We were assigned female at birth, and we didn't realize until around high school that maybe we aren't solely female. It began with frequent dreams wherein we had a penis, and the whole dream would be spent by us playign with our new appendage. That was the other thing, in these dreams the penis was always something new to our body. It was never us having been born with it. We thought the dreams were weird, but plenty of people in our life made us believe it was normal. "All girls dream of having a penis." But the thing is, these dreams weren't just wishing for one for the sake of standing to pee, we wanted everything about the penis.
So anyway, when we learned that transgender is a thing, it got us thinking. There were a lot of things which made us think maybe we were trans, except at the time we thought one could only be either male or female. We never felt fully male, so we figured we must just be cis female. We went the rest of our adolescence being constantly confused by our own gender, but we didn't have any other options to look at. We had always considered ourself an ally and we were part of the LGBTQIA+ community for a good while, as we'd been openly bisexual since the start of high school, so we wanted to support everyone in the Rainbow Mafia. A good friend of ours came out as trans after high school, and we were one of the first he came out to and one of his biggest supporters. We also got into a relationship with a trans guy, and again, we were one of his most vocal supporters. So when our younger sibling came out as nonbinary to us and our mom, of course there was light familial teasing, but we fully embraced them and sought out info on how best to support them. In learning more about nonbinary as an identity, we started to question our gender even more. Finally, our mom invited us to a trans-focused Discord server which accepts cis allies, as well as folks questioning their gender. So we joined, and this is where we learned about the many MANY gender identities possible, and when the term "plural" first entered our conscious. I mean, don't get me wrong, we had heard the term "Multiple Personality Disorder". We had seen the movie "Split". We thought we understood what we were now learning, and we were fascinated to learn more. And when we learned that the term we knew is not correct now, and our only media knowledge is of a movie which every system we spoke to despises, we were even more intrigued.
Eventually, through learning more terms, we discovered that bigender fit us really well. We felt female most of the time, with the occasional bout of being male, so this worked great. We were invited to a different Discord server, one with a lot more nonbinary-type people, and there we found the space to embrace who we are. We started embracing our male side more and more, and as we did so, we noticed there were days where we actually didn't feel either male or female. This is when we started calling ourself genderfluid instead, and that's where we stayed for a good seven months or so. We started paying attention to what gender we were experiencing at any given time, and while at first it was a wild ride of so very many identities and expressions (including one day where it was like our brain was playing Wheel of Gender and switching pronouns every five minutes), it eventually settled into a few recurring modes: boy, girl, blob, neutral, boyish-girl, and girlish-boy. We then started to notice that when we were in Boy Mode, we were a very different person. We became a typical dudebro, when we had never been that type of person before. This confused us for a good while. We also started to notice that when we spoke out loud to ourself, we would often use plural terms, such as "What are we gonna do today?" and the like.
At this point though, we assumed that one could only be plural if they had either a DID or OSDD diagnosis. We also assumed that a system had to be formed through trauma, which didn't fit our narrative. Of course we've experienced trauma in our life, most people do, but there was no trauma so huge that it split us into multiple people - as far as we currently know. So we sat quietly and didn't voice our thoughts. It wasn't until someone else in one of our servers started asking questions about how to tell if one is plural, and the things they were saying were really resonating, that we finally said something.
The systems who were answering these questions assured us that an endogenic system (one not formed through trauma) is just as valid as a traumagenic system (one that IS formed through trauma), and a system doesn't need a diagnosis to be valid. They also said that they had been getting plural vibes both from us and the person who initially brought it up.
So then came the fun part, figuring out who all was in our head. Rylan, Rhys, and Ellie were the firsts. Melody showed up next, then kind of both Vanessa and Marmalade at the same time, James showed up a few months later, Caleb was maybe a month after James, and Logan is currently our newest headmate. To read more about each of their origin stories, click on their profile pages! We aren't out as plural in most of our everyday life, since we're all okay with using Rylan as a singletsona and using they/them pronouns, so to the general public it's just easier to say we're genderfluid. Our mom and sibling know, and our partner knows. A few of our online friends know too, but mostly it's just our trans-focused Discord servers which know about us - and that's the way we want to keep it for now.
If you, the person reading this, know us in real life or think you might know who we are, please respect our wishes and don't out us. We are happy talking about our experience in private if you want more info than what's on this site, but please don't reveal this information to others who know us without our permission.