It took a long while before I could start to choose to be Lilly, but even then, it took a lot of precarious effort.

And sometimes it still failed to take.

So, when Lilly came out, I grasped onto her and encouraged her to be fully in control for as long as possible.

“I need to be Lilly,” I told my therapist once. “Lilly can pull us through this. Kit cannot.”

She seemed to find that perfectly reasonable.

But, Lilly is still new.

She has all the knowledge that Kit has from her life, but she doesn’t have any experience using it.

Kit does.

So, when we’re in times of high stress, the whole system automatically kicks all the control back to Kit.

Because Kit has the experience of being her our entire life.

She knows how to handle sudden, unexpected events like Kit does.

Lilly still doesn’t quite know how Lilly handles those same situations, yet. She imagines that there would be resistance to the sudden appearance of Lilly instead of Kit.

Lilly doesn’t know how to handle that resistance.

Kit cowers.

Lilly can’t cower. It’s not supposed to be in her nature.

But, instead of figure it out as Lilly, in those situations, she keeps kicking control back to Kit… who has an entirely different persona and ways that she reacts to things.

So, maybe it’s still Kit cowering.

Maybe it’s that Kit reacts to people being unhappy with who she is by cowering, and so it’s Kit that pulls back control on the whole system… effectively making Lilly cower away from handling things like Lilly would.

…because Kit is afraid people would like that even less.

Next lesson: “…and That’s How Kit Came Back for a While.”