How do you continue to live when you feel as though you have done everything you wanted to do, seen everything you wanted to see, and that life has nothing left to offer you? That was a question I encountered in my first year of university, approximately three years ago now. I was quite big on lucid dreaming back then and multiple realities, and honestly I can't blame my past self. After all, how do you reconcile how real dreams feel in the moment and after you wake with the fact that they aren't? How do you reconcile the fact that memory defines identity when memory itself is malleable? Four years ago I watched a show (which I have reconstructed a puzzle to here) that shattered my sense of reality, and it was an incredible feeling. I felt as though this world was not real, and that I was able to manipulate who I was and the world I lived in similar to a lucid dream. I felt as though this world was but a vessel that allowed me to explore other worlds. But then something weird happened. Time kept moving forward. Every morning the sun would rise, and I would have duties and responsibilities that didn't go away. And life moved on. Having seen what life could be, what it was, I didn't want to move on. I wanted to stay exactly where I was, and only maintain my shell as much as I needed to to allow myself to truly live in my own mind. The scary thing was that after about a year of that, I got bored. I had had a goal in mind, a goal of seeing the planet rise. I didn't allow myself to visualize that goal for fear I would lose all sense of meaning and purpose to exist in this world, but at some point my desire to fulfill that goal faded, and all I was left with was boredom. I had "seen" everything I wanted to see because I had seen it in my mind. I could go out and do things in the "real" world but all that would give me would be memories, memories that could be manipulated, that would be lost to time eventually. I was reminded of all this by Savannah Brown's latest video, which goes into depth on what feels to me like a very similar experience. And honestly, I haven't felt like that in a very long time. I still have dreams, very vivid dreams, and I still think it's cool when I can become lucid and manipulate them, and I think it's cool that a dream can seemingly manipulate memory to make you believe you've been somewhere or seen something for a very long time when you know it must be the case that your brain has come up with it on the fly. And of course, I still feel stories on an extremely deep emotional level, and describe my experience of media as being transported to the world, and often listen to the music of the world to re-transport myself there for leisure. But I don't have that sense of unreality anymore, that sense of being able to manipulate anything and everything about myself. I don't think it's age as the difference because Savannah Brown and others are definitely older than me. I think a pivotal moment in this experience was actually the moment I decided to transition, because that was an extremely material-focused decision on what I wanted to do in "this" reality. It also gave me something to focus on for a bit which sort of helped pull me out of the depression I was in. It helped me refocus what I wanted to do in life, and I came up with goals that are much more mundane than the planet rise but much more achievable, like sustaining myself financially, taking care of my parents when I'm older, etc. The strongest echoes I get of that time are how deeply I seem to experience media, as though it were its own reality as opposed to actors playing characters behind a camera. It seems to set me apart from my friends, and also makes some situations that would normally be interesting experiences into extremely emotionally painful experiences (I'm looking at you Martin Supreme, or any of UW Comp). That said though it is a gift, and I'm realizing this now. Many of my happiest moments in life have been through experiencing a story. The power a single story has to change my worldview and give me hope is something I wish to never give up, no matter what I say when I'm in pain. A recent experience has made me realize that. A friend and I were re-watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy in theatres (which now that I think of it my last blogpost here was so long ago I hadn't even seen LoTR, which is kind of crazy) and I couldn't get immersed into it for whatever reason. I think part of it was grief, part of it was social anxiety, and part of it was the fact that I had explored the LoTR universe so much more after initially watching the movies that all I could think about were the implausibilities and inaccuracies. I think often reading the book of an adaptation ruins the movies for me. Luckily, though, no matter what happens, the sun will rise again tomorrow, and again the day after that. Time moves on like it always has. Why don't we make the most of it :)
Of course, I must address the elephant in the room, which is the date. I don't usually notice valentine's day but I've had to tailor some personal events (baking cakes for people) to not fall on this date, and I was reminded of it when I wrote the date for this blogpost, so without further ado here's my rant: I'm not a big fan of valentines day, or romance in general for that matter. At least, romance as it's commonly portrayed, with gender roles and stereotypes playing a large role. Gay romance can sidestep this somewhat, and it's quite funny to me when the straights are all "well who's the man and who's the woman" because they can't understand romance without gender norms. The problem is gay romance is "outside the norm" for a lot of people so when it does have representation in media it tends to have all the issues of having a decision made for representation. Yes, I may be slightly biased by being an aroace trans girl, though honestly my favorite piece of media of all time (Finding Paradise) contains as its premise a love story, as does To The Moon (its prequel) which is also one of my favorite pieces of media, so I don't think I'm anti-romance in general, I'm just extremely against gender stereotypes which can often rub up against romance in the way society tends to think about it. Anyway that's all for today. See you the next time I can figure out ipv6 addresses :)