I’m back. Have been for awhile, but hadn’t felt much like writing until tonight.
Someone brought up something about leading a double-life in a comment to a previous entry, and I figured I’d write a full entry on it.

I live a double-life. Most transabled people probably do, in one way or another. Right now, some people in my life (mostly those who I haven’t known for very long) know me as a girl with MS, the rest of the people in my life know me as a girl without. I spend a lot of time managing these two identities, making sure the two don’t collide, making sure disability issues don’t come up in conversation when two people from the different groups are in the same place. Being careful who gets which story, based on who they know and who they talk to. Spending hours nervous as people in the two groups are in close proximity. I wonder what I’m waiting for, some days. Why don’t I just start ‘migrating’ the old identity to the new one? Once that’s done, everyone would see me as a girl-with-MS, and I’d have no more double life to manage. No more worries about who talks to who. I think part of me is waiting to see if therapy helps me at all, as I’ve just recently started with a new therapist. I’m not really thinking that it will be very helpful, but I think at least some small part of me wants to make sure it’s not helpful before I start making drastic changes in my life to accommodate this. I’m sure part of me is a little scared to do so, also. It’s a big change. I’m not sure how well my partner will handle it, as I know they would rather not see me as having MS.

But I would still have a double-life, even if I rearranged identities so everyone ‘knew’ I have MS. A number of people in my life know I’m transabled, and the rest don’t. Still a double life. A double life that’s much easier to deal with though, when compared with the ‘triple-life’ I have now. The people who know I’m transabled are people I’d trust to not say anything, even if in the presence of people who ‘know’ I have MS.

So what’s stopping me? We’ll have to see how the next few months play out, as I get into therapy and see how that works out. Right now I just want to stop living this double life and sort this out already.