All That Has Flown Beyond (Natural Magic #2)

by Marina Vivancos

Existing was a series of exhausting steps. His head filled with the thought of having another emotion, of having to contend with his morality, with his conscience, with having to have a sense of purpose. He couldn’t breathe. Everything was so unimaginably exhausting. The nothingness around him was almost better. The absence of feeling, of motivation, of self. He closed his eyes, and for the very first time, the thought of just stopping, stopping it all once and for all, entered his mind with shape and substance. He would do it, he thought. He would do it…if suicide weren’t another intolerable series of steps.

He was pathetic. Pathetic. The world was out there, functioning, continuing without him, while he counted brushing his fucking teeth as a victory.

For people whose negative wheel is nice and oiled and positive wheel is harder to turn, to use your example, it can sometimes be difficult to deal with a lot of positive stimuli aimed at the self. These people often have a voice that wants to constantly argue against every positive aspect of themselves. So, when you receive a lot of praise, that voice can go into overdrive, and you’ll have to expel a lot of energy to crank that positive wheel, which can leave you exhausted both physically and mentally.

“I. It sounds crazy, okay? But, like, I wish nobody could see what I was. I don’t like it when…I don’t know. When people call me a girl it’s like. You know when someone stands too close to you? And you don’t like it, it’s all weird and they smell like coffee or something? It’s kind of like that but worse. Like when someone you don’t know and isn’t pack, like a teacher or something, puts a hand on your back to tell you where to go and it’s like, get off! Like…like when someone says I’m a girl it’s like their hands are on me and trying to tell me, ‘Go there’ or ‘Be that’ and it’s not…it’s not where I should be. They’re too close and I just want them to go away.”

“If she says one day she identifies as female, then use female pronouns. If he identifies as male, use male pronouns. Is that confusing? It doesn’t matter. Your opinion doesn’t matter, because your opinion should never infringe on someone’s right to their own identity.

“Girl clothes, boy clothes. Girl toys, boy toys. Girl colours, boy colours. I’ve never really understood it. I am who I am. Boy, girl, it doesn’t matter. So, I wear what makes me feel good,” Mori said.