Latest Posts by introspective-in-somnia - Page 6
Since I've used this blog to talk about a lot of mental health aspects, heavily regarding my sense of self and identity, I'm thinking of talking about other aspects of my recovery and health here as well. Talking about the body the self must inhabit, a body which has long been afflicted with pain that is being resolved.
I self-tested for POTS, and with a 63 bpm difference, I more than qualify; I still would like to see it formally charted by a physician however, not just for the purposes of insurance, but for the personal validation of confirming suspicions held over a number of years. I am currently being investigated for Ehler-Danlos Syndrome, of which I appear to meet roughly 90% of the criteria for. I have been recommended a clinic to speak with, but I currently cannot afford the sessions; I will likely be diagnosed with either Hypermobile EDS, or Hypermobility Spectrum Disorder, which will also allow a lot of pieces to come together for me. Once I receive a diagnosis from the clinic, I will return to my primary care physician to seek a diagnosis for my digestive issues. My therapist (who had initially mentioned EDS and POTS to me, before my PC also strongly suggested them) brought up the idea of gastroparesis, something which I feel inclined to lean towards once I spent a day consuming nothing but liquid and, for the first time in a while, had no stomach issues. Receiving a diagnosis from this clinic will help pave the way for me to be examined for other conditions that tend to be comorbid.
I do have an appointment for two EMG tests next month, regarding the way my limbs tend to go numb, as well as a spinal MRI I have yet to schedule.
It feels overwhelming to be told that my conditions will likely be something I will carry with my for the rest of my life, but having answers is already giving me some solace. Being close to answers, at any rate.
@classicaldreams
𝓜.
I've been considering making two actually, I have one already that I periodically update, but I'm considering arranging some music for another that doesn't fling me so violently into such a headspace. The songs won't be as "fitting" for my emotions, but I'd like some I can hear that feel more comforting than validating (though having that as the main aspect is still the most important part).
Do people still make and post kin playlists, is that still something people do
I've settled, I will actually be using that for a talk tag
Been thinking about my tag system and am likely going to use some emojis! I'll move a few more posts over here before I solidify it, but I do have a plan!
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.
Reminiscing about my trip to Versailles. Feels like a lifetime ago. 
IG: iridessence
Almost funny in a sense that all my chronic illnesses are showing symptoms that look similar to butterfly traits.
I have POTS, for sure, I self-tested with my blood pressure cuff and laying down, I had a heart rate of 71 bpm, while standing brought it up to 134. That's a 63 bpm difference, when only 30 is necessary for a diagnosis. I still need it officially documented so I can request accommodations and whatnot, but you know what else is a sign of POTS? Inability to regulate body temperature. I'm often cold and need to either layer clothing or sit in sunlight to help warm myself up.
Notably, a trait seen in insects.
POTS symptoms, specifically the heart ones, are eased with the addition of lots of water and extra salt into your diet. I would consider that to be nothing short of a miracle cure ("cure" loosely used).
Interestingly, butterflies need to supplement salt in their diets due to nectar not providing it, leading to behavior called "puddling", because they're usually seen feeding from mud puddles, though tears and blood and other sources also provide the necessary sodium.
Lately, I've also been noticing a flare up in my stomach issues; I'm thought to potentially have gastroparesis, with my main issues being that I have stomachaches after nearly every meal, as well as losing my appetite early into meals. I'll be picking up some soups and broths tomorrow to try and get myself to eat something, going for an almost entirely liquid diet.
Do you know what else famously has a liquid diet?
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.
It's been a bit since I've last spoken here, and I have a lot of things I want to say.
After some very careful consideration, I think I can safely say that my feelings regarding kinning were actually the manifestation of myself coping with a dissociative condition I otherwise didn't know how to describe. This was the closest approximation I could come up with that made sense to me, and as time went on and I was afforded more chances to look at my feelings and perceptions, I do know for certain that there is something dissociative happening to me. Nothing as far as osdd I would say, but definitely along that vein.
I carry him with me. When I'm upset, I hold his grief, and when I'm overjoyed, I hold his caution. Every new situation has a protective measure put over it in the form of a dissociative fit. However, as I've mentioned previously, I don't interpret any of this in a negative light. It simply is what it is, and it is something that developed to help me cope. Of course I was afraid in the beginning - I didn't know what I was dealing with or what triggered my episodes, so I very naturally began to feel afraid when I could feel myself begin to drift. As time has gone on, I have made peace with this aspect of myself and wish to work with it.
