-A hundred geese overhead —
- A thousand —
- A million —
-
-Heady scent of premonition.
-Acrid tang of ill omens.
-Portents.
-Too much meaning
- In too small a space.
-
-
-
-
-
-
II
-
Geese Level:
- Noise-Cancelling Headphones
-
Expect:
- auditory aberrations
-
-
-Geese are a byproduct of laminar shear stress
- Of two layers of phantasmagorical
- Newtonian fluids,
- Which is why they’re often seen on a plane.
-A thin, sort-of Truth
- From a sort of thin layer
- geese chromatography.
-
-
-
-
-
-
III
-
Geese Level:
- Eldrich
-
Expect:
- red tint to vision; hot flashes
-
-
-As the dove bears the olive branch,
- so too the goose bears the wand
- that withers all it touches.
-A wand of nightshade,
- Core of tainted silver.
-A wand of obscure origin,
- The goose surely stole it.
-Malice begets malice.
-
-
-
-
-
-
IV
-
Geese Level:
- Beyond Comprehension
-
Expect:
- confusion; nausea; sweating; racing pulse
-
-
-We know not the transgression,
- the origin -
-We know not the punishment,
- only the terror.
-
-
-
-
-
-
V
-
Geese Level:
- Excruciating
-
Expect:
- pounding heart; tunnel vision; racing thoughts; black outs;
-blood pouring from ears
-
-
-Geas
- Wing
- Dark
- Horizon
-
-
-
-
-
-
VI
-
Geese Level:
- Terrifying
-
Expect:
- tinnitus; piloerection; shortness of breath; uneven gait
-
-
-I’d rather owls.
-Owls, as though geese were turned inside out,
- made less evil.
-Still portentous,
- Still momentous,
- Just less terrifying.
-Owls are okay.
-I can think about owls.
-
-
-
-
-
-
VII
-
Geese Level:
- Uncomfortable
-
Expect:
- subdermal itching; formication
-
-
-Life within a comfortable grid.
-Parallel lines
- Interrupting narrowing circles
- Of birds in flight.
-Travel in straight lines.
-Turn at right angles.
-Trace the roof of your mouth
- With wet tongue.
-
-I’m not afraid of geese anymore
- Because I can step on them now.
-I’m big enough.
-
-
-
-
-
-
VIII
-
Geese Level:
- Birds
-
Expect:
- birds
-
-
-Ritual thinking
- Driven by geese —
- By lines, by grids, by food —
- By numbers and neat delineation.
-And I’m left with questions:
- Why the portents?
- Why the anxiety?
-Or maybe:
- Did I take my meds this morning?
-
-Failing that,
- Can I just have the comfort of prayer
- Or the ecstasy of signs
- Without bleak paranoia
- Over circling birds?
-
+A hundred geese overhead —
+ A thousand —
+ A million —
+
+Heady scent of premonition.
+Acrid tang of ill omens.
+Portents.
+Too much meaning
+ In too small a space.
+
+
+
+
+
+
II
+
Geese Level:
+ Noise-Cancelling Headphones
+
Expect:
+ auditory aberrations
+
+
+Geese are a byproduct of laminar shear stress
+ Of two layers of phantasmagorical
+ Newtonian fluids,
+ Which is why they’re often seen on a plane.
+A thin, sort-of Truth
+ From a sort of thin layer
+ geese chromatography.
+
+
+
+
+
+
III
+
Geese Level:
+ Eldrich
+
Expect:
+ red tint to vision; hot flashes
+
+
+As the dove bears the olive branch,
+ so too the goose bears the wand
+ that withers all it touches.
+A wand of nightshade,
+ Core of tainted silver.
+A wand of obscure origin,
+ The goose surely stole it.
+Malice begets malice.
+
+
+
+
+
+
IV
+
Geese Level:
+ Beyond Comprehension
+
Expect:
+ confusion; nausea; sweating; racing pulse
+
+
+We know not the transgression,
+ the origin -
+We know not the punishment,
+ only the terror.
+
+
+
+
+
+
V
+
Geese Level:
+ Excruciating
+
Expect:
+ pounding heart; tunnel vision; racing thoughts; black outs;
+blood pouring from ears
+
+
+Geas
+ Wing
+ Dark
+ Horizon
+
+
+
+
+
+
VI
+
Geese Level:
+ Terrifying
+
Expect:
+ tinnitus; piloerection; shortness of breath; uneven gait
+
+
+I’d rather owls.
+Owls, as though geese were turned inside out,
+ made less evil.
