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(extracted from another entry as it began to fragment out)
...Someone we love wrote about this too, lately. Creating things, and that drive to make something beautiful, to just allow all that to become. We're in that state now too, in and out admittedly, but I don't think it's going away now. We missed it too much, it welcomed us back with open arms, "just be careful, okay?"
And that's the thing about Mage Angels; there's so much pain and bitterness there, it's in Parnassus too, and vo!t@ge... there's a lot of scathing hurt scattered about. It does hurt to write sometimes, especially as the "author," the chosen observer who has to write it all down, but not interfere, at least not without being asked or without clear permission. I remember, "I" stopped writing vo!t@ge for a very long time because I couldn't bear watching a certain boy die. Whoever our core was then, their heart still aches terribly at the thought. But death is inevitable, for him, one way or another. So it is for many others who we can't forget. And then there are those who live in pain, one way or another.
But I know the feeling. I know the feeling. "Is this something I should be writing?" I love these individuals I write about too, with their mistakes and flaws and fears... but their stories hurt, bottom line.
I'm rambling, I'm so sorry. I don't want this to turn into platitudes. That helps no one.
Point is maybe I'm just a sparkle-eyed idiot but maybe that's my job, to love anyway, to shine light anyway, to see hope anyway. With Infinitii I've learned the value of darkness, of those broken and hurt and angry souls. Where would Parnassus be, if not for Delphi's sins, for Genesis' flaws? Mage Angels wouldn't even HAVE a message to give, if not FOR the amount of suffering it held even so. And Dream World, yes even there, I can name several people who have been less than bright. And yes, it hurts to write it all. I think it always will. But you're so right, it's all just as valuable as the good, I mean geez just look at these archives, that's been burnt into our brains again and again. Too much light is just as dangerous as too much dark. They each need the other to be fully realized and understood and appreciated, in this world.
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@ 01:13 am
Let me try to update a bit. Hello everyone.
(This isn't quite Jay, btw, not 100%. He's fogging in-and-out with what he's tied to. Jewel and the AP are also working at this. It's usually a jumble of those three, and a bunch of unidentified socials. Life's been somewhat tossed-about lately (not bad, just shaky) and that does mess up common fronters so we apologize.)
First things first, as this has been on my mind. There's a message in my inbox that I can't rightfully respond to yet because I didn't read the entry that preceded it. The therapists insists we do so before tomorrow as we are going to be discussing it in-session and I honestly have no clue what was written.
It was all one author, though, all one social author, which is rare. She's written before and she is strongly tied to Overload, but they appear to be subtly different. Both are Brown, and their energies are close, but it's distinguishable.
Most notably, Overload knows about "the Upstairs." She has interacted with us directly before, while the previous author has not. She's just now accepting us entirely, expanding her worldview to include us, consciously. That's big; ALL faceless voices MUST first feel and admit the existence of headspace, in order to gain faces and names, and in time, colors. Most people like that are Socials, though, who almost always come in as Brown at first due to strong links to the body's past (Brown deals with physicality), and the problem is that most Socials exist separate from headspace on purpose, due to the extreme danger a connectedness would have posed in the past: inner matters and outer matters did not blend for quite some time. We tried, sure, but it didn't work well or often. Even the few spotty memories we have from Spinny/Cannon's days in 2008 or so are sandwiched between huge gaps, big empty memory packs that the Socials dealt with and never passed onto us because they were cut off from us by their nature. They were "alters" too, but they weren't "headvoices." We're now realizing that there IS a difference. Therapy is teaching us stuff, making us ask questions and stop taking so much of ourselves for granted. "Downstairs" is still tied to us, via the body we reside in, and that's a relatively "new" concept in its entirety, one which we are still unfortunately struggling with on a daily basis.
Anyway what I'm trying to say is... a lot's been happening? Even if it's just small things, they're adding up. Which is surprising when we stop and look at it... it's all background work mostly, things significant and vital but small enough to be overlooked at first? We shouldn't be doing that either, but to be blunt, we're still recovering from the smothering apathy-doubt of 2014 and re-embracing headspace into our daily life is taking time, little steps forward. At least we're walking.
