A Conversation with pax reese on Deconstruction, Somatics, and Queer Intimacy

Conversations Behind the veil 006

In the sixth edition of Conversations Behind the veil, I spoke with pax reese—writer, healer, and creator of inner cartographies, a Substack that explores Being, relationality, and the maps we make of our inner worlds. inner cartographies is an extension of pax’s wider project, which offers breathwork, somatic healing, and spiritual support on a sliding scale, especially for queers, BIPOC, abolitionists, and low-income folks.

We talk about presence and resistance, conflict as intimacy, spacious love, and the ways trust and deconstruction shape our creative and relational lives. pax writes and lives with radical tenderness, opening space for complexity and paradox.

This series is a space for honest, unguarded dialogue with fellow artists and writers. We explore the unseen: chronic illness, creativity, queerness, neurodivergence, and the quiet work of staying whole in a fractured world.

Content Note: This conversation includes mention of religious trauma, chronic illness and pain, inner child work, and sexuality/relationships (including nonmonogamy).

vōx: Hello pax! Thank you so much for sitting down with me. I’ve been really moved by your writing, especially the way you hold space for complexity without rushing to resolve it. In a time when so many people want quick answers or neatly packaged healing, your work slows things down and makes room for nuance, contradiction, and deep self-honesty. I know a lot of people feel seen by what you share, especially those navigating chronic illness, queerness, or creative life.

On Beginnings

How did you get started in the art form of writing?

pax: hi vōx. im grateful to connect with you, especially because you’re someone who also brings so much raw depth to queering chronic illness & creation.

i feel very honored to hear that my work has a way of inviting slowness in a hyperspeed world, especially because i often dont feel very slow myself.

somewhat embarrassingly, i began writing as a kid exploring my faith and christianity. i actually rewrote the bible when i was in grade school, to this like hyper condensed 10 page story (i couldnt deal with how long it was). in high school i went through a sharp atheistic phase and started messing around with poetry & songwriting. then, i got really into writing punk music–that stays with me now.

i actually went to college to study english, but discovered i detested structural-prompted writing and ended up switching my major to philosophy. there, i learned how to write both critically and with an open curiosity. i really feel i owe my deconstructive and explorative abilities to my time studying philosophy. we had a really cool curriculum that encouraged us towards analysis of power & disparity, and on another level how to actually be a part of the world and interact with it meaningfully.

mostly though, im a writer because i have to be. im a singer/musician/artist and find that i have to have multiple creative outlets to keep my inspiration alive and inspired. writing has become a way of keeping myself honest about what’s happening in my body and life–like all creation it’s how i maintain a relationship to the future and the worlds i long to live in.

Jan van Mieris De Schilderkunst 1680

vōx: It’s been interesting hearing about your path. I definitely see similarities. I was very religious as a kid. At one point I even replaced all my secular music with Christian counterparts, which was a huge deal because music had been my everything. In many ways it felt like my reason for living. Later, I became agnostic in my late teens and have stayed there since. I still suspect I have work to do around the trauma religion left in my younger years.

I didn’t think of myself as a writer for most of my life. I hated essay writing in school. I procrastinated until the last minute and stressed myself out finishing assignments. In hindsight I think a lot of that came from undiagnosed autism. Oftentimes assignment instructions would be too loose for me. I’d be plagued with insecurity that I wasn’t doing something right or following the rules correctly. My parents were academic focused, so much of my worth was tied to grades and I was praised for that more than for other parts of myself.

I wrote fanfiction for fun when I was a teenager, and then I dove headfirst into poetry that transferred easily into lyrical writing. And that’s where I stuck. I only started writing essays at the beginning of this year after a 17 year break, and I suddenly discovered I fucking love it! Proof that it’s never too late to try something new or something you once disliked.

pax: i relate to this so much, especially the parts about struggling with writing in school. i think the funneling-automated function of schooling can be really discouraging to some of our natural talents, and can be really discouraging for alternative ways of expressing/writing. i’m glad you found your way to writing despite all of the indoctrination.

Presence, Conflict, and Healing

vōx: I really feel your piece “my god is the present moment: the fallacy of enlightenment.” The way you reframe presence not as a serene escape or a perfected “now,” but as something that demands stamina. You talk about conflict as a portal to intimacy, truth, and transformation. The liminal state of healing, never arriving at a destination but always being in it. These are things I’ve been thinking about.

