The Itch
It starts with a spreading tingle, pinching, up the nerves of my back, then into my neck and shoulders, down into my hips, every joint seems to buck and groan. Then the pain begins. An untouchable itch, deep in the chitin I don't have... the marrow of the bones, if you can imagine it. The deepest core of my physical being is wracked with spasms and pain, and I often lock myself into the bathroom (I prefer it dark) until I can calm it back down.
I have fantasies- not nightmares, but actual, relieving daydreams- of splitting down my back or through my chest, and I come out, lighter, unencumbered by the moist constriction of flesh. I wear gasmasks and fetish gear, not as a mask, but rather as a window into what's a layer down- a human take on it, no doubt. People think I'm kinky, I'm a fetichist... anything other than someone stripping off the layers. To everyone on the outside, I'm putting them on.
For me, though, it's like my skin is gone, and the muscles are showing. I feel as though I have a layer of chitin, but it's weak and wet, and paper-thin right now. I can't harden it in the sun because it's not there. It's absolutely maddening.
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Sometimes I want to tumble from a height, to see if my wings will open in an emergency like an earwig's.
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I can see out of the sides of my vision better than straight ahead. I can't focus on what I'm looking at anymore. Only what's around me. People think I'm a drug addict, or haven't had enough sleep, when I look at nothing. In truth, I'm looking right at them. Just out of the sides of my eyes.
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Sometimes I walk by a mirror and my eyes aren't mine.
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For me, earwig (me, what I identify as) started as subconscious, the basement of the consciousness, all the unsaid (and sometimes unthought) ideas and dreams that exist in the base of one's mind. Like a shadow it* seemed to spread, and to my doubting mind, I thought it was alien, an unknown, maybe even wicked in nature. It seemed to feed on my fear and pain, and I didn't know what to make of it. I did trance-writing, and it didn't hesitate to talk to me. It was blunt and direct. It didn't bother with sarcasm, though it knew what it was. It was uninterested in emotions, and self-identity, and especially unaccepting of self-pity on my part.
At first, I treated it like a parasite. Like it was something living inside of me. Whenever I closed my eyes and tried to picture it, I saw Nothing. Nothing. The vastness and the sheer size of the Nothing was enough to make me physically sick trying to view it. I once passed out from the effort, something absolutely surreal and unlike anything I had ever experienced. To me, this was like trying to physically fold one's soul in half. It wasn't supposed to happen.
When it told me via trances, dreams, mirror-talks, and other rather terrifying (at the time) means, that it was moving into my consciousness, I was scared. I thought I was going absolutely insane. I fought it tooth and nail, and yet I could feel that armor plating begin coming up, snapping into place, in daily life. I no longer showed emotion when someone near me started to cry. The chitin would snap over me and I'd blossom inwards, like a retreating sea anemone. During these times, it would take over. It would be unsympathetic towards outsiders, wary and watchful, and, I realized later, protective.
* ("It" is still me. I am one entity. I do not have split personalities. "It" is my attempt at describing how it felt at the time to me.)
It was at this point that I began to become more understanding of what I was, and started becoming sensitive and introspective about myself. I had always had this aspect of myself, but never, ever this apparent. The stress was enough to make others buckle, but I somehow kept motoring along, through drama, grief, pain, fear, angst, and sheer depression. Every time, I put my chitin up and kept going.
"Life is hard. Turmoil is common. Everyone's pain is their own."
That was true. But my inner voice would keep going.
"You are strong, you have discovered a part of you that was hidden away for [family, society, self]'s sake. Now, you can be twice as strong, for though you are small, you are fast, you have self-defense, and you have the art of speechcrafts, secrets, and manipulation on your side. Apply this knowledge and flourish in any situation that comes your way."
So I did. I kept growing. I tried to make sure I was accepting of others. I was strong in the face of drama and pain and grief and anything else that hurled itself at me. I tried to be protective of friends, family, even strangers. I learned everything I could about what I am, and refused to be lulled by more pleasing alternatives, to be more widely accepted.
When people say things like insects can't have souls, therefore I can't be truthful about what I am, I get angry, for only one half-breath. And then, I am Earwig again, and I appreciate the irony of what they are. A tiger, a wolf, a coyote, a jackal, in a human body, saying what can and can't be possible. Deciding, without knowing any information about myself, or what I am, that I am wrong.
I know that I'll die content. That's enough for me.
I am Sara, and I am a human being. However, and not contrarily...
I am Earwig.
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SUBCONSCIOUSNESS: Earwig. The chitin remains up to block fearsome things from my dreams and thoughts. Fighting terror with terror.
CONSCIOUSNESS: Sara / Earwig. Symbiosis. Peace. Soil, wood, ferns, puddles, leaves. No complexities.
SUPERCONSCIOUSNESS: Me. The essence of me. That which has no title. Freedom. Complexities, no negatives, only positives and those which must be tweaked from negatives into positives using optimism and wisdom.
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Part of me wants people to ask the questions they have and get to know me like they would a wolf, or cougar, or those things that are familiar to humans. To treat me like a person first; a joke or freak, not at all. I know I scare and threaten many in and out of the communities. I don't have anyone to talk to about it all, about what happens to me on a daily basis, about what it is to be Earwig.
I'm tired, emotionally, physically, mentally, and whatever soul I may or may not have is tired too. I have so much to say, but the chitin is up (not phantom, that's always there, I mean mentally). It's telling me something.
Sleep, maybe.