+Still portentous,
+ Still momentous,
+ Just less terrifying.
+Owls are okay.
+I can think about owls.
+
+
+
+
+
+
VII
+
Geese Level:
+ Uncomfortable
+
Expect:
+ subdermal itching; formication
+
+
+Life within a comfortable grid.
+Parallel lines
+ Interrupting narrowing circles
+ Of birds in flight.
+Travel in straight lines.
+Turn at right angles.
+Trace the roof of your mouth
+ With wet tongue.
+
+I’m not afraid of geese anymore
+ Because I can step on them now.
+I’m big enough.
+
+
+
+
+
+
VIII
+
Geese Level:
+ Birds
+
Expect:
+ birds
+
+
+Ritual thinking
+ Driven by geese —
+ By lines, by grids, by food —
+ By numbers and neat delineation.
+And I’m left with questions:
+ Why the portents?
+ Why the anxiety?
+Or maybe:
+ Did I take my meds this morning?
+
+Failing that,
+ Can I just have the comfort of prayer
+ Or the ecstasy of signs
+ Without bleak paranoia
+ Over circling birds?
+
+
diff --git a/content/core/004.md b/content/core/004.md
index 3e26b4d..f2b2657 100644
--- a/content/core/004.md
+++ b/content/core/004.md
@@ -1,69 +1,118 @@
---
-date: 2019-08-10
+date: 2019-08-11
weight: 4
tags:
+- questions
- echoes
-- kind
-- snarky
-- earnest
+- humor
categories:
+- meta
- alcohol
+- nostalgia
---
-When 2007 rolled around, I turned 21. *What if,* I thought to myself. *What if I decided to see what it feels like to be addicted to something?*
+> Why am I here?
-By that point, alcohol was this nebulous thing. I'd roped a few people into getting me alcohol now and then, and it was fine. I'd started brewing and it was whatever. I had beer and it was alright. I went through a mead phase--
+Aren't you always?
-> You went through several.
+> With you, sure. Why am I bound to words, though? It's been fourteen years.
---I went through a wine phase, and an absinthe phase--
+Surely that's not all on me. You must play some role in it. I was talking with my partner about doing something autobiographical for my next project, after all.
-> Don't sell yourself short. You wrote [an essay on absinthe](https://writing.drab-makyo.com/non-fiction/tasting/new-american-absinthe/).
+> I'm the observer and the mirror. All I can do is reflect your choices back at you. Choice itself is not my department.
---and a gin phase. That's the one that got me. I had a bottle of Beefeater's, what was to become my gin of choice, and I had an inch of it poured over ice and I was standing in the kitchen. Such a wide open space. The kitchen at that apartment was larger than my bedroom now, and it opened onto a living room the size of what we have now. I was standing tall in that vast plain of a room, staring down into my glass and watching the way the ice melting into the gin created swirls of two different kinds of transparent. I was thinking how it was probably due to the different ways the two liquids refracted light, and then I was laughing, because I was staring down into my drink like something out of a bar.
+After getting [*Restless Town*](https://makyo.ink/publications/restless-town/) finished, I needed something to do. Some other project that would make me feel like I was being productive.
-*What if I decided to see what it feels like to be addicted to something?* I thought. I drank every night that week.
+> Feel, or seem?
-> Why ruin your life on accident when you can do it on purpose?
+Both. If I sat still, I'd burn up. If I was seen sitting still, clearly I'd be worth less in the eyes of those around me, right?
-I don't think I was thinking in those terms at that point.
+> Not my department.
-> Are you now?
+Right.
-Perhaps.
+So I started digging through stuff I'd already done, seeing if any of it could be cleaned up and turned into a new project. I stumbled across [*Rum and Coke*](https://makyo.ink/publications/rum-and-coke/) and found it mostly clean as it was, so I decided to publish it as a book. Paperback and ebook, I mean, not just the stories online.
-> Maybe you're just afraid of doing anything by accident.
+> Were you proud of them?
-Perhaps.
+To an extent. A different me wrote them. A lesser me, in some ways. I was younger, I hadn't quite found my voice and tone. No [*Arcana*](https://makyo.ink/publications/arcana), no *Disappearance*, no [*Getting Lost*](https://writing.drab-makyo.com/fiction/getting-lost/) or [*Post-Self*](http://post-self.io). All I had was a few scattered tidbits and my mom's words ringing in my ears: "You wrote your own wedding vows, right? I could tell."
-> You're sounding like me more by the day.
