dancing in the faerie ring

I'm back up in the Ozarks for the holidays, and it's strange. Making me think about how and why my plenanima became so heavily fictional. When I was young and up here, I would run away into the woods when upset. Follow along the coyote paths and collect the bones from their hunts. I'd sit and watch bugs eat the dead deer. I'd collect the dead birds and bury them and I'd fish out bones from ditches and creeks. Catch snakes and crawdads and bugs. It's where I ran to when everything up here became too much (which was, to be honest, very often). I'd climb up onto the cliffs and sit at the edge, so high that buzzards and hawks flew at my eye level. 

A lot of my nonhumanity, especially as an early child, came from my family in the Ozarks. And so I find it strange that throughout all my iterations and versions, even going into my current pencorpus, none of them resemble the wildlife up here. My feelings of nonhumanity are never stronger than they are when I'm up here. I'd expect myself to take the form of the place I went to feel the most comfort, but it's not. It's always been something very far off, very different. 

It probably has to do with my general use of escapism. I protected myself by retreating so far into my head that the real world can't touch me. So I guess that meant that the beasts of this world couldn't get to me. 

My plenanima is so deeply fictional, it's completely rooted in the coping mechanism that kept me safe when the stress was enough to render me constantly ill.

I've recently realized that my pencorpus really lacks a fictional essence. I'm starting to wonder if it's not "central to my identity" not because it's not inherent to me, but because I have been so fictional for so long that I am struggling to connect with nonhuman identity that is rooted in reality. The boar and donkey and bird aspects of me are definitely there, but they are locked away. I feel like I should be able to touch them the way I touch and interact with amphibians and reptiles, but I struggle to. 

There is also the thought of plenanima/pencorpus as some stronger, deeper type of duality to me. I've spoken about it before here and on my main blog, but gender for me is very nebulous and hard to navigate due to certain things being pushed onto me as a young teen. Because I wasn't feminine in the correct way (being tomboyish, not shaving, no makeup), my family assumed I had to be a trans man. Every time I deviated from the presentation they wanted, I was interrogated about my gender identity. They insisted that the only reason I'd be the way I was was because I was a closeted trans man. It confused me, it made me feel like I wasn't allowed to be a woman and I'd only ever find myself in masculinity. The thing is, I'm not a trans man or really even trans-masc. Engaging with that identity felt wrong, but its what I thought I had to be. This idea of a "masculine identity that i am both allowed to be and that feels good" manifested itself in my fiction in complex ways. It's an emotion that is very evident in my plenanima.

I didn't really start to realize what had happened until very recently. 

My pencorpus came about a year and a half ago, in summer of 2024. The things that happened in my mind and to my sense of self in that time shan't be repeated here, but it was tied closely to my experiences growing up in the Ozarks. It established a hard line in my mind between "me" and "not me" that was distressing and hard to navigate and control. I was very dissociated, and that disconnect from my plenanima gave way to many many cameo shifts and paratype developments. The dissociation faded, eventually, but I haven't really been able to shake that sort of... separation. What happened that month has haunted me and while I do not think plenanima/pencorpus is akin to that, I do notice similarities between a "me but to the right" and a "me but to the left". Both are me, but one developed from coping mechanisms, isolation, and escapism. The other is blurry and unfocused, but free of whatever constraints are on the other. 

I am, as a gillman, not allowed to be feminine. Others have never let me do it in a way that's comfortable or feels right, it's always been taken away and then weaponized against me. I don't think I can be faulted for trying to find safety in being masculine, it really was my only option for a long while. Even still, it is safer for me. I'm still actively interrogated about my gender by family, dressing or looking traditionally feminine makes me feel sick. It's easier to claim masculinity, the thing that's been pushed on me for so long, than it is to exist as feminine despite my status as a cis woman. 

My pencorpus does not care, there is liberation and joy in existing as a woman outside of cishet expectations. Seeing my body as something more akin to a female boar lets me exist in my skin and in my gender. Things that would be warning signs to my plenanima are natural to my pencorpus. 

A lot of this has been discovered with the (unknowing) help of my girlfriend, who has given me a safe place to figure out how I want to be seen, treated, and desired. Being able to engage with parts of myself that have been severely neglected in a safe way has really helped me realize a lot of this. 

I have dabbled with the thought that maybe this is some sort of plural situation. A part of me that developed under chronic stress as an attempt to keep me safe (plenanima) and then a part of me that has been preserved and protected from the stressors (pencorpus). I have completely different feelings around gender and my nonhuman wants and desires absolutely change. But I ultimately don't think that's what it is, and even if that argument could be made, I don't think calling it that would help at all. It gives these two things too much separation in me, implies that there is some difference or split in my sense of self or two different influences. When it's really just.... different traits coming out in response to my environment. All fully me. I'm just finally learning how to actually engage with the parts of me that I've forced into hiding for so long. 

I think that I am still very heavily a gillman, and I will be for a long while still. But I also think that being a jersey devil will begin to become more important to me as I continue to exist in safe spaces, like I do with my girlfriend. Right now, I doubt that I will ever stop being a gillman, I just expect my whole set up to slowly morph into an equal duality than a primary vs. secondary thing. 

If any of this makes sense at all. 

Thanks for reading and dealing with my ramblings. 

Godbwye.