Poetry and Birds
Last night, my marshmallow and I spent a few hours watching Tuca and Bertie together, and started playing a bit of Doki Doki Literature Club, which I've played before. Fae knows about the horror elements but doesn't know all the plot details, so it should be a fun ride. We laughed at the show and bounced along with the music, and took turns narrating the visual novel and picking words for the poems. It was a fun, cute time.
We also talked a bit about the nature of our relationship, which from fairly early on I suggested describing as a queerplatonic relationship. I have complicated thoughts and feelings around relationships that are hard for me to disentangle, and I don't really want to define my relationships in terms of a pre-existing script. And even that label feels like it's pinning things down a bit more than I'd like. But calling each other marshmallows, which we've just started doing, feels good. I'm so glad to have you.
I've just recovered from a migraine, lasted about a week. I'm still sleeping a lot. I think I was sleeping a lot even before that. Could be my mental health issues, could be the medication I'm taking, who knows. What I do know is, reading and writing are the main ways I relax and recharge, and I've been neglecting them both recently. There's something about writing online that always feels like exposing myself, and I've usually hid myself behind pseudonyms and obscurity to make myself comfortable with what I post. And I'm still doing that to an extent now, but hopefully in a more honest way, combining a couple of usernames I've used in the past.
One thing I've almost never made explicit, even if I've alluded to it occasionally, is that I experience some form of multiplicity. There's not just one singular, unified perspective or sense of self inside my head. I have no plans to explain the details or try and define exactly how it works for me, partly because I'm not on the same page with myself about how exactly to talk about or understand it. It's a private thing, but it does affect my writing and my approach to relationships, and my life in general. And I need to be able to express some aspects of it, in a somewhat public place, just to get it out of my system.
Ultimately, I think, this blog is going to be about wrestling with the conflicting urges to share and conceal things about myself, and one way or another it's probably going to read as oversharing even if I avoid any identifying details. It is what it is.
While watching the show, Fae and I both noted that we relate to Bertie's anxieties and insecurities. And playing ddlc, I was reminded kind of shockingly how much I related to Yuri when I was younger, and even now to an extent. It always feels like I'm not enough, especially since I've been unemployed. A collapse in the illusion of independence was accompanied by a collapse in any sense of self-worth or self-consistency. I thought I knew myself when I was burying so much of myself. Self-misrecognition, self-dislocation. I'm here now but I'm lost, because I wasn't where I thought I was. Nothing makes sense anymore. And then I do something right and everything falls back into place, for a moment at least. Still, it feels like I'm chasing rainbows.
At least I'm not alone.