Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz) 🌺 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
azurelunatic) wrote2003-11-27 01:17 am
azurelunatic) wrote2003-11-27 01:17 am
Useless?
Went to take out the trash from the little bin that's in my room by my computer, and was suddenly struck with a wave of feeling particularly useless.
I'm cleaning up a little, you see, and I'd put on the really pretty ring that I'd gotten at the Faire -- I really should take a picture of it and put it up on Petri -- and I was thinking about holding it in trust for Naomi --
-- and I got the most bizarre image of being, ultimately, obsolete.
I've been pondering, a lot, lately, the phenomenon of body-age and mental age. Kimmiebeth ponders gender; I ponder age. It's just something that's been sticking with me for a while; I suppose it's my thing to look into this time around. I think I've probably already studied gender, because it's one of my of-course things.
After twelve or so, I was the child who sat quietly with the grown-ups, sometimes, instead of being the hellion racing around. I was the one who could hold a decent conversation, could converse intelligently with adults on a mailing list at fifteen. I was well-educated, aced my SATs, and still had the social skills of someone five years below my age group, when interacting with my peers. I knew it, and I cursed it. It took Shawn to hurry me up to interacting at or near age level at eighteen, and I grew socially at a normal rate after that until 21.
Isolation played a large part in my social development, or lack thereof. I did not go out of my way to associate with others in school; I was too shy to go up and make the first move in making new friends; I preferred my old friends or my books. Outside of school, I had![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
swallowtayle and the birds and the books, and that was enough for me. After a while, I had the phone, and that was my godsend. I can still talk people's ears off, but it's not as bad as it used to be.
I'm familiar, though, with the sensation of being frozen, of drifting through life, so petrified by a deeper ill that while the body may age, and the experience may widen, the personality stays preserved at the same state that it was in at the time of the inital shock, or quite possibly deteriorating. You don't really mentally age through that time at all. You stay as you are, as the world goes past, and you don't really think of yourself as being able to make any sort of impact on that outside world. You yell; you're screaming, inside that cryochamber of yours, but it seems like no one will hear you; they pass around you, bumping you from side to side, as bits of you shatter.
If one wakes up from a depression such as that, it's a struggle to get growing again. Some people simply stop growing, after a depression; some stop growing without a known depression to stop them. It's as if they reach a spot, say, "All right, I'm grown up now, where's my life?" and stay there.
It's really those who don't stop growing who have caught the secret of eternal youth, I think.
My friend Dawn was at DeVry with me for a time. I first met her through Darkside. She was the tall lady with the bird necklace who was allowed to hug Darkside. After ascertaining that she was Nice and Safe (and engaged), she and I became fast friends. Despite the white in her hair, she pinged out to be about my age; I evidently felt like I was about her age as well. Imagine the mutual surprise at me being under 25, and her being nearly 40!
There was another interesting case of personality I witnessed. Someone had gotten themselves paused in mind in the late teenage years, and were in body, in their late 20s. Somehow, they got themselves jump-started again, and went through the classic stages of teenage, on fast-forward, before settling down at a comfortable rate of growth that went well with their actual physical age.
I've had more than one personality inside me since at least 1994, when I became acutely aware of it. Looking back at journals, I've been aware of some fragments since at least 1992, and looking back through old memories, the initial split happened as early as 1986. From everything I can gather, it was a relatively non-traumatic split, just the way that I wound up dealing with the cognitive dissonance of answering to one name and behaving one way at school, and answering to a different name, behaving a different way, at home. In high school, I developed my personalities, explored who I was. I came together in 2001, and evidently fragmented again in 2002. Different lines of shatter, of course.
That time, something interesting emerged from the pieces. I'm not the same person I was when I came to Arizona, at least not primarily. The set when coming to Arizona was Joan-prime, Shanna, Mona, and the Azure Lunatic. The primary person, Joan-prime, who came to Arizona exists today as Marah. I trace my mental lineage back to Shanna, though I answer to Joanie and many variations onazurelunatic. Shanna was always the responsible one, the caretaker, as well as having an adult sense of humor. In caring for the Little Fayoumis, I took on that primary role, and became that primary personality. Out of the fragments also emerged Naomi. When Naomi first came out, she was the logical successor of Mona, the broken one who rarely spoke. I guessed that Naomi was about five. Later, time and programming practice proved that Naomi was the geek, and further, about seven. Now, she's ten or so.
And I got her that ring at the faire, the ring I'm wearing today.
And today I got this feeling that it's her ring, very much, and that I'm just keeping it in trust for her, as if I'm her mother or something, and that one day, when she grows up, I'll be obsolete. Like it's her body, like it's been hers all along, and I'm just the caretaker.
I got that feeling when I was thinking that perhaps I should separate out the jewelry, since this ring is hers, and I suddenly knew that the blue topaz and rose quartz and faux-silver necklace with the wedding bead will someday be hers, will be set aside for her until that day.
It made me sad, and happy, and all odd.
Logically, I know I'm not useless. I know that when Naomi grows up enough, she'll probably be able to merge smoothly, become a true part of the working collective, and may even come to manage the merge, may even be the primary personality. I feel as though primary personality is her birthright.
It just feels odd.
I know that the 'I' continuity will continue, even though it probably won't always be this immediate personality filtering it primarily. I see my whole collective self as braided, processes threaded and bundled together, wrapped around each other, each with their time in the foreground. At fragmentation times, different threads are bundled in different places. Sometimes threads end, sometimes new ones begin.
And someday, Naomi will manage it all, I think. Birthright. Destiny.
I'm cleaning up a little, you see, and I'd put on the really pretty ring that I'd gotten at the Faire -- I really should take a picture of it and put it up on Petri -- and I was thinking about holding it in trust for Naomi --
-- and I got the most bizarre image of being, ultimately, obsolete.
