update from sparkleup

writing/3/terrifying/engagement.md

@@ -20,6 +20,8 @@ Clearly, one answer — one I decided to explore a late March night in 2012 —
 
 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.
@@ -37,4 +39,27 @@ Falcon died, she slumped against me and left me with her still warm but unalive
 > 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.
+
+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,
 ((Struggling against the loss of unity, and then struggling against a sense of the half-sensed loss of Slow Hours))