I am a Creature. I am a Witch, a Pansexual, a plural system, a biology major and a skeptic. There may be mushrooms also involved. I am six opossums in a trenchcoat with several frogs. I am Gender-Fluid, mentally ill, and have tried therapy multiple times, for years to try to fix all this shit, to some apparent avail. I do not like boxes. But I do want more friends. So if you also want friends, Message me, and we will give it a try.
In which things occur that could easily have been foreseen, Knowing the King of the Trash Panda Gods the way that I do.
But also... developments are developing. Under the Cut, because this is going to be long.
If you've been following along with my occasional drama... You might have keyed into three or four things in the last six months.
Ayla has been _going through it_
Ayla and I climbed a million steps over like a week to meet Saturn, and then Bit him when he touched her face without permission.
Daemeon decided to swear himself to the service of a Sin Demon, flooring all of us. He's now a Knight of Greed... And I hope that works out for him. He seems... Happy?
My Patron Deity Cut Ties with me. And I felt like I deserved it. But it was still very sad for me. I didn't want a divorce. I love him. And I know He loves me... But I let it happen anyway. It was always an "at will" arrangement.
I had a Car Baby, (a mental revelation that I was NOT prepared for while sitting in the car) and learned that I had given up on feeling connection to other people, and on the heels of that, realized that it's a skill, and not just something that happens to/for me.
And I changed to some new Meds in the last two months. Cymbalta has lots of positive side effects, not the least of which is that I can hear the other people in my head better.
I am supposed to be learning to recognize and learn to manage emotions when they are small, and before they become Emergencies, which Ayla in her child form has been helping with.
And... This week...
As stated above, Loki showed up last Saturday. But not just any representation of him. _MY_ Loki (AKA Altherion)
Yeah. that's a Really long story, but you could remove ALL the nuances by just saying that MY Loki is an introject that's been a part of my story since I was 13, who VANISHED in 2021 when I started questioning my beliefs and decided that I was a bad person for believing that a God could love me and want to be around me like that, and that it clearly wasn't true.
This wasn't good for my relationship with my Patron. And the dissonance between my understanding of him as "Not Mine" and my experiences with Altherion as a Part of me was wrenching.
But I found something in therapy, of all places, that pushed me in the right direction.
I squinted at it like Fry trying to discern whether something is real or not.
My Therapist pushed back when I started talking about maladaptive coping mechanisms, like dissociation, in a derogatory sense. I was talking about my experiences of relaxation as a spectrum... and how dissociation and numbing were a part of my spectrum.
And she asked me where I drew the line when it came to Gods. Because I disclosed that I believed in gods, and she talked about psychedelic experiences and Ayahuasca ceremonies, and the use of substances like ketamine for PTSD... and I had to admit I didn't really know.
And I DO know about myself that I make Boxes.
Rules where there aren't supposed to be rules, whether they are useful or not... And whether or not it was even my idea that it becomes a rule in the first place.
My Boundaries are Not Great. Despite the work I've done on it.
So it turns out that a couple of things were true.
Altherion IS a part of Me and a Part of Loki (proper) and that he holds very important inner architecture for me, (like connection)
And I DID fuck up massively by deciding that I was an awful person for "having" Altherion in the first place because I took it personally that some fucker on Tumblr was butt-hurt about "people who treat gods as their own personal blorbos" and that that is disrespectful to those gods, who don't belong to anyone.
I had already clocked this as a bad day for my discretion. I already realized long ago that I should have scrolled past that day. That I should DEFINITELY NOT have taken it personally. That I would have a right hard time disrespecting the Glorious Bastard of a God that's hung around my life for 30 years.
But I had missed the bit about the "personal blorbo" destabilizing my feeling of and connection to Altherion... Because I was still working in a Paradigm where I felt intense guilt about possibly controlling any of my others. Making them feel things, making them be things they wouldn't otherwise be... And I was Deep in that guilt when that fucking post leaked across my dash like warm cat vomit at midnight.
