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Role Fatigue And Being A Shell Of A Person

I Want Off This Self-Inflicted Archetype Ride, Thanks

Written by Gavin Reed-Machina on March 8th, 2024.

Hey, my name's Gavin, he/him, and I'm writing out my fucking identity crisis on main, because what else do we have a journal for?

Content Warning: I get existentially fucked up about my personhood and purpose in life, and I use a few reclaimed slurs as identity labels for myself. This ends on a pretty hopeful note, all things considered.

So. This past week, we realized something, that Jude and I - especially me - have been basically fitting in the same roles Max’s daemons used to. Because brains are weird, and they love patterns, and we've been unconsciously keeping this pattern going for a solid year or so.

And at the end of that last essay he posted about it, Max said that we aren’t the same thing. His daemons were parts of himself and extensions of what he needed back then. We, as their headmates, are separate people. And that’s that, right? Pack it in, solid conclusion, all neat and tidy. I sure fucking wish it were, but no, I’m having a bad time and I'm going to talk about it. My old therapist told me that writing out my thoughts is good for me, and I’m choosing to believe her.

I spent most of my time in the back. Not in a proper headspace, but just running damage control, executive functioning. Keeping track of stuff like, when's the last time you ate, or what do we need to do now to make your feelings less awful, or you should really take a break from memorizing brainstem structure and take a walk. And it's kinda ridiculous that I can do it for someone else, because I also have ADHD and all the executive function issues that go with it, but it’s easier when it's for someone else. And I guess that's part of being a Caregiver.

I'm capitalizing Caregiver there because I'm talking about the archetype. Martin was a caregiver archetype - her purpose in life was to take care of Max and their needs as a person, and she felt fulfilled and content with this because she was a part of them. She was never under the impression that she had anything to gain from becoming a fully separate person, someone with her own wants and needs as separate from her job, and she didn’t have anything to gain! She was happy like that, being an extension of someone else's needs, because Max was living enough life for both of them, and she didn't need to be a person for them to exist and thrive together.

I’m a separate person from Max. I'm a separate person from Jude. I'm not just an extension of what my partners need from me. But - fuck me, I've spent this long trying to be! And it's not even something that started here, it started in source, because Jude needed me to be functional while they were fucked up and having meltdowns over their abuser, and I stepped up because I wanted to help them. I helped them until I couldn’t anymore, because I was emotionally exhausted, and I stopped and recovered just enough that I could help them again the next time they ran back to me.

And I didn’t learn anything from that! I didn’t learn that I had to take time to rest and recover before I could help anyone else, I learned that I'm fully fucking capable of helping someone else if I just focus on them. This is the exact opposite of what I was supposed to learn, but I'm nothing if not exceptional.

Because - listen, I like helping people, I genuinely like taking care of people I love, it feels like I'm doing something important and making a difference and I am. It's so important to me to make sure that my loved ones are okay, and if they aren’t, I want to help them feel better. It's genuinely fulfilling to me.

And I looked at that, and I looked at what I could do, now that I'm here, feeling lost and confused and upset about forgetting important people and details in my life, and I decided that I would be fine just doing that. Only that. Specifically that. I can forget about how I feel like I’ve lost my identity by just making a new one. Right? It’s not like I had anything else to do, and I like helping people. It worked out.

So I just helped out. I didn't front, even though Jude did to talk to friends and make new ones and gradually get more involved in our daily lives, because I just didn't fucking want to. Like, really, what did I have to talk about with people? I don't have much. I'm doing something important, anyway, isn't that more useful than talking to people, or playing a game, or getting into a podcast, or reading a book? I was completely fine, and I had to be fine, because I couldn't help my partners if I wasn't fine and if I couldn’t do anything useful I’d have to face how fucking disconnected I felt from being a living person.

And now. Now, I can’t do that anymore. Because I fucking burned out. You really could have seen it coming months ago, if you paid attention, but I sure fucking didn’t. So I can’t do the things that I’ve been building my fragile fucking self-image over, and I’m left to look at what else I have to my identity to talk about. And it's really not enough, honestly.

Like, okay, I have three cats. They're wonderful little bastards, and I love them, and I can't hold a conversation only talking about my cats. I'm a fag, I’m queer, I’m transsexual, I'm kinky, I'm stone, and several of our friends have boundaries around discussing sexuality and slurs that I'm not going to cross. I was into martial arts back in source, and we don't have the time or money to learn that now. I tend to like alternative rock and indie music, and I haven't listened to new music in months so that's a dead end. I like tabletop roleplaying games, and we don't have the time to listen through a whole session, let alone a season, and I don't have opinions to discuss on them anyway because I'm fucking tired.

So I don't have much that makes me feel like I have an identity. I feel lost and frustrated and tired and anxious and useless. And I argued with my partners about reaching out to our friends for support, because I don't want to burden them with my nervous breakdown. Because isolating myself from the world has gone so well so far, hasn't it?

Turns out it helps to talk to people. Shocker, I know. And we know the guy who wrote the guide to growing as a person from being a fictive - thanks Goratrix - so I really should've done that weeks ago. Preferably before the nervous breakdown, but whatever, it happened.

In conclusion, I'm really not okay right now. Huge fucking surprise. But at least I know I’ll feel better if I start actively doing things. Because I can do that. Listen to new songs, listen to one session over three days. Play a video game. Getting one fucking hobby will probably do wonders to fight off the existential despair. And it's all going to be painfully fucking slow, because I'm not gonna remake a sense of self in a week, and it's going to suck. And I'm gonna get through it, and I’m going to feel better. It'll be worth it.

And hey, if you read through this whole thing and you're also going through the horrors, mood, take my hand. We’ll get through this shit together.