What's you guyses' favourite and least favourite part about 1. living here now, and 2. living where you used to before? Love, C. from your allyship
Hi @dismanibus, thank you for the ask. <3
I will not be going first.
And Matt is asleep right now, so that leaves me. Least favourite bits first, to get them out of the way:
Here: embodiment – I've got nothing against the concept in the abstract, I just really don't feel at home in our body at all. It's not just dysphoria (though that certainly contributes considering we are not built like me even remotely), it's also the fact that I'm having to practice using our left hand so it stops being useless to write (and do other things) with when I'm left-handed, and our sensory tolerance thresholds being way lower than my own (i.e. the cat yelling in the middle of me typing my response wouldn't have nuked my focus before, it would've been at worst an annoyance, no such luck here), and the insane amount of rest we need after doing basically anything, ... I can live like this because it beats being dead, it could always be worse but it's far from good.
Before: the impermanence of my living situation(s). I've never been scared of change in general (I get bored if things are the same for too long, even), so this isn't about that; more that I never got the chance to even try settling anywhere, get to choose to move on when I decided I'd had enough instead of external circumstances turning "moving on" into my best option.
My favourite bits now:
Before: Matt, in general. Doing most of our growing up in each other's pockets, and then I'm also glad we got to spend our last few months of life together.
Now: I cannot overstate how much I enjoy getting to be alive again (maybe unexpected considering a certain recent post re: "dying satisfied", but I wasn't actively trying to get dead, if there had been a viable/sustainable "staying alive" option I'd have taken it), and also getting to play pretend in writing – it is really fun when the stars align and we can make it happen.
Thank you. For my part:
Living here now, favourite part: relationships – mine with Mello and Matt, of course, but also the ones we have with our (collective) close friends & partners (! *points*) – are what I most consistently find myself grateful for.
Living here now, least favourite part: the lack of sufficient financial resources / in-person support that would allow us to spend more of our limited energy on things beyond "meeting our own basic needs & maintaining our living space reasonably clean". The limited energy wasn't new to me the way it was for Mello, and we (our system at large) do support each other when and where we can; but that only goes so far when you share the same body and brain. While it helps that some of us are more efficient with certain tasks, or find them easier, and we can somewhat reliably optimise energy use that way – ultimately, we all draw from the same resources, and they are not plentiful.
Living elsewhere before, favourite part: being able to set up my living space exactly the way I want(ed) it, to ridiculous extents. Not just "arranging the furniture in my rental flat" – we're talking "enough money to have entirely custom skyscrapers built to my exact specifications" here; perhaps not unfamiliar to you and yours. (I did not appreciate my indoor pool anywhere near enough while I still had it.)
Living elsewhere before, least favourite part: not something I ever fully realised back then, having known nothing else and therefore having an extremely skewed baseline, but how lonely it was. It got worse after Mello died – in many ways, he was the only person I could reasonably consider a peer – but we weren't very close before that happened, either; had barely begun to get along at the time.
Drafting this post for Matt to finish filling out later.
It is now Later so. HI CALLA here's my answer #myanswer!!
It's not going to be a proper answer for "before" because that honestly feels really far away for me now, I wouldn't know for sure. I know I used to be bored a lot and generally wasn't having a good time of things (there's a... maybe lots of... reason(s) I was stoned and/or crossfaded most of the time lmao, anyway) but I haven't got enough specifics to make Clear Pronouncements.
"Now" is easier. My least favourite thing is less to do with our life close-up and more to do with *gestures at the general world situation*, like, okay not EVERYTHING was better circa 2013 but SOME THINGS sure were better circa 2013. And NOW now my least favourite thing is that I'm hungry and it sucks. Will fix that before going to bed lol.
My favourite things are currently peeking over my shoulder while I add onto the post they started earlier (:þ) but aside from that, yeah I'm going to have to be wholly unoriginal and steal Nate's answer, because I AGREE we are absolutely surrounded with lovely folks (hi Calla & Geta & co at :pusheenfamily:. This includes you. Btw. Just so we're clear on that :3c). Like idk we just have really lovely friends (close and less close) and it's Nice.
ANYWAY YEAH that concludes the Kilometric Post. Thank you again for the ask (!!! mrrp) and I hope the answers satisfy sfdsgqhd