It hurts to type. I apologize. Our workspace is highly problematic right now and typing for extended periods of time is painful. Suffice to say, our desk/ laptop/ chair don't line up with each other, so. But we'll manage, we'll figure something out.
Last night I read the entirety of Paranatural again because I desperately needed a laugh, and because I needed to get a better grip on the concepts/ history/ etc. in it, with how serious the plot is becoming. I love that comic though; I will promote it every chance I get, haha.
I'm on the last Young Wizards book, at long last. I've had people compare me to one of the characters in this book before (he's autistic apparently) and I've just gotten to his introduction; so far the descriptions are thought-provokingly accurate. I'll keep you posted on that too; the concepts in this book series have strongly inspired me and I'll likely try to write an entry about it when I'm done.
...I never did write an entry for His Dark Materials, did I. I guess that felt too impossible, with how profoundly it affected me. I know I've written about those affectations, how they put deep roots into our psyche-- the daemons, the fruit, the gates-- but there was nothing solid and structured. Nevertheless I think I have notes on this computer. If not I'll just check the book out again, in the future. Right now I'm a little overwhelmed with data, there's too much reading, all the words are making this brain foggy.
Similarly, I didn't do much on Wednesday/Thursday last week, because someone spent two solid nights watching standup poetry on Youtube and we got terrible "style lag" from it. That's our superpower-slash-curse: if we become powerfully absorbed in some art form, some media creation, et cetera-- like the verbal structure of spoken poetry, the dialogue and art style of a comic, a musician's personal flair-- it will stick. For hours or more afterwards, we will be able to emulate that, but we can't control it. It runs amok, really. Last night I had to keep apologizing to headspace because everything looked like it was drawn by Zack Morrison. Last week, we couldn't even think without it turning into a stage delivery. Sure, we were able to write some really cool poetry as a result (it's in the works, I'll let you know when it's done), but the flipside was that I couldn't work in my own style, let alone think, as I said. So trying to recover from that kept us offline for the weekend, entirely so.
(Nevertheless there are a few poems I need to share with you guys, remind me to do so.)
Even worse, we've been trying to talk to people online, just randomly, trying to find local artists and musicians and the like in the hope of finding similar minds. It's... well, it's exhausting. It's one thing to find folks and send a line or two, "hey I heard you're into this creative thing too," et cetera, but remember we don't usually talk to people. No IMs, no steady stream of small messages, things like that. At first someone thought it was a "character flaw" I guess and decided we "should be talking to EVERYONE," and then when we actually started getting things in the inbox the reaction was... well, "dread" is the only word that works. Yeah, some of these people are really cool, and it's interesting to answer some questions, but for heaven's sakes conversation is hell. We're currently considering just abandoning all the talk, pulling a "French leave" and disappearing unannounced, completely. It's draining our batteries dead, honestly maybe this is something "wrong with us" but this attempt, one of many similarly failed attempts of the exact same sort, regardless of genuine effort... this has just proven that we just can't socialize. Is that bad? Does that make us a freak? What if we function better alone? What if we still want friendships, just those that don't force us to constantly chatter and message people? And I'm not talking about the one in our LJ inbox, that's perfect, that's the point I want to make here... that works. It works perfectly. We're just crushed by guilt for not being "normal" sometimes, which is frustrating.
We've been filling out a lot of job applications too, which is almost as draining as talking to people directly. There aren't many jobs in this area-- it's a small town, kind of in the boondocks; most of this area is trucking and factories. We've tried factory work, and the few bits of data we have from it are making us hesitang to try again. Fast-paced production, no room for mistakes or confusion caused by our sensory input problems... lots of noise, no light. It's not a healthy environment for us and honestly we can't function well like that, we wouldn't be helping anyone. So we try to swallow the weird shame and worthlessness we feel for "making excuses," and put in applications for store work. Cashiers, mostly-- everything else requires experience we don't have. We could handle stock work, we think, but can't find any local openings-- and location is key, as we don't have reliable transportation. Nevertheless we need money. We thank God every day that our grandparents are still living, and helping support us, because our "mother" has said flat-out multiple times that she would not do the same. Let's leave it at that. Bottom line though is that it's still hard to live on $70 a month for groceries when you're struggling with eating disorders. Lord knows we're trying, but it's not an overnight fix. Is it? Should it be? Is it even a matter of "iron willpower" at all? We're so used to saying "we only have problems because we weren't strong enough," that we get confused when someone tells us "grief is a normal process" or"anger is a normal reaction" or "what they didn't wasn't your fault" or "you need time to heal."
