All the Parts of Me

I have a split personality. I will be talking to someone and suddenly I become someone else to fit the occasion. Sometimes I'm my mother or father or brother and sometimes I am my ex husband whom I was with for 20 years. Occasionally I will become a friend or co-worker. In my head I hear their voices in place of mine. I see their facial expressions and their mannerisms in my mind's eye as I'm speaking.

My personality, it seems, is nothing but a collection of bits of other personalities gathered from people who have played roles in my life. I have no strengths of my own so I use theirs. My mother plays all the roles of wisdom. My father comes out in me when I'm feeling witty. My brother is convincing and confident in what he knows and believes in. The ex husband comes out in me when I find humor in a situation and I'm trying to be funny. (It didn't always work for him either.) My mother used to tell me that she could tell who I'd been playing with as a child because I would start talking like them right away.

If I strip away all the other personalities I am left with very little of myself. I don't know which parts are only me anymore. Are there any parts of me in there or are all people just conglomerations of people in their lives?

Why would a person replace parts of themselves with nuances from other people? In patients with Split Personality Disorder people often split off into personalities of individuals who are better equipped to deal with a given situation than they themselves are. I suppose my situation is like that in that I have learned to use those personalities to camouflage my weaknesses in some way. No one ever calls me on it because they see those instances as just more parts of my personality emerging. They don’t realize those parts of myself are gleaned from the people in my life who have had the greatest influence in shaping who I’ve become.

If I strip away all the layers that are all these other people, what am I left with? Can I strip them away and have anything left? I have tried to get in close and look for parts that are all me but they are buried so deeply under the aspects I possess of other people that I don’t recognize the true me anymore.

The people in my life see all those aspects of me to be mine alone so when they mimic a part of me, they are actually playing out a role that I imitated from someone else many years ago. The pieces of these people that I borrowed were previously on loan from someone else entirely.

I could go to those who are still living and ask them where they got the part of them that I stole but I am sure that they would tell me I’m crazy, that all their personality parts are their own, but they know they aren’t, just as I know mine aren’t. It would take a strong person, willing to endure self examination with a critical eye to be able to withstand the psychological whiplash that occurs while delayering oneself.

After examining myself in this way, I was astounded to find that the only thing I haven’t mimicked from someone else in my life is my sexual self. That side of me is shaped inside my own head and through my own experiences in life. I’ve had no one to pattern this self from because I haven’t been in the room when another woman was engaged in sex. This side of me surely comes out of my primal self, right?

Actually, no, that isn’t only me either. My sexual likes and dislikes are a product of my early sexual experiences. If my partner approached a new experience for me in a positive, sexual way then I adapted that as something very stimulating and something possibly worth repeating. On the other hand however, if a lover was too rough or the climax didn’t happen, I would file that sexual experience away in the turn-off file and may not enjoy that aspect of sex any longer.

For instance, some of the best foreplay of my life was with my first husband when we were dating in high school. He was very gentle with me and very loving so all of my sexual memories of him were positive experiences which usually involved a lot of heavy petting through the outside of my clothes. So I still find being seduced through my panties to be a huge turn-on.

But then my mother comes out in me and she won’t let me explain this to any of the men who have been my lovers so I’ve left them guessing as to how to be the most successful in their seduction. The next time I’m fortunate enough to be in another relationship, I’m stuffing a sock in my mother’s mouth and I’m telling him all about how my sexual self was molded and how he can most efficiently connect with her.

The personality layers are there. People come and go in my life but I carry parts of them with me always. Rather than fearing I’ll be exposed as a fraud if someone recognizes in me a nuance of someone else, I will embrace the fact that, even in death or divorce, I retain a part of them that no one can ever take away.