Why we bother?

(Copy-pasted from elsewhere; not proof-read; not directly aimed at this forum)



When I first joined otherkin groups, they were full of very intelligent, resourceful people actively researching their natures and the natures of their friends. People had the feeling of being on quests - we were adventurers, doing everything possible to get answers to the questions that burned. It's not rose tinted glasses that enable me to compare, in all honesty, those days to being like knights on a Grail quest.

Looking at otherkin groups now - this and others - it's almost impossible for me to believe they're the same groups, and to a big extent, even the same people.

Somewhere along the line people stopped looking into the other life. Somewhere along the line, the community as a whole decided that it just didn't matter. That looking into the "otherkin" nature of ourselves with any great intensity automatically meant that we were neglecting the human side . . . and that the human side, the "this life" side, was fundamentally and intrinsically more important.

There's just one massive problem with that attitude.

If the "other side" wasn't a big deal, we wouldn't be here on otherkin forums discussing otherkin issues.

But wait . . . for the most part, we aren't. What are the main topics of conversation on this forum and others?

Introductions of new members that go absolutely nowhere . . . often with new members being told by older and more respected contributers that their experiences and ideas aren't really worth believing.

Endless questions about how to tell people about being otherkin . . . without any discussion of why it matters.

Arguments about how badly the world got nuked when the tsunami hit Fukishama.

And in all of it, in all of it, there's this unspoken - and sometimes actually spoken - assumtion that everything related to being otherkin is a sideshow, a hobby, not that important. Being human comes first, apparently. The best place to look for answers about why we feel like we feel is human psychology, human experiences. The veteran otherkin talk about how when we were younger and believed interesting things we were led astray by manipulative predators, and the newer otherkin who are full of hope and curiosity are told none of it matters that much anyway, and hey, it's probably more to do with your childhood than anything else.

Unfortunately, there's a massive contradiction in all the "hey, just worry about this life first and foremost" idea. It's simple. If we were all able to just ignore being otherkin, get on with so-called real life, and think about other worlds as a hobby when there was nothing else to deal with . . . we wouldn't even need any of these forums in the first place.

I don't know about the rest of you, but when I first learned about the concept of otherkin, I didn't think "oh, this is interesting, but of course none of it is really relevant compared to exams and taxes and making sure my credit card is paid on time." I thought "WOW, all this weird shit in my head has actually been experienced by other people!" And I didn't think "I want to talk to those people so they can ground me and tell me to calm down and not believe every little idea that pops into my head," . . . I thought "WOW, some of those people can help me answer questions that hurt me to even think about, some of those people might not know what path I'm on but at least they can show me who to ask for directions!"

I'm as guilty of this myself as anyone. "What does being otherkin mean to your everyday life?" people ask. I reply, like a good little conformist, "Oh, nothing, I'm a regular person just like anyone else and honestly I care more about hockey. If being otherkin controls your life, seriously, get help!"

That's a lie.

I'll say it again: that's a lie.

I can only speak for myself . . . but there are aspects to my nature, as a shadow, as a multiple, as an otherkin or whatever you want to call it, that cause me real, tangible pain. "Existential agony" would be the precise phrase, I think. And it's all very well saying that people should just focus on the real life, the one that matters . . . but for some, the whole point about being otherkin is that the "real" life, the one that "matters", isn't this one here and now on Earth.

Over the last few years I've had to deal with some massive changes in that "real life" of mine, most notably a very serious illness that nearly killed me, lost me my job, led me to re-evaluate all my relationships, and caused what is almost certainly permanent brain damage. I talk about this a lot - having nearly died of encephalitis is, now, the defining feature of this life. That experience is the lens through which I view everything I see.

I'm not exagerrating to say that it's the second time in my life that I've come as close to dead as you can get without dying, and given how young I was the first time round, it's the only one I remember with much clarity.

During that time, I forgot many of my friends . . . both their names, and their identities. Both out there in meatspace, and over here on the internet. I also forgot some enemies, no longer remembering why we stopped speaking. I forgot some of my family members, for a long time not knowing who my own mother was. Vast chunks of my childhood are blank spaces. I'm not as eloquent as I used to be, especially in RL, and often have difficulty constructing grammatically correct sentences. I even - amazing as this may sound to those who know me - had to teach myself to skate again.