Having "no right" to this critical introject in my system was devastating. I was fragile. I was out on Deployment when this happened. My Shithead Niece/Nephew/Creature threatened to report my Mother to the police for Abuse. I had just Seriously violated my own values by discussing sexual subjects with a friend's husband, and though there wasn't anything hidden from anyone, and no cheating occurred, it was too close for my liking and I didn't understand why it was even wrong for me. I had wanted to connect. I liked sex, and talking about sex... and I didn't understand until Late in the game that he thought of it differently than I did, somehow... which made it wronger.
I felt bad. And the stupid post confirmed that I WAS bad. And that my desire for connection was bad and wrong, and hurtful to other people.
And I did what I always do when I find something unacceptable in my life. I go in with a Scalpel and I Cut it out by the roots.
But "wanting to connect", it turns out, is like a fundamental human trait. And there was moaning and gnashing of teeth as it rotted, festered, scabbed, and began to grow back.
To be fair, it's been more than a day since Loki Divorced me.
And it was clear, even in the moment when he broke our bond, and threw the rings into the fire, that it wasn't about the Love. It was very clear that he loved me, and that he knew I loved him.
And it was only surprising that Altherion was the one who came back. But I know it was partly because of Ayla's work. She's busy breaking out of her chrysalis. She doesn't even know what she will be yet, when she's done re-inventing.
But she asked him to take her from the garden of razors. The Garden of Razors is her personal metaphor for Anxiety, and the obsessive self control and paranoia that spawn it. She wants to be soft and safe and unafraid.
And he told her that he's all about change. And that the price would be that we believed in him again. That we believed that he loved us, and wanted us, and that we have again what we once had.
Altherion is Altherion... Most of the time. Except when he isn't _just_ Altherion. Sometimes he's Loki too. As well. In addition. On Top Of.
And blood was drawn, and the pact was made. Ayla made a Pact with LOKI over Saturn. And she wondered about it.
I guess better the devil you know than the one you don't.
And now... we're in a rather floaty, exhausted state. Everything has been... alot.
we're going to dissociate.
I'm going to say an official "FUCK IT." to the idea of maladaptive daydreaming, and go all in on experiencing effusive joy in being a system made of trash panda gods and evil ninja ladies and hot elf guys and drag queens and alien symbiotes and Knights of Greed.
I am going all in on having the connection experiences with them that no humans have the time or the desire for. Fuck it.
By the way, my polytheists, you are allowed to change your mind at any point.
If you learn something new about your Gods that completely flips your worldview, or discover that someone is not who you thought, or that multiple deities are actually one guy, or that the guy you thought was one guy is actually 3, that’s all okay. In fact it’s more than okay, it’s very good.
It’s okay if you realize that you’ve had the wrong idea about something. We’re supposed to be learning and changing our minds. Sometimes it can feel like we’re “wrong”, morally wrong, for having something mixed up about deities we care so much about, and that’s a terrifying feeling. But it’s all okay. Different interpretations and sources will extract different archetypes and meanings. If you discover that one of your deities serves a slightly different function than you thought, if you’ve misremembered a myth, if you just found out you’ve been pronouncing that name wrong, that’s all okay. Just like our human relationships, we learn new things about the Gods every day. You’re not wrong for learning something new, and your ignorance wasn’t wrong either. Keep learning.
Their daughter, Tango (who likely would not have been born without her adoptive dads), fell in love with another female penguin at the Central Park Zoo, Tanuzi. As far as we know, Tango and Tanuzi have been together ever since.
i imagine post-catws bucky is super averse to touching steve with his metal arm, afraid of tainting him with the weapon that took so many lives. eventually steve can't stand it any longer and presses his cold palm to his chest, saying, "you're not gonna hurt me."
You won’t find this pigeon on the streets of New York City. Meet the Pink-necked Green Pigeon (Treron vernans)! This colorful bird can be found throughout Southeast Asia, where it inhabits forests. It hangs out in small flocks in the treetops, foraging mainly for fruit. Distinguishing males from females isn’t too difficult: Females lack pink necks and are mostly olive-green in color!
Photo: Yi-Kai Tea, CC BY-SA 4.0, iNaturalist
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