Identity confusion

Do any of you, especially long time hosts, feel like they aren't complete alters? I mean, it makes sense for each alter to not have a full personality, right? Because we're all just part of the whole person. But I still feel like there should be more to me. I feel like nothing about who I am is stable, is *real*. Like I'm just stumbling through life pretending to be a certain way in order to survive, but really, nothing feels right, feels like me! I can think I want to be a certain way for some time, but after a while I always realize that that's not really me. I don't know why it's so important but I crave being my own person, and it just doesn't seem possible because nothing ever feels like me. I can try out as many things as I want, but I won't be satisfied. I just want to be able to present myself to others saying "Here I am, this is me!" I want that confidence. But I don't know who I am. I am nobody. I want to be more meaningful. I want to feel comfortable in my skin, but as it is, it doesn't feel like mine. It's like a white room that I don't know how to decorate/personalize. I am just a ghost, I don't have any real substance, I'm just copying others but that doesn't make me a real person.

Or maybe that's all not true. Maybe I am myself, maybe I have a personality, and I just can't feel comfortable that way I am because there are too many alters inside who want me to be different. Maybe I don't want to be myself. Maybe I just want to many different things at once without really wanting any of them. But how am I supposed to know what I want? I don't! I don't know how to find out because the only way seems to be to try out different things. It never works though.

Sorry guys, I'm just ranting, and it's late, and this feeling is tearing me apart. I wish I could look in the mirror and see myself. I wish I could alter my body and feel good about it. I wish I knew what I want but it's far away in a land of dreams that I can't reach. Life just seems senseless if I can't have some kind of self-accomplishment. I want nothing more than to be myself and be able to be happy with who I am. But it seems like I can't be. There are too many variables in my life.

(I apologize again, I'm very tired and this might not make any sense. If that's the case, just ignore it, please. I just feel like I needed to get this out.)

Something like this?

dissociative-identity/topic113961.html

We know, it doesn't make sense at all. But we get it anyway.

At the moment I think that our I-ness is split up in different alters who by doing lots of life, grew bigger than what the normal 'parts' of a normal I would normally be. And of course we are much more different than what normal parts of a normal I would normally be. I guess not every system's alters are this different from each other but we are.
It comes down to, I think that all the alters hold a piece of the I. We would have been part of her, of our "Door" (your white room), not so big, not so different, not so far away from this "I", if we didn't have DID. She wouldn't be a non-person if we wouldn't have split off/if we would have connected properly.
I guess I feel bad for her, feeling so empty. Can't even imagine not knowing who you are. But our door struggles with this as much as you do. We don't really have a clue how to define what she is. I could say she's a new alter being made, I could say she's a host, I could say she's an alter who lacks self image, I could say she's what's left of our "I", I could say she's just the body nothing more, but we really just don't know. I'm sorry.

I guess I'm taking the wrong approach in trying to define myself apart from alters. I just grew up thinking I was supposed to be like everyone else, so it's hard to stop searching for "me" when I am just part of a person. I guess it's just difficult to come to grips with that idea.
But reading about how usually alters are so clearly defined and supposedly have distinct character traits about them, sometimes even really stereotyped ones, I feel like I should be the same.
But I feel like I've been influenced by other alters all my life, so where do they end and I begin? Is that the wrong way to see it? It's just confusing that if I assume that all of us alters make up one person, then how is that possible when we have such opposite character traits.

I guess I just get overwhelmed with different preferences but I don't feel like I have any. Because they all don't linger. I feel like they aren't mine. It just feels like I don't make any big decisions myself, so I feel like I don't even count as a "real" alter.

Anyways, thanks for the reply and the thread, all of this really gives me something to think about.