It's not an exagerration to say that doesn't even scratch the surface on the really big things I lost or saw broken. That's just the edited highlights - or lowlights.

Through it all, though, I could still feel my tail.

Through it all, even as my memories of childhood and work-related expertise drifted away into nothingness, I still had as clear as ever that handful of fractured "otherkin memories" that drove me to find otherkin forums in the first place. Through it all, when my vision went from normal to full of flashing lights and back to normal again, my reflection still didn't look like me in the mirror.

Now, if I was to join an otherkin site for the first time today and talk about my experiences, I'm fairly sure that either I'd be ignored or some well-meaning senior member - someone much like me, really - would tell me in a way they thought to be oh-so-helpful that the phantom appendages were probably my brain misfiring, and the not-me reflection was just dissociation (understandable, really, given everything I'd been through) and if I felt like an alien and not at home then hey, that was probably just a psychological reaction to my brain nearly frying.

Every single experience would be whittled away with those weasle words, "If you can explain it by being human, you should" until there was nothing left.

Unfortunately that makes no sense at all, no matter how many times I've said it, meaning well, to other people.

I'm not human, not in any meaningful sense. This world isn't the real one for me, it's just somewhere I happen to be right now. Along with most of the world, I don't go to work and earn a wage because of a calling to my profession (thanks for that demotion, encephalitis) - I go to work to earn money to pay for food and internet access and hockey time (you know, the things necessary for life).

Being human is the same. The "work me" isn't the "real me", it's just the me I have to be 9 hours a day 3 days a week to enable the rest of me to have a good time. And the "Earth me" isn't the real me, it's just the me I'm stuck as for the moment while I try to figure out the questions that have been burning since before I even knew how to verbalise them.

Anyway - I'm done with that. And the purpose of this post is a public declaration that I'm done with that. I had questions and problems and ideas when I first stumbled onto an otherkin website years ago, questions that haven't been dealt with. Questions like . . . who am I? Why am I here on Earth? What happened to those people I knew in another life? Who is this other person inside my head/heart/soul, and where the hell is the rest of him? Where did my memories go . . . and can I get them back?

It's all very easy to tell people not to work on recovered memories and that they're never as important as this life. But I've lost chunks of memory from this life and the other. Let me tell you this, it's not especially easy to live life with a hole in your mind, knowing things are missing but not even knowing what they are. I think some people have forgotten the agony of that emptiness. A lot of people have claimed that it flat out doesn't matter.

It does. My being an otherkin, a shadow, a multiple is the single most defining point of my entire existence. It's not an optional extra to think about when the mundane - yes, mundane - aspects of my life are covered . . . nope, answering those questions that frame me is the only reason there is for tolerating the mudnane duties at all.

Huh. Read this, left to eat dinner, came back, and I'm still the only one to have looked at it? (from the time I began writing this, at least.) Forgive me if I'm a bit incoherent, I'm slightly lightheaded, achy, and am starting to get a headache...

This is pretty much the only otherkin-specific forum I'm on...though I have noticed the trend of, well, new people posting (myself included in that) and others, not so much. I've lightened up on the postings recently because I don't really want this to be "the Chordal forum." That is, I've noticed that I've been the main person writing anything here, for a while.

I had been posting at my blog, but recent events have caused me to think that it's not as safe there as I once thought it was. So...I've been reading, studying, writing in my own paper journals. There is really not much of a point to me putting my thoughts out online, and thus sacrificing security of personal information, if they aren't responded to...not to implicate you in that, because I have seen some activity on your end; but I feel perhaps I've alienated some people here and that's why it's quiet, or something. But then I tend to be a bit egocentric at times...it probably helps me feel I have more control over the situation than I do. <!-- s --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_razz.gif" alt=":P" title="Razz" /><!-- s -->

I've gotten to the point where what's going on with me...spiritually speaking...it's quite interesting, and in fact much of my recent non-work life has been focused around trying to figure out what exactly is going on. (Plus, organizing -- remaking the outer world to fit the inner world.) I'm no longer entirely convinced that what's going on with me is (of necessity) wholly biological. However...it doesn't seem that backwards is the way to go. I did hit up the Demonolatry forum, but that coincided with a bunch of strangeness as regards my machine, so I may not be going back there again. Regardless -- they're only one source to learn from, and I have plenty to read.