I’ve struggled with remaining present to the conflict inside myself. I really owe a lot of my growth to plant medicine, and the way it’s rewired my neural pathways. In my last ceremony the practitioner told me she sensed a huge resistance to being present in my body, a body full of pain. And that I didn’t love my body in its imperfection.

After that I started a mantra: I want to be in my body even when it’s hurting. I love my body exactly as it is. The first time I said this out loud, it opened a floodgate of alarms and resistance in my brain, “WARNING, THIS IS A LIE.”

But affirmations can change from fabrication to fact faster than you’d think.

You write about resisting the urge to arrive at a perfect healed self. What practices or people help anchor you in that resistance when pressure to “be healed” creeps back in, and how do you navigate the tension between surrendering to the present moment while still holding hope or a vision for something different?

pax: wow, vōx. thank you for sharing that powerful story with me. im curious about how that integration has been for you. plant medicine, for me too, is the most accountable and honest teacher i have. some of the greatest breakthroughs ive made with my health, and my acceptance of it, have been by sitting with these teachers, both entheogens and more subtle plants.

it’s actually through plant medicine and other somatic practices that i’ve come to understand that healing is an illusion. i write a lot about presence because i’m disenchanted with how it’s constructed in normative spiritual settings. but the thing about presence is that if you allow yourself to be ‘here’, then you have to allow yourself to be with every piece of yourself. if you allow yourself to be ‘here’, then you finally admit that there is no where to go, it’s all right in this moment. that’s scary to a body that’s only been taught how to ‘progress’.

the pressure creeps back in daily, especially moving through the world in a body that favors the slow delights of healing through time. im a breathworker and somatic practitioner, and find that i can break through the resistance when im holding space for other people. which, is bizarre, because people often ask if the deep emotional work i guide people through is draining, but it’s not. somehow, allowing myself to be of service to others really works for my body. mainly, because what the people im working with are moving through is relative to the conflicts in my own life. healing in community often happens in this mirroring kind of way.

mainly, im in the practice of allowing shit to be fucked up when it’s fucked up. people often come to me with a deep shame that they aren’t ‘meditating enough’ or that they’re far from their practice. but, what if the practice is also in the not practicing? that’s the medicine that carries me through. the knowing that there’s a future me looking back in awe of everything im moving through now, possibly even missing the way i viewed my situation then. it’s all very meta, but really the practice the anchors me amidst resistance is to surrender to what ever im resisting; whether that be admitting im scared, stressed, feel unhealthy–then my body can finally let go and shift focus towards being wherever it’s at and using its resources to provide me the care i need.

i navigate the tension between surrendering to the present and holding hope for the future by understanding there’s no distinction between and Now; past, present or here. something else i’ve learned from plant meds and my own somatic work/parts work, is that if we can reach into the past and hold ourselves, then there are also future parts of us holding us where we are now, and we can call on them.

Meeting Younger Selves

vōx: I love that viewpoint. Trauma in my body often ties to specific life moments. A present trigger can drop me right into being eight years old and hiding in a closet. It’s wild, but it’s true. I’ve found growth in recognizing these patterns and meeting that eight year old version of me tenderly. Talking to her compassionately, being the mother she needed.

It reminds me of a piece I read this spring about processing emotions. It urged recognizing an emotion as it arrives, then choosing whether now is the right time to process it or whether to set it aside for a moment when you have more somatic safety. That felt counterintuitive to my earlier belief that ignoring emotions was always bad practice. I now see a wisdom in trusting your body, not pushing past what feels unsafe, and setting aside time when you can be fully present to the work, whether with a therapist, a loved one, or in ceremony.

pax: yes! this is brilliant, important emotional knowledge to hold. i LIVE by this practice, and think it can be really healing in a culture that values reactivity more than it values processing and sifting through our inner worlds. i take this knowledge into moments of heightened intensity with myself, or in conflict with others. like, sometimes i shift back into a disempowered, younger version of myself, and how they might respond to a situation isn’t totally in line with what a very present, open hearted me might do. of course, those parts of me have valuable wisdom, and are trying to protect me–but i’ve learned that i get the most satisfaction out of emotional tumultuous situations when i come from an empowered, rooted sense of self.