That's one bit in A Wizard Alone that stood out so far, actually. "...Some autistic people have trouble conceiving of anything existing outside the workings of their own minds. The concept of 'the other' seems to take a long time forming. That's part of why so many of them can't make or keep eye contact with other people..." I read that and just thought, "geez that's applicable." Especially that first bit, with reality-- that's been a constant our entire life, and we didn't realize it was unusual until we started reading stuff like this. I don't know if eye contact plays into it though? I've never really thought about that, maybe I should. We had to at our last therapy session, actually-- she started laughing during a monologue, I asked why, she said we were like a cat with a laser pointer. She pointed out that when she talks, and moves her hands, we watch her hands like a hawk. Our eyes follow every movement. I laughed at that, a little surprised, and then I remember that we instinctively stuttered out "hands are easier to understand than faces." That gave me pause, as I'd never had to "defend" that tendency before, and hearing that immediate response was intruguing. So there's that. Also though, looking at a face while listening is terribly overwhelming. There's too much stress. Not only is the attention deafening, it's also demanding-- I can either listen and understand your speech, or try to do all the little "social actions" that making eye contact usually accompanies. If someone's looking at me, they're usually expecting me to conform to a certain standard of "correct behavior" and I then have to guess what it is every millisecond. It's exhausting. Long story short, if I don't look at you, I can be an individual, I can listen and learn, I don't have to talk or smile or move a certain way. When I have to look at you, that all goes out the window. The only time I will comfortably look at someone in the eyes is, ironically, when I'm staring on my own agenda. If I don't have to listen to anything, but I think you have nice eyes, I will stare at them. But then I get confused and stressed when people start talking, or stare back, etc. You know what, I guess that is proof of the whole "no sense of otherness" thing! Because I expect them to just let me stare, that they're just some observable being that knows I'm just looking and will act accordingly. It's kind of upsetting when people react in unpredictable ways, then I don't understand what's happening and that's scary sometimes. It's when dissociation happens the most; socials or numbs will come in and basically just try to escape/end that situation as quickly and safely as possible.
I can't turn that off. I've tried, I've tried so hard to erase that sort of behavior from my psyche so I won't be a "freak" anymore, but I can't. What do we do, then? If we're doomed to be a freak, and we don't mind, but everyone else seems to... I don't know.
I'm just going to finish this book first and see if it helps more. All the other 5 books did in their own way, this one will too, I know it.
I am profoundly tired. I've been standing for about 5 solid hours, we rarely sit down anyway. But it wears you out.
At least we're slowly getting back into exercise. Just please, please don't ask about the yoga. That's such a messy topic, I don't even know where to start, or if we should talk about it.
Yes, it's cool if you look at it like a maintenance thing, a logical thing. Move the body a certain way, and you cause muscles and organs to move in ways that are beneficial, etc. It's like a science that way. But when we get these books, there's so much talk, so much language that feels too much like the passive-aggressive orders of our childhood for comfort. Which is upsetting, because we want to do these exercises, but that kind of wording elicits a lot of "empowering rebellion" actions from young faceless alters. Angry kids who want a say in their own life for once, and who are now bitterly heartbroken because you demanded they do something they wanted to do on their own. Now, if they do it, you'll patronize and/or control them even more. It's uncomfortable and really I'm happier just doing intuitive stretches and things. This body knows how it wants to move; problem is I often can't figure out how to get it to move a certain way. Ironically the yoga books don't help much. Too many of the poses are currently impossible for us, which tends to cause a lot of existentially spiritual terror, the old kind, the "if I can't do this does that mean I'm flawed? will I be damned for not being able to do your damned stretches??" Basically, if yoga really is this "perfect exercise" that promotes spiritual growth and miraculous healing and the like-- something we can grasp through the "scientific" perspective, sure"-- but we can't do a lot of the exercises, does that make us some sort of demon? Does our reticence mean we're evil, and giving in to that evil out of laziness?
