Introductions Part 1: The Dude and Nic

!Or, the start of a list of introductory posts for those who aren't familiar with my headmates. AKA the inhabitants of Hell. Some of us have decided that I am Hell and they're dead in it.

!Okay, so first there's me. The Dude, we'll call me. I have a name, and it's not even William (William was a name I went by once and kept it as a pseudonym when I picked out another one later), but I don't share it. I can use The Dude safely for reasons I'll explain in the next paragraph. -Right there! In the next little paragraph! How about that?

!STFU, Doctor.

!Okay. The gist of it is, -long ago there used to be this person. Kind of a girl, but not really. Good at pretending to be a girl, anyway. !Whoever this person was, she had proprietary rights to the body for many, many years. Close to twenty. (Makes me feel like kind of a dick for stealing it, actually, except I didn't really. I'll explain.) This semi-girl - genderqueer person, I guess - was not the most healthy, mentally-wise. She was emotionally and physically abused by her parents, and as a result a lot of her (or the body's) natural personality traits were suppressed. She also had very little self-discipline, self-motivation, yadda - a problem I still struggle with. In ways, I think she was a shell for the actual body owner - kind of a personality-suit, if you will, with me behind the wheel. If you'll forgive my mixing comparisons. Anyway, she started to break down around the time I lost my faith (a hugely traumatic experience, but the thing that pushed us over the edge was losing our trust in our mother). Around this time, we/she/whoever was starting to try and get xemselves together, and manifested "The Dude." We didn't realize it at the time, but The Dude was basically a projection of everything we wished we were - confident, competent, good-looking, male. He wasn't a full-on personality/person, just a projection, and went dormant after a few months.

A year or so later, I was reading about transgenderism (I say "I" because at this point "she" was starting to break away,a lot of that old programming going dormant since I wasn't using it anymore) and I realized that I, too, was trans! Oh noes! The more I read, the more I was convinced, and the longer I was convinced the more naturally male I felt. There were other side effects as well - I started to feel more confident, more capable, generally more together. Not perfect, but better.

The Dude had integrated.

Okay, that took longer than a paragraph.

Next is Nic. I'll copy and paste his introduction from another source.

Nearly everyone in my head is an import of a fictional character, or else a composite of characters that seemed to be close enough to make a whole. Nic, for example, is based on Nicolas Cage, but is neither like the real Nicolas Cage nor a specific one of his characters - he is more of a composite.

...Not that I'm not a real human being. There's a difference between me and everyone else here. I couldn't describe it; I'm not a self-reflecting kind of guy. I'm a "get stuff done" kind of guy. I'm a eat-sandwiches-and-coffee-and-then-get-back-to-work kind of guy. I'm not afraid to speak my mind. Not afraid to speak Cameron's mind, either. Not that everything we say that isn't exactly blooming in the tact department is my fault. Cameron's got a big enough mouth to go around.

!An interesting fact is that in most situations, most of my headmates have difficulty actually talking through my mouth. They have voices, they just have difficulty bringing those voices to external space. Nic, on the other hand, is a very free talker when he has fronting time. On the other hand, he has difficulty writing - the above paragraph was semi-transcribed and is the only written word he's gotten out so far.

...It's not that I can't type. The Dude always seems to start fronting whenever someone tries to work a keyboard - !except when Spike is fronting; he's a pretty good typist. ...Anyway. So it's taken some practice to be able to run a keyboard without someone else getting in my way. That's why it seems like I don't talk much. That and I don't have a lot to say. I don't get out much, so what am I going to say? Hi, my name is Nic, I live here, I only come out when Dude needs me. Yeah.

!Like he said, Nic's a get-stuff-done sort of guy. He's kind of a work horse type personality - in contrast with me, who has been known to spend days on end playing Minecraft, Nic feels out of place if he's not working a steady job. That's his niche, his environment, you get the picture. He's also a defender kind of guy - well, everyone's defensive to a degree, but Nic is more proactive. He would carry a knife at all times if he could, and probably talk me into learning to shoot small firearms as well, just in case he ever has to get into an epic firefight with John Travolta or something. I think he thinks we're cooler than we really are.

