I Crossed Paths With A Fe.itan! The Internet Is Truly A Magical Place

Why would you bring a man back to life and take away all of his defining features except for his neurotic, debilitating anxiety

self care and masculine + androgynous accessories for shaiapouf from hunter x hunter, preference for blues and purples for @bandage-hearted-butterfly

it is, understandably, difficult to find blue stuff that isnt ocean scented and purple stuff that isnt lavender scented. which is difficult when i dont want to overload a board with just one scent. i had better luck finding things that were a blend of different scents instead of *pure* lavender

1 2 3

4 5 6

7 8 9

Seeing some people seem to focus a bit more on semantics, which is at least a little funny to me; I've always referred to myself with the "kinnie" moniker, but still do very genuinely identify as fictionkin

Reminiscing about my trip to Versailles. Feels like a lifetime ago. 

IG: iridessence

Why is it so much more painful this time? I can barely look myself in the mirror, the disconnect is so great; the short term memory gaps seem to be less often but that's also been a new manifestation. There were definitely times in the past where I'd been jarred by the face I see in the reflection but it's never been quite like this.

on love arriving unannounced

Beginning to really understand the importance of change, transition, and impermanence, funnily enough not embodied in this character, but in the insect he is modeled after.

I had spent a lot of time trying to be everything at once, telling myself that it felt like authenticity, almost compulsively providing information for others to gain as clear a picture as possible of who I am. Upset to even cut my hair - the person seeing it yesterday and the one seeing it tomorrow now have two different images to contend with, and I am left to ask which is the real one.

The real issue began to arise when I realized that I wasn't driving consistency with my names. Legal, primary, and this secondary name I have here. I've used my primary for most places, but have introduced myself to strangers under the secondary. When my doctors call me by my primary name (an accomplishment in and of itself), I did not feel the need to correct them. I realized I may not want Shai as the name on my tag for my new job. I would have considered it if I had gotten work at the library I had applied to (putting that name on the application itself). Usage seeming to differ based on feelings I couldn't quite name.

It feels to me that I'm experiencing a fairly normal case for identity. A person is not the same at work as with friends as with family; I had tried to make all these one and the same. Even my primary on a tag would feel like a victory, but I'm not quite sure if I would even feel comfortable with my secondary.

After a violent division of identity, having been closeted and ill in an increasingly radical and abusive household, I feel I wasn't entirely sure how to reconcile with my newfound freedom and hindsight, and attempted to make every aspect of myself be the most prominent thing about myself. Each name blurred together, individual meaning erased under collectivity. It just isn't something possible. Not for most people, perhaps even for anyone. I'm contending with identity in a way that is standard for most people, but in a way I've never encountered before. My divisions were violent and laced with fear, of being outed as trans, as queer, as mentally ill, as autistic, as physically and chronically ill. Of being anything less than the expectation imposed upon me.

Removing those expectations made me feel lost, left to my own devices to determine who I truly was, and in blending and merging every concept of identity I had, I thought I had found a way to find myself. I still am, and this process has only been in place for a year, a year and a half, of course it wouldn't be finished. But I am discovering more about how my mind works and how I feel about it.

I am still thoroughly convinced this is a normal experience, one of many I'd never had a chance to encounter for myself due to my long abuse history. I would need to talk it out professionally, but I feel confident regarding my assessment, and can see where I would like to take it from here.

Personal moodboard, individual images below the cut:

Strongly thinking about this when I experienced a very strong shift when I was dusting while listening to Beethoven.

"What reminds you of home?" Chores and cleaning, evidently.

I was able to do it! I told my friends and it was taken very well. I was still very nervous and wasn't able to look at them when I spoke, but it was taken with grace and immediately applied. I've been able to tell others as well, and am feeling quite good hearing it from others in my life.

What has surprised me is that it seems to be becoming the name I prefer to hear. It wasn't my intention, and I do still use the name I'd previously gone by, but I'm beginning to like this secondary name a bit more and have been preferring to use it instead. I applied for a job within the past 2 weeks and I used this name in my application; I would love nothing more than to have it on a nametag for regular use, to be recognized under this name.

It's surprising to me how this became such a large part of my life, and how my interactions tangle me a bit more each time I look. I'd even joked about him being cold blooded and unable to regulate body temperature, as well as needing to supplement salt due to his butterfly characteristics, and now I'm currently staring down what is definitely a POTS diagnosis, having both of those traits myself. My acceptance does make me wish to look to see how it interacts with myself, especially in terms of identity and confirmation of such. I don't see it as a bad thing at all, quite the opposite really. I think this is shaping up as something truly quite wonderful through which I may get to fully understand myself a bit better. I never really had a chance to do so before this point in time.

It almost feels as though the two of us became more similar as time went on, though I do swear to myself that I never consciously adopted his behaviors or mannerisms. It was the discovery that his arc mimicked the trauma I went through to an almost absurd degree, it's in the ways he thinks and acts and interacts with the world and others that made me very easily believe that he was neurodivergent because it hit so close to my own personal experiences, it was how I found myself having had the same sort of hobbies - I myself have a violin (though I haven't played recently, and will have to wait out an elbow injury before I can try again) and have always been an avid reader. I explored my own perception of gender through him, seeing him as a very feminine man whose femininity is never made the subject of jokes and is taken seriously, showing me a very rare glimpse of a man who looked just like myself. I felt comfortable in slightly more formal clothing, it felt like it helped to reinforce my feelings regarding my gender, though I can't say for sure whether that was before or after I developed such a strong attachment to him.

I recently got my first tattoo, near my left shoulder, and it's his wings. The artist told me she had actually been watching the series and had just gotten to his debut the night prior, leaving me to wonder whether or not she would think of me at least once as she watched, remembering that I wanted to carry him with me. It's almost completely healed and I'm very pleased with how it's come out, in spite of how dark and blotted it looked when I'd first gotten it. I'd like to get a few more, a few insects and a few awareness ribbons for my various health conditions, but he is present as my first and currently my one and only.

He represents my foray into identity, into coping, into understanding what it is that I want and am, what I want from life and what I desire most to give back. In times when the dissociative feelings kick in strongly, it feels as though there is another person with me, and that the grief I carry belongs to him rather than myself. It distances me from everything I've been carrying, and the feeling of another being present with me when I need it most is a feeling I'm afraid to conceptually lose in recovery, but I feel that I'll still carry him in less fully visible ways. In dress, in name. His, and mine.