the days that i set out to do deep inner work, at this point, i only do it when im in a good mood. which sounds counterintuitive because like why would i risk my good mood to feel scary stuff? but, i’ve learned it helps me have a greater navigational sense of my inner world–it helps me become a cartographer and honest observer of what’s going on inside of me. when i first intentionally started sitting with plant meds i would be like “okay im ganna heal my deepest darkest wounds” and i would come into my journeys SO intensely. and it actually made my healing process through those things that much longer because i wasn’t giving myself the integrative space that coming to myself when i felt good about did.

the point you made about transporting across time to yourself when you were more vulnerable is so important. and that part of you is such an incredible and deliberate messenger to be able to reach itself across time and find you in your present body. even in fear, those parts of us are so powerful and resilient–their knowledge of our needs is extensive and deeply lived. and when you bring that other piece of wisdom you shared into play with that, to approach it when it feels safe…it really gives us space to fully hold ourselves and hear our, sometimes contradicting, needs without judgement or confusion.

Trust and Spacious Loving

vōx: I’ve been in an ethically nonmonogamous relationship for over nine years. So your piece, “love under surveillance: deconstructing our culture of paranoia,” really hit home. Your critique of narratives that treat conflict as proof a relationship isn’t meant to be. Your insistence on the inevitability of hurt. And your framing of trust as an active practice. All of it resonates.

Nonmonogamy has changed my life and helped build an insanely resilient partnership. It forces conflict into the room, and every time you come through it together you deepen trust, communication skills, and freedom of expression.

Early on, jealousy surfaced for me. It’s only natural, and it helped me face it to learn that it’s a secondary emotion. There’s always another emotion underneath. For me, it was a version of myself as a small child, desperate to not be abandoned and feeling deeply unworthy of love. I couldn’t get through the jealousy until I learned how to love myself. I doubt I’d have faced that wound for many more years, if ever, without nonmonogamy forcing it into my life. It was simply too deep and painful.

You write about choosing trust as a practice. What does “spacious loving” look like in practice when someone repeatedly hurts or breaks trust, and how might your ideas about trust shift when applied to non-romantic relationships like family, friendship, or community?

Edvard Munch, Der Kuss, 1895

pax: yeaaaaaaaaa i relate to this all so much. especially about how the parts of me that get scared in non-monogamy are often younger parts of myself. you’re so right, polyamory really does help you build conflict skills in a way that monogamy doesn’t give us access to.

i wanna clarify first, that trust is not an easy practice for me. ive joked to friends before that venus scorpio people (me) arent meant to be polyamorous, but i come to polyamory because i have to allow my intensity to flow through multiple channels.

my writing might make it seem like i offer spacious loving to everyone, but im actually very specific with how i use my trust. generally, i start with a basic level of trust and work from there. i dont know if spacious loving can happen without commitment to meaningful conflict.

if someone repeatedly hurts me or breaks my trust, i don’t necessarily have a protocol i follow other than seeing what the context to the hurt or betrayal was. first, i’d make it known how they hurt me, and figure out what their intentions were. sometimes boundaries are crossed because we haven’t explored them, or we didn’t know they were hard limits–in which case i’d want us to both get clear and do some exploration and worldbuilding about how to navigate this in the future, and communicate our needs along the way.

in the case of someone deliberately hurting me, especially about harms we’ve discussed then i have to seriously evaluate our connection and how deeply i am able to be connected. sometimes, im messy and human and it seems worth it to keep my heart open and trust in the other’s integrity to hear me from their heart and change their behavior. other times, the thought of continuing, or maintaining a particular closeness is so painful that i just need to take space and tend to myself, and hope they take the space to tend to themselves too.

as far as non-romantic relationships, i’m a relationship anarchist, and i really try not to prioritize or hierarchize romantic relationships over non-romantic ones. im actually ever-working on viewing all relationships as having the capacity to be both romantic and nonromantic–it’s also a movement in desexualizing my connections. of course, trust does change with different relationship types. im learning that de-hierarchizing doesn’t mean absolving all hierarchies, just as being present doesnt mean detaching. instead, it means recognizing the power differentials present in our connections and not turning away from how they impact our relationships.

power differentials are both systemic and personal. basic recurring power differentials could be like racial, gender based, money based—these happen everywhere in all of our relationships. when it comes to trust, being able to hold our varying levels of power and talk about them & feel through them is crucial. then of course, there’s minor ones that ebb and flow with different themes in our lives. for example, when we’re moving through random difficult life shit, stressors that activate our wounds. you know, the subtle power dynamics that we sometimes swallow like, someone taking up more space in the relationship than we have capacity for, or us not speaking our truth because our shame or people pleasing tendencies.

