I seem to be experiencing my identity strongly today. Which is a weird way of phrasing a thing, but I don’t really know a better one.

It’s both gender things and dragon things demanding my attention today. My gender has drifted to the “tomboyish female” side of things and been yelling loudly at me, making me even more displeased than usual at my general body shape, which doesn’t really play that as well as I’d like. At least to me; I apparently don’t look so contradictory to the part, from gathered evidence, so perhaps I should worry less.

Ironically, being more obtrusively nonhuman than usual causes me less distress. It’s more of a constant thing, so I suppose I’ve learned to adapt. Sometimes my fluctuating gender lets me be okay with that aspect of my body, but I’m never shaped especially much like a dragon, so that displeasure can fade into the background noise of other things that irritate me, like just barely missing my second bus at the connection or that weird squealing noise that was ambient in the office today.

This, though, is about awareness and reaction as it is identity and experience-of-identity; I’ve felt wary and reactive today, as if my senses were both clearer and more demanding of my attention than usual. I’m used to feeling wary and twitchy as kind of a background anxiety thing, but this was different; I have been situationally aware in much the same way that I am when generally over-anxious, but without actual anxiety, just awareness. It’s the opposite of anxiety, really, as it gives a kind of confidence- I feel like it’s more difficult than usual to surprise me.

Which is only part of it. I do not know how to explain what it is to feel more animalistic than usual; it is actually easier to describe gender things and I’m terrible at that. But it’s been a thing today. It doesn’t even particularly displease me; the stuff that isn’t the gender stuff is a more comfortable way for my mind to operate, and the gender stuff is simply a thing that is enough of my identity by now that I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t know what to do if it decided to stop and be stable.