Caitlyn IS back... but she's being stubborn

Being pushed around is no fun... especially when it's YOU pushing YOU!

Have you ever had one of those friends that just PUSH you and PUSH you and PUSH you?  I have, and I love those friends dearly.  It seems I have another friend like that... Caitlyn.

Yeah... at this point I'd have to say that she's distinctly back.  I'm not feeling like her right at this moment, but that makes actually makes this process a little easier to talk about.  You see, this feels different than before.  Before, my 'Caitlyn' side would come and go, but it would mostly be there.  It was often there when I woke up, it was often there when I went to sleep.  It was certainly there whenever I capped or role played.  If it wasn't there for an extended period of time (say a full day) I'd worry about it.  Then came the job which was soon followed by Caitlyn's disappearance.

When I started making these Obscurra last year it felt like I was hearing an echo of Caitlyn.  She wasn't ever fully here.  But I could tap into her side and make some fun quirky semi-caps.  I still had my design side... that's something that Caitlyn borrowed from ME, and that side of me really had too high of a standard and just didn't want to make caps.  I guess a better way to put it is this... that 'Caitlyn feeling' didn't ever last long enough to find an image, get a story idea, write out the story, and then move into the design phase.  I'm sure plenty of you have seen it in some of the Obscurra I've produced... they're unpolished, they're unfinished, and frankly they're not all that good.  Many of those are more porn that TG cap or story.  Many of those instances were from me feeling the 'Caitlyn feeling' dissipating and me rushing to finish it off.  I still got the 'high' from producing somethng and putting it out for others to view and comment on, so I still wanted to do it.

But if I couldn't get a story out, even a first draft of one, there was no way in Hell I was going to be able to massage and edit it down to fit into a cap.

I did make a few caps, but I can't really say I'm proud of any of them.  About the best of the bunch ("Learning to Please - Pleasing to Learn"), would be a mediocre one in my heyday.  But that was fine... Caitlyn was gone and I was simply expressing what I had in any way that I could.  Maybe I'd never make a good cap again, and I would have to be fine with that.

So around October I started playing at DX again.  I wanted to see if immersing myself into a role play... actually making myself live out some of those emotions... would  help me find Caitlyn again.  When I started up there I was really NOT Caitlyn at all.  Sure, my display name was still 'Miss Caitlyn' but that was just so people would know who I was while I figured things out again and worked on how I wanted this character to come back into the fold.   My friends there, many of which I hadn't seen since I stopped playing there back in 2012, were happy to see me.  I found that in the Shout (a kind of live chat built into the site) I was fine having people treat me like as a girl.  Technically in the DX way they were treating me like a Woman as I wore the title of a Staff Member, but that's quibbling... they treated me as a feminine entity and I was fine with that.  I was mostly fine with that.... I was fine with people calling me Caitlyn.  I was fine with the girls and women there saying I was sexy (that's the kind of fun we have in shout).  I was even fine interacting with the girls and women there in a semi-sexual way.

But I was NOT fine with the men treating me that way.  One of them, a good friend, came into the shout, saw me for the first time in years, and gave me a kiss.  We've shared FAR more intimate contact in the shout before I left so a kiss was simply a kind of 'hello'.  But it completely freaked me out.  I mean freaked out enough to say nothing else in shout and finally just log out.  I wasn't Caitlyn at all and a man just KISSED me!!!  So at the very least I learned that the 'Caitlyn' side of me isn't always there.

I kept coming back though.  If for no other reason then meeting up with so many old friends.  I sent PMs to most of the 'fellas' there and explained that until further notice I was still a little freaked out with the sexual side of things.  And in fact that became true of the girls too when it went beyond kissing.  You have to understand, in circumstances like that I don't just take what is written and try to add to it.  I try to experience it.  I try to live it, so that when I respond I can give a real emotional flair.  So when a girl talks about feeling my breasts or putting her fingers up under my panties... well it didn't register as something right and true.  I don't have breasts.  I have something that distinctly is NOT able to have fingers slit into it under my panties.

So I tried to work that into the story.  Into my character.  Obviously I couldn't just come back and play the same sexually curious, confident, fully feminine woman that I was before.  I won't go into the story details here, but I eventually found a way to make the Character more compatible with who I was at that time.  I had her feel OK about being a woman but completely uncomfortable with just about anything sexual in nature.  Thankfully everyone played along and I was soon back into the swing of playing.

Before I left DX when I would send a private message I would always sign off with "Love, Caitlyn".  It's how my feminine self would do that.  My male self (me in the real world) would sign off in a similar situation with "Respectfully, Calvin".  So when I got back I didn't feel right with even that little bit of feminine self.  I would sign off with just "C".  No love, no respectfully, and most certainly not the name Caitlyn.

But all of that slowly changed.  I got more and more comfortable.  One thing in particular that got me over the hump was Sean.  Sean is a character there.  Sean is also the player.  He is one of the only male characters there that isn't a secondary character.  For example I had a male character I played there called Jacob McAllister.  He was a dick.  He was there mainly to be a foil for Jennifer's character.  But I played him as a full character and he interacted with more than just Jennifer.  Most of the male characters are just that... secondary for a player who is primarily a female character (obviously gender distinctions get a little strange as most of those players there are men playing as women... not all of them, but most).

Anyway, at the time I had left I was kind of moving toward a relationship with Sean.  An in character relationship.  Out of character we were good friends getting to know each other.  If I said that I had out of character feelings for him, I'd be lying.  He was a good player and I enjoyed playing with  him, but that was about it.  But when I came back we started playing in character as well as chatting often out of character.

