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I've first spoke about my physical nonhumanity with this post, calling it philosophical only. And since making this post, I realize that I also mean it in a more literal way, and that the difference between literally physical and philosophically physical is incredibly confusing and vague to me. I instead see it as a vague area.
I don't like how some who are literally physical imply that the philosophically physical ones view it as something watered down, more shallow and as having the capacity to experience things that the metaphorical/philosophical ones can never hope to understand. And I also dislike the idea that literal nonhumans are taking it too far, and that the only way it can actually be experienced is through a philosophical lens. I don't really see anything good coming out of separating and gatekeeping the two as separate things. As I've already written on the subject, "by making the claim that you are physically nonhuman in a philosophical way, you are still addressing the body as physically nonhuman. And from there, they can modify the body or do whatever they want after that point. There are differences between the two, but I think specific similarities between the two are being overlooked." Someone who is literally physical and someone who is philosophically physical both attribute their body as something not human, for example.
I don't know where the philosophical part of my identity starts and where the literal part of it ends, or if there is even a difference between those two things. This is because I view all of existence and consciousness through a philosophical lens. It feels pointless to try to label my experiences as one or the other.
Note: As a warning. there is a bit of disassociation and unreality talk in the next paragraph in the midst of my philosophical babbling.
I see physical and mental impressions as subjective things rather than empirically. And the objective, physical world is understood through these subjective impressions. As a thought experiment, I ask myself sometimes, "Why is fear and pain unpleasant? If they're both subjective things experienced by the brain and can't be felt by others, what makes the mental sensation of it real? How do I know this sensation is uncomfortable and painful?" I find myself not able to answer these questions. I know the evolutionary reasoning for why these things exist and the chemicals associated with those things, but it still doesn't really answer my question. There's an implicit subjectivity when experiencing my physicality and the body just as there is with trying to talk about the how and why pain is so uncomfortable.
So I follow this line of questioning to the rest of my physical existence and my appearance. My brain/body map views itself as being physically protoss and it gives me interesting psychosomatic sensations. It's just the way it is and how I live in every day settings. I think it's due to some physical neurological pathways that make all of this possible. I sometimes wonder if a brain scan would be able to detect abnormalities that separates me from most other humans. From a biological standpoint, these sort of experiences must light up a few different parts of my brain differently from other people's, and probably has different connections compared to other people's brains. So it's an educated guess.
To start explaining my own physical nonhumanity, I ask myself what makes my hand a human hand? Or what makes it inhuman, conversely? I do have depersonalization, and it does play a role in how I see this physical body. I don't see it as 'me', but at the same time, I am aware that I have it and that I somewhat exist inside this body, and that I own it. In the same way someone can own a car without actually being the car. But the depersonalization doesn't cover the whole story. My alien spirit does make it so that this body belongs to a nonhuman from association. And yes, I get that to the outside world I look like cis human and that I pass as a human visually. But physicality is more than just your visual appearance. I perceive my hand as something not human. Because it doesn't belong to a human occupying this body, and because the way I express my phantom shifts, it makes it physical. It's a physical expression of the internal. It's directly tied into my muscle proprioception and bodily awareness.
I've mentioned other times that I have to move my hand and fingers in a certain way in order to feel comfortable, usually fanned out and held as if I had claws. Hell, I felt actually thumb pain when I hit my pinky knuckle against the side of a drawer. I instinctively hold out my pinky out as if they were thumbs and orientate my wrist and my hands. I can stifle these movements by pretending the physical sensations and shifts aren't there, but it feels smothering to do so. It's annoying to mask for so long and consistently. I have heard about the more animalistic physical nonhumans being unable to mask this, but I have the added benefit of my species being sapient to help me mask with this. Still I feel like I have to perform humanity instead of it being natural to me.
And there are more examples.
