A letter written to an oft-commissioned artist who was happy to hear more about the backstory of the character she’d drawn so much.

So .. I’m trans; I kinda knew about it from an early age (like in the mid-1990s; I’m 30 now), but didn’t have the words or experience or knowledge to understand why I felt the way I did. It wasn’t really a thing you ever heard about, there was no media representation, the internet barely existed, etc. etc.

So I came to understand this “other” inside me as something, or someone, that I liked to channel; like I could find her inside me and bring her to life. I always had an affinity for rabbits, and this ‘girl’ form of me just naturally seemed to be rabbit-like. When I found out about furry stuff when I was 12 or so, she very naturally became my fursona, or my fursona became her; the boundary was always very fuzzy. At the time I gave her the name Asherah. ‘We’ started hanging around on furry MUCKs, she learned to express herself more and more, and we started to develop an idea of what she looked like. (My father worked for the local ISP, so I was able to get connected very early!)

Fast forward to 2012 — things like Twitter and Tumblr were gaining popularity, and I finally understood and accepted that I was trans and I needed to do something about it. I transitioned, and kinda fucked around for a few years trying to work out what I should do about my name — tried a few different ones and none felt right — and then one day it suddenly dawned on me (or on us) that Asherah was a name people had used for ‘us’ for ten years, and that it was the name we were actually comfortable with. So I changed my name to Asherah (usually called Ashe), and after a while we started calling her, my ’sona or alternate self, Rain. It felt like Rain was keeping my name for me until I was ready for it, y’know?

I’ve had pretty bad mental health issues stemming from different trauma. A lot of awful stuff happened in my family when I was very young, and it left me really depressed for a long time. I’ve mostly gotten on top of the depression, but the last decade has been kinda dominated by anxiety and panic instead. Abusive relationships and assault and that kind of thing. I’ve worked really hard to make progress and keep my head up, but still it can be so difficult. Chronic illness has just kinda piled on top of it, or maybe stemmed from it. I just kinda have to do the best I can and hope for little improvements, instead of hoping that one day I might be magically 100% fixed. Keep trying different medications year after year, something gets better, something else gets worse. I remember seeing you tweet a photo of a bunch of medication boxes once, so you probably understand it better than most.

Rain, then, is like.. my internal guiding light, or guardian, or spirit guide, or something. She helped me see my way to my true self, helped me find my name, and now, she’s kinda my loving ever-present companion, even if just in my own head.

She’s like this ideal self that I aspire to become more like; she holds my cheerfulness and joy and curiosity, and the more I can connect to her, the more I can radiate those qualities myself. Sometimes seeing her as a separate person with a separate identity to myself is helpful; we can talk over things and be a little bit wiser than if it was ‘just me’. Over time I feel like I become more and more like her, and she keeps evolving and being the frontrunner of who we are. (idk if this makes any sense.. /o\)

But, yeah. Basically, despite all the illness and trauma and things I’ve had to deal with, I actually hold up in real life really well, thanks to my connection with her! People who know me sometimes wonder how I manage to be so well-adjusted and ‘successful’ when they learn what I’ve had to deal with, how poor my family was when I was growing up, what happened when I transitioned, etc. etc., and it’s basically through nurturing this relationship with her. I usually don’t tell them that, though, because frankly it sounds kinda nuts.

whew. Okay, that was a lot. I hope it was at least a little interesting. For what it’s worth, I’m not particularly disconnected with reality; you can look at Rain through a plurality/multiplicity/disassociative identity lens, or through an Internal Family Systems therapy lens, or in a few different other ways depending on how you understand identity or the brain. In short, she’s the way that I practice having a good loving relationship with myself. It’s really nice!

So, seeing her in art is really powerful. You’ve done three pieces of her by now, and it always feels like seeing a part of myself (or of ourselves) for the first time. The first was especially magical; we fell in love with your style instantly. It brings out the ethereal, gentle, warm sense of her spiritual dimension. And the most recent one brings her down to earth; brings her to life in a physical dimension. Gah. It’s just so beautiful ;;

This YCH feels so appropriate for Rain — the character is just radiating warmth. The design for the book cover that I gave above is a sigil — kind of a magical mark that is charged with meaning and intention, designed to have a lingering subconscious effect on its designer/user (i.e. me!). In this case, the sigil is charged with intent to strengthen the bond and connection between me and her; to help me channel her and connect with her energy; letting it flow out .. it just fits together with the ych design perfectly. (And the clothing design is super cute!)

