Who am I?

Written when I was sixteen. Holds up surprisingly well.

I was born in the Fremont district of Seattle, on October 28, 1993 at 5:51 am. I was delivered at home, in the middle of the apartment, in a hallway at the crossroads between parents' bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, and my father’s magic room. Two days before, my parents had tried to force me out. Thinking it fortuitous if I were born on my mothers birthday, they used castor oil to try to induce labor. I waited for my own time and place. Not far from what they desired, but far enough.

I was originally named Pan Demian De Luna Greenwood. Pan, Greek god of goats, and the high hill lands. He who chases nymphs in the woodlands. Half man and half goat, half chaos and half order. Demian is a transliteration of Daemon, the soul that acted as conscience to Socrates, and the soul that guides each of us in the balance between good and order, law and chaos, thought and action. De Luna is the Spanish word for the moon. A feminine word to balance out the masculine power of Pan. My mother, fearful of the masculine power of Pan and Demian together, banished Demian just prior to my birth, changing it to Devi, the Hindu word for goddess. I was born god of the greenwood and goddess of the moon.

This first chapter of my life has become part of me, part of my personal mythology, and part of my understanding of myself. Born with the names of two deities, I am deeply religious. Born in the crossroads of the house I have never been lacking in life possibilities. Born in my own time, I resist my parent’s attempts to shape me but change as they desire it in my own epoch. Like my name I am made up of dualities. 

The first duality is that of light and dark. I have dreams of having one white wing and one black, and have often characterized myself as a creature of the darkness working for the purposes of the light. I am constantly struggling to keep the balance between being good, helpful, kind, and orderly, and being chaotic, impulsive, free and letting order go to the winds. My half brother, ten years older than I, let himself run free. The results where drug addiction, theft, and a generally meaningless life. I don’t wish to follow, and so I have conditioned myself to be light, but struggle not to suppress my darkness. I try to let it through in a safe controlled manner. So far so good. 

The second duality is between the physical and mental. I often focus purely on the mental without regard for the physical. I spend hours, days, or weeks reading a book. Spend time immeasurable at the computer, or write for hours on end. Everything from shorstories and love letters to theological treatises burst from my pen. I am bursting with ideas, and I love to learn. But there is another half of my life. My body is not a bookworm’s. It is the body of a warrior. I fight, dance, haul art supplies, and furniture with comparative ease. I understand through touch more than words. I am in tune with my body. So I see the inner and the outer as intrinsically linked. What my body does my mind follows. What my mind does my body follows. My emotions are the only thing holding these two in harmony. Heart commands both.

The third duality is between male and female. As a child I hated haircuts, so I grew my hair long, and as I discovered, people judge a child’s gender by the length of their hair. I was repeatedly referred to, spoken, and treated as a girl. The difference is subtle but I noticed, and I began to act the part at the same time as I rebelled against it. I enjoyed making grownups blush as I corrected them. I enjoyed the attention girls receive. I am bisexual. Male attention flatters me.

As I grew up I began to look male, and surprisingly I began to wish for that attention again. Girls have a power that most are not aware they have. The power to command, the power to attract, the power to bear life. As a male, I vividly felt this power, and felt that it ought to be mine. I tried desperately to grasp at it, but a male cannot command a female’s power. I had to weave the two genders into a working whole, with a dominant masculine nature. I did this through my name.

At age thirteen I began shaping my name. I added a “Sun” because I liked the sound of it. I only realized later the sun contrasts with De Luna, the moon, balancing that feminine with masculine. I added Demian, my long lost conscience, a word ironically Christianized into “demon.” I hold both meanings in that name �" a conscience to guide me, and a dark force to contrast my Devi, light and dark. As my name goes on it moves from rough universals to delicate poetical pieces, the finishing touches to myself. Silver-tongue for my way with words, Kimble’s son for my acceptance of my father, Hungry to mock my father’s pronouncement that “you eat so much your middle name should be hungry!” and Little-loo, my childhood pet name, so that I might not lose all that was good about childhood. Honeydew, a gift. These names make me an adult, consciously shaping myself.

In my search to know myself I have applied many different systems of analysis. Astrologically, I am a Scorpio with a Libra ascendant. In Jungian terms, I am an introverted, intuitive, feeling, judger. In Auras, I am a sensitive tan. All these come together to form one picture of a boy who will judge himself a sex obsessed narcissist, but who appears outwardly charming, flirtatious, playful, and willing to speak of his life. I am brutally honest to myself, and terribly dishonest with everyone else. In writing, mattering on my audience, I can be either.