I walk and move my knees as if my heels are above where my calf would be and as if I have clawed talons. This phantom body map is so consistent, that its proportions don't change with what I'm doing. And when my phantom heel intersects with my physical heel such as when I am sitting down and putting weight on my heel to the point that I can't ignore it, my body map adds about the same exact additional length between my heel to my calf forward to my toe and onwards. So I behave as if my toes and talons are further ahead than from what you can visibly see.
As more time goes on, I learn about more and more psychosomatic sensations that directly inform me on protoss physiology and anatomy even though it never goes into detail in the canon and the lore. If I have a question about their anatomy, I can refer to my body map to answer that question. But these sensations can come up to me from nowhere as well. As I mentioned it in my 'Existing as a Protoss' essay, I feel as if I can breathe using my forearms, back, chest and through pores on my face. I get faint sensations and impressions of these pores. Unprompted. I feel that I can drink from my hands and I may not notice I'm thirsty until I try to sense my hands or splash water on them. And through some sort of synthaesic pathway, they end up actually feeling 'thirsty.' I also feel like I can smell through my hands and to a lesser extent, my limbs and the sides of my face, rather than the front.
As for the parts of my body that are visibly human, (like having a mouth, for example) I experience a degree of separation and disassociation. I don't view it as belonging to me and I don't think I have a strong phantom sense of having a mouth to begin with, so it makes things interesting. And If I visibly passed as protoss, I don't believe I would have any more depersonalization around myself. But whenever I have to eat, I often think back to Plankton from Spongebob eating holographic meatloaf made out of light. I think it's a joke based on the fact that planktons in real life are photosynthetic and get their energy from the light. I have to think about it like that to help myself out. And by mentioning photosynthesis, I should also include this experience.
"Holographic meatloaf, my favorite!"
I've also lately noticed that forcing a smile with my mouth feels really weird and awkward. It's almost like the muscles on my face are cracking and breaking to get the look right. And when I see pictures of myself with this forced smile, the body really does look like it's in pain. I guess this is something I'm unable to really mask up again after dropping it.
I also sometimes get these superficial psychosomatic aches on my skin along where the ridges and sides of my head crest and cheek bones would be. But I also know that it's psychosomatic because it sometimes comes when I think about it and the discomfort goes away the second I lightly tap the spot that feels achy. It's almost like a bruise or an itch. It's almost like a phantom pain, (and I occasionally get those too with my phantom cords, I don't like it when something touches the back of my head even though I'm not hypersensitive to touch). With the head crest itself, I've had these similar aches for a while whenever I thought about ducking underneath something to avoid hitting the top of my head, since at least 2007.
Another thing that I don't like to admit to is the familiarity I feel towards the khala. It would still be dumb of me to deny it, just because I'm uncomfortable with emotional mind links. I've spoken about it here. Continuing on to right now, it's a faint thing that feels familiar to me. And it's been said to be an ancestral memory. Despite what my genetics tell me, I still experience this in some sort of spiritual-somatic way that I don't really understand.
I've read others saying that they are detransitioning from forced humanity, and I share that sentiment as well. I'm tired of having to pretend to be human and pretending that I have a typical human body that doesn't have these experiences. I often have to put on an act. And if a conversation veers even remotely towards this discussion about alienness or nonhumanity, I would either dismiss and joke about it or change the topic to avoid suspicion because I am often closeted with the online and real life friends I talk to.
At the end of the day, this body lets me experience certain things that I'd otherwise never be able to if I was a typical human, and despite my visual appearance. Saying that it's unreasonable or impossible to have these experiences just doesn't make it all suddenly go away. Does the need to constantly mask and hide myself not make that a physical experience in itself? Constantly pretending and telling myself to act like a normal human to avoid being singled out?
I can lie to myself and call myself physically human, but it just doesn't do what I personally experience justice. Because by saying that I'm physical human, I deny everything that I DO experience. And that's not even bringing up the fact that humanity is a social construct. Most people don't look at something's DNA when trying to determine the species. Traits that are considered human are determined by society. By lacking kindness, empathy, or looking a certain way, and it's something that can be taken away when it suits them.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Some more supplemental reading on my physical nonhumanity from my tumblr is here.
