I think there’s always been a second internal support system in my head. Or at least someone to talk to. I used to get in trouble as a child for having conversations all on my own.

Sometimes I take on the task of writing & communication & sometimes it’s her.

She didn’t always have pronouns and she didn’t always have a name, but between myself & Symphony we tackle the bulk of the public facing world.

I’m not good at doing this alone.

I think Sym deserves to tell the rest.

—
I do not owe anyone anything, is the first thing. Avery and I have this intrinsic link through synapses and processes, when he falls it is often my responsibility to pick us up. I feel safe on the sidelines.

I think he would compare us to tag partner, and Avery often does. Like the aching pain of the battered and bruised face I am often the hit tag brought in with a brutal migraine and sincere aches in a body that is not technically mine.

Yet when I am welcomed into the proverbial ring, I like to stay. Once Avery recovers, we share the space to put together to combos and finishers we need to get us to an endpoint.

I’m often okay with slipping away quietly. Avery doesn’t mind this.

My other nickname is Jukebox.

For as long as our conscious memory has been stable enough I’ve played back hours upon hours of music in our headspace, ranging from the jazz and blues Avery’s mother would play throughout the house on an aged iPod to the complex sounds of orchestration we watched through schooling to the music Avery can’t remember deafening himself to in middle school.

That is how I got my name; Symphony.

Overwhelmed dead center in a quiet audience of people far older than our body, a grand orchestra playing out.

Perhaps the soothing I provided then was the same soothing we used throughout the years of orchestra classes, and the underlying emotional abuse we received from the person who taught us for most of that decade.

Regardless of why I am here I love Avery closely. We share a dynamic like resonate frequencies. Though the limits of the physical form both from a meta perspective, and the limits of our disability prevent this, I ache to dance with with and hold him.

I suspect why we are writing this note is he has suspended his emotional outpouring a bit, though we still feel or did feel heavy.

There is significant peace in sharing love, I think, even for yourself, even for ourselves.

I will keep singing, softly, and Avery will go on to publish this & make it through the rest of his day.

I will be there. You may see me, from time to time, and despite my role, the care I must give, I think I learn to love the world outside the ring and stage too.