I've been pondering, a lot, lately, the phenomenon of body-age and mental age. Kimmiebeth ponders gender; I ponder age. It's just something that's been sticking with me for a while; I suppose it's my thing to look into this time around. I think I've probably already studied gender, because it's one of my of-course things.
After twelve or so, I was the child who sat quietly with the grown-ups, sometimes, instead of being the hellion racing around. I was the one who could hold a decent conversation, could converse intelligently with adults on a mailing list at fifteen. I was well-educated, aced my SATs, and still had the social skills of someone five years below my age group, when interacting with my peers. I knew it, and I cursed it. It took Shawn to hurry me up to interacting at or near age level at eighteen, and I grew socially at a normal rate after that until 21.
Isolation played a large part in my social development, or lack thereof. I did not go out of my way to associate with others in school; I was too shy to go up and make the first move in making new friends; I preferred my old friends or my books. Outside of school, I had
swallowtayle and the birds and the books, and that was enough for me. After a while, I had the phone, and that was my godsend. I can still talk people's ears off, but it's not as bad as it used to be. I'm familiar, though, with the sensation of being frozen, of drifting through life, so petrified by a deeper ill that while the body may age, and the experience may widen, the personality stays preserved at the same state that it was in at the time of the inital shock, or quite possibly deteriorating. You don't really mentally age through that time at all. You stay as you are, as the world goes past, and you don't really think of yourself as being able to make any sort of impact on that outside world. You yell; you're screaming, inside that cryochamber of yours, but it seems like no one will hear you; they pass around you, bumping you from side to side, as bits of you shatter.
If one wakes up from a depression such as that, it's a struggle to get growing again. Some people simply stop growing, after a depression; some stop growing without a known depression to stop them. It's as if they reach a spot, say, "All right, I'm grown up now, where's my life?" and stay there.
It's really those who don't stop growing who have caught the secret of eternal youth, I think.
My friend Dawn was at DeVry with me for a time. I first met her through Darkside. She was the tall lady with the bird necklace who was allowed to hug Darkside. After ascertaining that she was Nice and Safe (and engaged), she and I became fast friends. Despite the white in her hair, she pinged out to be about my age; I evidently felt like I was about her age as well. Imagine the mutual surprise at me being under 25, and her being nearly 40!
There was another interesting case of personality I witnessed. Someone had gotten themselves paused in mind in the late teenage years, and were in body, in their late 20s. Somehow, they got themselves jump-started again, and went through the classic stages of teenage, on fast-forward, before settling down at a comfortable rate of growth that went well with their actual physical age.
I've had more than one personality inside me since at least 1994, when I became acutely aware of it. Looking back at journals, I've been aware of some fragments since at least 1992, and looking back through old memories, the initial split happened as early as 1986. From everything I can gather, it was a relatively non-traumatic split, just the way that I wound up dealing with the cognitive dissonance of answering to one name and behaving one way at school, and answering to a different name, behaving a different way, at home. In high school, I developed my personalities, explored who I was. I came together in 2001, and evidently fragmented again in 2002. Different lines of shatter, of course.
That time, something interesting emerged from the pieces. I'm not the same person I was when I came to Arizona, at least not primarily. The set when coming to Arizona was Joan-prime, Shanna, Mona, and the Azure Lunatic. The primary person, Joan-prime, who came to Arizona exists today as Marah. I trace my mental lineage back to Shanna, though I answer to Joanie and many variations on
azurelunatic. Shanna was always the responsible one, the caretaker, as well as having an adult sense of humor. In caring for the Little Fayoumis, I took on that primary role, and became that primary personality. Out of the fragments also emerged Naomi. When Naomi first came out, she was the logical successor of Mona, the broken one who rarely spoke. I guessed that Naomi was about five. Later, time and programming practice proved that Naomi was the geek, and further, about seven. Now, she's ten or so. And I got her that ring at the faire, the ring I'm wearing today.
And today I got this feeling that it's her ring, very much, and that I'm just keeping it in trust for her, as if I'm her mother or something, and that one day, when she grows up, I'll be obsolete. Like it's her body, like it's been hers all along, and I'm just the caretaker.
I got that feeling when I was thinking that perhaps I should separate out the jewelry, since this ring is hers, and I suddenly knew that the blue topaz and rose quartz and faux-silver necklace with the wedding bead will someday be hers, will be set aside for her until that day.
It made me sad, and happy, and all odd.
Logically, I know I'm not useless. I know that when Naomi grows up enough, she'll probably be able to merge smoothly, become a true part of the working collective, and may even come to manage the merge, may even be the primary personality. I feel as though primary personality is her birthright.
It just feels odd.
I know that the 'I' continuity will continue, even though it probably won't always be this immediate personality filtering it primarily. I see my whole collective self as braided, processes threaded and bundled together, wrapped around each other, each with their time in the foreground. At fragmentation times, different threads are bundled in different places. Sometimes threads end, sometimes new ones begin.
And someday, Naomi will manage it all, I think. Birthright. Destiny.
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I'm not sure how to define that "you."
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In almost every way but identity, Marah is the "me" that
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I don't think you'll be gone. Just different. And people do that. It's sad and happy. I'd like to reference
(And yes, I set up my new userpic just for this comment, thinking it apropos.)
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I would have really liked to have not lost that journal with the tree on it. That documented the changeover, and the moment of integration.
I really feel like one of my best, and most stable, configurations is in the four-personality configuration. I like it.
(I really wish there was a happy html code that would reproduce the echo effect I hear on my inner voice when we're all saying something together.)
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