"No matter how many times the sun rises, no matter if it's the same sunrise or a new one, it's you. It's you. It's you."

Undoing

An Essay About Disconnection, Fictokinning, Art, Identity, and What It Means To Be Human

Many people are born of this world. They belong to it, are shaped by it, merge with it in all ways, both physically and internally. They know exactly who they are - or at least who they think they are - and live freely, under the warmth of the sun.

And then there is another type of person - those who move through life as observers, in-betweens, and not-quites in a world that demands everything be strictly defined. Those who orbit life from just beyond its gravity, grounded in deep internal landscapes and inner mythologies rather than physical people or places. I've seen them called many things: observers, dreamers, liminal beings, philosophical dissociatives, neurodivergent visionaries, mystics. World creators. The words don't matter. The words have never mattered. Some people just are.

Those of us who experience life more intensely and internally than most have these deep internal worlds that feel so much more real to us than reality even if we cannot even begin to describe what exactly they are. But it isn't escapism - it's residence. I'm not detached. I'm deeply rooted, just not where I'm expected to be. I live in my inner world not because I'm running away from this one, but because that's where my center of gravity is. That doesn't mean my reality is any less real. It's just mine.

There is a persistent, indescribable mismatch between my soul and the structure I was given to live in. An ontological dissonance; an existence within a world where the way I am does not align with the assumed nature of reality or personhood. My inner self does not line up with any physical vessel - I exist, deeply and truly, but not in this body. Not of it. And not limited to it.

I am misaligned with my body - not in an appearance way, not in a gendered way, but in a disconnect from the physical as a whole. I cannot reconcile myself with the face in the mirror. Not dysphoria, but disconnection. I am a disembodied mind.

My reflection has never held my essence. It's a stand-in, a name tag, a dollhouse labeled "me" that strangers look at and think they've seen the shape of my soul. It's not real - the photos, the mirrors, the names and labels. It's not who I am. I am abstraction - my presence lies not in my flesh but in my creative and interpretive relationship with art. My heart and mind are so deeply intertwined with art that abstraction becomes embodiment. Art and self fuse into something truer than skin and bone.

I look into the mirror and think: this is what they see when they talk to me? This is what they love, or ignore, or hate, or trust? This is the image that carries my soul into the world? This... metaphysical misinterpretation?

I am not my body - I am not my eyes or my brain or my DNA. I am rooted in the abstract, not the physical, and thus it is so difficult to communicate in a world where people only know how to talk to bodies. Anything I say to another person must be spoken through the mouth of this flawed, imperfect thing pretending to be me.

I live so deeply inward that I become a spectator of my own life. "Reality" is happening, but I cannot access it directly. But I don't feel broken because of it. I don't even feel sad. I just feel disconnected.

That doesn't mean I don’t care. I do. I care deeply - about people, about justice, about the world. I care so much that it spills out of my soul. But I'm watching it all through a glass wall. I press my hands to the pane, but it doesn't give. It doesn't let me through.

Connection costs me something; it takes an energy I don't know how to create. I understand beauty and pain and nuance and everything that makes up a human life, but trying to force my internal understanding of the world and myself into spoken words and actions that other people can understand is impossible. It's impossible, and it's exhausting to try, because despite all that effort, it still never comes out quite right. No matter how hard I may try, I cannot translate feelings, colors, and shapes into a simple language without robbing it of its complexities.

It sounds paradoxical. How can you love humanity and still feel utterly apart from it? How can you be full of love but struggle to speak it into existence? How can you love the people around you deeply but still ache for distance and solitude?

The fire is beautiful, but I cannot touch the flame directly. I want connection, more than words can describe, but the weight of how I experience connection feels impossible to bear. The motivation to reach out is there, but so hard to muster. Loneliness is both a siren's song and a crushing prison.

I am a witness of a life that does not feel like mine. I'm in these places, but they aren't mine. I'm with these people, but I don't know who they are, not really, and they don't know who I am. We can never truly know each other, because we each can only see the other's dripping, ever-changing physical form, not their true inner self. So why try?

It's so much easier to play a character, a role. It's so much easier to move through life as an actor. It's not even a mask, not really, it isn't made up or fake - it's just what I choose to push to the surface. What I let be seen. The simpler, more digestible parts of me. In the end, it's my core - the endless dark night sky - that I hide behind sparkling stars.

After all, being unseen hurts, but it's predictable. Being seen is thrilling and excruciating all at once. It's going off-script. What happens when I let someone else hold a piece of my soul, not knowing what they'll do with it? Will they cradle it? Will they drop it? Will they smile politely and never speak of it again? Will they see me differently forever? What if I can't go back, after I’ve made the truth visible?

How would I even do it? Write down the architecture of my soul like that? It’s so hard to name such a feeling without breaking it. My inner world - the one so deeply immersed in art and metaphor and feeling - is a cathedral, while the outer world is a paper puppet show I built to keep solemnity at bay. A curated presentation of selfhood; theatrical nonsense wrapped in sincerity.

