Feeling angry, frustrated, and alone....

[Dreamscapes Collectives]

We thrive on downtime as well. The difference is that our whole life has become work, FOO, therapy, MM, and flopping onto the sofa at night. The last two years have been exhausting for us.

But this explanation only holds water to a certain extent. We're keenly aware that we've pushed people away because we're convinced that (1) no one in the singleton world understands us, and (2) geting involved with anyone, even friendships, will only hurt us, or at least disappoint us.

We're mostly introverted except with certain people we trust. And we thrive on downtime as well. But there are times when we feel the need to be with people. We're lucky enough, as far as the multiple thing goes, to have a couple friends who are either multiple of understand about being multiple.

Being multiple isn't the end all and be all of our existence. And as much as it frustrates many of us, it just isn't practical to be completely open and out as multi. We don't deliberately hide it, but we also don't call attention to it when we're with, say, our FOO. And while we all understand that there is only one body and one legal identity, we also resent it quite a bit. To us, it feels like we're still having to play the "family game". That's where most of us get frustrated. That to keep ourselves safe we have to use something we learned as children that was harmful for us.

Well, we too do a good job of blending in, but it's still uncomfortable. Most of us don't feel the need to share all the time, but there are a few of us who feel this need keenly.

It's good that you feel comfortable with your singleton persona. We feel like a fake, like we're acting. Like we can never truly be genuine.

We don't mix with people other than our few friends, our kids (who know we're multiple, but again, we don't flaunt it) and our FOO. We don't work because we're on disability so we just don't really interact with anyone outside or circle. I think that if we were working it would be much harder. So we understand feeling fake, like we're acting. But with our FOO we know we're acting most times and that's something we've chosen to do to keep us safe. Doesn't make it hurt any less.

True. Guess we try to avoid thinking about the mundane. We've always preferred to focus on the Important (with a capital I). But other people don't seem to do this, or at least they don't advertise it when they do. So this only increases our feeling of being different.

We've had to learn to pay attention to the mundane stuff. This is a place where, for us, it was good that we had children. Taking care of them and making sure they were being raised right forced us to pay more attention to the mundane than we otherwise would have.

Something we've found lately...we've been hanging out on Facebook a lot lately, getting in touch with old friends. And it is so frustrating for us to have to keep the multiple things under wraps. Like we're just not being honest. At the same time, we know that we can't just toss it out there. It's a balancing act that while we're good at it, we resent the need for it. *sigh*

For us, being multiple is one of the biggest part of our lives. Maye it's because we are still learning things about our past that take a lot of time to assimilate and accept. I don't know. But we understand the feeling you all are feeling. Just wanted to let you know we hear you.