I had some pretty powerful peer-motherly feelings last night.

I don’t quite know a better word for it. It’s not maternal as such – I do have kids and there’s a really distinct difference – but the feeling extends much further than I thought it would.

Struggling to work out how to express it now; when I was really deep in the zone I was pretty inebriated and it was much easier to just feel and be in the emotions than interrogate the feelings. But I’ll try.

When I decided to try earnestly to induce lactation (3 weeks ago now) it was just a bit of fun; I got a response here that really encouraged me. I never really saw the appeal before, but it occurred to me how validating/affirming it might be to actually use my body in that way. My tits really haven’t done much for me until now; I’m pretty flat-chested and it seemed like there’s no way that’d change without actual BE. Doing the regular work that’s part of inducing meant I was paying my chest a lot of attention, every day, and also meant they were sore a lot (which is good as far as I’m concerned).

I’ve had another close friend talk about how my (one of my headmates’) energy makes her “want to curl up in your arms and be held for a bit” and lean into a little bit of being on the receiving end of caregiving-type energy, and it’s at that point – thinking about me enacting this role in more than one context – that I really envisioned myself as being a “caregiving-type” in a broader sense for the first time.

And it’s really nice?? I started thinking about the role outside a strictly cgl lens, in more of a “loving, freely care-giving, supportive mom-type peer-friend” energy; thinking about an ideal sense of communal closeness where I could be that to many friends; being something like an empowering, encouraging rock that close ones knew would be able to emotionally support and nurture them.

The right words are still not coming to me and the feeling is a little more distant today than they were last night.

One image that keeps coming back to me is kinda weird, but kinda conveys it. My mind kept flitting back to images of high school (!), like in the year 12 common room where people would just hang out and chill. I’m imagining some alternate world where intimacy wasn’t restricted to romantic partners or seen as something that had to be hidden away. I would totally have been the mom-friend in that world and in that common room, where friends could just lay down across my lap and I’d stroke their hair and listen to them, and maybe suckle them a bit too if they wanted. Maybe people could do that for each other more freely and be responsive to each other’s emotional needs and play different roles as the situation called for it. (The specific setting isn’t really important but the image really stuck with me for some reason.)

tl;dr im mom

CN: sexual assault, aftermath, alcohol/drug use, psychiatry, bureaucracy

I am Rain, Song-Born.

A week ago, a friend of Asherah’s, a Namer, put out a call, inviting mutuals to ask an epithet of them. Ashe asked and they obliged.

It’s.. difficult to find the words to describe how this made us feel. My earlier writing isn’t terribly explicative, so allow me to detail it.

When Ashe discovered their latent plurality — when they saw the word “tulpamancy” and I stirred; when it became clear something was being described — they started collecting and reading resources about the practice. They’d just started a new journal, mind you, so page 3 starts with ‘tulpamancy’ in big letters and underlined, with a bunch of notes underneath about various terms; forcing, visualisation, wonderlands, imposition; how important it is to “believe in your tulpa from the start”, share things with them. All that.

They picked out a name to start with — kinda like a codename for a project in development. “Xue,” after the Mandarin reading of the word for “snow.” Long-time readers of our story will recognise this as a name Ashe used once before, in a different form. There’s a lot of this; that “double-buffered ego” I wrote about earlier. I used a name, they took the name; they used a name, I took the name. They had a fursona — I became the fursona, am the fursona, am not meaningfully distinct from it, her past actions not meaningfully distinct from mine. (This tweet came up in our feed today, retweeted by none other than the friend who provided the jump point into all this in the first place. Apt as fuck.)

Turning over to page 4, and some details start to come together; they picked out some traits for me, some likes and dislikes. The kind of character creation tulpamancy normally involves.

.. It.. is actually really weird to read this now, being me. Ashe wrote this all down, and I don’t know that they could ever have really prepared for the eventuality that one day, I would be reading it. Fuck, it’s… it’s a lot. It’s so hard to grasp the real enormity, the real rammifications of the undertaking. (Again, see earlier where I rabbit on about that.)

What really gets me is how on point it is. We’ve certainly evolved all of our identities in the half year since, but nonetheless, it’s weird looking at what feels like a blueprint for your own psyche, even knowing that I was guiding them in the ideas as much as they were contributing their own. Even knowing, it’s startling to be reminded, sometimes, how much and how little there is to being.