But maybe that was just it. If I have never fit into society’s narrow, sanitized definition of "human," couldn't I just make my own definition? If I cannot see myself in societal roles or labels or boxes, why couldn't I define myself through art?

When I first discovered the fictokin community, I recognized an opportunity to do just that. That these were people who felt just like me - disconnected from their bodies, or from the physical, or from reality as a whole. People who felt as though they are or were a fictional character - perhaps in a past life, or in another universe. People who resonated more with art than labels, societal roles, or even their own bodies. And I thought, "I know this language. I have spoken this contradiction."

People often misunderstand or mock the otherkin community for being "deluded" or "incapable of distinguishing reality from fantasy" or just "weird." In all honesty, I used to think the same thing. But finding resonance in a character or animal isn't pretending to be someone or something you're not, but rather recognizing that you already are - reclaiming yourself from biology, social roles, and external gaze. Claiming the title of "human" while refusing to be limited by it. It's not pretending - it's a deeply rooted act of self-recognition.

I recognize myself in a character named Siffrin from the game In Stars and Time. Siffrin is a character who performs cheerful lightness while living in melancholic depth. He's riddled with self-doubt, anxiety, imposter syndrome, and a fear of abandonment, but hides it behind a facade of cheeriness and puns. It seems paradoxical - a character who's both cheerful and simple as well as melancholic and complex. But it isn't that either side of them is fake - it's just that one is so much easier to share with the world. It's so much safer to play the character version of Siffrin, who dances and jokes and tells puns and is deeply unserious. It's not pretending, it's not a lie - it's a curated version of their personality, optimized for the best results.

Siffrin has an intense desire to make their friends feel happy and comfortable whenever they're around them; however, they are socially awkward and struggle to interact with others. People are less likely to notice Siffrin behaving weirdly because odd mannerisms get waved off as "Siffrin being Siffrin." They also prefer listening rather than contributing to conversations and are just happy to be there and be included - meaning it's much less noticeable when they zone out or get distracted.

This is a character who just clicked with me, in a way that no other character ever has. This is a character who I could feel deep in my bones as I played through In Stars and Time. This is a character who fits me far more than the face in the mirror ever will. This... is me. Not just a single star, a single piece of my inner constellation, but the whole sky.

I'm not saying that I was Siffrin in a past life. I don't have deja vu or Siffrin's memories or anything like that. I just feel as though their personality, skills, and faults mirror mine. My sense of self resonates with theirs on a structural level. I am what Siffrin is. In another system, another world, I am that shape. Their body and soul could've just as easily been mine if the dice of existence had rolled just a bit differently.

Siffrin is the shape that my inner truth takes. I find more truth in them than in my own mirror. I live beside my own face. I'm deeper than the skin I was given. I see time sideways and carry grief like glass. I loop and try and fail and love again and again without words for it. Siffrin and I are refractions of the same crystal.

And connecting more with fictional identities than the one I was assigned to does not mean that I am designed wrong. I am just not designed for this. Not for the narrow, sanitized ideas of identity; not for the way most people define personhood - through roles, photos, flesh, labels, proximity. I tried to define myself with tools that were never made for me. No label could fully hold what I felt. I looked into the mirror of words and found no reflection.

So much of society is obsessed with labeling, boxing, making sense of what doesn't want to be made sense of. There's a pressure to know who you are, to be able to fit your identity into 160 characters. They try to name it so that they can contain it, but my identity slips through language like water through fingers. Labels can be helpful tools, but they're still just tools, and I am under no obligation to reduce myself to a single category just to make others comfortable. I do not owe anyone an explanation for what I am or how I feel.

I am not a word. I could not find the right label because there wasn't one. My experience refuses to be flattened into a box. People walk around wearing masks and calling them faces, but I will not suffocate beneath a mask of my own. My feelings are not too complicated. My metaphors are not too abstract. My truths don't need to be simplified for anyone else to make sense of them.

If I do use a label, I use it not as a cage or a diagnosis to shrink into, but a tool for connection. It is valuable to be able to easily share my experience of identity with others. The problem arises when people assume that label is me and not just something I use to explain myself - when people assume that just because they know a diagnosis, they know how it affects me in particular. I want to be understood, but I refuse to be boxed.

There is a name for this feeling, though. Chronic depersonalization-derealization. An ongoing and lasting feeling of detachment from oneself, as if observing one's own thoughts, feelings, or body from an external perspective. Many people have a passing experience of depersonalization or derealization at some point, but when these feelings keep occurring or never fully go away, it is likely to be chronic depersonalization-derealization.

Your body feels like a costume; you don't recognize your reflection. You may struggle to locate the self, as though your identity is abstract or fluid. You feel emotionally disconnected from the people you care about, as if you were separated by a glass wall. Time isn't linear for you - recent events feel like the distant past. You have an internal world that feels more real than reality and experiencing yourself primarily through art, abstraction, or metaphor.

