I don't often reflect on "who I am" anymore, not as much as I did when I was a teenager, when I had bouts of conscious identity crises. During that time, I was obsessed when changing my gender, and my name. I was even seeking out anyone who could help me achieve this, because my mother just wouldn't understand me if I tried to talk to her about it. She would deliberately treat me as if I were insane and never try to help me, and she would just give up on me and let me be crazy, and allow me to make rash decisions, while also insulting me and calling me names. I dare say she didn't love me.

I still get those urges, to change myself entirely, to become someone else. My pseudonym is male. My characters are all male. My alter ego is male. My dream ego is often male. Whenever someone refers to me as a woman, I think that they must be mistaken. My boyfriend knows full well what and who I am. He knows I'm not like most women. He likes that about me, as long as I have breasts. When asked my gender on a form I need to fill out, I almost always mistakenly say "male." It's one of the hardest questions on a form for me to answer, interestingly enough. Even if asked about my greatest dreams and aspirations, which still confuses me to this day, I can answer such a thing far quicker than what gender I am.

People online identify me by a male first name. When I was younger I would enter chat rooms pretending to be male. I never got over this. It's still lingering around. My boyfriend would immediately abandon me if I became male. I know he would. He would be offended at hearing such a thing, but I know it's true. He'd ask how I could come to such a conclusion, why I'd think he was so heartless. He knows he'd leave me. He knows it.

These thoughts drive me to imagining suicide, so I suppress it. James needs me in his life, and I can't leave him alone. My best friend Ray needs me. I can't leave him either. It's them that I think about each day, it's what keeps me from offing myself. I pretend so much to be happy, that I love everything. It's eating away at me. The only way I can help it is by writing.

I don't know how I even got to this subject, or why I started ranting about it. I came here to talk about my nightmares. But I guess I already am. I feel like I'm living a nightmare sometimes.

Last night I had yet another dream of a sinister voice telling "me" to kill. I was playing the role of a young boy, a curious mind who had dark thoughts and dark intent. He seemed more than willing to listen to the voice than my current adult female self was before. Also, this "voice" was not a parasite as it once was, but it manifested itself as a literal demon that lived underground, a goat-headed monstrosity that I strangely didn't fear, but related to and got along with. Thankfully, this time, he didn't ask me to kill my friends. He started on an easier path. He asked me to kill a homeless man. He also gave me a gift; a necklace of some sort that carried a power that I was unfamiliar with. Though I was young and frail, the necklace allowed me to carry out his bidding without effort. I killed the homeless man, willingly. My greatest fear at first was being discovered by adults. I ran for cover, hoping they wouldn't find me. Eventually, I began killing so much to please this demon that I began to fear what I was doing. I had lost all control of myself, and it scared me. I shed so much blood that I couldn't remember how many lives I had taken. I eventually had some friends help me, other young, innocent boys my age. I told them about the demon and necklace. They seemed interested in assisting me. They too retrieved necklaces from the demon and helped me on my tasks. Eventually I felt I was going insane inside my own mind.

I woke up and forgot a great portion of the dream. I didn't want to make this entry public, mostly because of my personal business, but also because I don't need religiholics telling me it's a sign from God or something batshit insane like that.

What I do think it's telling me, though, is that I know something dark is in me, something very dark, and very powerful, but I won't release it. It stays hidden, underground, talking through me like I'm a puppet on its hand. I'm afraid of this darkness, just as I am in my dreams. It's not just sinister thoughts, but violent. My cravings to hurt others surfaces now and then, and so many times I've either broken objects or almost broken them in a fit of sudden, inexplicable rage. So often I think about how great, how amazing it would feel to batter the living hell out of someone, to beat them until their face is no longer recognizable, then beat them some more. I want blood on my hands, I want to cut life from an organism. I've developed an obsession with hunting, an unhealthy obsession, but more specifically the aspect of killing and gutting and skinning. Of butchering. To get blood on my hands in some way, blood that isn't human. Strangely enough, I try to convince myself that the act of killing is not what gives me a rush, but I know deep down that it is. If I were to kill a deer, of any age, or any size, gut it on my own, quarter and eat it later, it would be so satisfying.

Does that make me insane? Probably. Especially knowing that it would make me smile.

I play a lot of video games, but I've been wondering for a long time why my favorite games are those that involving riding mounts, such as horses or dragons. In games where collecting mounts, rideable, controllable vehicles, I obsessively collect these items. I need to have them. Why? Well, I couldn't tell you. The more I had, the happier I was, and I would use them all. The more exotic they were, the happier I was. My assumption lately was that it was because I felt powerful riding them, and had control over them. It might even be deeper than that. Come to find out that it could also mean unreleased sexual desires, unsatisfied sex acts. Having a stable full of rideable animals implies sexual urges and mental instability. The collection is linked to compulsion, neurosis, wanting and desiring power and control, but also wanting to have sex that I actually enjoy. I never get to fulfill my role as a male during sex. Vaginal sex is excruciatingly painful for me. I don't want it. I naturally reject it. I want sex in another form that I can't achieve. My sexual desires are getting tough to control. I'm sexually frustrated, perhaps even angry. I will never get to have it the way I want to. I will never be a guy, I will never get to have sex with another guy as one. All of these things are building up inside of me, and somehow it's turned into collecting these virtual items, where I'm riding imaginary creatures.

To say I'm neurotic wouldn't be saying enough.