Playlist Challenge!

Do people still make and post kin playlists, is that still something people do

Adam Hall ~ “Passes Us By” - Oil on Panel  34 x 40

Oh, is it happening again?

Alterhuman ID cards that were posted at othercon! Idk who originally made them, if someone does know let me know! @thetrashduck

Very exciting to have what I've termed a "clinically significant bug moment" and notice that my gender dysphoria became exponentially worse as it happened.

I'm finding a lot of moments of melancholy accompanying the shifts, looking up at the moon in the night sky as I've done so many times before

Beginning to really understand the importance of change, transition, and impermanence, funnily enough not embodied in this character, but in the insect he is modeled after.

I had spent a lot of time trying to be everything at once, telling myself that it felt like authenticity, almost compulsively providing information for others to gain as clear a picture as possible of who I am. Upset to even cut my hair - the person seeing it yesterday and the one seeing it tomorrow now have two different images to contend with, and I am left to ask which is the real one.

The real issue began to arise when I realized that I wasn't driving consistency with my names. Legal, primary, and this secondary name I have here. I've used my primary for most places, but have introduced myself to strangers under the secondary. When my doctors call me by my primary name (an accomplishment in and of itself), I did not feel the need to correct them. I realized I may not want Shai as the name on my tag for my new job. I would have considered it if I had gotten work at the library I had applied to (putting that name on the application itself). Usage seeming to differ based on feelings I couldn't quite name.

It feels to me that I'm experiencing a fairly normal case for identity. A person is not the same at work as with friends as with family; I had tried to make all these one and the same. Even my primary on a tag would feel like a victory, but I'm not quite sure if I would even feel comfortable with my secondary.

After a violent division of identity, having been closeted and ill in an increasingly radical and abusive household, I feel I wasn't entirely sure how to reconcile with my newfound freedom and hindsight, and attempted to make every aspect of myself be the most prominent thing about myself. Each name blurred together, individual meaning erased under collectivity. It just isn't something possible. Not for most people, perhaps even for anyone. I'm contending with identity in a way that is standard for most people, but in a way I've never encountered before. My divisions were violent and laced with fear, of being outed as trans, as queer, as mentally ill, as autistic, as physically and chronically ill. Of being anything less than the expectation imposed upon me.

Removing those expectations made me feel lost, left to my own devices to determine who I truly was, and in blending and merging every concept of identity I had, I thought I had found a way to find myself. I still am, and this process has only been in place for a year, a year and a half, of course it wouldn't be finished. But I am discovering more about how my mind works and how I feel about it.

I am still thoroughly convinced this is a normal experience, one of many I'd never had a chance to encounter for myself due to my long abuse history. I would need to talk it out professionally, but I feel confident regarding my assessment, and can see where I would like to take it from here.

It's been quite some time since I've last written here, and I'm excited to announce how I've been doing! After over a year of work, I've finally become much more comfortable in my identity as fictionkin and have incorporated it into my life as a spiritual belief ✨️ I plan to open up a bit more about my thoughts and feelings regarding this because I spent quite a long time in therapy sorting out how I felt about this, and have made the decision to no longer push this aspect of myself away as it's been crucial to my recovery and to understanding myself. I'm grateful for the existence of a community that's allowed me to be able to make sense of my thoughts and emotions, and plan to have a bit more on this blog as I continue to work with my identity 💖

@classicaldreams

𝓜.

"You're everything! You're rose petals and vanilla and soft candles and clouds! What a joy to know you! To have been afforded a chance to know you and to have taken it! To indulge and be indulged! How joyous indeed!"