This article, written by my inside part, Brian won the 1st Honorable Mention in the 2009 Victoria Writers Society Summer Contest.
It describes his experience of being a man in a woman’s body.
Have you, as a man, ever lived inside a woman’s body?
Have you, as a man, ever lived inside a body over which you have no control over?
Have you, as a man, ever lived inside a body with more than one mind functioning simultaneously for periods of time?
Have you, as a man, ever lived inside a body where your main function is simply to keep the body alive?
Finally, have you, as a man, ever lived inside a body, such as this, with the knowledge that in all likelihood, this quality of existence will be a life long commitment?
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Ahh Part II of an increasing amount of humor in dealing with the atrocities of assault.
I’ve always held the belief that the universe would protect me and give me only that, which I could cope with at a given time. Though pushed and stretched to its limits many times—through sheer determination and guts—I have always driven the extra mile and survived. This is how we live our life.
This article is dispersed with the grammatical ‘I’ and ‘We.’ No need to call the grammar police! All my writings flip flop from first to third person. And why is this?
Well, due to childhood sexual assault, I survived by what is known as Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). Simply, as a child, I compartmentalized my identity and split into many selves (inner parts) rather than a single one. My publication, “Dissociative Identity Disorder,” describes the mechanics of DID in order to survive sexual/physical and/or emotional assault.
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Another article, as there can be so many on the topic of therapists–they are after all one of the human race as we are.
Having been in therapy for the better part of twenty years I’ve seen many different approaches from therapists, doctors and mental health workers. This is the story of how my memories of ritual assault and childhood sexual assault have been processed by different therapies along the healing spectrum. Its sister article, “A Survivor In Therapy,” is on my website, the DS, under therapy issues.
I grew up with Dissociative Identity Disorder, which is the creation of inner parts, (alters), split from the original child to deal with overwhelming emotional, physical and sexual assault. (For a more in-depth definition of Dissociative Identity Disorder or DID please refer to my article, “Dissociative Identity Disorder” on my website, the DS.)
At the age of twenty five, I ran away from my family in the East to the West coast of the country, hoping to leave my trauma and my unhappiness behind me. I quickly learned that the geographical cure did not work. I was just as suicidal, just as addicted to drugs and alcohol, still suffering from severe chronic anxiety and almost completely dysfunctional. I couldn’t sleep at night due to nightmares and night terrors. I tried to hold a business together during the day, but spent more time in the hospital than I did working.
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How Denial plays a part in your healing journey, to be followed by honesty.
As I continue my campaign against Ritual abuse and childhood sexual assault from a survivor’s perspective, my research has led me through previous, almost forgotten old sets of journals. I have come across entries that scream ‘honesty,’ only to be followed with ‘that couldn’t have happened.’ How could anyone possibly make up the secrets hidden in those diaries or more importantly, why would I want to?
Who hasn’t heard a parent tell their child: ‘Don’t lie? Don’t tell a fib?’ At age five, I was taught to lie. As my father incestuously assaulted Julie, one of my child alters, he was relentless in stopping her from exposing his hideous playtime of what was really happening in that cold basement on the hard concrete floor. ‘Why,’ she asked, ‘do I have to not tell?’ His answer: ‘Mommy wouldn’t believe you and if she did I would go to jail, you would never see me, and the family would be torn apart.’ Naturally, a five-year-old would lie to keep her daddy out of jail.
Twenty-five years later, during a face to face confrontation, I asked my dad: ‘What happened between us when I was a kid?’ His reply: ‘It was only touching. It was no big deal.’ But it was a big deal, and I carry that with me, every time I touch on a new memory, an old feeling, or when my whole existence seems like no big deal.
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What for some would be a homeless life at home
When most people think of the homeless they conjured up pictures of soup kitchens, food banks, worldly possessions in shopping bags or carts, and sleeping in all elements of weather. Old oil drums turned upright and many people, all races and creeds, all ages and genders, grouped around to gather the minuscule warmth they can get from the fire inside and the heat of human bodies meshed together.
This is one reality. I would like to offer, yet another.
If, as a child of eight, living with three brothers and a set of parents, on a slab of concrete, in the middle of a cold Ontario winter, with only two walls and no roof for shelter, is considered homeless, then, yes, I have been homeless.
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