Several months ago I must have mentioned something about there being another way to approach the illness issue, in my case, but that for it to be effective I had to believe it could be effective. In the meantime I've been approached by a couple of new presences..."energies" might be an apt description, because I tend to synch with them in harmony or concert...and that's not really a concept that comes across when talking about "people." The most recent one, you probably know, appeared to be a Water/Air elemental. But I note that I have a tendency to see whomever I'm synching with (in spirit) as myself...and also that I have a tendency to externalize parts of myself (as shown in my former identity as multiple).

What came across to me as evident, then -- is that Mist, the Water/Air elemental, seemed to represent myself. What was also evident is that my illness is one of the cognitive abilities and emotions: Air and Water (so far as I know, at least).

Once I got the Water hit, I went searching for more information on this, particularly recalling something I'd read in a book called Aura Colors. I found a good amount of what was referred to in the "Crystal" aura type being representative of myself, but then went and finally filled out the questionnaire. (I've had this book for years.) What I found is that I have two aura colors which are healing types (one Physical, one Emotional) and one which is Visionary. I say all of that to get to the point (I'm sorry) of saying that this book implies that I could be a powerful healer if that is what I chose...that my physical health is due to being a conduit for Healing energy (Physical), and that due to my Crystal and Indigo traits, I should have the innate ability to heal myself -- the Crystal is an added attunement to Healing energy and the Indigo is an attunement to Intuition.

In addition...my early curiosity towards Satanism could have been out of rebellion, which is a trademark of my first aura color (Yellow). Many of my life difficulties have arisen because of my sensitivity to energies around me, and tendency to identify myself with them (Crystal [out of balance]), plus emotional fragility and tendency to fragment (Crystal). If I had regular physical exertion, this would help cycle my energies so they don't putrify (Yellow), and if I can see my body itself as energy (Indigo) and trust my intuition (Indigo), I may be able to go a strong way towards clearing up my symptoms, aside from medication.

This is a great assist to me -- I've come to know that the medications I'm on aren't effective forever. And even if they do work, there are side effects, some of them potentially stigmatizing, to contend with. So I'm treating the medications, now, as a temporary phase until I can get my act together enough, and until I can become educated enough, to heal myself. I'm not saying religion's going to heal me. I'm saying that what I'm experiencing could at root be an expression of my core self, or at least of two of my strong core attributes (Water/Air) thrown out of balance.

Which circles back around to the idea of having a "nonhuman" energy. Either I'm so totally nonhuman that I really don't understand at all what it means to have "human" energy, <!-- s --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_wink.gif" alt=";)" title="Wink" /><!-- s --> or I'm thinking that maybe energy...is not form-specific. I should state that I haven't continued on with the energy work at this point, though, as a caveat.

One of the major reasons that I have not tried to recover memories is that...well, there are several reasons:

1) Early on, Bell (one of the two) told me that in a spirit, there is no brain in which to store memories. Of course, caveat: this could have been a lie from Bell's copy, so I wouldn't seek memories s/he lacked.
2) I'm afraid of what I might find (or create).
3) Having experienced psychosis (a break between shared reality and internal reality), I know that things can seem very, very real, and not be.
4) Having been in the Satanist subculture, I've seen examples of the harm which false "recovered" memories can do.
5) Knowing multiples IRL, I've seen examples of the harm which false "recovered" memories can do.

Because of the framework I was working in at the time when I encountered Mist (Water/Air), this somewhat restricted my approach to thinking, "could I be one of these -- or like these -- Demons?" OFS, which school S. Connolly's book comes from, has a history of expressing antipathy towards humans who believe they're demons, spiritually speaking. Which, I know, I say over and over again. There is an old thread on the Demon subforum which records the phenomenon, from long before I came here. I'm still not entirely certain why this is, unless the sect believes that humans who think they have demon souls must be, in actuality, confused humans. Or that humans who claim to have demon souls want to be worshipped, or something.

Add to this that I do not get the sense that all of these Demons, as expressed in the book I have, are "dark." Some certainly have their dark sides, at least metaphorically speaking -- likely most, if not all, do. But we (if I may say "we",) certainly are not made of dark energy, just because Xianity and Islam like to paint themselves as light and the rest of the world as not. <!-- s --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_smile.gif" alt=":)" title="Smile" /><!-- s --> I'm actually seeing where the gold light in my visualizations might have come from...

