update from sparkleup

writing/post-self/what-right-have-I/001.md

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+The itch on my palms is not a real itch, and yet all the same, it demands to be scratched. I can scrub my paws down over my front or rub them over my thighs and gain momentary relief, but it will always come back when tensions run high.
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+Many things will plague me when tensions run high. I will tic — a jerk of the head to the side with a squeak or a yelp or a quiet grunt. I will pace in an abbreviated line, my steps spelling out an ellipsis. My stammer will get ever worse.
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+I maintain that these are an integral part of me, that I will never strive to rid myself of them. I say to myself that I will never cease pacing, that my tics are a form of communication, that scrubbing my paws over my tunic or trousers is simply a part of the way that I live. I promise myself — and you, whoever you are — that I will not elide my stammering. When tensions are running high, these are cemented within me as a part of my existence.
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+Tensions are running high.
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+I am supposed to be calm. Relaxed. Professional. I am supposed to do anything other than scrub my paws over my front and fidget with the hem of my tunic or visibly restrain myself from pacing. I am not supposed to yelp or squeak in the middle of someone speaking — least of all Rav From Whence! — and I am definitely not supposed to scuttle off stage to go lay down on the cushion I keep beneath my desk for high-anxiety moments such as these.
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+I explain to myself and to others that the entire reason that I exist is to outlive the part of me that speaks in should-statements. I am not supposed to do any of these things, but 'suppose' is a 'should' in disguise. Reframe it: "I should not do–" 
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+No.
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+I exist specifically to kill that version of What Right Have I. The whole reason that I *am* What Right Have I of the Ode clade and no longer am I From Whence Do I Call Out is because Rav From Whence knew that at least some part of her, some *version* of her should exist specifically to revel in unmasking.
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+We are a revelrous clade.
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+We are all hedonists, in our way. Conscientious hedonists, mind: we believe that *all* deserve revelry in that which is good, but simply that we, too, are included in that 'all'.
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+Some revel in the hedonism of play, or the hedonism of creating, or the hedonism of food, of drink, of drugs. Some revel in the hedonism of naught: No Unknowable Spaces Echo My Words dreams of death and the lack of life, and to her, such is a joy. Unknowable Spaces's up-tree Before Whom Do I Kneel, Contrite dreams of the very lack of a sense of self, and to it, such is a joy. <!-- make take restructuring of sheet: Unknowable Spaces to focus on death, Beside Whom focus on grief? -->
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+But consider: they are cross-tree from me. I bear in me very little of what makes them *them.*
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+No, my revelry lies in unmasking. I revel in the earnestness that one feels for oneself when one is truly as they should be. Michelle never had that. How could she? She was bound by capitalism, and capitalism does not particularly like catastrophically autistic nerds living their best lives.
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+So she tamped it down, as did so many others, back phys-side, and lived the life of the slightly strange woman who taught theatre — for what theatre teacher is not slightly strange? — who loved her students and went home to pretend to be a skunk person on the 'net.
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+And that was our life.
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+For the first 31 years of our life, we were that slightly strange but nevertheless comfortably masking autistic woman, and even after we uploaded, even after we were surrounded by so many other strange people, we only relaxed partway, and it was not until Michelle forked into the first ten lines of the Ode clade that we had the chance to relax any further
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+For the first 38 years of our life, we were still slightly strange and nevertheless still masked. It was not for another six years until the first line of my stanza, the third, forked my down-tree, Rav From Whence, and while ours was the stanza that returned to the Judaism of our childhood, she was the one who dove wholeheartedly into it. Here, though, is where we took a step back, masked yet more, for as Rav From Whence was forked to lean harder still, she too began to find a place of leadership for herself, and so she remasked, and masked again.
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+For the first 44 years of our life, we were strange, and yet making it work. We — Rav From Whence and the me who was not yet — found a synagogue. We made it through school. We founded our *own* synagogue. We soon lost track of what it meant to be strange.
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+That did not mean that we ceased having that strangeness within us. That did not mean that we ceased being autistic, nor even that we ceased talking about it. We just became something new. We became Rabbi From Whence. We became a visible, public representative of our clade, and we took that seriously.
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+That tension piled up, the tension between our new selves and our inherent strangeness. Some 22 years later, I forked off from From Whence. I was no longer her, I was What Right Have I. I was the version of From Whence who could return to strangeness. I was that of her that could not just present as an autistic woman, but the version of her that could revel in that.
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+And so, for the first 66 years of my life, of all that time as Michelle, as Oh But To Whom, as From Whence, I was strange, but merely strange. I was restrained, and not wholly, joyfully myself — and this is not to say that my down-trees were not whole or did not experience joy, but I was not them.
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+On systime 28, 2152 common era, 5912 of the Hebrew calendar, I became me, and I had the chance to grow into what I would eventually become.
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+And that is, apparently, a fidgety, anxious mess who is doing her best not to scuttle off the stage and go hide under her desk in her office on a glorified dog bed. I am beyond strange, now, and beyond old. I am 316 years old, now, though I have only lived a bit less 315 of those. That is why we are here, yes? That is why I am standing on a stage, ancient and anxious and weird, yes?
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+I am wandering.
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+<!-- Barukh ata Adonai Eloheinu, melekh ha'olam, hagomel lahayavim tovot, sheg'molani kol tov. -->
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