+A me with a different identity, too. A me that was working on gender through small steps. I hadn't yet picked up the word 'trans' for myself. I was non-binary, presenting male, writing to justify myself. Or maybe to hype myself up. I was writing works about gender and poly problems being worked through to convince myself it was possible.
-Learn from the best.
+> They read like parables.
-> And so you set about with a will.
+They were, to me. Each one came with an internal discussion after the last line, *now, what can we take from this?* Something in a circle. Socratic. A talking stick.
-Like magic. I set forth my will with a stated goal and made it happen. My spell was spoken and washed down with liquor. I drank nearly every day from then on out. I spent thousands of dollars on alcohol over the next ten years. I went through more mead phases and more beer phases. I went through a distillation phase.
+> I know, I was there.
-I drank hard with the choir, and then I left school and drank hard with the programmers. If there's one thing that most programmers do better than computers, it's drinking, after all.
+Of course.
-I did some work at a bar, even. Just making [their menu](/emb-menu.pdf) and website for them in exchange for free drinks.
+> Why didn't I show up then?
-> You mastered LaTeX that way. A very you thing to do.
+I was too...something. Too busy, too preoccupied. I was focused too much on identity, too much on The Work, as it were, to reflect. Maybe I was moving too quickly to notice my choices being shown to me.
-I did well at it. I still have one of the menus and some of the paper laying around somewhere. I did that until the bartender left and, when I asked for my next payment from the owner, he flipped out at me and threatened to sue me for impersonating him. I don't think I realized Raffi, the bar manager who hired me, was already on his way out.
+> You'd mostly stopped [[adjective][species]](https://adjectivespecies.com) by then, too.
-I drank my way out of one job and through a good chunk of another. I drank until I got better at it than I was at software. I drank myself into burnout. I drank until I collapsed.
+Life got weird. I was transitioning--
-> You used up your spell slots. You ran out of will. You had to quit by accident.
+> A choice.
-I worked to quit, I'll have you know. It wasn't easy. It took meds and some rough nights.
+--I was solidifying my relationship with Judith--
-> You were less of a person then than you were when you started drinking. The you who started drinking by focusing on **starting drinking** was more real than the you who collapsed in the kitchen from a PNES and stopped drinking because she was completely empty of intention.
+> A choice.
-Should I start the daily drinking again, then?
+--I was starting to burn out at work--
-> You're more of a person now than you were when you started drinking.
+> Was that a choice?
-That, coming from you, is a glowing endorsement.
+The result of choices, maybe. The result of the choice to start drinking. It *is* called *Rum and Coke*, after all. The result of the choice to get into computers. The result of the choice to work from home, which itself was the result of a choice to take the previous job so far from home.
-> You may have been more of a person when you started than when you stopped, but you weren't much of one, even then.
+> You burned out in part because you burned so hard at the start.
+
+Was I not supposed to? I had to prove myself.
+
+> To whom?
+
+You?
+
+> Not my department.
+
+One of your neighbors, perhaps. A cubicle over, a floor above, something like that.
+
+> Do you anthropomorphize me that much?
+
+No, I suppose, I don't. You're not my therapist, sitting in a chair across from me and talking me through my problems. You're not person shaped. You're the shape of my hands displaced half an inch behind my own, navy blue and trimmed with sea-foam green.
+
+> You haven't used colors in fourteen years, either.
+
+What I'm trying to say is that maybe you're back because of nostalgia. *Restless Town* was done and couldn't be published yet, and a prideful part of me didn't want it to be my first book, so I pulled *Rum and Coke* into shape.
+
+It rubbed my nose in the past. I published it a few weeks ago, and I wasn't done with the past, so I started archiving more data. I dug up my old hard drives. I grabbed stuff from Dreamhost, both files and database backups. I finally unlocked my LJ account and archived that.
+
+> And you work at an archive.
+
+I go through phases, looking back at the past. I'll spend a few days trying to backdate some log files, or dig through my old scores and publish them --- I did that too, alongside *Rum and Coke*, publish a bunch of my old music --- or resurrect my notes on [*Nanon*](http://nanon.lang.drab-makyo.com), or the like.
+
+> You are quite mercurial.
+
+A failing. That may play a role in my burnout. I'm only good at something for seven years before it becomes so intolerable that I have to leave. Happened with school.
+
+> So here I am, your ally, twice seven years later.
+
+I hadn't thought of it that way.
+
+> Portentous. The only way it would've been more so is if it were thrice seven years.