this is all relevant to trust. like how can i trust you if you can’t tell me what you need, want, or feel? there’s a flowing element of self trust that needs to be evident for me to feel a general sense of trust for others. do you trust yourself to be fully you around me? obviously, in relationships we all flow in and out of internalizing our own oppressions, so i have a degree of spaciousness for letting that naturally ebb and flow. but my general want, is a space to bare things out in the open and be like “hey so actually this dynamic is kinda weird for me”. i don’t really care if it’s succinct or messy, as long as it can come through then i feel a sense of trust, because intimacy is being utilized.

i could go on and on about trust, but really i intentionally diverge from cultural constructions of trust which rely on the premise that “i can trust you, as long as you don’t hurt me”. my sense of trust makes space and welcomes others to hurt me, to be in conflict with me, and is hinged more upon what we do to build trust and intimacy across time and connection.

Desexualizing Connection

vōx: It’s helpful to hear the messy, vulnerable reality of it. Non-monogamy isn’t perfect. It’s hard work, trial and error, and frequent cliff-diving. But the payoff is the resilience you describe. It keeps us on our toes! Complacency is not possible, that’s for sure.

I’m so curious to hear more about desexualizing your connections. As an asexual person, that really strikes me.

pax: desexualization is essential to me being able to express myself fully & build trust and intimacy with others. i have *gasp!* a pussy, so i’ve spent so much of my life surveilling my body through the male gaze. i grew up in a family that really emphasized beauty, and affirmed that my beauty was the most important thing about me. even to this day my family rarely affirms the things that matter to me; how i’ve studied myself, cultivated care, play multiple instruments, you know, real qualities of myself that i value deeply and center my life around.

i remember reading a post of yours about the power and liberation shaving your head gave you, that really struck me. that resonated deeply in me, and am sad to say i’ve heard the same sentiment from so many people.

i spent a good portion of my sexual life dating cis-men, until i realized it was a trauma response. through much trial and error i had to brutally learn that cis-men rarely met my needs, and often, even the radical ones, valued our relationship through a politic of desirability.

we live in a hypersexualized colonial culture that views any body that isn’t a cis white man as something to be possessed, consumed, and owned. desexualization is one way i have been able to free myself up from that pressure to perform womanhood and good-objectness. what that looks like is very specific to me, but it started with degendering myself and becoming nonbinary. i am not meant to hold all that comes with performing womanhood. when i stopped gendering my body, i started to notice how much other people relied on their gendering of me to have a connection with me. you go on a date with a cis man and tell em not just “i’m nonbinary” but also “you know im not a woman at all right? and if it’s confusing for you then use he/him pronouns for me instead.” they can’t handle that shit.

desexualization for me, is also rooted in asexual perspectives. asexual people have taught me more about love and intimacy than sexually-centric connections. because of our sexualized culture, sex comes with so much pretense and context before we even fuck. desexualization is a way of dropping that back. but its not just something you can talk about which is difficult, you have to find people who are willing to desexualize your connection together. its kind of like a lens you learn to look through, the same way that learning to degender people happens across time until it really becomes an embodied part of you to view others through their own gender lens, or as nongendered until they tell you otherwise.

the thing about desexualizing is that its not about sex, but it can include sex. it’s about taking off the sexualized cultural scripts off of each others bodies. and if you do have sex, it can become this really pure thing where you’re just meeting the other person in their full being, as they are. i think part of it is letting go of the narrative that sex is how we build intimacy. instead, intimacy is how we build intimacy; vulnerability, authentic sharing, touch that has no intention–-it’s a practice in deep being. it’s hard to describe because its a lived practice. i integrated this kind of orientation by playing the 3 minute game with friends, which you can find on the wheel of consent website.

The Practice of Deconstruction

vōx: The viewpoint of meeting people as non-gendered or desexualized is just amazing. Your piece “this pussy is work, so i only fuck deconstructionists” was also so brilliant. From examining why we believe what we believe and not just what we believe. To not getting trapped in “good” vs “bad” binary thinking and the spiral of shame, which can be so isolating or self-focused. Your emphasis on partners and friends who move with softness, presence, and responsibility resonates with how I seek connections, people who can hold complexity and curiosity.