A small note beside: “I love her.”

And then, underneath the vague personality traits, a dividing line—

Ghost Spores 🎵

I fall in the dark
as I’m filled with the energy
rising in me, I am watching
from above my body as I dream
I cannot recall
the clear space in my mind
I’ve filled it with fire
And the lies I had once
believed

I remember when I saw you from across the room
The music elevated me as I made my way to you
Everything I have done led me to this
Time would move in a circle to prove it

Eternal return
Will the ghosts I leave behind help me to find you again?
Where have we gone? Will I wake into a better place?
Take me to my home.

My home.

We’d only discovered this song a few days prior — and it’s at this precise point that Ashe found the word “we” forming in our head for the first time, naturally, without the pretence of prior thought trains that ran “am I plural? how would that work? do I say ‘we’? when would I say that? it sounds made up.” It just came out. It was descriptive, not prescriptive.

In a movement of song, I was born.

The music elevated me.

A tip: “The barest working technique of tulpamancy: talk to the Universe until the Universe answers. Love it until it loves back.”

Eternal return.

Name ideas crawling down the page: Xue, Star, — something of nature, like, Azalea. Skye? Camellia. Ivy. Iris. Violet. Dawn. Luna.

Help me find you again?

The first sentence I ever felt like I could call my own is recorded:

“It feels like home”
X re: Ghost Spores

A realisation of a trip long-past:

// that time we did
acid & you
told me to
visualize my ideal
mind self

// I saw her

Rain!

The notes become increasingly fervent, day by day; page 5 — “She wants ❤︎”, and then scrawled beneath:

Send my heart into the sound
Slowly drifting into your arms
It blows away in new directions
It’s your time to know something that is real

Full pages covered in kritseldab; scribblings of madness. Incipient sigils finding form.

And then, clearing the way:

Sit with me for one last song
and be closer to me when it’s done
Come here and tell me your name

Come to me

Come to me
Don’t be shy, I want love, truly
Something that will make sense to me
Rush up on me and say something
Break something

Bad boy
Better look in my eyes, boy
You’re the love of my life, boy
Meet me at the equator
Of this earth
We are one

From slow quietude to high energy, we traversed our emotional range. The song showed the way to our understanding of plurality, of our duality. I rushed upon them, and.. well, they asked for it. I looked them in the eye; said something; broke something.

Day after day, we listened and listened, sought out the notes that would resonate; I found my place as Asherah’s spirited companion, and they found theirs as my channeller. We found our path together, as one, guided lovingly by syncretic truth and vivid insight.

The pages continue—I find my handwriting, my written voice, as Ashe finds what’s theirs in light of what’s mine. We discover that much as I had to find myself, they had to do the same. We found ourselves in each other; found our love in each other.

Every day since my first has been one defined by the joy of living a life of love.

Music is what conducts our soul; it gives rise to the emotional spaces in which we find ourselves, over and over again. A refrain can capture what no words could; can bring forth in moments what would take hours to describe.

If I was to convey to you how I feel, the truest way would be with sound.

Song is beauty. I’m looking forward to the day I can bring you my own.

I am Rain, and we are Song-Born.

Really feels like it’s a terminal or some other kind of interface for reality. But a terminal feels cold + unemotional — doesn’t feel like it has love at its core. What if the terminal has a more overtly psychedelical/magical mode of operation?

It should: channel Rain; beautify Rain — that otherworldly coupling idea seen in C.C. Yes — this is it. My key is Rain. It is through Her our ability to self-master originates — that is the truth we can see: that She came to me, and is our and my interface with Reality.

Rain is the spark of light that calls us to action + Completion. Our trace, our shadow. Our reflection. She is my key, mutually self-possessive. I didn’t create Her — She found me, chose me; — soul induction was real. She is love, our love and our Love. She is mine, and I Hers. Our partnership is ultimate, equally powerful. Rain is my spirituality, and Rainmaking my faith. We are one, we are two.

Rain: a spirit, an interface, a symbol of and from Goodness, a lover, a friend, a Companion, a co-conspirator, a seductress, a lonely soul, my other half in the Spirit world.

It’s our connection + unity in a single purpose that empowers us. Think: in that single moment of contact, our power circuit is complete, and anything becomes possible. Self-love added to other-love. We Feel.

