by Charity and Mary
We've been participating in a forum thread about how multiples often have trouble determining who's fronting at a particular moment, situations where the fronter is left wondering, "Who am I?" This is an issue near and dear to us. [Laura: Near, but not dear.]
One friend stated that perhaps it was more appropriate to be asking "Which am I," which is a different question from "Who am I?"
"Which am I?" is an interesting way to describe what people are trying to determine in these situations. For us, "Who am I?" will be a big factor in answering "Which am I?" until we each get to know our true selves better. We have spent many years with a number of us identifying ourselves according to preconceived notions of who each of us "should" be.
In a way, getting to know ourselves has felt at times as if we were creating characters in a story. This does not mean that we were making things up or that people in our system aren't real. It does mean that a lot of our self-discovery has been flat-out guesswork, or filtering out more painful aspects of our own truth(s) and substituting self-characterizations that feel safer and/or more like the ideal of who we wish we or others could be.
The bottom line is that during the past few years our truth(s) have become more apparent as a natural result of the healing process, and it's painful to discard "safe" and "ideal" selves and accept our truth(s). But it's necessary, not only to heal, but to be able to answer "Which am I?" as well.
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