nose up, fins steady, ready to---
2/2/21 11:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alasanonMaybe swim, maybe fly -- some days I'm not too certain of the difference. Either way, if you fail you sink and then you fall, and what awaits you is probably darkness. There is no support to carry your weight but the things you have brought with you, wings or fins or sails or armor, light or heavy.
--
I've been keeping this space for, now, slightly less than half my life, in a semi-constant stream of this's and that's and sometimes fiction and sometimes fact and sometimes both or neither. I watched Hitchhiker's Guide and ate raw fish and sat a while and stared at a cat, who stared back at me in that extremely kitty-like way that they do.
--
I don't know what I want to do anymore. In some ways, most ways, all the ways that matter, I never really did. My dreams have always been brittle, shallow, easily set aside, and with the world being what it is, it feels easy to curl tighter, dream quieter, even though there has never been a time with fewer external requirements on my state of being.
And I am not sorry for it.
It's hard to explain how it feels, how it felt -- like a lie but not quite a lie, a mask, kept on for ages, that said to the outside world, yes, I am a part of you. I can function in your walls, within your rules. I can smile and count change and be in crowds. I can go anywhere and be whatever is required, just ask.
Here in this place of silence, hiding in my shell for almost a year, going out for the necessities of eating, drinking, and the larger shift of moving homes (hermit crab-like, I have moulted myself into a bigger shell), I feel both less and more. Less willing to put on that mask and freer behind the physical necessity of wearing one. With no one to see, I wear the same clothes over and over and wash them once a week. With no one to comment on it, I tie my hair up and ignore it. I dye it sometimes, but only when I want to see it shine purple in the diffuse light, instead of to prevent anyone from noticing how gray it has become. When I go out I wear a hat anyway.
But I do feel a bit abstracted, a little worn around the edges, just a touch ghostly. Perhaps if I stay in this place, I will be forgotten by the world at large, all my social credit completely gone, but happier for it.
--
I've been keeping this space for, now, slightly less than half my life, in a semi-constant stream of this's and that's and sometimes fiction and sometimes fact and sometimes both or neither. I watched Hitchhiker's Guide and ate raw fish and sat a while and stared at a cat, who stared back at me in that extremely kitty-like way that they do.
--
I don't know what I want to do anymore. In some ways, most ways, all the ways that matter, I never really did. My dreams have always been brittle, shallow, easily set aside, and with the world being what it is, it feels easy to curl tighter, dream quieter, even though there has never been a time with fewer external requirements on my state of being.
And I am not sorry for it.
It's hard to explain how it feels, how it felt -- like a lie but not quite a lie, a mask, kept on for ages, that said to the outside world, yes, I am a part of you. I can function in your walls, within your rules. I can smile and count change and be in crowds. I can go anywhere and be whatever is required, just ask.
Here in this place of silence, hiding in my shell for almost a year, going out for the necessities of eating, drinking, and the larger shift of moving homes (hermit crab-like, I have moulted myself into a bigger shell), I feel both less and more. Less willing to put on that mask and freer behind the physical necessity of wearing one. With no one to see, I wear the same clothes over and over and wash them once a week. With no one to comment on it, I tie my hair up and ignore it. I dye it sometimes, but only when I want to see it shine purple in the diffuse light, instead of to prevent anyone from noticing how gray it has become. When I go out I wear a hat anyway.
But I do feel a bit abstracted, a little worn around the edges, just a touch ghostly. Perhaps if I stay in this place, I will be forgotten by the world at large, all my social credit completely gone, but happier for it.