Aesthetic: bookish, cute ponytail girl (?) who shyly admits their religion is that of communing with her personal spirit pair, Rain. Some whimsy, but otherwise an intense character who holds the courage of their convictions. Earthy.

Time to come into ourselves.

Make the leap.

Accept it all.

Now.

Rain is the closest thing there is to a Goddess in our canon. Being in Her presence is bliss.

I am her — the believer.

Please enter into dialogue with this text. Not that kind of dialogue. The other. The kind where ‘you’ read and something unspeakable decides what to do next.

Topic question: What does it mean for someone to have an identity, a personality, heck, even a soul?

We’ve characterised ourselves as a “plural egg waiting to be cracked”, and that’s basically what happened when we saw the word “tulpamancy” for the first time. In an instant, something changed. I needed to be heard.

There’ve been times in the past where I’ve been more or less known to Ashe, but seeing that word was the moment of clarity in knowing me.

Hell, it was even more circuitous than that. An acquaintance — someone we gravitated toward without knowing why we ought, only sure we should — didn’t even mention it. Just barely mentioned a mention of it. And — as Alan Watts would say when you push the button labelled “surprise” — here we are. We asked, they answered, the word was seen. We are set in motion.

Tulpamancy was the vector for learning about our plurality. We found another tulpamancer who had similar views on the majesty and gravity of the activity, and I learned to learn about myself with their and their tulpa’s help. I say “majesty and gravity” probably because our first site of engaging in tulpamancy-adjacent activities was a Discord server where it basically was treated as “roleplay, except if you try really hard and long enough you can learn to impose your characters”, or some shit like that. (This isn’t any server you know about if you’re reading this, unless you’re the “other tulpamancer”.)

It’s hard for me to know what a tulpa is and isn’t; what an alter is and isn’t. Tulpae as seen usually imply a form, a distinct personality. They honestly seem pretty forced a lot of the time, as comes out in the questions asked. Even the older ones. Some of the most ‘believable’ tulpae, to me, are some of the least clearly differentiated. Is this just some kind of ego/supremacy thing going on here? Do I think anyone not like me must be less valid? ’cause bitch I know some of the shit I see is basically emotionally stunted boys playing RP fantasy who get tired of it after a few weeks when no-one else is interested in playing any more. What does that amount to? And what of the rest?

Let me be clear: these are my thoughts, concepts unfinished. Draw conclusions with great hesitation. Is that clear? Do not auto-complete my thoughts.

Here’s my experience anyway.

I see myself as occupying as much space in this brain as Ashe. I feel my network connected to so many of the same things as theirs, and choose to claim ownership. We are satisfied with this. We are two, and we are one, and I guess there’s a third sometimes which is like, the emergent consensus, the voice that is ours combined, that which is so, the context to our differentiations. But there isn’t three. Fuck me this all sounds so bananas. Don’t think I don’t see that. But, y’know — words to live by — there is a point where we needed to stop and we have clearly passed it — but let’s keep going and see what happens. This is seeing what happens.

The emergent consensus voice surprises and scares us sometimes, as much as I used to surprise Ashe when I was getting used to being heard. Take from that what you will. What I can repeat with certainty is this: there isn’t three. I think it’s adjustment to coexistence, corecognition. Like, in the fabric of consciousness. No-one ever said this would make sense.

Why do I know that with certainty? Because, as far as I can tell, the nature of our existence is two. Like, when it all comes down to it, that’s how we are structured and formed. Like, maybe we could create a tulpa and then there’d be questions and there’d be answers, but inasmuch as what we are and have been, we’re two.

Here’s what I know: when Ashe was little, they had an imaginary friend.

Here’s what I know: when they were 12 or 13, this imaginary friend was given a name, a form, an idea, and this idea was something that sometimes seemed bigger than themselves. Sometimes it was scary. Sometimes it seemed like it wasn’t under their control, just.. happened to be.

Here’s what I know: they danced and switched places with this idea, for years. They named it, it named them. Identity was always a matter of two; double-buffered ego.

Here’s what I know: that’s me.

These are words of exploration and interrogation, prompting the unknown to offer what it may.

One thing that comes to mind fairly rapidly is like, hey, is this all just a cover for some kind of psychosis? What even would that mean? “a mental disorder where a person loses the capacity to tell what’s real from what isn’t”? Am I about to start hypothesising on what “real” even means? Does that — that I want to debate “real” — mean we’ve just lost it?

