update from sparkleup

writing/post-self/idumea/006.md

@@ -16,7 +16,7 @@ The Woman, you see, had picked up on furry as a subculture, for when you are a c
 
 The Woman's superlative friend followed with her and then soon surpassed her. Ey picked not feline, but fennec fox, with ears too big and a brush of a tail and a short but pointy snout.
 
-The Woman and her superlative friend moved together as one. They were the same person twice over, they would say. Michelle who was Sasha — a name chosen for who knows what reason — and RJ who was AwDae — a name that was a corruption of eir name. They were the pair who loved each other in their own way and who surrounded themselves with others. They were the pair who found each other and, when the world deemed them in some way unworthy of consideration, got lost together, for they fell among a crowd of politically active friends, as they were active themselves, and how inconvenient! Inconvenient people should be set aside, some bureaucrat thought. They should be put up high on a shelf in some forgotten storage. And so they were. 
+The Woman and her superlative friend moved together as one. They were the same person twice over, they would say. Michelle who was Sasha — a name chosen for who knows what reason — and RJ who was AwDae — a name that was a corruption of eir name — a name I feel no shame now in sharing. They were the pair who loved each other in their own way and who surrounded themselves with others. They were the pair who found each other and, when the world deemed them in some way unworthy of consideration, got lost together, for they fell among a crowd of politically active friends, as they were active themselves, and how inconvenient! Inconvenient people should be set aside, some bureaucrat thought. They should be put up high on a shelf in some forgotten storage. And so they were. 
 
 The Woman and her superlative friend, when next they clicked their implants into place and delved into the familiar second home that was the 'net, they were shunted away into dreams and left there to wilt, to languish, to dessicate and wither and be blown away by who cared what wind. They were both torn asunder in some ineffable way. For Michelle who was Sasha, those two identities were carved apart, though only halfway, and, when her superlative friend, her beloved RJ, gave of emself to create the world that was Lagrange, a System for those minds who chose to upload, she dove in as soon as she could afford.
 
@@ -66,4 +66,40 @@ But I digress.
 
 We are built to love, yes, The Woman and I and all of our kin, and how complicated that is!
 
-What is one to do when faced with the enormity of love? What subtle powers does such wield over one?
+What is one to do when faced with the enormity of love? What subtle powers does such wield over one? Are we beholden to the fact that we deserve love? Had we not deserved love, were we not to deserve love, what would become of us? Would we be better off by choose-your-metric? Would I be better off if I could love beyond that familial love I feel for those in my stanza, for those in my clade? If I felt feelings of romance of desire of libido of attraction of soul-mate-ness of this-ness or that-ness would I be better off, or am I better for lacking such?
+
+The Woman and I and all of our kin have not always had the best of luck with love, nor with standing up for ourselves. When I say that we have more traumas than simply getting lost, our unluck in love accounts for some sizeable portion of this.
+
+We struggled with the role that our bodies played, yes? For Michelle who was Sasha was short — as we are — and she was fat — as many of us remain — and she was so-called blessed with breasts to match. So-called by those who wished to in some way claim ownership of them. When she pursued a reduction, her back thanked her and those who bestowed such praise wondered why why why we would withhold that goodness from them.
+
+And yet even that did not stop such attention, for we were, it seems, worth a certain set of things to others — to those beyond our friends and our superlative friend with whom we remain in love — and so why would they hunt for aught else?
+
+We are skunks for a reason. We bear these aposematic stripes for a reason.
+
+We also bear these scars on our chest for a reason, a reclamation. We found new joy in this transgression on the gender we are told is worth X and Y and Z. We are more than short fat women, though we also find joy in that, for What Praise exists, yes? My cross-tree? Lovely, he is. And Hold My Name exists, yes? Tall and trans and woman the long way around and transgressive for it? And Deny All Beginnings exists, yes? Trans man that he is? There is queerness in us and that is the more that we love, that is the A and B and C that is not the X and Y and Z.
+
+We are skunks for a reason and we bear these aposematic stripes to say: stay away. I am as I am and I will not be anything else.
+
+It worked some of the time.
+
+But I digress.
+
+-----
+
+We are skunks for a reason and we bear these aposematic stripes for a reason and we bear these scars on our chest for a reason and we also bear these scars on our thighs for a reason. Should you, dear, dear friends, be so thoroughly plagued by self loathing that the only option to move forward is to externalize that pain, that hatred of self, through blood through a knife through a hot wire, then can do naught else but beg you not to.
+
+There is reclamation to be had there, yes, for so many of us have kept those subtle ridges on our thighs, marking skin or easily felt through our fur because they are a part of who we are entirely. I still bear them and will not fork them away.
+
+There is also reason not to keep them, for we have moved beyond what we were, and that, too, is a loveliness for its very truth.
+
+I do not know whether The Woman bears these still. I do not *know,* gentle readers, much about her. I do not know if she *actually* went out and walked east from the house for hours and hours and a day and lay down in the grass and dug her claws down beneath the roots and stared up to the stars and laughed and wept. I will say that she did.
+
+Enough digressions.
+
+We are all of us beings of balance. We live with one foot in two worlds. We live with our thoughts in life and in death. We live with our hearts here and also there. We are platonic minds and bodies, and we are unified in the both of them in a Blakean energetic hell.
+
+We are those who have scars because we sought the self-fulfillment of a breast reduction and those who have scars because we hurt so much we took a knife or a hot wire to our skin where such might be easily hidden. We are these things because we love life with a ferocity that leaves others breathless and also, though there is only the faintest whiff of suicidality in us, yearn in some intangible way for that which is not life, whether it be void or rest or, yes, joy.
+
+I feel that call now, yes, as I pace the empty rooms of my home, listening to nothing, looking at nothing, clenching and unclenching my fists as I struggle not to reach for my pen, my paper, and instead write in my head, and perhaps The Woman felt that, too, as she wandered east and lay down in the field and looked up to the stars and held that other, most peaceful life that plants dwell within in her paws.
+
+And yet I feel that fearful love of life within me now, for the words that I am writing now, pacing my empty house without senses but those bound up in my mind, stroke most softly along some part of me that is built to love, a silk dragged along skin and a soothing balm on bothersome scars and a cooling ice that runs through my veins to calm the fire of graphomania as though they were not actually a symptom of such, and perhaps The Woman felt that, too, as she overflowed beneath the stars and felt growth and growth and growth and growth and growth and growth beneath her paws and between her pads as blades of grass and achingly beautiful dandelions reached for the heavens where perhaps our superlative friend dwells.