We don't talk about the feeling of "misrepresenting" our source enough, despite it being a decently common thing from what we've encountered. Especially within the factid community (and even more so within the "identifying as" part of the factid community), which is what this post is going to focus on, despite it by no means being an exclusive experience. We've just seen it tenfold there, likely due to a lot of discourse that comes from just having a factual identity.
The feeling of misrepresenting your source is something we've experienced a lot. That feeling of double guessing "am I doing this right?". Of "would my source feel this way?", "would my source say that?", "do I match up enough to count?". This goes double if part of your identity *doesn't* align. Maybe it's a different gender. Maybe it's a different partner/feelings about the partner you had in source. The guilt, the feelings of being invalid, of double guessing "is this even really an identity of mine?". They creep up out of nowhere. It's easy to get lost in it, especially when you're still new, but honestly it can come just as strong years in. And it takes over everything. It's one of those feelings that just engulfs your brain, making you double guess *everything*.
Like I said, it's something we're familiar with. Especially since we have such close interaction with so many of our sources. Hell we're friends with some of ours. It's easy to get caught up in that questioning of being similar enough. We find this is truest for our factives (not many folks with other factional types have fronted enough to confirm beyond factives) compared to our fictives, who seem to be able to handle the feeling a lot better. Something about just being a factive of another person makes us feel like we have to represent them correctly. We have to be a copy of them, and we can't have any deviations. Maybe it's because we're held to such higher standards by the alterhuman community. We either have to 100% source separate or be 100% the same. There's no room for anything else. Maybe it's because we're afraid they'll see we're different and get mad at us for, being us?
But that's the trick to all of this. You can't misrepresent someone by existing as yourself. A part of having a source (and identifying "as") is you're a version of them, not an exact copy. This doesn't make your identity any less real, but it does mean things will just naturally be different at times. And that's okay. It's okay to have a different typing style, a different gender, a different partner. Because in the end we're us. We can be our own person while still being/having our source, and that doesn't invalidate our identity at all. And of course it's easier said than done. Dealing with feelings, especially when there's so much outside influence, always is. But that bit has been a good base to fall back on when we need it honestly, so we're hoping it'll help someone else too.