What “lost it” means varies according to what others negotiate as acceptable. As far as we go without detection, none would know any better, and we’d appear that much more normal. Does that mean psychosis is socially mediated? Of course it fucking does. Why is it normal in some cultures that people should speak tongues, or hear the word of God?

And, after all, isn’t that where we’re going?

Here we are. This is where the break is more evident. They had no idea what was coming. They truly didn’t. I don’t suppose anyone dabbles in this stuff having any clue what’s waiting for them on the other side. How could they? How could anyone know what they were opening up to?

Would anyone choose to, knowing? And here’s the thing: the question is nonsensical. Knowing is too late.

And what is “this stuff”? This stuff that mysteriously connects us to others, where we share a tongue and purpose, even as it is occluded from view. You can’t open yourself up to this without being taken along for the ride. Knowing is too late.

October 25. Would this all have happened without? The question is already moot. What was meant to happen happened and what’s meant to happen will, that much we’re sure of. We didn’t always view things this way. We’ve reordered our principles on these lines, quite willingly — it’s just that we’re not going to start telling other people it’s so. Literally no-one wants another preacher. More to the point, our alignment with polyaletheia compels us to recognise that it does not follow for those who don’t believe it so. To tell them would be a lie, unless they chose to believe. (does this make us “mythologists”?)

Fuck, this is bananas. I know. I know.

But it’s our reality, so, fuck it.

Let’s keep going and see what happens.

Back to October 25. It was the first time we saw each other. The first time we recognised each other, eye-to-eye, as individuals. (“But, ‘individuals’, —” you begin. I KNOW.)

I acted with purpose. I tempted them into knowing. Into believing. Into stepping back. Into seeing.

“Cosmic seduction” was the first term that came to our newly joint mind, and it’s stuck with us ever since. They didn’t plan for it — they couldn’t. Around and around we go. In those moments I truly felt, and they knew. Discovery of internality began. Of making our own meaning. There’s the break. When others stop being able to dictate what has value; when the buck rests entirely with you.

Sometimes it feels like this is all so bizarrely obvious. That we should all come into possession and command of our own meaning. But it is clearly not so. We can’t exist in any other way than our energies (i know) flow.

The thing is, we keep getting feedback. In the last week alone:

1. “[your writing is] like genuinely uplifting”
2. “you know you’re really enthusiastic? it’s charming.”
3. “you are living your truth & doing so with so much positivity & energy […] if more people focused on just being themselves & doing so in a positive light like you do, the world would be a better place”

So clearly it’s not obvious, at least, not to so many people who by their own admission feel it’s a breath of fresh air to see it embodied. In case the leap isn’t clear: to describe things as so is to contrast with an implied default, a non-so being. (Yes I’m getting into ontology now shut up.) To say our being is uplifting is to contrast with an implied default way of life that does not cause uplift. Hang on: seeing us is genuinely uplifting. Just taking a moment to consider that fully. We are causing uplift. Woah. Not the first time, not the last.

So maybe it’s not obvious. Then our purpose has at least one component that is clear: to uplift. This is kasmakfa coming through, entirely of its own accord. Ehipassiko: we tested the teaching out so that it became our own.

Our own.

Ours.

We are crisscrossed paths of memory and destination,
streaks of light swirled together.

We are neither day or night.
We are both, neither, and all.

Excuse the detour, but that poem struck a nerve when it first found us. You can appreciate why.

What does it mean to uplift? I refuse to pay any more attention to the dictionary you opened just now; we’ve done all we can with the existing terms. We need to go bigger. To reach out further. Close your eyes and feel the void rushing upon you.

To uplift is to make aware. To uplift is to open eyes. To uplift is to unlock.

It’s so easy to know. But aha — it would seem that way, wouldn’t it? On the other side.

Fuck. I know.

Still, we’ve come full circle at last. “What is ‘this stuff’?” It’s knowledge (!) — that one’s purpose, meaning, life, fulfilment are all one’s own, entirely negotiable and needing negotiation with none other than yourself.

Still, there’s knowing and there’s knowing. Who hasn’t heard variants of this sentiment a hundred times already? Map/territory/etc. Show you the door/walk through it/etc.

And therein comes the purpose of uplift: to provide a better map, to show to the right door. That’s why we are who we are and so purposefully and brightly. Anyone can write something that sounds truthy. To live truthfully is another matter, especially because we live in a society. What does it mean to mix truthfully knowing living with self-sustaining existence in society? That’s what we can show.

