What does 'our' do for us?
When we answer a question about ourselves, we are either going to answer collectively or individually. We often answer collectively because that is simply the path of least resistance, especially when communicating irl with friends that we don't see often enough to get to know on an individual basis. For instance, "we" like spicy food. "We" enjoy electronica. "We" draw/write. "We" enjoy crochet, "we" dislike eating fish. This may or may not be true for the individual speaking. Some of us have a low spice tolerance, some of us prefer classical, folk, metal, rock, etc, some of us don't have a creative bone in their body and would rather be doing something else. Our body has an aversion to fish, our brain and muscle memory means all of us can crochet or draw even if we have no desire to. But it's much easier to explain our hobbies like that to people who won't 'get it'.
However, we desire to be seen as individuals with our own attributes and not just a mass of collective identity. It's very easy to ignore us as individuals and in essence see us as a quirky singular person when we are collectivized like that.
However. There is another factor with answering collectively that we are often hesitant to talk about: filling in the blanks.
You don't really think about this as a singlet, especially if you have a good memory, but autobiographical information is not generally difficult to recall. Your mother had a maiden name you likely know; you remember your first pet, you probably remember the books or movies or video games you loved most growing up. You have downtime in your everyday life. When someone asks you what you have been up to, you can probably answer that easily, and have something of substance to say. You have a cohesive life to recall from, but most of us do not.
There is the obvious problem: we are generally speaking fronting once every few months if we're lucky, sometimes once every few years, and most of the time in between we are either asleep, puttering around our headspace or have lives on our gateway world whose details we can't recall on demand when we are here, for the most part. Our everyday lives are full of holes, but so are our early lives. We may or may not have memories of our lives before we came here, and those memories will be patchwork at best and extremely light on the detail at worst, being able to be summed up in a mere sentence. Recalling details is difficult and emotionally fraught. Imagine for a moment you could not remember an autobiographical detail as simple as the names of your parents or your birthday. Frightening too are the holes we have in our personalities. You don't know what your favorite genre of music is. You don't know what types of things you like to do in your spare time. But you know with certainty that you DID know at one time, that you could recall this information and now it's just been taken from you.
This type of draining self work is so hard because it exposes gaps in our personhood. We used to be different. We used to be a whole person, but not everything was carried over when we came here and now we have to figure it out and what if it's wrong? what if you're just making things up? That's not how autobiographical memory is supposed to work! That's not how people work! So what does that make you?
And as fraught as that is to interrogate within ourselves among people who understand the nature of our situation, being asked for these details--or even someone just trying to get to know you more at a deeper level--by anyone outside is all at once embarrassing and terrifying. I don't know what my hobbies are, I haven't had an opportunity to explore my options. I don't know when my birthday is, I don't know the details of my childhood, I don't remember what my parents were like. I know I have a job in-world but I don't remember the specifics. These are details I should know, because these are details other people know about themselves. Even this minor scrutiny has turned us into paper dolls with pieces haphazardly cut out.
At once: I am a fraud of a person.
And: They can see straight through me.
So answering collectively smooths things over. It fills in the holes so it's not as jarring when we don't know something we should. It's much easier to interface with people who can access their own autobiographical memory even if it means lying about our own, or at least prioritizing the least confusing version of the truth. But to be honest: we hate it.
In our panic to cover up the "I don't remember"s we lose the opportunity to say "Can we chat about it and maybe I'll figure it out?". We lose the opportunity to have a true moment of connection. We may never be able to fully remember the details of our pasts or our lives on our Gateway world, but does that make us less of people? We can build new lives here, too, but by avoiding thinking about the gaps and filling them in with the path of least resistance, even when we are self-examining, aren't we robbing ourselves of an opportunity to grow and become our own people?