Additionally...(I should go check on my laundry in a moment)...there is just the amount of peer pressure that there is to keep this under wraps. Sometimes the term "energy" may be acceptable to someone, while the term "demon" is not, and even though one may mean them to speak the same thing, the terms don't read the same way to others outside one's body. I'm certain that to spirits, the intended meaning comes across, not the etymology and cultural connotation of the term. This would be why I generally find good and helpful spirits when looking at Demons, and not innately harmful and malicious ones.

But AM I ON A TANGENT...? Ugh. Sorry.

I began writing this to say that it is the case that what is going on with me is a big part of my life. I've just not been particularly inclined to share it with the world, recently. <!-- s --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_smile.gif" alt=":)" title="Smile" /><!-- s --> And...I'm not particularly inclined to call it "otherkin" anymore, either. It's gone to a level where it is the nature of me...not my species (though I do still find birds to be beautiful beyond all reason), and not so much where I fit in the human scheme of things.

I've got to go fold my clothes. <!-- s --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_smile.gif" alt=":)" title="Smile" /><!-- s --> Sorry for the textwall. <!-- s --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_wink.gif" alt=";)" title="Wink" /><!-- s -->

ETA, 06-24-11: The book is called Life Colors, not "Aura Colors". I didn't think the correction merited its own post. <!-- s --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_smile.gif" alt=":)" title="Smile" /><!-- s -->

I decided to reply first to Archer's original post, before I read what others had to say, and I'm afraid this got real rambly real fast.

My dad has this saying, "no matter what you do with your life, you'll always have to sweep floors"
The meaning of this, the way he explains this, is that even if you pursue the profession that you love, that you're passionate about, you'll always have banal, meaningless, repetitive, boring tasks that you "need" to do. Whether they're literally sweeping floors, or taking the novel you've been working on for months and going over it with a fine toothed comb, correcting spelling, grammar, or making sure you've kept "consistency" or whatever.

This applies to the way I see otherkin as well.
No matter what your kintype is, you'll always have to sweep floors.
You "can not" spend 30 days in unbroken meditation to discover all of your internal secrets, you have to get up and eat, stretch your legs, drink, go to the bathroom, sleep, tend to the basic needs of the body.

There are times when I feel that the otherkin community as a whole has put far too much weight on "finding out more about yourself"
A pressure, spoken and unspoken, to discover the next part of yourself, the next kintype, the next alt, the next, the next, the next....
And when I say "no, I'm still just what I am" I find people expressing a "aww" sort of response. As if I have to keep adding types or memories or more to the mix or I'm somehow "failing".
Then there the other times I feel the otherkin community as a whole has become hyper-fixated in the other direction.
The days when it seems that the whole "being otherkin" is treated as a fantasy for children, which makes one wonder why the posters of such responses are on otherkin forums at all.

I don't view my "self" and my body as strictly separate.
The "I" that "I" am at this moment is affected by the body I am in.
The body doesn't "define" me, but it's a part of who I am right now.
And so, it bothers me a little bit when otherkin "tell me" that I am not my body, that it's not "me". (Speak For Yourself!)

And then there's the endless stream of otherkin who pine away for their past lives, romanticized and idealized in nostalgic memory, and as a byproduct belittle and discredit the value of human life, not just for themselves but for everyone, for me.
This life, as a human being, is far more enjoyable to me than what I remember of the first life. I'm "more" today than I was then. More free, more myself, more happy, more comfortable, more...
And so, it bothers me quite a lot when otherkin "tell me" that "being human sucks" and "humans are all -insert derogatory term here-".

ramble ramble

I was going somewhere with this but I'm exhausted and stuff, so...
I'll revisit later maybe.

Here's my deal:

When I first started looking into 'kin forums, Otherkin Alliance didn't exist. Hell, Otherkin.com didn't exist. This forum was still waiting for a very impulsive event to happen and for some community elders to take matters in their own hand.

I was full of this need to share my experiences, and this desire to find people who shared the same experiences and feelings. I wanted to see if I was crazy, or were there other people out there living everyday lives on the surface all the while delving into memories of far-off lands?

And then I found some forums, and I got to share my stories, my memories, my beliefs, my viewpoint on life and the universe as we know it.

The more I did it, the more I realized that, regardless of how old my existence may be, I'm attempting to infinitely describe a finite amount of information I possess. I've repeated myself countless times. I've played the same ideas back and forth in myriads of ways mentally.