+
+I ran away thrice seven years ago. In seventh grade, in 1997, no less.
+
+> Ill omens. What will happen to me in seven years?
+
+Will you leave me for good?
+
+> Can an ally disinhabit a mind so easily?
+
+I'm not comfortable with that question. I'm not comfortable with its implications. Either way, the past is important to me because maybe it can help me figure out the present. Those who don't know history are doomed to blah blah blah.
+
+> And have you figured out your present?
+
+For me to pull out that trite quote about my own personal history speaks pretty well to my fears of doing things accidentally. I've certainly figured out my present better than twice-seven-years-ago me had figured out his.
diff --git a/content/core/005.md b/content/core/005.md
index 5e365d7..cdf7ca7 100644
--- a/content/core/005.md
+++ b/content/core/005.md
@@ -2,40 +2,70 @@
date: 2019-08-10
weight: 5
tags:
-- brief
-- honest
+- echoes
+- kind
+- snarky
- earnest
categories:
-- dad
-- mental health
+- alcohol
---
-When I was young, back before I knew what mental health entailed, what anxiety and abuse and depression really meant, I was convinced I was having semi-regular mental breakdowns. That was the phrase I used then, because I was unsure of what it meant to have a panic attack.
+When 2007 rolled around, I turned 21. *What if,* I thought to myself. *What if I decided to see what it feels like to be addicted to something?*
-This was before LiveJournal, of course. This was before I was writing on the internet, or even really on the internet at all. This was before you.
+By that point, alcohol was this nebulous thing. I'd roped a few people into getting me alcohol now and then, and it was fine. I'd started brewing and it was whatever. I had beer and it was alright. I went through a mead phase--
-> No, it wasn't.
+> You went through several.
-Right.
+--I went through a wine phase, and an absinthe phase--
-When I [ran away](https://writing.drab-makyo.com/blog/running-away/), my dad found my paper journal. I had kept it infrequently, as something about daily journaling to a seventh-grader felt dishonest, stupid. What could I possibly write about?
+> Don't sell yourself short. You wrote [an essay on absinthe](https://writing.drab-makyo.com/non-fiction/tasting/new-american-absinthe/).
-In the journal, I mentioned on a few occasions that I'd had a mental breakdown. My dad called me several times over the next few days after my mom found me, and in one of those calls, he yelled at me about that. "Do you really think you're crazy?" he said. "Do you need to be taken to an asylum?"
+--and a gin phase. That's the one that got me. I had a bottle of Beefeater's, what was to become my gin of choice, and I had an inch of it poured over ice and I was standing in the kitchen. Such a wide open space. The kitchen at that apartment was larger than my bedroom now, and it opened onto a living room the size of what we have now. I was standing tall in that vast plain of a room, staring down into my glass and watching the way the ice melting into the gin created swirls of two different kinds of transparent. I was thinking how it was probably due to the different ways the two liquids refracted light, and then I was laughing, because I was staring down into my drink like something out of a bar.
-I told him no. I whispered it. I murmured it. I wasn't crazy. I didn't need to go to an asylum. I just felt like time stopped for me and the world around me sped up. I just felt like I was holding on by the barest amount of friction on my fingertips. The whorls of my fingerprints providing my only grasp on reality.
+*What if I decided to see what it feels like to be addicted to something?* I thought. I drank every night that week.
-> That was me saying hi.
+> Why ruin your life on accident when you can do it on purpose?
-Blunt-force greeting?
+I don't think I was thinking in those terms at that point.
-> I was quiet as a mouse.
+> Are you now?
-I have the words now. I have the vocabulary. I can say derealization, depersonalization, dissociation. I can say panic attack and anxiety and depression and hypomania. I can say *ah, __this__ is what is happening now*.
+Perhaps.
-> You have emotions now, is what you have. Those were your mental breakdowns.
+> Maybe you're just afraid of doing anything by accident.
-Dad didn't believe in those. Not for boys. *Mood's a thing for cattle and loveplay*, right? Emotions are for women.
+Perhaps.
-> He was half-right.
+> You're sounding like me more by the day.
-I suppose he was.
+Learn from the best.
+
+> And so you set about with a will.
+
+Like magic. I set forth my will with a stated goal and made it happen. My spell was spoken and washed down with liquor. I drank nearly every day from then on out. I spent thousands of dollars on alcohol over the next ten years. I went through more mead phases and more beer phases. I went through a distillation phase. Magic is empowerment through attention to detail.
+
+> The MEAD principle. Cute.