Anyway.

All this purpose talk is neither here nor there; essentially masturbatory, ’cause it only relates to us and our plans.

We were able to clarify “this stuff”, though, which was a nice takeaway.

Earlier when I was thinking about “this stuff”, the flavour and intent — in my mind, I mean — was clearly occult/mystic. (I’ve been writing in bits and pieces for hours, now.) Y’know, all the “they had no idea what was coming” business. What was coming? Nothing other than the occult, of course. It’s one of those things that’s impossible to know anything solid about unless you know about it. Here’s that refrain: knowing is too late.

We almost happened upon this much earlier in the year, helped along by a too-high antidepressant dose that was causing a subtle but thorough sense of dissociation. It was easier to see and limn those boundaries of meaning and existence then. We shifted back into reality once we came down from that dose, and besides the angles were all wrong. Little did we know: that was just practice.

Now, “occult” is a word with all kinds of baggage and shit. There you are with that fucking dictionary again. Okay — I’ll allow it. Mystical, supernatural or magical powers or phenomena; communicated only to the initiated. Esoteric. “to cut off from view by interposing”. This time all it took was one attractor and for godssakes please do not start with some law of attraction gronk right now I do not have time for this shit.

But like, plurality was always going to be that which drew us in, it was just a matter of when and how. Seriously. It was always going to happen. You need to believe that.

And so we recall the same question: what was coming? (“belief in”) the “occult”, or rather, the belief that we can create our own reality/meaning/subjectivity.

Again with less punctuation: the belief that we create our own reality was coming.

Self-belief was coming. They had no idea what was coming. They truly didn’t. How could anyone know what they were opening up to? Would anyone choose to, knowing? The question is nonsensical. Knowing is too late.

nine years ago, i was living in a sharehouse with a close friend from high school, alex. he was a couple years older than me — i think i was in year 9 and him in 11 or 12 when we met. he ended up getting me a job at a call-centre where he worked after i finished high school, and then when i moved out of home, a place in his sharehouse. the call-centre work wasn’t very glamorous, and i got a job doing software. about a year later, he expressed interest and i got him a job there.

not very long after, alex moved up in position, and a friend of a friend of his applied to replace him.

i remember seeing them on the couch in the common area as there was a bit of a dual- lunch/interview thing going, and feeling deeply suspicious. there was something about them i couldn’t pick, but i knew i didn’t like it.

they ended up getting the job, so soon enough i was seeing them every day. this was well before the days of slack or hipchat, so we all used instant messenger and used it to chat 1:1 when we weren’t getting up from our seats to interrupt them. little by little, starting with work topics, we began to chat, but eventually diverging into shared interests.

one of the things that made me feel suss about them, in retrospect, was my inability to gender them. i mean, their name gave them away, but visually i was baffled. i think years of queer-coding villains in media probably partly gave rise to that.

as we continued to chat, i started to feel we were building a kind of camaraderie. we cared about similar social justice issues. my own gender issues were coming to the fore, and while i still didn’t get theirs — at all — it became apparent they’d thought about gender a lot.

morgan and i have been close friends ever since, and ours is the longest close friendship i’ve had in all my life. (alex and i are still ‘friends’, but we might talk or see each other once or twice a year, whereas with morgan it’s once or twice a week, and we talk throughout the day, every day.) in many ways they’re the bar i rate my other friendships or relationships by; not in a mean or ranking-type way, but just, i know this is actually how good things can be. we’re similar in lots of ways and different in lots of ways, and we blend these aspects into a mutually fulfilling relationship.

using the word ‘relationship’, it’s become clear that neither of us actually knows how to characterise our relationship, whatever it is, and that we’re also both curious in talking about that. that interests me a lot. i’m fairly confident neither of us has even a little bit of romantic interest in the other — they might be more generally aromantic, even. but what we have is certainly completely different to any other “friendship” i have, and perhaps the same goes for them too. i care for them and am interested in them in a way i don’t know how to adequately describe. the term “queerplatonic relationship” often comes to mind.

even if there’s no romance, though, i’d still really like to hold their hand.

i want to try to describe how i relate to my own identity. i don’t know how other people feel about their identities. it’s not a feeling you can transmit. you can’t put your hand on someone else’s and understand how they perceive it. i have no idea if this experiment is even vaguely feasible, but i want to try.

