Very Exciting To Have What I've Termed A "clinically Significant Bug Moment" And Notice That My Gender

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.

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.

**SPOILERS FOR THE BARBIE MOVIE**

I saw the barbie movie yesterday and found almost every feeling I have regarding humanity to be challenged. I struggle greatly with reconciling with my own humanity, especially with the isolation I feel from it due to some personal characteristics, as well as due to a lot of negative experiences growing up, ranging from abusive family to a host of adults who did nothing to help me as I moved through that exact abuse, as I moved through chronic health issues, through my undiagnosed autism, consistently struggling to fit in amongst those who seemed to reject me consistently. All of those feelings became very neatly tied together with my kintype, a nonhuman misanthrope.

This movie ran completely counter to my own held beliefs.

To see the negatives depicted, in barbie experiencing misogyny for the first time, in the discussions of how hard it is to be a woman, balanced in barbie's choice to be human, the imagery of her struggling to do things as simple as drink and her isolation from humanity itself, juxtaposed next to her finding a sense of beauty in it all, in her ultimately choosing to be human because all of the joy and wonders and experience is worth the pain and the risks. That ultimately, the love of the experience is worth it.

It's something I never imagined to see depicted on screen, and it's something that made me actively sob when I got home. The idea of this experience being worth it instead of being something akin to a punishment never crossed my mind, and I'm being left with a lot to consider. It feels almost overwhelming, I simply don't know where to start..

I've been thinking about gender this morning and realize that pouf played a decent role in me figuring out exactly where I am in terms of how I feel about masculinity.

As a trans man, I don't really often see men who look like me; I especially don't see men like me because I'm not planning on medical transition. Of course, I'm not disparaging those who seek it out - that's wonderful! I'm so glad that there are options for those who have debilitating dysphoria, but I personally only suffer from it on a social level. I rarely feel it otherwise, and this is the choice I feel most comfortable with. However, this comes at the cost of rarely ever seeing men like myself; practically every trans man I see is either post-transition, or is planning to do so.

And I can now say that this is what struck me so much about this character, that he had so many stereotypically feminine traits, but was still clearly recognized as a man. That we had similar body types, similar mannerisms and means of expression. It was around then that I began to play with masculine pronouns and realized how much I enjoyed them; my most comfortable and conforming outfits ended up being semi-formal wear. I can push androgyny if I really try, but the only way to be consistently read as masculine would be to cut my hair, which I refuse to do at this point. I'd had nearly buzzed hair at one point, but find I like my shoulder length hair much better.

I'm actutely aware of how the butterfly is coded as a "feminine" insect, and that was also something that initially drew me to him. I'd never seen butterflies associated with masculinity, and to this day I haven't seen anything quite like him. He really pushed me farther along in my transition than I think I would've achieved otherwise.

I crossed paths with a fe.itan! The internet is truly a magical place

I'm discussing this on my main blog as well but having a music special interest is so. Oh it is so perfect for us, with a healthy dose of classical and orchestral of course ✨️

Yes, actually, that does feel like the best description of my alterhumanity experiences, not of one soul through two lifetimes, but two souls in one lifetime

Am I stressing myself into splitting?

Alterhuman ID cards that were posted at othercon! Idk who originally made them, if someone does know let me know! @thetrashduck

🦋

Hello all. You may call me Shai; I am 25, transmasc, and aromantic and asexual.

While this blog was initially dedicated to my experience as fictionkin, and still is at the very core, this blog is a space for discussions of general spirituality and self care, as well as occasional insect imagery. I may feature my own art as well. Some other information that may be useful:

✨️ My experience of kin is tied with my experience of my kintype as a dissociative fragment. While it isn't something that I discuss frequently as my mental health has improved immensely and he is quiet for the most part as a result, he does still surface time and time again, and I would like a space to openly discuss it.

✨️ Two fictives use this blog - Sha.ia.pouf from Hun.ter x H.unter and someone preferring to remained unidentified for now.

✨️ Chronically ill - I have Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome and have, interestingly enough, used it to connect with my kintype. This condition is genetic and affects me daily and will be a topic of discussion for here as well.

✨️ This is a sideblog - my main blog you will see interactions from is @/au.tistic-sha.iapouf

In spite of the long gaps of silence that may occur here, I am online quite frequently and am always open to discussion or conversation; in spite of the formality, I swear I'm friendly 💖

General tags:

🌟 -> Host speaking

Tags used here by Pouf:

🦋 Musings 🦋 -> Talk tag

🔮 -> Directly related to spirituality

👑 -> Interior architecture for royal buildings

❤️ -> Lovecore imagery

🐜 -> Insect imagery

💭 -> Posts that strike a certain chord with my past, current and distant

Tags used by [XXX]:

⚙️.txt -> Talk tag

Stroke of the pen -> Poetry and philosophy

[Seeking artwork tag]