I don't like how some who are literally physical imply that the philosophically physical ones view it as something watered down, more shallow and as having the capacity to experience things that the metaphorical/philosophical ones can never hope to understand. And I also dislike the idea that literal nonhumans are taking it too far, and that the only way it can actually be experienced is through a philosophical lens. I don't really see anything good coming out of separating and gatekeeping the two as separate things. As I've already written on the subject, "by making the claim that you are physically nonhuman in a philosophical way, you are still addressing the body as physically nonhuman. And from there, they can modify the body or do whatever they want after that point. There are differences between the two, but I think specific similarities between the two are being overlooked." Someone who is literally physical and someone who is philosophically physical both attribute their body as something not human, for example.
I don't know where the philosophical part of my identity starts and where the literal part of it ends, or if there is even a difference between those two things. This is because I view all of existence and consciousness through a philosophical lens. It feels pointless to try to label my experiences as one or the other.
Note: As a warning. there is a bit of disassociation and unreality talk in the next paragraph in the midst of my philosophical babbling.
I see physical and mental impressions as subjective things rather than empirically. And the objective, physical world is understood through these subjective impressions. As a thought experiment, I ask myself sometimes, "Why is fear and pain unpleasant? If they're both subjective things experienced by the brain and can't be felt by others, what makes the mental sensation of it real? How do I know this sensation is uncomfortable and painful?" I find myself not able to answer these questions. I know the evolutionary reasoning for why these things exist and the chemicals associated with those things, but it still doesn't really answer my question. There's an implicit subjectivity when experiencing my physicality and the body just as there is with trying to talk about the how and why pain is so uncomfortable.
So I follow this line of questioning to the rest of my physical existence and my appearance. My brain/body map views itself as being physically protoss and it gives me interesting psychosomatic sensations. It's just the way it is and how I live in every day settings. I think it's due to some physical neurological pathways that make all of this possible. I sometimes wonder if a brain scan would be able to detect abnormalities that separates me from most other humans. From a biological standpoint, these sort of experiences must light up a few different parts of my brain differently from other people's, and probably has different connections compared to other people's brains. So it's an educated guess.
To start explaining my own physical nonhumanity, I ask myself what makes my hand a human hand? Or what makes it inhuman, conversely? I do have depersonalization, and it does play a role in how I see this physical body. I don't see it as 'me', but at the same time, I am aware that I have it and that I somewhat exist inside this body, and that I own it. In the same way someone can own a car without actually being the car. But the depersonalization doesn't cover the whole story. My alien spirit does make it so that this body belongs to a nonhuman from association. And yes, I get that to the outside world I look like cis human and that I pass as a human visually. But physicality is more than just your visual appearance. I perceive my hand as something not human. Because it doesn't belong to a human occupying this body, and because the way I express my phantom shifts, it makes it physical. It's a physical expression of the internal. It's directly tied into my muscle proprioception and bodily awareness.
I've mentioned other times that I have to move my hand and fingers in a certain way in order to feel comfortable, usually fanned out and held as if I had claws. Hell, I felt actually thumb pain when I hit my pinky knuckle against the side of a drawer. I instinctively hold out my pinky out as if they were thumbs and orientate my wrist and my hands. I can stifle these movements by pretending the physical sensations and shifts aren't there, but it feels smothering to do so. It's annoying to mask for so long and consistently. I have heard about the more animalistic physical nonhumans being unable to mask this, but I have the added benefit of my species being sapient to help me mask with this. Still I feel like I have to perform humanity instead of it being natural to me.
And there are more examples.
I walk and move my knees as if my heels are above where my calf would be and as if I have clawed talons. This phantom body map is so consistent, that its proportions don't change with what I'm doing. And when my phantom heel intersects with my physical heel such as when I am sitting down and putting weight on my heel to the point that I can't ignore it, my body map adds about the same exact additional length between my heel to my calf forward to my toe and onwards. So I behave as if my toes and talons are further ahead than from what you can visibly see.
