Dreams of Identity

A thing I do with my cognition is to simulate situations and interactions in my life. One of the ways I do this is by trying to find a story that matches all the emotional and practical beats I need. Because it I can find a story I can believe about this scenario I can build it into a piece of identity, and I can – at least for a time – become the person who lives that story.

This is a super valuable thing to do at times. It lets you write stories. It lets you script and practice scams. It lets you interrogate things you think you know about people’s behaviors and feelings. It lets you choose how you want to change yourself. It’s a great tool to have, and I like using it.

But my brain does it obsessively when I should be resting. It’s already happening when I wake up – it’s what I remember thinking about, in lieu of dreams ¹When I remember anything at all. Often when I wake I’m jerked suddenly into PIC, so they can deal with my startle response and more carefully assess the dangers of this new situation.. It’s a thing that can happen when I’m stuck in work mode. It’s a thing my brain does automatically whenever I’m overwhelmed but not immediately occupied. It’s what my brain does when I leave it unsupervised. And I sometimes cannot escape it.

Living in a machine that generates identity is complicated for all of us, but it’s hard for me in particular because I cannot stop thinking about it, and because being able to accept new identity is a survival skill I have coerced myself into millions of times since I was a toddler. Being able to find a story to explain and control your shitty situation can make things survivable when they otherwise would not be.

Being able to live that story is easy if it fits all the beats. It will feel normal and you’ll know how to do it. Just step away from your old life and identity and don’t break stride picking up the new one. Maybe it will be easy to come to back later. Maybe you will be gone forever. But if you don’t follow the story you maybe can’t be a person who survives this. So you learn to make yourself do it. Not right away, but eventually, and then it’s just a thing you can do. It hurts. It’s sometimes very hard. And there’s no guarantee your simulation was right. But you can do it, if you make yourself.

When I’m obsessively thinking I get stuck in short loops trying to find a person – a story – who can survive. The simulated situations are set with real parts of my life, but with super high stakes a d intolerable and unlikely constraints – as if I was oppressed and in a dangerous situation ²Yes, patriarchal capitalist imperialism is inescapable and that does suck, but I mean unbearable like: you can’t react to being hurt, you have to hold still and control your breathing, you can’t expect humane treatment. Do it and believe in it enough to endure indefinitely without change.. It’s not working on a useful simulation, it’s just imagining ways I can need less.

I am a person who can change my needs. Not all of them. Not in isolation from other needs. Not without (sometimes great) cost. Not without hurting myself. But I can change my story and have different needs. Honestly it’s hard for me not to, given a few weeks of exposure. It’s literally all my brain can think about sometimes.

So I hate it, because it’s a tool my abuse built, because it’s a hammer I use to spare myself the blade, because the fact that I’m doing it is a sure sign my life is going to get worse. And also it’s the only path to contentment.

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Shanda asked for me to call emergency medics tonight. You decided not to go to the ER, but it was still a lot. I’m sorry you were feeling so bad. I know what it’s like, to be sure of impending doom. I’m sorry you were there. I hope you could remember that I’m good at emergencies, and that I can understand how you feel when you think you are dying, and have survived it and trained for it. Today was already a lot and this was more.

But I did like how your pre-existing defiant and assertive condition let you push back at slightly patronizing medics and their authority-based “reassurance”. The things they did might help some people, but you were correct to complain that they weren’t helping you.

They were also impressed with the screen when they were leaving. As they should be.

ZiB

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Sent from a phone.

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