update from sparkleup

writing/3/terrifying/blind-strife.html

@@ -16,7 +16,7 @@
                 <h2 id="blind-strife">Blind Strife</h2>
 <p>There is a tension within me. It is not the tension of muscles — though there is often that — but the tension between contrasting ideas. I have been through my dialectical behavioral therapy. I have learned that this is a thing to be understood within one&rsquo;s core, to be held with care and love. I <em>get</em> that. It is a thing that I have not just intellectualized, but a thing that I have internalized. I do not struggle with the idea of dialectics, of dichotomies.</p>
 <blockquote>
-<p>I had read the sign, and had immediately fallen down into the space defined by that dichotomy, the gap between had-to-be and could-not-be. Dichotomy? Dialectic? There was no telling anymore, no matter how many times I’d tried to paste one word or the other onto the two phrases. Were ‘dichotomy’ and ‘dialectic’ a dichotomy or dialectic?\footnote{\cite{plu}}</p>
+<p>I had read the sign, and had immediately fallen down into the space defined by that dichotomy, the gap between had-to-be and could-not-be. Dichotomy? Dialectic? There was no telling anymore, no matter how many times I&rsquo;d tried to paste one word or the other onto the two phrases. Were ‘dichotomy&rsquo; and ‘dialectic&rsquo; a dichotomy or dialectic?\footnote{\cite{plu}}</p>
 </blockquote>
 <p>Or perhaps I do.</p>
 <blockquote>
@@ -35,24 +35,25 @@
 <p>I can see the allure, there, myself. Of course I can.</p>
 <p>I teased myself when the first book in that series, <em>Qoheleth</em>, came out that if I had an nickel for every time I accidentally wrote something with heavy plural undertones that nonetheless made me doubt my own identity, I would have two nickels. Which isn&rsquo;t a lot, as the quote continues, but it is weird that it happened twice. After all, hadn&rsquo;t I received all of that attention from plural folks with regards to <em>ally</em>? &ldquo;I think it&rsquo;s my favorite plural memoir&rdquo;, Rax wrote,\footnote{\cite{rax}} yes?</p>
 <p>And then <em>Toledot</em> came out. And, six months later, <em>Nevi&rsquo;im</em>, and <em>Mitzvot</em> six months after that.</p>
-<p>Five hundred thousand words about a people whose lives were defined by their ability to fork and individuate.</p>
+<p>Five hundred thousand words about a people whose lives were defined by their ability to fork and individuate. Half a million words of almost-plurality heaped around me, edging me out of the corners where I had previously hid, forcing me to stand, visible, in the centers of rooms where I might be perceived.</p>
 <p>When <em>ally</em> came out, when I got that review from Rax, I tripped over a crack in my identity and fell to my hands and knees, skinning my palms, barking my shin against this potential conceptualization of self.</p>
 <blockquote>
 <p>Are you me?</p>
 <blockquote>
 <p><em>Am I?</em></p>
 </blockquote>
-<p>I don’t know. I can’t tell. I can’t tell if you’re me, if the adversary is me, if “that third-of-three parts, that part defined by negative space and shadow and blind spots” is me.</p>
+<p>I don&rsquo;t know. I can&rsquo;t tell. I can&rsquo;t tell if you&rsquo;re me, if the adversary is me, if “that third-of-three parts, that part defined by negative space and shadow and blind spots” is me.</p>
-<p>I can’t tell if hypomanic Madison is me. I can’t tell if depressed Madison is me.</p>
+<p>I can&rsquo;t tell if hypomanic Madison is me. I can&rsquo;t tell if depressed Madison is me.</p>
 <p>Sometimes she feels separate. Depressed Madison, I mean. Sometimes she feels like another person who is doing different things, and I feel trapped up within my head, watching her act–</p>
 <blockquote>
 <p><em>Or not.</em></p>
 </blockquote>
 <p>–or not, and I feel like nothing I say or do can get her to change the things she does or does not do. Nothing I say or do can change the way she feels.</p>
 <p>The way I feel?</p>
-<p>The way she feels when she’s fronting?\footnote{\cite{ally-plurality}}
+<p>The way she feels when she&rsquo;s fronting?\footnote{\cite{ally-plurality}}</p>
-((Struggling against expectations versus desires esp re: feeling like I deserve to take up space))</p>
 </blockquote>
+<p>It sent me into my five thousand word tailspin where I asked dozens and dozens of questions of my ally, of myself, as I tried to nail down the panic that came with being confronted by this idea of plurality.
+((Struggling against expectations versus desires esp re: feeling like I deserve to take up space))</p>
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                 <p>Page generated on 2023-09-15</p>