart and curious about the world around her. I think you'd both love her and hate her.

It's hard for me sometimes when I try to understand that she is a part of me, that all of her was once just a part of my personality. She's the light, believing in being healthy and stay true to the nature, she's logical more than emotional, though a bit narcissistic and self absorbed. I one the other hand am dark, into self destruction and indulgent. I'm creative and rely more on my emotions than logical thinking. We're a bit like yin and yang.

Would you want to meet her when I come to Uppsala and Stockholm? I could totally arrange that. If I could only get her out of her shyness for a little while. No parties though, she hates that kind of stuff. Tea in a café or just talking in a park or wherever would be better. Close to nature, but it's not mandatory. I have full understanding for it if you don't want to be seen around people with the crazy person in drag with a split personality.

But yeah, I've been wanting to let her lose a bit more lately. Let her see the world too. Though it would probably feel like walking a dog the first few times. And this is what I love thinking about what shrinks would say about if they were told about this condition, this way of living.

1998

I just realised that I don't remember anything from year 1997. Maybe because everything happened during the year after. When everything changed, forever. Did you know I was raped twice? Though it's hardly a record and nor should it be. It just popped up in my head right now, as I was thinking about the number 97 which is one of my favourite numbers.

Rape, sexual assault. It changes you. And I was so young in 1998. Just nine years old. Did I ever have a childhood? I ask myself. I's almost like I was born unhappy and then people went and made my life even crappier. It's not so strange I hated elementary school. But my hatred towards it wasn't actually directed to schools as such, cause I really liked going to other schools later on. I guess I just hated my class and school mates back then. They weren't so friendly.

They did that to me. Children, younger than I was. Though I can't even remember all of it. Don't remember how the rest of that day went by, how I felt directly after. I don't remember the rest of the day my second rape happened either. I wonder why. My mother remembered it though. Apparently I was kinda upset.

I guess I just like ranting about the horrible things I went through. Maybe it's a way of facing it, of dealing with it. Maybe I am just crazy and find pleasure in reliving the truly unpleasant. I fantasise about it, how it could have gone differently. For the worse and for the better. Trying to get some perspective. Trying to understand what actually happened, why it happened. How they must have thought and felt. What went through my rapists' minds when the did what they did? Did they think they didn't harm me, or were they cruelly aware of it?

Wonder why I didn't defend myself the second time, in 2007. I knew karate for fucks sake. And I just lied there and took it. I don't understand why. Maybe my fear just paralysed me. So much for learning self defence.

And it just brings me down. How fragile I am, so easily broken. And I wonder if it could happen again, cause I have a feeling that it will happen again someday. I don't know why, but it's like I think the world isn't done fucking me around. At least it gave me Anna as a sad act of forgiveness or something. Cause I still think this is why she came to me. PTSD with dissociation, or DID. My best bet so far as to why I have a split personality. The whole of me split into two people. And most of you only know half of me.

Don't be your own therapist, you just end up getting more entangled in the memories of your traumas. But they're just memories now and they can't hurt me. My scars that will never fully heal. I don't think I've ever heard of another rape victim who's moved on completely from their experience/-s. Cause maybe it just isn't possible.

When there's no escape

Let's talk about pain. It does things to you. It makes you do things you didn't think you'd ever do. As a kid I never wanted to drink or do drugs, I swore I'd never do that. I never got desperate enough to take a whole bottle of pills or get so drunk I couldn't stand on my own feet cause I couldn't deal with my headache. Because I wanted to escape.

I remember the first few months after it got chronic. I was sixteen and just wanted to lead a normal life, go to school and meet new friends. Become something, have a job that I didn't hate. Of course I still wanted to be different, that's not what I mean. It was so hard to come to terms with it and accept it. It took almost a year before I gave up on trying to understand and cure it.

Now when I take something, recommended dosage of painkillers or something more of a dangerous amount, I just try to get rid of the worst of it. It never works anymore. Not even morphine and I think it's because it isn't physical anymore. There's this thing with our brains, it remembers pain and can make you experience it even if you aren't actually in pain anymore. It's hard to explain, cause I don't fully understand it.

There is no cure, there is nothing I can do. Most days I accept it, try to work around it somehow, anyhow. Find my limits, when to stop or slow down. I can't even go to School anymore. It is that disabling, cause after one or two School days in a row it becomes so strong I have to go home and rest for a week. Aside from the other mental problems that hits the roof at about that time or even sooner. With slight social anxiety, dysphoria, psychotic symptoms and a splitting headache you just don't work in society.

