Am I Dangerous?

I asked my friends to describe me, and most of the adjectives they used were positive ones.

“Considerate”, “compassionate”, and “kind” got mentioned. But a few less-positive ones also got mentions - “absent-minded”, and “insecure” to name two.

But there was one word no one mentioned, but I worry describes me.

“Dangerous.”

Why would I worry about being dangerous?

Because I was broken, psychologically. And to use a quote from a story by Randalynn, one of my favorite authors: “Funny thing, though. When you break something as complex as a human mind, you might break things you never intended to break along to way. When they imprisoned me in this body, they set a part of me free that turned me into something else. Something not quite sane. Something ... dangerous.”

While her character Jo Stark is fictional, I feel a great amount of similarities between her and me.

Like given a chance, I could be as dangerous as Stark is.

Because what happened to me in real life was every bit as horrific as what she suffers in fiction.

And the fact is, I was actually insane at the time.

I’m not saying that casually, its a fact. I suffered a form of mental breakdown called “disassociation”.

And the insanity didn’t stop when it was over.

Because I submerged my feminine nature behind a male mask, effectively creating a personality split.

But just because I had a form of insanity, does that mean I’m dangerous? Perhaps by itself, no.

But there is more.

There was one more ... personality thrown into the mix by what happened to me.

If the male mask was “Todd”, and the feminine part was eventually “Dorothy”, the third part should have an appropriate name as well.

Call that part “The Monster.”

Because that’s what it is - utter darkness, anger and evil personified.

I don’t talk about that part of me much, and it’s understandable why not. If you had something as horrible as “the monster” inside of you, you’d try to keep it under wraps as much as possible.

But “the monster” has its own plans ...

Perhaps you’re asking, “What makes you think there is such a part inside of you?”

Because, on occasion, it has shown itself.

I have had flashes of anger so strong they’re scary.

I have even come within a hair’s breath of killing a man.

And nothing that has happened to me since has convinced me that “the monster” is gone.

So at the very least, I’m potentially dangerous, even yet.

Does me becoming Dorothy make me less dangerous?

Actually, ... no.

Women can be dangerous. Perhaps even more dangerous than men, if only because we tend to not expect it from them.

Being Dorothy helps reduce the stress in my life, so that might help indirectly, but it doesn’t actually deal with the problem at hand.

So if being Dorothy doesn’t make me less dangerous, or at least not significantly, does anything?

Working on what happened to me helps, at at least a little.

But in the end, I think the only thing I can actually do, is to learn control.

Take it one day at a time, one moment at a time.

And pray that someday, I will be healed enough to no longer be scared of “the monster”.

To be able to answer the question I posed at the beginning of this essay.

“Am I dangerous?”

With the words ..

“No.”

“Not any more.”

End