I always say I’m looking for friends who are non-judgemental. I think honestly it’s one of my best qualities as an autistic person. I’m so curious. I’m so sincerely interested in the depth of humans, in the parts that are contradictive, in the most vulnerable spaces.

I was once given the advice that the best thing you can do in your relationship is to be on the same team as your partner, to move with trust and curiosity versus suspicion that their intent is to harm you. This was a gamechanger for me.

How did your deconstruction practice begin, was there a turning point or relationship that catalyzed it? And how do you discern between someone who’s only saying the right things and someone actually living them?

James Ensor, Ensor with masks, 1899.jpg

pax: dang, this part, “how do you tell the difference between someone who’s just saying the right things and someone who’s actually living them?” WOOOO–that’s the question.

i think this thought, this question, is how i came to deconstruction with necessity. i write about harm and conflict a lot because ive experienced so many radical humans, that i was close to, totally 180 when it came to handling harm in our communities. watching people who claim to be abolitionists and anti-police/imperialism just absolutely dehumanize and alienate someone because they themselves were afraid of getting canceled for not cancelling someone else–that radicalized me. i used to not have the language for what i could feel in my heart. i didn’t know how to carry it out, but i felt so deeply that no human, regardless of what they’ve done, should be denied access to care, love and healing. ive lost so many wonderful friendships because people were unwilling to deconstruct carcerality from their hearts. i dont blame them either, because we’ve all been taught how to mirror cultures of violence and dehumanization onto each other, but i have to question our avoidance of actually being in conflict with each other. like, if we are going to imagine futures without police, without war, without prison walls–we have to remove the prison walls in our hearts.

living in your politics is different than just contemplating them or absorbing information about how to be a ‘good’ person online. living in your politics is dangerous—politically, socially, and emotionally. there’s no risk to taking in information if you don’t do anything with it. like with abolition, for example, it’s not enough to just imagine and hope for a world without prisons, we have to start doing the deep conflict work now. that means, accepting that we are going to hurt people, and they are going to hurt us–that’s a part of being in relation. that doesn’t mean we have to stay connected if we don’t want to, but it does mean we all still deserve to be treated with humanity. we have to live abolition every day of our lives, so we can get it right on a larger scale when we break down the prison walls. we have to learn to sort through our traumas, our wounds, and not thrust them on each other everytime we are hurt. this is how i tell the difference between someone whos just saying the right things, and someone whose living them. i dont care what kind of jargon youve learned, some of the most radical futuristic people i know dont have the language that someone whose academically trained or chronically online does–but they practice worlds from the future. i wrote once “i really try and live the teaching that if i “AM” something, then i don’t need to announce it. if i am loving, you will feel my love. if i am radical, then it will radicalize you”, and i feel this to be true to how i can tell if someone is living their beliefs.

Closing Reflections

vōx: Wow! This is so powerful: “i really try and live the teaching that if i “AM” something, then i don’t need to announce it. if i am loving, you will feel my love. if i am radical, then it will radicalize you.” That really blows my mind wide open.

I feel like nothing else we say here can top that, so maybe it’s a good sign to wrap up this wonderful conversation. I’m so grateful you’ve taken the time to let me more deeply into your beautiful soul, pax!

Any final thoughts? I’d also love to hear about the things that are bringing you joy these days.

pax: thank you so much for your dedication to this practice of sharing collaborative wisdom, and for inviting me to be a part of it.

i’m finding a lot of joy in possibility. everything feels so precarious right now, and i’m taking it as an opportunity to lean into the instability and imagine new worlds.

i’ve been really emotional about some of the deep relationships i have, and the amount of humans who love me thoroughly, and value my input, creations, and messiness. that kind of spaciousness to love and be loved, keeps me grounded enough to both take in the absolute horror show of living on earth right now, and be like okay, i have work to do and it’s all shit anyways so what ELSE can exist besides this. that feels really good, and i’m really feeling the medicine of being a dreamy ass bitch right now. i’ve been leaning into radical sci-fi heroes, queer theorists, and open hearted visionaries more than ever now; octavia butler, adrienne maree brown, ursula le guin are especially medicine for me right now. we need worldbuilders more than ever, and we need the people who are willing to go on imaginative quests and explore alternate realities to bring back their visions and ground them into this reality here. “writing the ending” through imaginal worlds is my joy lately.