## Engagement

And what of it? What of all of this? Waving my hand at the previous however many hundreds of words, I might ask, "Why the fuck does it matter?"

There are many things that I might ask. There are many things that I *have* asked, even in these last however many thousands of words. Questions and questions...

> > *So, do you want to know the answer?*
>
> I don’t know.
>
> > *It is strange that you sound unsure.*
>
> Why?
>
> > *There are twenty-two questions on the previous page. Twenty-five if you count mine — and I suppose that whether or not we are to include those is the crux of the issue. If that is not bemoaning the lack of answers, I do not know what is. It is strange that you would be unsure whether or not you want to know the answer.*\footnote{\cite{ally-plurality}}

But there is that one that sticks in the craw: 'why?' Why do I worry so much, and what, pray, might I do about it?

Clearly, one answer — one I decided to explore a late March night in 2012 — was simply to escape. Just leave it all behind. Take the easy way out. Choose the escape hatch.

One way, perhaps, to stop worrying about how much space one takes up is to stop worrying at all.

> Your dream, is it not this, some time to be invisible?\footnote{\cite[87]{duino}}

But what does this mean for the foundation of those worries? I would still take up space, yes? Arguably, I would take up more! *Much* more, yes? I would take up an inordinate amount of space in the hearts and minds of my loved ones. They would be left not only with their knowledge of me, but also of their lack of knowledge.

They would not know why I chose to quit this life, not wholly.

They would not know who I was in those last days-hours-minutes, not wholly.

They would not know what I was feeling, not wholly, and they would not be able to ask.

I would take up an inordinate amount of space in their hearts and their minds, occupying the whole of them as they grieved, pushing out any ability to do much else. That's what happened to me, after all. Falcon died and I was useless for days, for months. What was I to do with this sudden, overwhelming trauma? Simply...let it go? Hah!

Falcon died, she slumped against me and left me with her still warm but unalive body, and no amount of weeping, no amount of JD crying, "Come back to me, come back" could change that.

> And being dead is full of the labor of catching up,  
> as one gradually acquires a sense of eternity.—  
> But the living always make the mistake of too sharp a distinction.\footnote{\cite[17]{duino}}

I hold in tension within myself the idea that the only way out is through — through to the void, through that narrow gate, through to darkness — and just how unfair it would be of me to choose that.

But– No. It is not the way through, is it? Not the *right one,* at least. That way through is the way through to nothingness. It is the way through to nullity. There will be time for that.

So instead I must choose these countless deaths other than my own. I must choose to live through Falcon's death, through Turtle's and Zephyr's. I must choose to live on after Dwale and Cullen, after Morgan and Tirix and Brone and Margaras.

So instead I must choose these countless self-deaths. I must choose to be Madison, I must choose that egocide for Matthew.

I must, it seems, choose the death of a singular identity, if I am to acknowledge completion.

> That once, having passed through the merciless insight,  
> I may sing to approving angles in praise and rejoicing!\footnote{\cite[89]{duino}}

Perhaps the most terrifying bit of this decision is how little change I feel. It does not feel like a new thing. It does not feel like I have become someone else. I do not feel like the various mes that I am now are somehow any different from the singular me that I used to be.

I felt better, yes! I felt a sense of relief, but it was the relief of acknowledgment rather than the relief of being somehow fixed, being somehow mended. There was not dysphoria, but there is euphoria. It was the relief of recognition of already being whole. 

How strange! Every time I came out before, it involved some change in living. I came out as gay and had to reckon with the homophobia that I knew would come. I came out as trans and had to reckon with transition.

Now, I come to terms — 'coming out' fits poorly, here — with plurality, with medianity, and...and what? I keep living as I do, for the most part. I live as I had been living, only more earnest: "Rilke is not at all sympathetic with an other-worldly attitude. His concern is with the enrichment of this present life and its dependence on solid material things," Crichton writes of the *Elegies*.\footnote{\cite[106]{duino} Yes, yes, this identity business veers rather close to the other-worldly, but it is not; it is a living in the moment with less of that other-worldly fretting in the way.

> It is such a luxury to dwell in these details — to share them with you.\footnote{\cite[89]{timewar}}

There are, to be sure, issues. There are those in my life with whom I will not share these words, these ideas. There are still pangs for the loss of unity — even if, as I say, this is simply an acknowledgment of the truth, ah, life would be easier if I did *not* acknowledge this, yes? And there are still difficulties.

As I explored these new versions of me, I ran into new deaths, too, new risks of death. I found the boundaries of these selves entangled in different ways with other people. Is my partner as one me still my partner as another? Yes. Mostly. Ish. And what of my plural partner? What of the ways in which we fell in love, that slow entangling of one of me and one of em, and that first day another instance of mine peeked out and...and I wasn't theirs, was I? Or perhaps I was. Mostly? Ish.

And what of the amount of time spent living into those personalities? When I stopped living into one for a few days, then nearly two weeks, I found myself crying, found myself clutching at my bed for any sense of grounding against this half-sensed death — or potential for death, perhaps — of one part of me. What would happen if she died? What would happen if I no longer found connection there? Would I lose that forever? Would I lose the relationships that she had formed? And, supposing even that those relationships spanned partials, the particular peculiarities would fade, yes? Mostly. Ish?

> You, who descend with the thud  
> only fruits know, falling, unripe,  
> daily a hundred times from the tree  
> of jointly built up motion (which, quicker than water,  
> has spring, summer, and autumn in just a few  
> minutes) — fall off and bump on the grave;\footnote{\cite[51]{duino}}

She did not, but had she died, what then? I would be unwhole. I would have a rotting edge. I would have to tape myself together around this missing self.

> What will I do, sky? Lake, what? Bluebird, iris, ultramarine, how can there be more when this is done?\footnote{\cite[165]{timewar}}

But, yes. She did not. We found a way to make it work. We found a word to kick that partial Madison into place, to smooth out coarse seams. We found a secret name. We made promises to make time for each other, for these us-es.

> But it will never end — that's the answer. There is always us.\footnote{\cite[165]{timewar}}