As more time goes on, I learn about more and more psychosomatic sensations that directly inform me on protoss physiology and anatomy even though it never goes into detail in the canon and the lore. If I have a question about their anatomy, I can refer to my body map to answer that question. But these sensations can come up to me from nowhere as well. As I mentioned it in my 'Existing as a Protoss' essay, I feel as if I can breathe using my forearms, back, chest and through pores on my face. I get faint sensations and impressions of these pores. Unprompted. I feel that I can drink from my hands and I may not notice I'm thirsty until I try to sense my hands or splash water on them. And through some sort of synthaesic pathway, they end up actually feeling 'thirsty.' I also feel like I can smell through my hands and to a lesser extent, my limbs and the sides of my face, rather than the front.
As for the parts of my body that are visibly human, (like having a mouth, for example) I experience a degree of separation and disassociation. I don't view it as belonging to me and I don't think I have a strong phantom sense of having a mouth to begin with, so it makes things interesting. And If I visibly passed as protoss, I don't believe I would have any more depersonalization around myself. But whenever I have to eat, I often think back to Plankton from Spongebob eating holographic meatloaf made out of light. I think it's a joke based on the fact that planktons in real life are photosynthetic and get their energy from the light. I have to think about it like that to help myself out. And by mentioning photosynthesis, I should also include this experience.
"Holographic meatloaf, my favorite!"
I've also lately noticed that forcing a smile with my mouth feels really weird and awkward. It's almost like the muscles on my face are cracking and breaking to get the look right. And when I see pictures of myself with this forced smile, the body really does look like it's in pain. I guess this is something I'm unable to really mask up again after dropping it.
I also sometimes get these superficial psychosomatic aches on my skin along where the ridges and sides of my head crest and cheek bones would be. But I also know that it's psychosomatic because it sometimes comes when I think about it and the discomfort goes away the second I lightly tap the spot that feels achy. It's almost like a bruise or an itch. It's almost like a phantom pain, (and I occasionally get those too with my phantom cords, I don't like it when something touches the back of my head even though I'm not hypersensitive to touch). With the head crest itself, I've had these similar aches for a while whenever I thought about ducking underneath something to avoid hitting the top of my head, since at least 2007.
Another thing that I don't like to admit to is the familiarity I feel towards the khala. It would still be dumb of me to deny it, just because I'm uncomfortable with emotional mind links. I've spoken about it here. Continuing on to right now, it's a faint thing that feels familiar to me. And it's been said to be an ancestral memory. Despite what my genetics tell me, I still experience this in some sort of spiritual-somatic way that I don't really understand.
I've read others saying that they are detransitioning from forced humanity, and I share that sentiment as well. I'm tired of having to pretend to be human and pretending that I have a typical human body that doesn't have these experiences. I often have to put on an act. And if a conversation veers even remotely towards this discussion about alienness or nonhumanity, I would either dismiss and joke about it or change the topic to avoid suspicion because I am often closeted with the online and real life friends I talk to.
At the end of the day, this body lets me experience certain things that I'd otherwise never be able to if I was a typical human, and despite my visual appearance. Saying that it's unreasonable or impossible to have these experiences just doesn't make it all suddenly go away. Does the need to constantly mask and hide myself not make that a physical experience in itself? Constantly pretending and telling myself to act like a normal human to avoid being singled out?
I can lie to myself and call myself physically human, but it just doesn't do what I personally experience justice. Because by saying that I'm physical human, I deny everything that I DO experience. And that's not even bringing up the fact that humanity is a social construct. Most people don't look at something's DNA when trying to determine the species. Traits that are considered human are determined by society. By lacking kindness, empathy, or looking a certain way, and it's something that can be taken away when it suits them.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Some more supplemental reading on my physical nonhumanity from my tumblr is here.
