5. 2026-02-01 / index

Hi, good afternoon.

I don't know how to write about what's going on, because it's almost more private and personal than we feel "okay" being open about. But that's what we have to do, that's what we want to do. It's part of what we need.

You can put this down if you don't want to be near this sort of vulnerability right now.

This is Whisper. The image above, yeah. But also the blood in the ink in these words. You've probably met her. If you haven't, then here she is. With a little time, maybe you'll get to know her.

We became Whisper in June of 2023. Today, that's approaching three years ago. This was half a year after we quit our job. We left there the only people to whom "Jade" was a specific show that we were putting on. At home, in company and only almost alone, we were someone who we thought was no one. Then we felt our heart beat, and we were Whisper.

The last few days are turbulent. Turbulent and sleep-deprived, mostly.

Do you remember being sixteen years old? Alone except when you were online, and so the internet became the other hell, the one of your own invitation? Because you welcomed so many dangerous people near you. Rebelious, you reveled in this. Every heart you touched was by your own agency. Every heart which touched yours was a gift, and you were hoarding.

Whisper is a thousand impressions on our pain, every fracture and fissure to which she offers, "yes, and that's okay! yes, and I've been there too! yes, and you're going to make it!"

But before she was that and after, she was a person.

She's done being herself for someone else, and she doesn't know if she's the one who's deciding that.

Jade thinks she died. Jade thinks she's gone. Jade thinks it was so over five whole years ago, can you please stop pulling me out of my bloody coffin, fuck you. It's cozy here. She's dead.

This is Jade. The image above, right? She's the ink in the blood in these words. You've met her. Here she is.

Jade wrote herself a callout post. This isn't rhetorical: she literally did. She's the monster in her own head. Nothing scares Jade more than herself, so she's untouchable. Then someone fucked her after she told herself no, and she died. (Wiki finalization, indeed.)

Only, she didn't. Everyone else did.

Whisper has a different face every day, and most of those faces are in the eyes of someone else. It's in the eyes of someone she trusts—multiple someones. They ask her if it's okay if they see her. She tells them it is. Then she asks herself. She thinks it is. She thinks it is. She thinks it is...

Eight years ago, she
Nine years ago, she
Nine years ago, she
Nine years ago, she
twelve years ago
thirteen years ago
fourteen years ago

Whisper is scared of Jade.

Whisper engages with the feelings you give to her. She does not engage the feelings you do not give to her.

Whisper is not scared of Jade for any of the reasons Jade thinks Jade is scared of Jade.

Whisper is scared for Jade.

Some days Whisper is only an animal. Some days—she asserts that's all days. An animal not only finding its way, but doing so in good comfort, surrounded utterly by love and care and kindness. Just an animal with enough kick still to bring all four legs one step forward.

She loves her friends. Nothing, she thinks, has ever held truer. She loves her friends, and she loves that about herself, and so she fights. Today mostly with steel-set jaws and a lucid waking dream. Tomorrow...

Second, though, is that she does not hate. She could never hate. No one has successfully made her to hate.

She wonders if it's a blessing that she cannot hate. If it's a quirk of biology. If it's something strange in her skull. If she's broken. If she's pure. If she'll ever find an answer to these questions—for herself.

A deep tendril pulls her stomach down. She's not broken—she's only half of herself. The part of her who hates, who knew how to hate, is missing in action. On strike. Dead, so she says. Is that true? Could it be? Is it so simple? It would be simple. An elegant mirror. When the image Jade gave of herself was someone another person viola

When Jade was hurt that way, she thought she forgot how to love. She thought it was gone. Gone. Gone. Gone. Gone

Whisper doesn't want to merge with Jade.
Jade doesn't think she wants to merge with Whisper.
They think they can, and they've thought they can. They've done a lot of thinking about integration: yesterday there was a whisper, a whisper, a whisper, "wouldn't that be alright? Maybe that would be alright." They didn't fight. They didn't fight. They didn't bare their teeth. They didn't fight.

Whisper doesn't want to merge with Jade, but she doesn't know if it's her own choice. She doesn't want to punish her other half. She doesn't want to take away what she maybe needs.

She doesn't think it can happen nonconsensually.

She doesn't think it would. She doesn't think it can.

She doesn't think, she doesn't think, she doesn't think...

She thinks it's already happened. She thinks it's always been so. She thinks there was never an ounce of difference between Jade and Whisper, between Claire and Hush, between- they've been one this whole time. She thinks they never split. She thinks it doesn't work like that. She thinks, she, she

She's scared of her biology. She's scared of being an animal. She's scared of being human. She's scared no one's figured it out. She's scared she's one and two both at once. She's scared the separation inside her is there and then gone, only by observation. She's scared of being healthy. She's scared of being healthy. She's scared of being healthy.

This is Everest. The image above, yeah. But also the words in her ink and her blood. The "us" and the "all" in "all of us". (Maybe the "of", too.) The breeze in her head when the door is closed. The recognition of where she's been. The premonition of who she'll be. The fur between her claws.

She's happy that she's meeting you. She's happy. She's healthy.