It makes me nuts sometimes, all of that, but I can handle most of it, with rest and time, but not the headache. Psychotic episodes eventually fade, dysphoria goes down when I'm back at home again, social anxiety goes away when I'm away from social situations. But the headache never goes away. Ever. It doesn't matter how much I rest or whatever I do or don't do.

I wish there was something that could be done about it. My ideas have been everything from crazy to stupid. Like when I want to literally be beheaded or when I cut myself only to ease the headache. Sometimes it works a bit, the latter that is, which is kinda sad.

Right now I'm worried I'd get a fever. Cause if I do it's likely an infection and I have to go to the emergency ward. Don't want to spend my Easter that way.

Anna says: Don't be afraid of your own body.
I respond: There's nothing I am more afraid of.

What's in my power

I think maybe it's a bit warmer today, cause I went outside wearing my leather coat with only a fish net shirt underneath on my upper body and it wasn't that cold at all. Well, it wasn't that warm and cosy either, but still. Just did it to take some photos. Needed some nice ones with my new haircut. Now everything smells like hairspray though... and I need to get some nice wax for my hair.

Think I'm gonna take the bandage off my horizontal scars soon, cause the wounds have closed up by now. So no need, I mean. I feel so damn restless today. like I wanna run around and exercise and stuff. It's like I actually want to go to the gym, not just thinking I need to. Spring, it does things to you.

Need to heal up for at least another month, possibly even two. I know of other transguys who started working out just a few weeks after their top surgery, but I'd rather be safe than sorry. The nice weather isn't helping.

My hands are shaking for no reason. It's annoying, almost dropping my cigarette in my lap. That's frigging dangerous. And I like my new pants. They're a little too short, but I've completely moved in to them. Black, tight, comfortable, and I look good in them. Well, as good as I can, that is. My major dysphoria is my ass and thighs now. My weight is still a problem, but I'd rather gain muscles now. Priorities. And I'm not fat, not even close, no matter how fat I think I am.

Though I know that I pass very well now, especially with the short hair and all, but I'm always a bit afraid that people would question my gender if they paid too much attention to my body. And I really want to work that ass off, kinda literally. Though I suppose I could do that, carefully, as long as I don't restrain my upper body too much in the process.

But the yeah, bulking up my upper body would be a compensation of sorts. Been on testosterone long enough for it to be fairly easy for me to gain muscles now, so that will hopefully not be a problem, as long as I'm patient enough.

Patience. Now that has started to become a problem as of lately. It's like I've been waiting and waiting and given things so much time it feels like I'm gonna grow grey hair at an early age. It's like all I have is time and I have nothing else to give and I'm getting tired of that. I wish I had some effort to give, or some sort of inner power. Cause I can't help but feeling powerless.

I'm betting with Anna now, which is perhaps kinda weird. About me getting a low level character in WoW to level 10 before I get tired of him. She's betting that I won't, and if she's right I'm gonna go and eat breakfast. If I'm right, I can starve a little longer. Cause we can't really bet on money or anything substantial like that. Took some time to figure something out that can actually be paid in reality. I bet you're all on her side on this, am I right?

Cause and affect

I had some weird conversations with Satan and Anna on my way back from the grocery store. I made a prayer to him that he called a "desperate prayer" which I thought was a little... eh, i dunno. You know evil beings can be a bit... mean. He said he couldn't grant me that wish, and I asked why. That at least he could try. He seemed a bit baffled by my up frontness. I told him that he's not the real Satan, but just a voice in my head. He replied to that that he's a god and can do whatever he wants, including invading my brain with crude telepathy. Anna said that he's weird for a god, to which I replied "how can you know, how many gods have you met?"

These voices really know which buttons to press to keep me believing in them... And losing sleep and fucking up my circadian rhythm and eating habits really fucks with my mind. Like normal people in that situation would get tired and cranky, a little disoriented perhaps - while I'm hearing the voice of Satan and my split personality talking to each other in my head.

Oh, well. I guess I'm kinda used to it. As used to someone can get to something like that. Though I've heard somewhere that hearing voices isn't that uncommon, and you don't have to be psychotic for that sake alone. Asperger's can experience that. And those with Borderline can experience psychotic symptoms, though it's quite rare for them. I don't know what that's supposed to say about me though.