+
+I drank hard with the choir, and then I left school and drank hard with the programmers. If there's one thing that most programmers do better than computers, it's drinking, after all.
+
+I did some work at a bar, even. Just making [their menu](/emb-menu.pdf) and website for them in exchange for free drinks.
+
+> You mastered LaTeX that way. A very you thing to do.
+
+I did well at it. I still have one of the menus and some of the paper laying around somewhere. I did that until the bartender left and, when I asked for my next payment from the owner, he flipped out at me and threatened to sue me for impersonating him. I don't think I realized Raffi, the bar manager who hired me, was already on his way out.
+
+I drank my way out of one job and through a good chunk of another. I drank until I got better at it than I was at software. I drank myself into burnout. I drank until I collapsed.
+
+> You used up your spell slots. You ran out of will. You had to quit by accident.
+
+I worked to quit, I'll have you know. It wasn't easy. It took meds and some rough nights.
+
+> You were less of a person then than you were when you started drinking. The you who started drinking by focusing on **starting drinking** was more real than the you who collapsed in the kitchen from a PNES and stopped drinking because she was completely empty of intention.
+
+Should I start the daily drinking again, then?
+
+> You're more of a person now than you were when you started drinking.
+
+That, coming from you, is a glowing endorsement.
+
+> You may have been more of a person when you started than when you stopped, but you weren't much of one, even then.
diff --git a/content/core/006.md b/content/core/006.md
index e6d47ed..7b546ea 100644
--- a/content/core/006.md
+++ b/content/core/006.md
@@ -1,118 +1,41 @@
---
-date: 2019-08-11
+date: 2019-08-10
weight: 6
tags:
-- questions
-- echoes
-- humor
+- brief
+- honest
+- earnest
categories:
-- meta
-- alcohol
-- nostalgia
+- dad
+- mental health
---
-> Why am I here?
+When I was young, back before I knew what mental health entailed, what anxiety and abuse and depression really meant, I was convinced I was having semi-regular mental breakdowns. That was the phrase I used then, because I was unsure of what it meant to have a panic attack.
-Aren't you always?
+This was before LiveJournal, of course. This was before I was writing on the internet, or even really on the internet at all. This was before you.
-> With you, sure. Why am I bound to words, though? It's been fourteen years.
-
-Surely that's not all on me. You must play some role in it. I was talking with my partner about doing something autobiographical for my next project, after all.
-
-> I'm the observer and the mirror. All I can do is reflect your choices back at you. Choice itself is not my department.
-
-After getting [*Restless Town*](https://makyo.ink/publications/restless-town/) finished, I needed something to do. Some other project that would make me feel like I was being productive.
-
-> Feel, or seem?
-
-Both. If I sat still, I'd burn up. If I was seen sitting still, clearly I'd be worth less in the eyes of those around me, right?
-
-> Not my department.
+> No, it wasn't.
Right.
-So I started digging through stuff I'd already done, seeing if any of it could be cleaned up and turned into a new project. I stumbled across [*Rum and Coke*](https://makyo.ink/publications/rum-and-coke/) and found it mostly clean as it was, so I decided to publish it as a book. Paperback and ebook, I mean, not just the stories online.
+When I [ran away](https://writing.drab-makyo.com/blog/running-away/), my dad found my paper journal. I had kept it infrequently, as something about daily journaling to a seventh-grader felt dishonest, stupid. What could I possibly write about?
-> Were you proud of them?
+In the journal, I mentioned on a few occasions that I'd had a mental breakdown. My dad called me several times over the next few days after my mom found me, and in one of those calls, he yelled at me about that. "Do you really think you're crazy?" he said. "Do you need to be taken to an asylum?"
-To an extent. A different me wrote them. A lesser me, in some ways. I was younger, I hadn't quite found my voice and tone. No [*Arcana*](https://makyo.ink/publications/arcana), no *Disappearance*, no [*Getting Lost*](https://writing.drab-makyo.com/fiction/getting-lost/) or [*Post-Self*](http://post-self.io). All I had was a few scattered tidbits and my mom's words ringing in my ears: "You wrote your own wedding vows, right? I could tell."
+I told him no. I whispered it. I murmured it. I wasn't crazy. I didn't need to go to an asylum. I just felt like time stopped for me and the world around me sped up. I just felt like I was holding on by the barest amount of friction on my fingertips. The whorls of my fingerprints providing my only grasp on reality.