This experience has been and continues to be deeply important to me, and I feel that part of my interpretation of it is almost spiritual in a sense. I grasped a lot of my identity through him, saw a lot of my trauma and myself in him and he continues to serve as a lens I occasionally interact with the world through. I have chosen to use his name alongside my own, feeling a sense of recognition and actual, genuine joy upon hearing it. Only a small handful of people know I use this name, and smaller few still know about my dissociation. While the psychological pieces don't necessarily have to come to light, I would like to be afforded the chance to be seen in the world as I am.
I am planning to tell two friends of mine about my name. I trust one of them to take it well, but I fear a bit of reaction from the other. She has a concept of "cringe" and has implied to me a few times prior that my behavior felt embarrassing in a secondhand way. The behaviors in question were either deeply ingrained, as from how I grew up, or entirely innate, as with my neurodivergence. I fear another layer being added to this, especially since we live together, but I don't want myself to be ruled over by my fear of perception. I want to be able to live authentically and for myself, regardless of what may be perceived of me. I already exist as someone who is queer, traumatized, disabled; some of my actions are already perceived differently because of these immutable factors. I don't want to feel afraid anymore. I am preparing for potential questions or pokes, but think I truly may not have much to fear.
My name is Shai, and I don't want to be afraid to say it.
You know, I don't think I'm afraid anymore, I don't want to fight anymore, and I've come to see how fundamental this is to me. It isn't something I chose, so fighting performs a disservice to it.
I don't think I'm afraid anymore.
I think I love you.
I love you.
La Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, France - 2010
Do people still make and post kin playlists, is that still something people do
A small edit:
🦋 Musings 🦋 -> for the borderline poetic, things that express mood more than thoughts
Still considering what I'd like for a talk tag
Been thinking about my tag system and am likely going to use some emojis! I'll move a few more posts over here before I solidify it, but I do have a plan!
Was thinking a bit on main this morning about how my kin identity can be used as a litmus test regarding whether or not I feel like someone can fully respect me.
On a surface level, it's almost silly, oh it's this guy? The butterfly that cried glitter and screamed all the time, who was awful and mean and nasty towards the end? Well, yes. That is indeed the surface level of this, I saw everything he did that make people cringe, and yet there was still that element of resonance. Once I feel like the more jokey part of this is accepted, that's when I feel I can pull the curtains back and begin to show some of the psychological horror that underlies this.
To show what I've discussed in therapy, to talk about how a large theme of my connection is the idea of servitude and how I was forced into that position for my family, how I wasn't able to form an identity outside of this predetermined role and how I was to perform it to the best of my ability, and how any deviation was punished, to the point where I held these standards to myself and would pull myself apart when I couldn't meet them. To show how deep this truly runs carries a certain type of despair, not necessarily for myself, but to really show someone else what this means to me and how it is such a vital part of myself.
It's for sure a certain type of intimacy, it puts me in a vulnerable position on every front; on the surface I could be made fun of, in which case I laugh along and maybe even retract a statement or two, and on a deeper level it blows my trauma wide open and exposes a lot of the most damaging things I experienced. It's an odd place to be, but I'm not upset by it. People who are aware of it don't necessarily bring it up unless I talk about it, which in and of itself is a rare occasion. That stands in comparison with actually seeing myself be called Shai, something which only one person has done, and it has delighted me to no end.
I feel that the odder aspects of myself need to be things that will be met with respect. As someone who grew up trans, queer, and neurodivergent, I've been seeking that kind of respect for quite some time. When it does come, it's almost always from those who share a trait with me. I enjoy the bonding, and of course enjoy the respect, but I just wish it was something more easily seen; to just grant someone in the margins respect and decency.
Alright so I've given it some thought, and so far:
🦋 Musings 🦋-> talk tag
❤️ -> lovecore/heart imagery, as well as posts that express a certain love drunkness; roses and other pink things
👑 -> architecture for the most part, though there might be a few posts that put me into a certain mindset; I can't totally describe it but it's very clear if you look
Been thinking about my tag system and am likely going to use some emojis! I'll move a few more posts over here before I solidify it, but I do have a plan!
@classicaldreams
𝓜.
Reggia di Venaria, Italy, photo by Maria Elena Pini
I have so many images of architecture and interior design saved to put here....
Been thinking about my tag system and am likely going to use some emojis! I'll move a few more posts over here before I solidify it, but I do have a plan!
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.
"You're everything! You're rose petals and vanilla and soft candles and clouds! What a joy to know you! To have been afforded a chance to know you and to have taken it! To indulge and be indulged! How joyous indeed!"
It's almost funny, sometimes when I look in the mirror, I feel like I'm surprised by who I see
I always get such a specific set of feelings when it comes to cooking, like YES I am actively choosing to perform this task for other people and feel nothing but the utmost, absolute when it comes out well; as far as service is concerned, cooking is something I hold very near and dear to myself