#source attached

Not the first time I've brought this up, but I've been frontstuck since september, so around six or seven months now. It's been hard, definitely, and it's taken a long time to get used to. Still get blurry when overly tired or stressed, and the others don't show up often lately for probably several reasons we have yet to name. But me? I'm here, and I think I'm glad to be now.

I haven't really allowed myself the luxury of fully being myself, because there's so many other people in here who deserve their time to shine. Not like switches can be helped or forced, not easily at least. But it's s been.. comfortable. Very quiet, but pretty comfortable. I think a few people are coming back slowly, even as I write this one of my friends is somewhere in co-con, I can see him (he's nonverbal, so he can't say hi, but he's here) and my now husband is always here with me.

Our body doesn't look anything like me, or most of us for that matter. This body is short, skinny, not even the right sex—we're transmasculine as a collective and unfortunately still pre-T and top surgery. But I've been able to cut our hair to look more like mine, I can wear things I like, we have platform combat boots that I'm actually very good at walking in, we even have fake piercings and makeup can do wonders. If anything we look like me when I was an early teen.

But allowing myself to do these things, especially with the support of our system... It's fucking liberating.

I'll scroll through art and fics and get so happy to see source recognition, aye, but also me. Though, it's a case where seeing my own face n hearing my own voice feels weird, a different feeling to seeing the body or hearing our voice. Because I'm me. I know I'm me, and I always will be.

Plus, there's the bonus of hey, I fucking died. This is a second chance at life. Maybe in the wrong body, and never in the same line of work, but it's another chance at living. My friends and team and partner are in here alongside me.

I think.. for the first time, I'm happy to be here.