Old Stories

[paracosmic_gt]

We read some of those stories we wrote with you. And it’s strange. Because I’m there, and so is Seto and Gabriel. And our characters were friends with these characters, but in a deeper level for me, I have memories with them as people. I have that nickname, Autumn Leaf, which I’ll never be called again. I’ll never be Aunt Jewel, Seto will never be Uncle, and Gabriel won’t have them either. They’ll never take trips in our mind or our dreams, even though our brain still keeps their signature; our hand knows their faces.

 

Our characters were completely outnumbered by yours, and yet, we fit right in. Just like we as people, fitting just right until it ended. Now just another source of nostalgia, separated and distant.
 

I read these stories and I feel old senses of love, joy, excitement, pain. The feelings aren’t mine alone, I feel June, Seto, Rio beside me. Wondering about the pages that made up so much of their lives*. It’s strange that I won’t be in these situations again, my life now is normal when compared to Mermen, animatronics, and sorcerers. I am not a wife, I have no child, I have no doting husband to kiss me on the forehead, I have no gang of friends fighting, laughing, loving together.
 

Except. Have I truly lost?
 

I am not a wife. But did I ever want to be? I have gained so much of a nuanced understanding of my gender and femininity, so much that being a “wife” is not something I cling to desperately. My former self might cry upon being separated from her husband for a moment, but I am not so sure anymore.
 

I have no doting husband. But what have I gained in his stead? A complex and strong bond with a person I’ve known for a decade, and yet only truly understood for a year. A new relationship, forged on my own, with someone who would very gladly kiss me wherever I desire. An interwoven connection, origin lost to history, now looking each other in the eyes for the first time. I can lie between them and feel like I have the whole world around me.
 

I have no child. That one is true, I cannot say I am parent to any young one. But I have a charge. Someone I will always look out for, even if our bond is not by adoption or anything formal. A family of the ink and page, stronger than the blood of the womb (or in my case, the egg).
 

I have no gang of friends. But the approximately 30 other adults I’m currently sharing a body with might strongly disagree. (Even as I wrote that statement, I felt pushback to rewrite because it was an “incorrect observation”). They weren’t written by anyone, but I don’t need them to be. I’m discovering their uniqueness, their sorrows, their joys, as they discover mine. Never to be separated.
 

My life is normal. It is not like the life I had. And for that I am grateful.
 

*Lives confined within the page are merely snapshots of the complexity of true existence.