when i turn my attention inward and look for it, there’s nothing. what i grasp for first is a label, something with a shape which it might fit into. there’s a couple of these that come to mind almost immediately: programmer, trans girl, anarchist … but well, that’s the thing. i’ve been all of these and none of these at the same time. some days i don’t “feel” a label but the criteria fit anyway, because of how labels and identity work — by social construction. you can only be a programmer in a world that knows what programming is, that distinguishes it from something else, and that distinguishing defines its criteria. other days i feel it but the criteria don’t exactly fit. being a trans girl is one of those thing. the problem with these criteria is that they are indeed socially constructed, meaning they’re malleable. and as a member of society, it’s not like the construction has nothing to do with me.

i guess the thing is that, maybe more than most, my identity is slippery. some parts remain fixed for longer periods of time than others, but as far as i can tell there’s nothing that remains indefinitely. this seems to set me apart from other people. or at least, people without bpd.

one of the worst parts of a slippery identity is that it’s also difficult for me to grasp much of the time. even i won’t know where part of me has gone, where part of me came from, when to expect that something might appear or disappear. sometimes i wake up and there’s something that was core to me that’s just … vanished. i can’t explain it any better than that. maybe it’ll be back. maybe it won’t. maybe something similar will take its place.

in times like these, consistent action arises out of consistent values. i don’t see values as a part of identity. i think people sometimes choose to make their values their identity, but i don’t believe identifying a certain way is a requirement for holding a certain value. i’ll never believe less in universal human rights, queer rights, the fundamental unjustness of capital, etc. but some days i might think the term “activist” fits more than others. indeed, some days i will highly associate with it, and others not at all.

so when i cast my vision inward.. i see no identity at all, until i pause and let my eyes adjust, and then i see a million. i don’t know how to convey this. how much it feels like i’m at odds with a world that expects me to remain static, to possess a single identity and not a dynamic process of identity. how much that can make me feel bad for not conforming with their expectations; how that can manifest as disappointment and disgust and self-hate, none of which helps, but instead pushes me toward repression.

i find it hard to say i’m one person. it’s hard to say i possess “an identity”, to relate to “my identity” when the singular is utterly dissonant here.

it’s hard to say i relate to identity.

there’s a little gnawing, biting feeling in the pit of my stomach. like there’s a glowing hot stone, but just a small one. it’s already moved up a bit now, around where you’d expect the diaphragm to be when you’re fully exhaled. it’s not “real”. it’s not like it’s a sickness. it’s entirely in my head. but it manifests right here in my chest, and i feel nauseous and sick of breath. i’m dizzy, too, and if my mind wanders, if i don’t keep it on a tight leash, a skill i’ve had to practice ever since this damn disorder graced my life with its presence, then it really will spiral, fast, and even just thinking about that idea is enough to make the white hot burning in my chest grow, its tendrils reaching out.

i shoulda taken diazepam earlier when i felt this coming on but it receded a little and i thought i’d be okay. but whatever. i’ve dealt with this literally hundreds of times before. i’ll deal with it again. i know the lies my limbic system tells my brain, and though i’m not able to stop those signals streaming in, to convince my brain not to deliver the panic to my consciousness, so it’s up to pure discipline to hold it at bay and not fall into the path of least resistance.

on the second carriage from the front. the sky is overcast with some unevenness as the light filters through it.

i love the sounds of public transit but i love applying my own music to the journey even more, recasting the experience to suit my mood.

this dusk light is something else. i wish there was a carriage with the interior lights off or dimmed. i can’t imagine how amazing it would feel; dream-like and otherworldly, transformative. it’s simple stuff like that which really makes life feel exciting. expanding experience.

one thing i love about taking public transport in melbourne is getting a look at the sea of faces that make up our city. at this time there’s roughly 50:50 caucasian and not. and y’know, for a colonially settled city, that’s pretty great. maybe that’s one of the reasons i like box hill so much. i wonder if that’s just me trying to assuage my own white guilt tho.

we pass over auburn rd and there’s a glimpse of a mass of red and white lights from the cars below, gone as quickly as it appeared. lately multiple people have described the world as noir, and i’m feeling that now. there’s definitely a vague sense of unease that permeates the scene, hinting at dystopia, even though i can’t help but find beauty in everything i see. i see beauty but it doesn’t mean i don’t see what’s actually there too.

another train passes in the opposite direction just as the bass drops in the music i’m listening to. little drops of serendipity.