This Endless Desire
You never get tired of food, don’t you? It may feel like you’ve had too much pasta, but you’ll still crave some kind of meal the next day. It’s the same with water, or sleeping, or sexual desire to those inclined. But for my system, there’s one more insatiable hunger: being a toddler.
The yearning pulls from the corner of my mind. Be a baby. Wear a footed sleeper, hug your stuffed cat, wear diapers and talk dike dis. I want a Mommy and be loved. These are cravings that are NEVER fully satisfied. I’ll indulge for a few hours of playing with blocks and cuddling Bluey, and maybe then my system will enter the mood for a more complex hobby. Yet even in those complex activities, I want to be a child. I feel like a child.
The pull may camouflage when I’m in public. Our headmate Aurora is our adult mask, and she can talk to doctors like we have no desire in the world to be a silly little toddler. But we do. She’s playing pretend. Aurora doesn’t think she is, but she is, because we still want to be a child. And it nabs at us so much.
Do we listen to the pull? The kids within...They want to abandon all pressure. We would be unemployed, hoping to survive in capitalism without active income. As much as this world will let me, maybe we can be kids, writing and composing and also playing and sleeping. I had wanted to be a professor, but any job I’ve had — even tutoring from home — after a few weeks I’m sobbing daily. Can I be a kid instead? Is that a feasible life?
Is that a moral life? Requesting disability services just because working has me throw a tantrum. That’s my excuse? I should train away my nervous system’s fears. Given that I can force myself to act like an adult sometimes, I have an obligation to pretend. After all, don’t people say all adults are just pretending? The capability to work means I must work. My anxiety is not bad enough that I get to the luxury of being a toddler while everyone else strives to keep the world turning.
Curse my ability to mask, meaning I should mask. No, curse this childish pull instead. Adults don’t want to be children. My brain is wanting something that is destroying my financial safety. I’m not supposed to want to be a kid. I’m not supposed to want to be a kid.
What is the cause and effect here?
Did I yearn to be a child so much I became dysfunctional? Or was I already disabled, and then identifying as a kid felt right?
Do I yearn to be a child because I am one? Or do I yearn to be a child because I fucked up my brain?
Let me believe there’s circular logic here. Let me believe identity is self-determed. If I want to be a child, then I am one. Maybe a dumb, pretending adult would want to masquerade as a kid, too. No, ignore that thought. Let us be happy. Let us exist.
We believe in a world where everyone decides who they are for themselves. Why are we really cursing our childish pull? Because surviving is hard in a society that doesn’t reward happiness? Because our parents said we were selfish for transitioning? Capitalism and childhood trauma tells us that we are destroying ourselves, but we can only be with the mind that exists today.
Today, I feel like a little girl cat. That feels rather nice.
Keep picking those berries~ 🫐🍓🍇
OH MY GOSH I actually got myself to post again after 6 months!!!
It’s been such a battle with my brain. I’m glad I have ADHD meds now at least; I didn’t have them for over a year. But I have such a brain fog these days. There’s words all around me, just over the trees, but my brain is folding in the forest’s darkness. We're grasping out from the mud our paws are stuck in.
I don’t think I can polish my writing as well as I could before. But I still want to share my voice. So here’s what I can write, through the marshes in our brain.
We still want to add voice recordings of our blog. I want to be accessible to more kids like me, and I also like the idea of putting my literal voice out there! But delaying posting until we recorded audio for our whole blog was one of the mental barriers keeping me from writing. So I needed to just post and worry about recordings later. I hope you understand!
I'm excited to write more now that I got this post out. So hopefully the next post won't take 6 months? Paws crossed!