#existential thoughts

This shows up particularly in how we mask to get along better with others in the world, to be safe and inoffensive in many types of relationships, the true self hidden behind this veneer, protected and untouched. But life is unrelenting. It is impractical to escape from society in the world that we live in, where you're expected to be available at all hours of the day, everyone having unlimited access to you, and being condemned for not being sociable and/or agreeable to the same extent as your counterparts.

When you spend so much time in this mask, you might find yourself inaccessible. And it really poses a chicken/egg type of question: does the mask reinforce the void of the true self, or does the void reinforce the mask? It will be different from person to person, and I myself do not have a real answer here for myself.

My connection with these different parts of my identity, that make up the person I "should" be are so inaccessible to me—my race, ethnicities, gender, age, family, nationality—my relationship with them is not intimate. These are things I know I am, but I feel no sense of true identity in them. Rather than being in any one of these things, I feel as though I stand beside them.

A good way to put it is my age: my entire life, I never felt analogous to my age or my age group. This isn't to say that I felt like my mind was particularly older or younger, but that I was perpetually out of place and on an entirely different timeline. It was a major contributor to my sense of inhumanity amongst humans.

Of course I lived the way children and teenagers do, went through similar phases and from an external perspective, it was not out of the ordinary. But internally, forever unable to relate to my peers on a number of different levels, my perceptions of myself were perpetually distorted and never quite able to form-fit a true sense of self that I can describe in confidence.

When I can find a way to articulate my relationship with my gender, I would also like to go more in depth on that. It has been so abstract and difficult to define, especially as a non-white man who doesn't experience the world with the same level of privilege as white individuals in a million different areas. It also informs a lot of my fiction and the way I continue to come back to body horror, even subtly, even unintentionally—the way that we are chained to a skin that does things without our permission.

I don't know if I knew who I was as a child. Forever, it felt as though I knew who I wanted to be, who I should be, but never who I was in the present moment. There was a perpetual undercurrent of unhappiness that festered and grew as I aged until it was entirely unavoidable.

The diagnosis of schizoid personality disorder gives me a point of reference, a sort of context for why I am the way that I am. It makes it easier to answer the hard questions. But it doesn't really fill the void, it doesn't really make me any more human or closer to those figures around me who can exist in the world without self awareness.

I struggle to identify my social personhood. Not intrinsically; I know I am a conscious organism. I have subjective experience. I feel joy, pain, fear, boredom. No, I mean social personhood.

Am I simply a person just because I exist? Or is it something earned? Something I have to work for to keep?

People struggling with homelessness have their personhood stripped by their own kind, because in a capitalist society like America, humanity is earned. Humanity is a dead white man's face on a piece of paper. Humanity is a clean body, clean clothes, a full belly, a roof over your head. Humanity is dictated by others around you—everyone but you. You are only human if you are perceived as human. On the other hand, you may not feel like a person in modern society. You do people things: eat, bathe, shit, sleep... when you can. But you feel like you're the odd man out, literally.

I believe it is not humane for us to have the perception of social personhood, because in recognizing it, we have placed limitations and goals to strive toward—to prove—our humanity.

And attached to this humanity are things we need to survive, at least mentally. In my opinion, existence and expression are of the greatest importance, more so than what the body needs as food, water, and shelter.

Love, respect, compassion.

These are things that are deemed moral, and so morality is tied to personhood. You're essentially vermin, a plague on mankind, the left hand of God, if you do not prove your humanity.

This is tied to people with developmental disabilities and the range of the populace that doesn't fall in line with neurotypicals. We are cursed, not quite human. If you do the disservice of being a burden just from being born, you are stripped of your humanity—infantilized, treated as an object, or even a pet. These are behaviors I've observed personally, though not usually directed toward me.

And yet, even being born "different" is inaccurate in the way it's presented, because if you come into this world, everything about you is natural—even the mutations. And I'm not saying this to dismiss medical treatment or intervention (including the exploration of gene splicing and editing, because there is an incredible amount of good that can come from it). I take a fuck ton of medication just to barely function. But whether you approach life through science or faith, the conclusion you should come to is the same.

The idea of intrinsic and social personhood needs to be combined, eradicated, or approached in a completely different way. Recognizing someone as a human being is not the same as recognizing someone as a person. I've seen the phrase "sonder" romanticized in online spaces. When you have these moments of introspection turning outward, who does your mind go to? The car in the other lane? A woman pushing a cart full of what could be her entire life in a few ripped bags? Some guy selling hot dogs?

The task is not just awakening,