Written by Vivian/Vivian
I am of two minds
I've attempted to write about some of my feelings regarding my current mental state over the past month, about half of which I've either deleted or hidden cause the thoughts were only half-baked and I feared being misunderstood
My sense of self is splintered
- There's one facet of myself that wishes to delve fully into femininity. To become every bit a reflection of a woman that she is. A self who has flourished with the exploration of my gender in more feminine directions
- But there's another self, one filled with trepedation and fear regarding this transition. They are unable to solidly navigate these feelings, they often feel panicked when confronted with these things. One who wishes more to just be done and rid of gender altogether than to embrace any part of it
At first my description of these selves seems to just be conflicted feelings regarding a point of identity. Why this isn't the case is down to how many feelings flow in from both sides regarding these emotions. That I can go through an endless cascade of reasons supporting both sides and positions and feelings of me feeling like myself on either side, but the two contradict
These selves are both me... but they are fundementally splintered from one another. They co-exist, but they are not the same.
Vi and Vivian are both "me", but they are not the same as one another
The me that is writing this is Vivian
I've tried to allow all aspects of myself to be earnest with their feelings, and that's why there's been so much fighting amongst myself on my blog regarding how I wish to be seen and perceived. Vi attempting to come out and say that they are not my fursona, that they are not Vivian, that they are this distinct presence. But I felt conflicted enough about this that I took back control and took back this association
I, Vivian, very much am my fursona of the same name, that is a pretty good representation for my internal image of myself. Vi is not this though, and they don't have a solid sense of identity yet either
Most people have a central sense of self. A set of traits they can say is what they are. However, this is an illusion, proven by neurology. The mind is a fragmented set of independently functioning bundles of neurons that just happen to communicate with one another. And naturally when you mix in a bit of neurodivergence with how things are wired plus enough trauma, the sense of a unitary self will shatter
Now, to be clear, I am not hearing voices in my head that I have no control over. All the voices I hear are mine, they always have been. I've always been able to hold conversations with myself within my own head, with differing sides taking different perspectives. The only new development here is that the two sides here have held their grounds long enough that they've individuated from one another
I could continue to deny these thoughts, however I'm very much done with denying the existence of the different aspects of myself
I don't really want to claim labels such as plurality for this, as those come with extra connotations and expectations that I don't wish to be beholden too, at least not until I sort out my feelings more
I am of two minds because that is a model that I find comfort in. I've borrowed this term from Post-Self, specifically in reference to the experiences of True Self within the story Mitzvot.
Within the Post-Self universe, there is a digitized reality one can be uploadeed into called The System. Here, one is permitted the ability to fork themselves, creating a complete copy of themselves at that particular moment, who from then on experiences their own existence until/unless they decide to quit and merge back with their root instance.
I won't get into the complexities of the plot, but True Self has an instance of herself that has individuated over the course of 156 years into an entirely different person, E.W. (Mitzvot, 20). E.W. forks and merges that branch with True Self, with him contiuning to exist, but merging all his experiences since last being True Name into her mind
E.W. had defined himself by not being True Self for century and a half. When True Name is suddenly confronted with all the memories of being him, she struggles to reconcile this within her mind. These two minds fundementally can't be collapsed into one unitary sense of self, not fully.
True Name describes it as such...
"I become less and less sure that I will be a singular person again, and so the reconciliation that remains is one of ensuring that those facets can coexist peacefully" (Mitzvot, 39)
When one has facets of themselves that are fundementally opposed on aspects of how they're perceived by others, they cannot be merged together. One must either discard one or the other, or learn to live with both
Vi is in many ways similar to E.W. They are the me that defined themselves by not being me, Vivian. They splintered from me after my creation a year or so ago, with the old version of myself that existed before that fizzling out of existence altogether
Vi cannot be merged back into me, because there are fundemental parts of myself that do not wish to be strictly feminine, and Vi embodies them. I cannot be Vi, and Vi cannot be me.
So I am left in much the same state as that of True Name, needing to deal with a split mind. This doesn't make me any less a whole being, I just have more facets to myself, and sometimes I'll feel more like one self than the other
I don't know when/if I'll actually make this page of my blog visible. And if I do, I'm likely to probably take it down again. I want to clarify and work through these ideas more, and this post will not remain stable. Maybe I'll transform this into a standalone page on my website, much like the current therian page I created
Update 4/18/25: I've decided to finally unhide this page now that I've sorted through my plurality emotions a bit more properly, and know that I'm very firmly on that spectrum of neurology. I'm currently working on adding indicators to my blog on who wrote what, in regards to this plurality stuff I'm experiencing. I'd like to make more of my inner experience into a more visible outer experience, at least for this place that I control for myself on the web
Vi is firmly Vivian, she, I, have accepted her/my femininity. She was far more scared of it for far longer, but she has come to accept that she does desire to be a woman just as much as the other facets of myself, she simply wishes to feel safe in that identity.
This entire blog post was mostly an argument between these two facets of myself over how I felt regarding my transition. At the time I did not understand them to be facets, despite how much plural heavy language I was already using, lol