Let me tell you, we tried. We ended up sobbing on the living room rug for an hour from how helpless and scared we felt. First, we still can't kneel on our left foot, it won't bend that way. Second, our hips have clunked and popped since elementary school, and although we'd love to fix that, it makes a LOT of the yoga poses impossible because our legs will literally jam. Third, our hypotension makes it terrifically painful to lay on our back in most situations, or to stay upside-down for long in any position. The intense skull pressure is unbearable and it causes lingering pain. We can't get around that either, at least not yet. And that's the kicker-- yoga effectively promises that if you do it, all those problems will melt away. And God I HOPE so, but we're going to have to find a way around half the poses you're giving us first. Oh yes, and fourth-- there are a lot of poses that we cannot do simply because the amount of internal screaming they elicit is awful. That in turn drags up huge amounts of self-loathing and inadequacy, "if we're afraid of these poses it means we're broken and wrong and evil," etc. etc., all harmful language but it's because we're afraid it's true.
There hasn't felt like there's much "wiggle room" for the mentally ill in modern spiritual communities. We've reached out but don't get any real support. When we do, it's typically of the sort we've admittedly shouted about here in the past-- the sort that effectively hand-waves away the existence of negative things, the too-bright sort. What hurts is that we know they're good people, we feel that, we know the advice is given with the best intentions... but it's not always the best advice for us. That is a very, very difficult thing for us to accept sometimes... the fact that we have our own needs and can assert them. We're used to other people telling us what we need, or don't need, and why. But that's all just orders. It's not what we feel. And that's valid. We're learning, it's a truth that takes time to step into.
This is getting so tangled. That's what happens with stream-of-consciousness typing, and people jumping all over the page to write. You're never sure who wrote what, or when, or in what order. It gets foggy.
There were lemons on sale for 75 CENTS A BAG the other day, at the store. I bought six bags. I already had two at home. Absolutely worth it. (I will drink them all, just watch me.)
Anyway we used three of those lemons to make a lemon meringue pie with the grandmother this morning. The filling has the coolest texture ever but we can't eat it because of eggs and butter and sugar. But it's pretty.
It's been snowing lately and that's pretty too, which broke my heart because today I was staring out the window at the trees against the white, and I thought, "winter is almost over. My favorite season, and where have I been to see it?" We've been so disoriented this winter, what with the surgeries and the personal stress. It's hard to remember anything, and there's sick sad vibes clinging to much of it. It's hilarious though... the bit of time in October or so, those few weeks when we played Dishonored while the leaves were falling outside? We don't remember anything but the game, and walking outside with the wind and the leaves and this stuck in our head. It's all so positive, so gorgeously vivid, that game put down some beautiful roots and I am so so so glad for it. It painted the autumn beautiful this year, the first autumn I can remember, ever... I'm so happy we had that light, that massive light, between the missing summer and the confused winter.
Now it's March and I don't know where the past 2 months went but I'm trying. It's Lent and we're trying, ironically now we're trying too hard and messing up. Every Lent we tend to take on 5, 6 tasks for self-improvement but then we take on a "no mistakes allowed" mindset and if we aren't instantly perfect on Ash Wednesday we feel like a moral failure. It's a very unhealthy habit but it's an old one. Again, time, and recognition.
At least there is another big light on the horizon. Somehow, Saint Patrick's Day has a lot of positivity tied to it from childhood, although we have no memories of it at all. Part of it is all the GREEN, it's gorgeous. And part of it is, oddly, the fact that the word "Irish" is one of our favorite words sensory-wise, not only are the consonants very soothing but the word itself is synaesthetically green! So that's super nice.
But that's not even the best of it. EASTER IS COMING. Every year Easter is incredible, both dark and light, I can't wait. I cannot put into words the amount of sheer magic tied to Easter for me personally... actually that whole period from Palm Sunday on. It's deeply introspective, rich with wonder and woe alike, colored with violets and daffodils and lilies as well as with thorns and blood and broken wood. The church we go to, it's so beautiful, every Holy Week the light comes in through the windows and paints the place gold... God it's gorgeous. I should take pictures this year.
