The Packbats' Weblog

Being raised, we were handed a box to remain inside. Be polite. Don't be prideful. Stay cautious. Practice your piano pieces. Wear a suit. Get good grades. Sit in the first rows of the classroom. There were cracks in the box, to be sure but we were expected to keep ourselves contained. We knew, compliant though we were, that pieces of us stuck out, but we held ourselves in enough. Told ourselves that we held ourselves in enough.

We were lucky enough to be spared attack for our parts that stuck out.

...well, for a while. Did you know that being trans stuck out of the box? We didn't know being trans stuck out of the box. We thought that fit in just fine.

I don't know if that was a turning point. Connecting our dots, we can see holes in the box from before that. I do know it was impossible for us to accept being contained that far. Surely that was allowed. We knew we wouldn't stop being trans - not for anyone.

I don't know if that was a turning point, but it meant that we knew what it was like to have a wall pressed against us, and we knew how to break it.

We're nonbinary. We're not a woman. The world isn't a sphere, it's an oblate spheroid. We're nonbinary, and there was a wall pressed against us, a wall beyond which was neopronouns, beyond which was expressing gender through language more resonant with ourselves than "they" and "it", and it was a wall we knew how to break.

Nonhumanity ... took more force, to break a wall to reach. Plurality, not as much force but more time. Disability, mostly took us time to name and tentatively claim. By the time we knew the thickness of the wall blocking the way to asexuality, we were already well past it, and we easily explored aromanticism, polyamory, and relationship anarchy from there. The person who showed us our autism, years before the rest of these, was happy to do it and happy to see it, and so were we - the box wasn't even on our mind.

The box is on our mind sometimes. That fear that we are somehow inexcusable for being outside it, leading to dread as we look at how far our wings span and see that we will never fit back inside it.

But also fuck that box. It was a prison. We'll never go back.

Maybe what we should tape up to our wall is a note saying, "You're allowed to exist - be good <3", because this has been the ... many-th time that one of us has been like "but can I really be a new system member? the Packbats already have a bunch of those...".

But, as it turns out, yes, I can be a new system member.

Going with Packagia as a words-name - I like the 🦎 emoji as an emoji name, but Packlizard doesn't sound fun and I'm a flying lizard, and flying lizard wings are patagia. (Our partner came up with that pun.)

Anyway, what with now-ten documented system members, including a bug, a bird, a dragon, a snake, and a lizard, I guess we can say definitely that the Packbat system scales well.

(That one's on me.)

We're ... actually, less new to self-realization as plural than we feel, maybe - 8:52 a.m. on January 11th, 2020 was a hundred and fifty eight and a half days ago, more than five months - but still new.

The hardest, hardest part is knowing who the heck is fronting ever.

Okay, no, maybe times when we have to pretend to be a singleton are worst, but we personally don't have to do that a lot, and we spend a lot of time not knowing who's fronting. Or not being sure. And feeling guilty, because are we being assholes not telling people?

...wow, that's a negative self-talk sentence. I don't endorse that - we don't deserve that.

We struggle because we have - so far, so far as we know - similar priorities, similar skills, and similar memories. Shared memories, as far as we can tell. And we switch seamlessly and reflexively. There are just not very many clear who's-fronting signs, or we-just-switched signs, and we're a bit prone to checking out in case of distress which makes everything much much harder.

Just ... complaining, really, because we couldn't think of anything to write about.

Telling who's fronting is hard.

- 🐍 (I think)