-A me with a different identity, too. A me that was working on gender through small steps. I hadn't yet picked up the word 'trans' for myself. I was non-binary, presenting male, writing to justify myself. Or maybe to hype myself up. I was writing works about gender and poly problems being worked through to convince myself it was possible.
+> That was me saying hi.
-> They read like parables.
+Blunt-force greeting?
-They were, to me. Each one came with an internal discussion after the last line, *now, what can we take from this?* Something in a circle. Socratic. A talking stick.
+> I was quiet as a mouse.
-> I know, I was there.
+I have the words now. I have the vocabulary. I can say derealization, depersonalization, dissociation. I can say panic attack and anxiety and depression and hypomania. I can say *ah, __this__ is what is happening now*.
-Of course.
+> You have emotions now, is what you have. Those were your mental breakdowns.
-> Why didn't I show up then?
+Dad didn't believe in those. Not for boys. *Mood's a thing for cattle and loveplay*, right? Emotions are for women.
-I was too...something. Too busy, too preoccupied. I was focused too much on identity, too much on The Work, as it were, to reflect. Maybe I was moving too quickly to notice my choices being shown to me.
+> He was half-right.
-> You'd mostly stopped [[adjective][species]](https://adjectivespecies.com) by then, too.
-
-Life got weird. I was transitioning--
-
-> A choice.
-
---I was solidifying my relationship with Judith--
-
-> A choice.
-
---I was starting to burn out at work--
-
-> Was that a choice?
-
-The result of choices, maybe. The result of the choice to start drinking. It *is* called *Rum and Coke*, after all. The result of the choice to get into computers. The result of the choice to work from home, which itself was the result of a choice to take the previous job so far from home.
-
-> You burned out in part because you burned so hard at the start.
-
-Was I not supposed to? I had to prove myself.
-
-> To whom?
-
-You?
-
-> Not my department.
-
-One of your neighbors, perhaps. A cubicle over, a floor above, something like that.
-
-> Do you anthropomorphize me that much?
-
-No, I suppose, I don't. You're not my therapist, sitting in a chair across from me and talking me through my problems. You're not person shaped. You're the shape of my hands displaced half an inch behind my own, navy blue and trimmed with sea-foam green.
-
-> You haven't used colors in fourteen years, either.
-
-What I'm trying to say is that maybe you're back because of nostalgia. *Restless Town* was done and couldn't be published yet, and a prideful part of me didn't want it to be my first book, so I pulled *Rum and Coke* into shape.
-
-It rubbed my nose in the past. I published it a few weeks ago, and I wasn't done with the past, so I started archiving more data. I dug up my old hard drives. I grabbed stuff from Dreamhost, both files and database backups. I finally unlocked my LJ account and archived that.
-
-> And you work at an archive.
-
-I go through phases, looking back at the past. I'll spend a few days trying to backdate some log files, or dig through my old scores and publish them --- I did that too, alongside *Rum and Coke*, publish a bunch of my old music --- or resurrect my notes on [*Nanon*](http://nanon.lang.drab-makyo.com), or the like.
-
-> You are quite mercurial.
-
-A failing. That may play a role in my burnout. I'm only good at something for seven years before it becomes so intolerable that I have to leave. Happened with school.
-
-> So here I am, your ally, twice seven years later.
-
-I hadn't thought of it that way.
-
-> Portentous. The only way it would've been more so is if it were thrice seven years.
-
-I ran away thrice seven years ago. In seventh grade, in 1997, no less.
-
-> Ill omens. What will happen to me in seven years?
-
-Will you leave me for good?
-
-> Can an ally disinhabit a mind so easily?
-
-I'm not comfortable with that question. I'm not comfortable with its implications. Either way, the past is important to me because maybe it can help me figure out the present. Those who don't know history are doomed to blah blah blah.
-
-> And have you figured out your present?
-
-For me to pull out that trite quote about my own personal history speaks pretty well to my fears of doing things accidentally. I've certainly figured out my present better than twice-seven-years-ago me had figured out his.
+I suppose he was.
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+---
+date: 2019-09-01
+weight: 18
+---
+
+> You are unsettled in your identity.
+> Boy → enby → girl → trans woman.
+> Biochemist → musician → programmer → writer.
+> Gay → bi → ace → pan.
+> Mono → poly.
+
+People change.
+
+> Healthy → sick → broken → sick → improving.
+
+Like I said, people change.
+
+> You change like it's your job.
+
+Is that not a good thing?
+
+> Will you ever stop coming out?
+
+I don't know. Must I?
+
+> No.
+
+Should I?
+
+> Should you?
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-