And oddly, oddly. I don't know why, and I don't know when, but there is one memory from childhood we have about Easter that just paints everything. We were young, it was spring, it was drizzling outside, the sky was grey but it was so bright and everything smelled like spring... the bluet flowers were coming up in the yard, the muscari were blooming on the hills, the lilies were everywhere in the church. God just the smell of the flowers, with the light rain and the high silver skies and that light, green-smelling wind... in my backyard, on the road, wearing some sort of little dress and throwing my arms up to the air and breathing it all in... it felt like the beginning of a book. The world was bursting with about-to-be, with the promise of new adventure, with imagination and wonder and joy. That feeling, THAT feeling, that IS Dream World to me.
...And you know what? I first started writing the original "book" form of it on March 5th 2000, right before Lent began. I'm not surprised.
Geez, I... even thinking about that, it makes me so happy. I needed that. I felt very out-of-sync today and the daily grind has been beating me down lately, so suddenly tapping into that pastel-bright bliss of childhood was exactly what my heart needed.
There was a light-river in the living room the other day, the kind Maitru used to chase when I was a kid, and she and the other Guardians had semi-anchor plushies. So much joy there. But I ran right up to the little river and for a second time hadn't changed, for a second everything was right in the world and I could do anything, everything was limitless. Feeling that so genuinely, so fast... inside, I'm still reeling a little, but with incredible boundless excitement. It's still there. ALL of it, it's still there, I can tap into it, it's not broken or gone or tainted! At all! I should have guessed, at Christmas, that one evening Jewel just watched the tree for an hour, all red and gold, and got right back into the story flow... nothing was lost. God I was so scared the hackers had touched it, had ruined it somehow. They tried, we all know they tried. But they failed, spectacularly. Nothing was broken. I don't know how to put into words just how happy I am at that. It's like a sunrise in my chest, like a golden sunrise.
Oh, I should mention. I'm painting shirts again, finally! I have limited paint colors to work with but hey, it's making me draw. I have 3 shirt designs sketched out so far, but at least 6 more to go... once they're all drawn onto the fabric, I'll spend a few days mixing up the paints and actually doing the shirts, so they can all dry together. I'm staying with minimal color palettes to make that easier, picking easy people to color too. Yes I'm doing a bunch of Leagueworld shirts, it's making me so happy. I'll show you them when I'm done!
It's weird, but nice. Lately my optimism and sparkle-eyed outlook has been deepening to twilight hues around the edges. Technically it's catching shadows, but the word I keep wanting to use is that it's softening. It's mellowing out. Feels a little ironic, to say that about a decrease in the brightness level, but look at a kaleidoscope. You need a great deal of dark for those to work, as well as a great deal of light. I like that analogy.
This is me though, this is my native level, this balance. It's me, just like the ones I love, a paradox just like our earliest ones called themselves. It never changed, really. I remember one of us, riding a bus home from New York with their head tired against the cold glass, Anna Molly playing over their headphones as they watched streetlights and trees swift away in the dark. It's a beloved memory, however sad its edges may be, because of the wonder that surrounded it, that was held within it nonetheless. And so that person, too, was a pardox, was an anomaly. They couldn't see it then, but they were two opposites at once, as they wished to be... two seemingly contradictory things, coexisting. That's life, at its heart, and that's us, too.
I had the physical bed to myself for 3 days this week, so of course I took that as an opportunity to let the late-night overlays go full force (kind of helped by the fact that we were up working until 2AM all three of those days). Long story short, what that means is that this is the first time since SLC that I've literally fallen asleep and woken up beside Chaos, and been tangibly aware of it downstairs. Which was really, really lovely.
God I missed him. I've missed everything about and around him.
I have to say though, I am ridiculously happy that THIS is a thing that is happening. Chaos has wholeheartedly agreed to switch his anchor plush when I get one, because his old one is like 6 years old now and it's loveworn to death. I'm just laughing because I keep thinking of this dream and I keep having to remind myself that I will probably not wake up and find such a new plush in my mailbox already. But I can dream, pun intended.