Now most peoples reaction to my 'not feeling like Caitlyn' explanation fell into one of two camps.  The first and by far the most common was "Just do what you can and be comfortable".  The second was more... hmm... I don't have quite the word for it.  The only thing that comes to mind is 'pushy', but it wasn't as negative as that sounds.  They were actively encouraging me to play and be feminine even when I said I wasn't feeling that way.  It was done in a nice way and I appreciated it as it showed they cared about me, but it didn't help at all.

Sean... he was just there.  He would listen to me, let me open up, and just sort my own feelings out.  Kind of like me posting a post like this... but live and in person.  Not me just throwing feelings up and organizing them myself, but having him react to what I was saying and letting me clear up when I wasn't being clear.  Not pushing me, but not just sitting idly by.

That.  That was what helped me the most by far.  I started to feel more feminine around him.  Not just shy and giggling girl around a guy but like my old self.  Not just 'like' Caitlyn... I started to BE Caitlyn when I was around him.  And that sense just grew stronger and stronger and stronger until one day I noticed I was feeling like Caitlyn a lot of the time.  At least half of the time I was there at DX and much of the time I was spending making Obscurras.  It even grew beyond me sitting at the computer.  I would start feeling like Caitlyn when I was driving to work, driving from work, when I was out with friends.  It never lasted all that long... it was never a full day or even hours on end... but it was distinctly there.

And I was SO damned happy!  I was proving what I had always hoped was possible.  I could be happy in my 'real' life AND be Caitlyn at the very same time.

But now... looking back... I may be wrong about that.  You see I changed jobs right around that time.  In early November, I started up at another facility.  And if I'm honest (I've written more about the job change at my other blog, and I'll be writing more with this post as a starting off point soon enough), it wasn't a good job change.  There are advantages aplenty, but I just don't like this job nearly as much as my last one.

Could Caitlyn be coming back because I'm not happy?  I don't know.  I don't think so... this isn't the depression that I was in before.  Yeah, I don't love this job but it's still a good job with good people.  I am good at it and accepted into the group of people that I work with.  My life outside of work and being Caitlyn is also good.  I am happy there.  So at first blush, I can't say that Caitlyn is coming back because I'm not as happy at work as I was months ago... but I can't shake the feeling.  I can't just push it out of my head and say that it's false.

That being said, Caitlyn coming back has advantages and disadvantages.  The first advantage is just being femme.  I love that.  Even here and now when I have no feeling of Caitlyn whatsoever... I can say honestly that I love thinking of myself as femme.  I'm actually exploring new grounds on that femme side as well.  In character at DX Caitlyn is falling in love with Sean.  And really that's just a reflection of how we feel outside of our characters.

Yeah... I have an online boyfriend.  Trust me... at moments like this it's kind of freaky to say that out loud (not that I've ever actually said it out loud butyouknowwhatimean!).  But I can't deny it's true.  Being 'near' Sean at any given time almost always brings Caitlyn back.  So long as he's there, I become Caitlyn.  For example, while writing this post up, I logged into DX just to make sure it was 2012 when I left there.  Well Sean was there and BOOM... I was Caitlyn.  I hugged him, I kissed him, we chatted for a bit and we're both eager to just hang out.  He had to leave, and once he was gone Caitlyn just... left.  It wasn't all of a sudden, but within minutes of him logging off I was back to 'Me' and able to continue writing this post.  I do love Sean... again, hard to write when he's not here, but I'm not deluding myself into thinking it's not true.  I do love him when I'm Caitlyn.  There are occasional times when I log in and even seeing Sean doesn't bring Caitlyn back.  But you know what, I can let him know that and he's completely understanding and supportive.  Yes... I (Me, Calvin, the dude), have talked with Sean and told him how awkward it is to be near him when I'm not feeling femme at all.  He accepted that, kept the gender and sexual innuendo to a minimum, and we just chatted.

So, that's a good thing.  I have a relationship with someone while I'm Caitlyn.  YAY!

But then there's the bad thing.  Not to sound all split personality and all... but Caitlyn doesn't like the Obscuras.  Seriously, when I'm fully feeling like her and not just acting out of her echo, I can't do the Obscuras.  I see them as cheap, badly written, un-creative, garbage.  I knew that... I knew that at their heart, they were all of the cap ideas that were never made because they weren't good enough... but feeling it in such an intense way is... well it's hard to deal with.  I think that's why my tempo has fallen off.  The more I'm Caitlyn (and I'm Caitlyn more and more and mroe), the less I can do those half measure.  BUT... I also still can't cap.  I'm not finding good ideas.

I had a friend ask for a cap about three weeks ago.  I said yes and figured it was just a matter of focusing my energy onto a task and getting it done.  It probably would never get into my 'best of the best' catargory, but I could make a "Caitlyn's Mask" cap and be proud of it.  But that just wasn't true.  I tried when I didn't feel like Caitlyn.  Nothing. I tried when I did feel like Caitlyn.  Nothing.

I eventually got an idea and just RAN with it yesterday.  I think it's pretty good, but it still took me two weeks (I was on vacation for one of the weeks) to make a single cap.  TWO WEEKS!  So being Caitlyn is NOT helping me out here on the blog.  She's getting in the way of the Obscuras and not helping me cap.

So... I don't know what to do about that.  I like participating in this blog world.  I like producing content and the Obscura, while never great, were a way that I could do that.  Only time will tell if that's going to remain true.   Only time will tell if this version of Caitlyn is here to stay or just a side effect of Sean.  Only time will tell if I'll get back to really making caps again.

I hate waiting for 'only time will tell'.