I am reticent, occasionally overwhelmingly so, but usually only enough to be silent at first. Once I begin to know my audience I am willing to speak. I love attention but shy away from getting it. I am dreamy, and intuitive, constantly creating new fantasy worlds, each complete with cultures, species, belief systems, dress, and cuisine. I will delve deeply into a world for a few months before being inspired to move on to the next. Fantasy could swallow me if I let it, but I do not, because I hope to do something meaningful in the world. 

All my thoughts stem from feelings. I feel with a certainty how things are, whether true or not. These feelings change with circumstance, but I do not change my thoughts on a matter until my feelings shift. My thoughts are rationalizations of what I feel. I analyze why I feel as I do, what the feeling is telling me, and why it might be doing so, but I never doubt that it might be wrong. I like to judge and act on that judgment. If I discover my judgment is flawed I am willing to change, but I get things done in the meantime. This is to counter the endless possibilities that come of having been born on a crossroads. I must be certain of my feelings, or I will be lost in the endless potential of life.

So when I get a feeling I usually act on it, although I have great self-control when I choose to use it. This usually happens when I have conflicting emotions, an urge to do one thing but at the same time the feeling that it would be bad to do so. Immoral actions tend to be this way. I will often find a fierce desire to steal something, coupled with the feeling that it would be wrong. I will the urge aside. Or when I fell madly in love with a girl four years my junior. The urge to tell her was overwhelming, but likewise the emotion telling me it was immoral was present. It was then that my will was truly tested. I fear apathy more than death, or the death of a loved one, because of this. Without feelings I would be without will or action. Since I am disposed towards fantasy and dreams, lack of action would destroy any hope I have of accomplishing my ambitions. 

My mother has often joked that I am obsessive compulsive. I have begun taking her seriously. There are things that I do not think I could stop doing. I will not step on cracks in the sidewalk, and avoid cracks inside whenever possible. On a tiled bathroom floor I will carefully step in the center of each tile. If by accident I step on a crack I will convulsively shudder. I also brush my teeth, say bless-you, and will not pick up coins dropped on the floor. I rationalize all of these actions, stemming from feelings as they do. I will not step on cracks so that I might avoid the transitions in life. I brush my teeth to keep my words clean, and say bless-you to fill the possibility created by letting something go. Coins are perhaps the hardest to justify. I once picked up some dropped change of a teacher of mine. He told me harshly to leave it. It became a geis. A thing I cannot do.

I have a fierce desire to help, and I can justify anything if it helps another. I believe that hardship is a learning experience, but I would not be ethical if I did not try my best to help those in pain. Empathy keeps me human, action keeps me moral. I know that no matter how much suffering I help, there will never be a shortage of hardship to keep teaching. There are many things that I fight for that I would not want to succeed in. World peace would be catastrophic if successful. War is psychologically purging in nature. Perfection would be awful if achieved. What would we strive for? Philosophic questions are not meant to be finally answered. What would we think about? But I can seek all these things because I know I will not succeed, so I help wherever I can.

I am a narcissist. Not philosophically, I believe that genuine altruism exists, and I believe that I posses it, but my primary focus is myself. My parents are both well-versed in Jungian psychology, where a major focus is to know yourself. I like to think that this is why I am so self focused, and that the negative aspects of narcissism are worth the self-reflection. I cannot be humble, as much as I try, and only dim strangers believe my attempts to look as if I am. My focus on helping others is to counterbalance the tendency to gaze at myself lovingly in the mirror. I also choose to be an animist in order to get out of myself. By believing that everything is sentient, I am always in the presence of another who desires my attention and respect. Narcissism is difficult when surrounded by life. On the positive side, the ability to see myself also allows me to see others as they reflect me, and see what aspects of myself come from outside. Which is the majority.

I do not have original thoughts. Most people are not original thinkers, but they, at least, have ideas that are original to themselves. I used to think I did, but when I told someone my idea they would point out where I got it from. I have learned to immediately source my thoughts, discovering that my ideas are all improvements. I have found that any system I come into I immediately begin mentally editing to make it more efficient, aesthetic, and functional as a whole. I can take random bits from different sources and combine them. This is how I create my fantasy worlds, stories, or anything else that takes imagination. The power is not in the pieces but the reconstruction.

Yet even as I seek to edit everything, life (or I would like to think my patron deity, a goddess of learning) sends me things I cannot change, and puts me in places where I have no choice but to go along. School is one, romance another. I have been constantly in love since I was twelve. I know the mechanisms, I know what I should be doing, but I cannot. The editor finds that editing himself unattainable. Yet I hope that even as I am unable to edit myself, love or school will edit me. I hope that life will shape me into who I truly am. My goddess has a line - That spark within you, that which has never been before and will never be again, you must give this to the world. My spark is the ability to make things better around me. My spark is to help.