Yet another theory

Coldness. It can really set loose almost any emotion known to man inside me. Fear, hopelessness, eagerness, hatred, comfort, and right now it's pissing me off. Like: get the fuck warm or I'll do something I'll regret! I realise I'm actually talking to myself sometimes, and not only to Anna. Yes, this is an actual realisation. Maybe I've done that all the time but just didn't realise it until now, but it could be baby steps in trying to think for my own a little. Whatever that could be good for.

She is my emotional support and has been for as long as I can remember, or well, before I couldn't handle my thoughts at all, so in a way it was good that she came along. I've never really doubted that it was good she showed up in the first place, I was a terrible mess by that time. But I do think it might have been good if she had left before she became the problem. My post traumatic stress disorder is only masked by her existence.

I found out, a few months ago, that there is a kind of PTSD that causes dissociation and that is one of my many theories about Anna that in some view could be possible. About an imaginary person showing up right after a trauma, as a type of defence mechanism, and it's closely related to dissociative identity disorder. I'm definitely still fucked up over what happened all those years ago, so dissociation or not, PTSD is more than likely.

But a part of me still believes this is an exceptional thing that is a bit out of the ordinary, and can't really fit into just one particular diagnose. A dissociation wouldn't be permanent, as extended, deeply embed and developed as this. While at the same time a hallucination or a delusion wouldn't be so alike my own thoughts, permanent and constant. Cause I'm absolutely certain this is permanent, we will never become one again. It's like a fictional movie thing about split personality with the vast exception that we coexist as two different people. That is where DID doesn't fit in either. This is a mystery that I just can't let go of, okay?

I think maybe listening to Emilie Autumn sparked my thoughts this time, and reading a bit about her on Wikipedia. Thinking that maybe I should buy her book, cause apparently she wrote one, and it seems it could be interesting.

The difference between us

Me and my realisations. Doesn't seem to be an end to them, does it? However, one of the most recent ones I had is about Anna. She can't feel or in any way experience love at all. She's never been in love with anyone that I have or haven't, she doesn't love any of my family members or friends, and obviously she doesn't have any of her own. The only other people besides me she could possibly befriend would be Vargyl or Satan, and she totally loathes both of them.

I can't even say that she loves me. It is more of a duty to her, I'm her duty. She came to me as my guardian angel and swore to protect me and that's why she exists in the first place, but it was never out of love. She's still like a guardian, except perhaps the "angel" part. Not really a saint, so to say, and she doesn't always stick to that oath nowadays. Well, we're not kids any more.

It came to my understanding that we are total opposites on that matter, like night and day. That she's completely incapable of feeling love and I'm almost constantly more or less in love with someone (cause honestly, have I ever been out of love since fifth grade?)

I've always been hoping for her to like the same person as I do, that that would somehow make me feel more whole. We are bits and pieces of each other, if not entirely the same person cut in half. So if that's the case, I can't help but wonder how deeply I've ever been in love, how terribly lovesick I've ever been: was/is there a part of me not capable of feeling anything for anyone? And that "part of me" being Anna, I mean.

It's hard for me to think of us as the same person, but in a way I believe that it could most likely be so. It's not exactly common for a person to get a "walk in" spirit or something just moving in to your brain all of a sudden right after a terrible childhood trauma. It just doesn't quite resonate as something like that in our case. It's text book mental disorder.

I know it's a contradiction, but I also truly believe that she is indeed a person of her own, another life form of sorts. I can't explain it, as I've mentioned a gazillion times before. But it has to do with the fact that even if we once were the same person before we split, we definitely aren't any more. We've grown apart, developed different personalities and she has every quality any other real person would have - except for a body of her own. A life of her own, cause she is literally living my life.

So what I'm saying is that I shouldn't invalidate her feelings (or lack there of) just because they aren't equal to mine, and state that it doesn't make me feel "whole" when it just further proves that we aren't the same. In my world it is perfectly possible to not be able to feel love at all; in the same way it's obviously possible for me to feel love so insanely strong and much and out of control it has led me to obsessions, stalker-ish behaviour, heartbreak after heartbreak and at least five suicide attempts just because I got more than I could handle. (Love is supposed to be a positive feeling, right? But too much of anything will break you, or even kill you.)

Perhaps I just want to finally share those feelings with her, want her to know what it's like and be in it together. Cause it pisses me off that she's constantly criticising what she can't understand.