Hati, my cerberus, goes by they/them. They've been an exploration of neutral/agender stuff since I really started exploring that.
Aurum, my jackal, goes by she/her. She's been an outlet for exploring the more fem end of things, but she's just one face.
My "namesake" character, Howlitzer, predates gender questions and I haven't depicted them in a while because it's been easier to sort things with those other faces.
Since I've been hyperfocusing on Aurum for a bit some folks probably have seen her first as my online face. Nonetheless, I go by they/them and am most comfortable with that at the moment.
My brain has been beating the shit out of itself lately so I might as well vomit my thoughts in one place while I have enough of them in mind...
<<< bigger, juicier braindump behind the read-more >>>
I'm going to just add to this as I untie some knots.
There's nobody at fault for the mental mess I am in other than my brain latching on a bit too hard to folks I've vibed with on identity matters when they're on their own journeys, and the world for being a bit scary right now for even the hypothetical exploration of that.
I need to find more than one thread to pull to get myself somewhere with all this because motivation is fragile and otherwise my brain is all too keen to latch onto others' connections and progress in the worst possible way and beat the shit out of me with it. But right now that's all I'm stewing in with my own thoughts.
I'm realizing there's some extra mental gridlock because it took me some time and trauma to really internalize and accept my asexuality, before any gender things came into play.
When I was dealing with that I watched a number of people I'd connected with there... then realize they weren't ace when gender things were explored. And this just really made me have to work against "it's just a phase" thoughts with myself.
It's hard to be confident in aspects of your identity that involve an absence of a feeling. It makes it harder to not have some nagging "maybe you haven't just felt it yet" and that is downright crazymaking. While identity can be fluid...this bit makes it hard to not have an extra layer of self-doubt.
And I've probably had some maladaptive ways of dealing with that. But I don't know how else to.
Having that lynchpin pulled just dumps that all in my lap at once. I'm frankly terrified at the possibility of reckoning with not being ace, and that just ties this giant knot around all the other anxieties if pulling those threads pulls that one as well.
