Ghosted Margins

I didn’t really have a plan for this blog. I just wanted a more legitimate reason to write, and buying a domain felt like a commitment, a way of guilt-tripping myself through not wanting the money to go to waste completely. I also wanted a space to place all of my writings, quietly hoping someone besides me, myself and I will actually get to read them. 

Now the questions are coming. 

Consistency. Style. Identity. Purpose. Meaning.

I’ve re-read my previous posts a thousand times, picked them apart almost as diligently as I pick myself apart in the mirror. At some point, every letter felt out of place, urging me to erase, delete all false testaments of my character. Because through tiny glimpses, you can’t see the whole, and that’s terrifying. The fear of being misunderstood strikes again.

If you build your image of me from a single piece written here, it’s so easy to pigeonhole me. Label me as one thing or another. 

Boxes.

I used to be obsessed with putting myself in boxes. Different in shape, size, design… boxes nonetheless. To have a shape, something tangible. A bold enough contour that would allow others to not only notice me, but remember me long after. 

Fuck that. Fuck boxes.

Call me wishy-washy if you will, but right now I refuse to shrink myself into a container. Aren’t we all multidimensional, complex beings? Let me be just that. Let me be a cat and sit in a receptacle of my choice, regardless of whether I fully fit it. Let me abandon it at will, go back to it, choose a different one, switch it up, organise them close to each other and lay in more than one at a time. 

Maybe it’s because I’m supposedly neurodivergent. Slightly traumatised. A constant work in progress. But often, I feel like I don’t have a strong sense of self.
I’m working on it – to not spill myself all over, to not run myself too thin.
So I know where I end, and the rest of the world begins. 

I just finished reading a newsletter from a German book and comic seller I recently signed up for, full of genuine rambling, sense of humour, character, and it made me smile. It also made me think about how often I don’t feel like myself. About the masks we put on.

Witold Gombrowicz wrote that you can’t escape a face except by taking on a different one. The mood, the role, the circumstances – how many faces can one have? Are all the masks I ever put on mine? Is any of them?

I’ve been called calm, hotheaded, mature, childish, serious, funny, reliable, problematic, kind, and cruel. The list goes on. One of the best things anyone ever called me was a wild card, and I carry that with me. Because I am many things. I am everything. I am nothing. I am a collection of paradoxes. A kaleidoscopic being, full of shifting versions of myself.  

Maybe we all are.

Not fixed.
Not singular. 
Not easily defined. 

Maybe the truth isn’t consistency. Maybe it’s dependency.

Context.

Change.

Motion.

Dependalism.