Hi everyone,

I was just reading a thread written by Bob, where he asked the question, "how many people are inside of you?".  I didn't want to steer his thread in a different direction, but what he wrote there really got me thinking about just who is inside of me.

I don't have a sense that there are two people inside of me.  I have always felt it was just me in there, but I was definitely not projecting the real me.   I was just like the ventriloquist and the dummy.  The dummy could only say what I wanted him to say and could only do what I wanted him to do, and while he was an extention of me, just as the ventriloquists dummy is an extention of him, he was a totally fabricated character.

The thing is, the dummy needs the ventriloquist to come to life, but the ventriloquist himself is never revealed.  The ventriloquist needs the dummy to say and do things that he could not do without offending people.  And I needed a dummy for the same exact reason, so I could exist without offending people.  The real me was a girl, and if I presented this way it would offend people, but as long as I did all my actions through the dummy, I could do whatever I wanted.

When the ventriloquist retires, it is not the ventriloquist that stops speaking, it's the dummy.  He goes into his suitcase and becomes a memory of a different time and place, usually to never be heard from again, but the ventriloquist may be a person that no one really knows.  Everyone will think the ventriloquist is really the dummy, they won't accept that the dummy was just a character and never really existed at all.

That is how it is for me. "He" was just a character I made up.  He was projected exactly the way I wanted him to and he acted how I wanted him to, but it was never me.  And now he is gone.  He does not need to exist as a part of me, because he was never a part of me.  He was just a dummy in suitcase.  Sure I could bring him back to life any time I wanted, but what would be the point?  He never represented who I really was and it was just too stressful.  Now I never have to think "what would he say", again.

The ventriloquist has retired and the dummy has been destroyed.  I now speak and act for myself.

Love always,
Elizabeth

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Copyright 2006 by Cindi Jones
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The Dummy


Your life was expressed through a wooden head doll
expressing your feelings though no one at all
would ever guess your true self,
Dress up the dummy in his pall
No more of his drivel ringing in these halls.

In the trash? Or is he buried? Who cares?
His tacky little mouth and the words he aired
were meaningless little acts of a minor play.

The bill now proudly displays
a new cast member in the prominent role.
Get rid of the little plastic and wooden troll
for the new star will bear her real soul.

Our lead actress is
not a performer or abstractor
she has no need to be the benefactor
of an audience held by captor,
the stupid little doll.

The ticket now is well worth the price.
The actor now will cover no vice
of lies thinly veiled in truth.

Our hardened hero now cares.
A badge of courage she bears.
Yes, the medal she proudly wears
earned through winning her battle of self.

Love the analogy Elizabeth. I always said we lived a scripted role as males in that we always tried to learn how to act and rehearse it for real. However, your analogy sounds much nicer, at least to me.