What I am cognizant of is how this has become a habit. Yes, some of that is just part of human communication. Yes, some of that is simply being a kind person. Yes, so much of this anxious spiraling is just that: anxiety.
Perhaps I am just afraid.
Afraid! If it is a part of my identity, why should I be afraid? Isn’t that the whole point behind Pride? Isn’t that part of my whole schtick as the visibly and effortlessly trans girl who prides herself on being such, who aims to be a sort of trans psychopomp?
++Fig tree, how long now has it meant much to me
+
+how you almost entirely skip the blossom
+and without praise press your pure secret
+into the promptly unfolding fruit.\footnote{\cite[57]{duino}}
Perhaps that, too, is a trans thing, though. We come out, we transition, we live in this ridiculous world, and the whole time, our goal is to tamp down our identity. Even from within the community, even from the most proud, the goal is to tamp down this part of ourselves. Yes, praise the validity, but do so by passing ever better. Praise most of all the stealth, for they have tamped down their identity with makeup and binders. Praise most of all the successful men and women who slip effortlessly through the world around them, for they have integrated.
Surely there is something similar for plurality. I imagine, given its associations with psychology, this most often is brought up in terms of functionality. After all, if it is touched by those who touch other neurodivergencies, then surely it must be the same.
There, see? The successful trans girl with ADHD: she took her meds and did her voice training and now she does a capitalism well.
-What’s the analogous form of success fur a plural person? I am told that for a long time, it was becoming singular. More recently, I have heard that it is the ability to ensure that all of the personalities within one remain in consonance, that it remains egosyntonic, in harmony with the concept of self. +
What’s the analogous form of success fur a plural person? I am told that for a long time, it was becoming singular. After all, even passing as singular would be better, would it not?
+More recently, I have heard that it is the ability to ensure that all of the personalities within one remain in consonance, that it remains egosyntonic, in harmony with the concept of self. This, at least, I can see being analogous with my goals of being happily, visibly trans. After all, is it not my goal to live specifically as a trans woman? Not just as a woman, but specifically a trans woman. The way I bridle when I hear “I just see you as any other woman”…
+Become singular, become cis. Pass as singular, pass as cis. Live in harmony, live in harmony. It is times like these when I think back to those words, “Identity is psychopathological in that you only feel it when something makes you feel bad.”
+So, if I am to have this sense of pride, if I am to live in this egosyntonic harmony, then what is the fall out of that?
+More strife, more strife… ((Supporting identities))
((The trans urge to tamp down one’s own identity))
((Struggling against expectations versus desires esp re: feeling like I deserve to take up space))
diff --git a/writing/3/terrifying/index.html b/writing/3/terrifying/index.html index de914a6d1..1c0a82e13 100644 --- a/writing/3/terrifying/index.html +++ b/writing/3/terrifying/index.html @@ -15,7 +15,7 @@Wherein Maddy worries about how much space she’s allowed to take up and also waxes rhapsodic about how love is right at the margin of the terrifying through the lens of Time War and also Rilke. It’s also kinda about suicide plurality???