(still, "totally out of left field" my tail; with all the love I've sent his way over the years this sort of thing was inevitable dude)
Oh, and please watch this video, I don't know how I found it but I could not stop smiling while watching it. It's like if Sonic Inversion had actually been made into a game, thats what it reminded me of. Chaos being able to run, going Super (which is GORGEOUS; also I had to pause it and stare for a minute there to make sure that wasn't the Ruby), driving a freaking car, the whole shebang. And then there's the fact that he does Sonic's victory dance at the end and somehow it still works and geez, it's like 2005, like the Outspacer days all over again. Sorry for slipping back into that style of speaking but that's what it feels like, that boundless joyful freedom of those early days, that even he tapped into entirely. I have a lot to say about that but not tonight, it's too late in the evening.
One last thing, this is extremely important and I keep forgetting to say it.
Glissando-- one of our past cores, she was with Cannon for a while and wrote most of our music from 2009-- is still alive. She came through the other day shockingly clear, and WITH a color (which was probably why). It's a violet hue. Something close to this, really. For a musician, that struck me as unusual. Violets are usually protectors of some sort. But then it hit me; she is; she protects that sort of sheer musical creativity, something no one else seems to be able to reach or corrupt for that matter. So I'm very glad she's still alive. I'll have to get her to finish the LG*Girls OST soon.
Also, another E.D. voice has "manifested." I have to thank Cel for that. Last week we were all just experimenting with "who can actually eat non-green foods without being shoved out by the Destroyer or one of the abusive socials" and basically no one could; Emmett can only eat green and Fig seems to have demanifested. But then Cel stepped in and SHE could?? Which shocked us, until we remember she had bloodline ties so she predated the eating disorder severity to an extent. Nevertheless it wasn't her job, so although she could do it, it was still "weird" for her and she didn't want to mess up her anchor or anything. So that's how it was for a week or so, with us trying to get a grip on what faceless people were on that level... and then on Tuesday, Xenophon showed up ghosting thinking I was in the body, but I can't eat so it was someone else. Upset, she interrogated them about that (as usual) and demanded they tell her who they were, and what they were doing, and why. She got an answer.
Their name is Leena. They are a LIME voice (something like this?), faceless yet, feeling semi-humanoid, nongendered with a female pronoun bias. Once we got the name we were able to tune into a vibe, so now we can identify her when she's out. But yes, she is the missing link we were trying to find-- the Downstairs voice who eats, and semi-destroys, without being angry or crushed with shame or guilt. The Destroyer doesn't eat, or taste things, or enjoy the process at all; she just destroys stuff. Leena seems tied to the obsessive texture-mangling thing that can lead to destruction if taken too far, but which nevertheless makes a lot of edibles a lot easier/safer eat than they would be otherwise. It's complicated and I apologize, but this is extremely relieving news. We now have TWO safe eaters (Leena and Emmett). That is big. So we're happy about this. We'll have to see if we can get her upstairs, to find her face; then she can work with Spice and Emmett in person. If not (we don't know if going upstairs would mess up her function?) then hey, we're glad she exists nevertheless.
...But that's something about Xenophon that amazes me, and everyone else really. She seems to be able to talk to ANYONE, on ANY level of this body-system, Upstairs or Downstairs and everything in-between. That's unprecedented. Even if they're faceless and/or nameless and/or abusive, as long as they are able to detect someone ghosting, she can talk to them-- even when Genesis can't. She has a different sort of aura, something less focused, something more all-inclusive.
...It's making me wonder about the whole "bridge the gap" thing again. Maybe it wasn't "my" job. Maybe it's hers. She never saw a gap in the first place.
...It is snowing beautifully outside right now. I just hope that doesn't affect our therapy appointment tomorrow, we need that.
I wish I had a temperature-insulated bubble or something (hey Infi) so I could go outside and just run around in this weather, at this hour. It's gorgeous. Snow and streetlights are also one of Cannon's (?) few positive archived memories, back from the IJ days. They're just always a sign of peace, of a sort of transcendence to the environment, something deeply more than our daily troubles... nighttime is like that always, but add in the ethereal snow, the glow of the roads, and you have something so heavenly and alien it lifts your mind right out of the rush.
I think I'm going to go stare at it a bit. I'm very very tired and it's 12:24 AGAIN (that number is a reminder for creative effort to me at least, and I keep seeing it so yes I will take the hint).
I hope this entry is coherent. I'm starting to get the icy-lungs feeling which means sleep is mandatory right now, or else.
I wish you all well.
Tags:
==>
who was tied to
before the solid NIER-induced gender shift in 2010.