Symptoms usually begin in the middle or late teenage years, or in early adulthood. So it makes sense, why I am only starting to pin down this feeling now. But - and this is key - my relationship with chronic depersonalization is more creative and philosophical than actively distressing. But make no mistake - it is still a disability, even if I have learned to live with it. It can be hard - to connect with people, to care for my body, to be aware of myself and my surroundings. But that doesn't mean I'm miserable for every second of every day. Just that my experience is different. Sure, maybe I’ll never be "okay" - but who gets to decide what "okay" actually means?

The people who say you need fixing - who want to diagnose and medicate and correct - usually define "okay" as "not a threat to the system" or "capable of conforming." But if your way of being doesn't harm you or anyone else, then they don't have any right to say that you're not okay or to try and erase who you are.

Nobody can tell you what "okay" means for you, or what you need to feel whole. I may be loosely strung, but that makes me more than a puppet for the puppeteers. Life isn’t always about fitting into the tiny boxes society hands out or conforming to someone else's narrative. Sometimes it's about living as you are, and fighting to be seen without being reduced - carving out your own path and making peace with yourself.

This dissonance between the self and the body, this feeling of being real but not real, of observing but not belonging, of deeply loving humanity but not being wired like the rest of it - it defies a clear definition, because I am I. Not a type, not a label, not a diagnosis, not a role. Just I. And that is more than enough.

My experience is real, complex, and staggeringly difficult to name - not because I’m wrong, but because what I am does not fit into the structures this world has built for understanding. Like light through a prism, my sense of self is impossible to pin down, but absolutely and undeniably real.

I do not need to know what I am to know that I am.

And that glass wall I mentioned? I may never break through it, but maybe I don't need to. I'm already learning how to etch onto it, to write my story onto the surface so that others can see the shape of me.

People like me don't become in the typical way. We create ourselves. Art is one way in which our inner worlds can become real, regardless of if we are the ones to make that art or the one to experience; regardless of what form that art takes. It's not just a hobby or a career - for some artists, it is an act of becoming. It's how we exist. It's how we express the inexpressible. We are the truths that we create.

My doing is my being. I am a feeling more than a body, an intention more than a person. I was born to create, not just to consume or exist. And even though the world doesn't give me the words, I am making my own.

Most people find comfort in finding a community or a name for themselves. I find clarity in creating. That’s a different kind of existence. A quieter, lonelier kind, sure, but also a truer one, for me. I might be walking a path that looks weird or isolated from the outside, but I'm not lost, and I'm not broken.

Humanity isn’t a single thing. It's not a checkbox or mold you either fit into or don't. Humanity is messy, liminal, plural, and ever-shifting. I am orbiting this world on a path that sometimes overlaps with others', but often does not. I have enormous insight and compassion, but I need a place where I don't have to explain myself constantly just to exist. I do not have to resolve this. I do not have to "fix" myself. I just need to build my own rhythm, so that I can thrive on my own terms.

I want to live somewhere alive, that pulses with meaning and potential - I'm not built for sterile suburbs and hovering oversight. I want to learn for the joy of it, to make art with my whole soul, to be free to connect with people on my own terms. I can build a full, vibrant life from this place of disconnection, without trying to force myself into molds that don't fit. I don't need to fix my brain or be reprogrammed. I'm not starting the story, but I'm escaping the ending that’s been written for me. I'm running toward a version of life where I have control over my energy, interactions, and environment.

I am and still and always Becoming, and Undoing is part of that. This is Undoing.

Undoing is brushing against the edges of what words can do in an attempt to give voice to something formless. Undoing is a shedding of imposed identities or expectations - an active process of becoming and unbecoming simultaneously. Undoing is a profound, lyrical exploration of selfhood - of what it means to exist beside the typical human experience, to feel like you’re an observer of your own life instead of its author, and to wrestle with identity in a way that no neat label can capture. Undoing is realizing that you’re not broken, indecisive, or lost - just not binary. Not in the way the world wants you to be.

When met with the familiar stranger in the mirror, I used to wonder how I would ever make it all the way through life like this. With this body that felt more like an ill-fitting glove than an identity. With this in-between existence. With this uncertainty.

But now, I know who I am. I've mapped my identity - written it down, turned it into language and laid it bare. And now I stare at it, wondering if it's safe to share with anyone. Wondering if I should continue to live as an actor for the sake of simplicity. Wondering if I should flatten or dramatize my complexity, or hold it out like a glass prism and turn it slowly so that you can see all the light go through it.

I don’t think I'll ever be able to fully explain who I am. Not to other people, maybe not even to myself. I exist in the in-between - not just physically, but existentially. I'm not fully in the world in the usual way, but I’m not outside of it either. I'm crossing thresholds constantly - of identity, reality, perception. I am ever-shifting. I am real, but not easily located or pinned down.

I have thought for a very long time not only about how I feel, but also why, and what it means. I am porous, fluid, and layered. I'm not on a linear path - I'm orbiting, looping, making and unmaking simultaneously. I am I. That is my name, my shape, my truth. I know the shape of my soul. I live not in the world I was born into, but in a world of my own making. I am a being on the threshold of Becoming. I am art in motion.

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