We do not get this.

Spike is a self-professed vampire. He has an irrational fear of sunlight and doesn't really care for food. But he doesn't have an intense craving for blood, possibly because he's in a human body.

The soldier, on the other hand, was never a smoker until we read an extensive story about a soldier character who picked up the habit. Now whenever we communicate I am blasted by an inordinate craving for cigarettes. I do not smoke; I am not physiologically addicted, but the soldier demands some sweet burning tobacco.

I wonder if growing up with smokers, moderate exposure to secondhand smoke, etc. is somehow responsible for this. All I know is that it does not make sense, particularly since the last time the soldier was out (after reading that story) he wasn't having this problem. Also, I feel a little silly now, because I have my "token smoker." One of those weird li'l plural system clichés that I figured I would probably avoid.

(And because most people who read this will probably have no idea what I'm talking about, an introductory post is probably in order.)

I do not understand this "two spirit" thing.

Please hear me out.

We began reading the writing of Native American two-spirit people with no other intent than to educate the self. The main one - we'll call him William - understands the importance of learning about the experiences of TLGB people who are not white, because how else could he be an effective ally? Even to himself, how can he protect himself if he cannot protect his brothers and sisters and brother-sisters and sister-brothers?

So we read with an open mind, and we do not understand.

This page outlines the basics of a two-spirit movement (you might call it Two-Spirit 101.) William would call it the Two-Spirit Movement, but it would be impractical and ridiculous to assume that every Two-Spirit person everywhere is united with all the others. But it explains the basics. The self grasps these. They are parts of a different culture, but they fit into the tapestry of human experience.

This is a post from one two-spirit person about something that happened in her day-to-day life. (William offers his apologies if he left out part of the pronoun.) We understand the need to talk about these things with someone like ourselves; no one else ever truly understands. It's not a hard concept to grasp.

But we've heard that a two-spirit person will often refer to themselves in the plural. As if they are truly two persons, male and female.

And we wonder if there really are two persons.

William is willing to believe this is so. It's his writing you've read on this blog. He is the social activist, the humanist. His fingers write this post. He refers to himself in the third person this time because Nicolas is speaking.

Nicolas does not understand this at all. Nicolas is furious that someone would try to appropriate the identity of someone who has two persons within them in this manner. Do you know what it's like for him? He's not even his own person. William is trapped in a life that does not fit his gender. Nicolas is trapped in a life that has no room for him. Most days he is completely silenced because there's nothing being done that needs his attention. Every day it's William this and William that. He sits there quietly, so quietly that it makes the self wonder if he even exists. He's less than half a person. And yet he is a person. He's a person with thoughts of his own and a will of his own and every day he takes backseat to someone who just happened to claim this life first and wastes it every day playing video games and doing crap that has a snowball's chance in Hell of taking their life anywhere. So I want to know - me, Nicolas, the other man in William's head who never comes out because it might UPSET PEOPLE if they knew there were more than one of us in here - I want to know if you know what that's like. Duality ain't nearly as fun as you kids seem to think it is.

I won't apologize for that.

But William would like to remind you that he doesn't know what it's like for you, and he's not going to assume that it's not the way you say it is. He's a good kid. Sees the best in people for as long as he can. So when he gets the opportunity he'll ask someone. I will. Because the only way to understand is to educate myself, the lesson I've learned time and time again.

And please remember that Nicolas is in here, too. He may not say much, but it hurts him to be ignored. It hurts him that I (William) would rather stay safe than admit to the world that he exists. That's not what he wants. It's not what either of us want, and since we are the same person I feel his pain almost as acutely as he does. But William can put it away after a while. I get to be the one out most of the time, so I can forget what it's like to be shut away. Nicolas never forgets, and the next time I hear from him he will remind me. I'm scared of Nicolas, scared of losing control of my life, but Nicolas is scared of only one thing in the world and that's being forgotten.

That's what it's like for this person to have two spirits (if that's what you call them). Maybe someday I'll introduce the third, but he doesn't feel like coming out right now.