Malachite

It’s almost midnight, and instead of sleeping I am once more trying to figure out whether it’s normal to wish I didn’t have an organic human body (in favor of a robotic or digital existence, preferably with some alterations to my body plan), or if that’s a sign that I’m some flavor of alterhuman despite not having many of the other trappings (no supernumerary limbs, no phantom senses, no belief that I actually am something other than human, no belief in past lives or souls and thus no belief that I was something other than human in a past life or that I was born the wrong species, etc.).

Like, so many facts of life when it comes to having a human body make me really uncomfortable. Also, when given the opportunity to play as something that isn’t human-shaped in a video game or RP or whatever, I will pretty much never play as a human. This is partly because I’m a human every day of my life and I want to be something different, but also because it Feels Good to have a character that isn’t human (or better yet, isn’t even humanoid).

I have been told in the past that the normal amount of wishing for a nonhuman, inorganic body is zero. The amount I experience is noticeably greater than zero. However, when I read up on alterhuman experiences, there’s a bunch of stuff I just don’t have, so I’m unsure if I “count” or if I just feel that way because of my myriad mental health issues regarding body image and the like.

Was writing a silly little gender comment on someone’s silly little gender chost when suddenly my brain hit me with:

Wait, how much of my current gender journey is tied up in the fact that I live in a place where it’s dangerous to be visibly queer? How much of the whole getting gender envy from shit that I know would make me dysphoric anyway shit is because I just wish I could safely express my queerness in the physical world to begin with, rather than some misguided desire to try and look like that when I know it would worsen my dysphoria? How much of this current round of questioning isn’t fueled by an evolving understanding of my identity, but rather by my desperation for any avenue of queer self-expression I can get my hands on?

Brain, you can’t just hit me with earth-shattering shit like that when it’s this late in the evening.

There is no surgery or prosthesis that would permanently rid me of my disability. It would require such extensive modification or replacement of the neurological and musculoskeletal structure of my torso that it just cannot be done. Even in a sci-fi setting with cybernetics all over the place, I can’t see it being feasible.

But in such a sci-fi setting, there would be other options for me.

I want to upload my consciousness into a robot body, or at the VERY least plug my still-living brain into one. If we’re already considering replacing my whole goddamn torso with a cybernetic version that doesn’t suck, why not throw out the rest of my meat along with it? My torso’s not the only part of my body that’s busted. My arms, neck, and feet could use replacing, too. At that point just stick me in a machine and call it a day. Chrome doesn’t feel pain.

My chronic pain isn’t the only problem being a robot would solve, either. A robot wouldn’t need to eat, or exercise, or take an exhausting number of pills every day just to function. A robot wouldn’t ever have to set foot in a bathroom. Sure, a robot body would require mechanical maintenance, but that’d be a lot less frequent than, say, needing to brush one’s teeth.

And a robot body could look however I want it to look. Goodbye, gender dysphoria! It wouldn’t necessarily even have to look human if I didn’t want it to, so long as it was still human-shaped enough to function in human-designed spaces. I could do away almost entirely with the design constraints of the human species if I wanted to, if only I could have a robot body.

I know there would be other problems with putting my mind into a machine. The robot body didn’t pop into existence in a vacuum, for one thing. But this is a pipe dream anyway—it’ll certainly never become possible within my lifetime—so can’t I just have a little wishful thinking about not being in pain every day without worrying about capitalism ruining my fantasy?