In the closet, listening to the party

I get to work with some really neat people. Work with, as in, get paid for being productive alongside. I often feel like my job as it is currently is a little gift from God, a thank you for the work that I'm trying to do in my life. It's just demanding enough that I don't get bored (and if I do, I can talk to my boss about it). It's creative, but there are also routine aspects to it that ground my day and ensure that things don't get too nuts.

It also uses a broad range of skills, which for me has meant letting other people from the system work. A big part of the reason that people can pop in is because my boss is just amazing at creating a good atmosphere. This is so rare that I often think she should be getting some kind of reward. She's firm but flexible, and she accepts people a lot where they are. My system is quick to figure this out, and so some of them feel welcome. The fact that on my first day she asked me if I'd feel comfortable creating an alter ego to do quality control sure helped too; it was taken as a general invitation.

I'm sure that it's entirely unfair to attribute this skill in my boss to her sexuality, but I do. She's an out of the closet lesbian, despite the fact that it probably sometimes makes her a target. Whether it's fair or not, I often feel that it's a mixture of her personality and her experience in a marginalized group that makes her someone we can be ourselves around a lot of the time.

And of course, Lynn and Lyria worship her as an example of the kind of woman they would like to be (have been?)

Still, this sometimes comes with a price. Here's what I wrote the first day that the issue of sexuality and the closet came up in a big way (for me) at work:

So today my boss brings in a lesbian-positive video to lend to someone. Sitting at my chair I start to feel a peripheral arm's length kind of loss/longing. Someone identifies as lesbian - more than one possibility for this as I already know - and is aching to talk to someone real about it, to come out of the closet so to speak. To watch the video. That person is hurt that they weren't offered the video, and that they can't wedge their interests into the office dynamics. Lyria? I throw up onto the whiteboard in my head that I use when I'm trying to get some sense or order to something. No answer. But the ache just below my heart of loss, and the ache of longing in my gut both continue.

Despite these feelings really not feeling like mine, they're there. I'm breathing differently. It's hard to concentrate. The women in my office are striking people in the system as looking particularly beautiful, a feeling I find uncomfortable to consider.

It's too much duality and at the first opportunity I flee to the bathroom. Bathrooms are in a way my sanctuary, a place to have a little internal conference and re-adapt; come up with the right response for the situation, the right person to do the job. Breathe. I tell the emotions, whoever or whatever collection of people's they may be that work is not a good place for exploring these things. I promise to think about getting a video, although my own feelings about it is that I don't really want to encourage exploration in a direction that is likely just to become unrequited longing. Maybe not knowing what could be is better than knowing and not having it; I don't know.

In any case, the promise works well enough that the feelings slow down a bit. The necessity for doing work things at work is generally understood. I get back to my desk and throw this into my Word document, my own personal way of stamping closed across the case file.

--

4 hours later

So the discussion burst into a kind of ramble about gay culture, Pride Day, etc. I suppose I'm learning the stress that people talk about when they're in the closet, where you can't really say anything but you do anyway, hoping that it makes sense, but you're not really sure because it's not really coming from you. You plural in my case.

What can I really say about gay culture... that I've read about it? Lyria and Lynn don't really know about it, because they don't get to go hang out in gay bars and hold their girlfriends' hands. And yet, possibly, I do understand because my system maintains many points of view simultaneously.

So I excuse myself to get dinner this time, a real break in a mall and everything. As soon as I hit the elevator the argument breaks out. The consensus from the trusting individuals is that we should at least start to edge towards admitting to some kind of ambiguity in the area of sexual identity. The non-trusting individuals essentially start to scream: are you NUTS? The decision: it's 4 more months to the end of probation so the discussion is tabled until after that.

I have to curse that I live in highly sexualized times where gender issues are raised, because I am going to have a hard time avoiding it, unless I slam down some walls and go find another job around a bunch of narrowly focused men. Not my first choice. :)

Now the probation period is over, and the discussion has been opened again. Last week, Lynn tried to bounce one of her problems off my boss, and I cut into the conversation. I think that I ended up sounding very anti-lesbian, which I really regret. I'm only anti-lesbian if we're talking about someone that shares a body with me, but I couldn't explain that and it ended up a bit awkward. Lyria was all for pushing the issue ahead and bringing up my multiplicity with my boss. The theory is that since she honours the concept of coming out, my coming out to her would also be honoured.

Why bring my personal life into the office? Well, partly we all do to some extent; it's a tight group, and we have to sometimes comment on issues as our real selves - another stress area for me as the system doesn't have consistent views. Also, it really would help if I did ever have a really disoriented day at work to be able to quietly say that I was. And finally, I feel like a fraud because other people are themselves and I am - often not, with them. Sometimes I feel like they're offering me snapshots of their lives and I'm offering them... puzzle pieces from different puzzles.

But I'm nervous. I don't want to have to get a different job.

And beyond all that there is the guilt. Being me, Teresa, I am still so disconnected from the root causes of the multiplicity that it hardly touches me, but the whispers go around the system anyway. They will know something happened. They will see I am bad. Being me sometimes that makes me think the secrecy has to stop here but... I'm scared.

I've tried to sow some of the seeds. I talk about my inner child. I talk about the false memory people. I've mentioned that I have a website. But then sometimes the Censors rise up and I say stupid things about DID, like not remembering the name of it these days.