When I first put a name to my belief, when I first was able to say "I think I'm Otherkin," I was attempting to figure it all out, to define myself, to compartmentalize this belief into the rest of my beliefs so that I may reserve a special time and place for it in the humdrum of school and friends and video games and human life.

I'm not old, by human terms. 22 isn't old. I'm not even old by 'kin terms. There are people believing themselves to be beings far more ancient than a blob of energy that's potentially been floating around for multiple millennia. But for more than half of my life, I've had this very strong conviction that I'm not entirely human. Every single day, I wake up and look in the mirror and am still surprised that I have hands and legs and eyes and a face.

If kin forums have done anything for me, they've brought me on a trip farther and farther from the conventional train of human thought. I think I'm more disassociate now than I've ever been before. I used to have problems leaving my body, and I so desperately wanted to do so, to figure out what I was, to soul search, for lack of better terms. Now I find it difficult to stay in the shell. I'm out and about when I'd rather not be.

Despite all the psychological torment, despite the lack of reason and rationale, despite all the self-arguing I've done and despite my continuous attempts to blend in with normality, I can't shake it. I'm not human. It won't go away. If this is brainwashing, I've far surpassed expectations.

By no means do I want to die. I've found wondrous things in life that I don't wish to give up. I don't want to end the trip so soon, do I? I therefore work, and live, and love, and lie, and languish in the luxuries I am allowed to pursue.

Well, sometime along the 12 years I've been visiting forums and typing out responses and attempting to further myself and my understanding of myself, I realized I don't have words for everything. My experiences are a unique path that only I am going to understand fully, if I understand it at all.

No amount of words on a message board on the internet will change that. How can a being devoid of a written language convey their entirety through written language? It's like painting music: it's beautiful and complex but it will NEVER be the same.

Did I ever have a need or a desire to help out other 'kin who Awakened? Nope.
Am I glad there are people out there with that need? Yes.

For me, once I came to that epiphany, I didn't feel the need to share my worldview in quite the same way. There is so much I type, but simultaneously there is so much I never put into words on here, or ever to the world.

My biggest lament is that I'd love to share my thoughts with someone but I understand nobody is going to get me, 100%, ever, because they are not me.

Now, I type with whatever intent strikes my fancy. There's no ultimate plan. There's no grand design. I simply like being able to come by here and read on the thoughts of another in the hope that it will expand my own personal understanding of myself a little more, aka, to grow.

I was going to continue on with how I feel newcomers aren't the same as they used to be, but the inherent flaw behind this argument is that:

-There will always be newcomers
-I was once a newcomer
-I think I am awesome

So compared to when I was a newcomer, since i am awesome, no other newcomer could ever be as awesome. I mean, the logic is flawless, but it's probably also slightly biased.

Therefore, I'm just summing up how internet Otherkin forums have probably caused me to delve further into insanity than I already was, and how I feel increasingly compelled to see if the rabbit hole ever ends.

Tbh, I agree with Archer. It's ridiculous how a lot people throw the idea away like it's a joke....although nothing is clearly stated to be "true", neither is anything clearly stated to be "false". People should make up their own minds about what they think.

Archer, clearly you found better otherkin communities than I did 10 years ago. There were a *few* people who were intelligent and resourceful, but what the forums were "full of" was something definitely smellier and less useful outside of a garden.

When I first discovered the word for the concept that I had been dealing with for the previous 5 years, I stuck with the dragon-specific forums. And dear gods do I cringe at the memories I have. No nostalgia here.

People would 'astral project' while in chat and battle demons or be raising astral babies or be bemoaning the loss of said astral babies when they were horribly murdered by those aforementioned 'demons'. One person claimed to be the past-life mate of 7 different members of one forum and led those poor guys around by the nose for almost 2 years. They were full of "I was from earth and was 300 feet long with a 100 foot wingspan and weighed 30 tonnes and I flew without using magic!" or "I had lightning, fire, water, and poison breath weapons!" or "I'm a mile long!" People were finding out new past lives every other week, or bemoaning the fact that they didn't know what color their claws were. It was full of young kids who went "I just randomly found this site and the concept and I like dragons so I must BE a dragon" and within a year went out in a flaming blazing mass of trollish glory when they realised they were NOT otherkin. And I'd say that most likely 4 out of 5 newcomers did this. The forums were hotbeds of misanthropic vitriol and whining and pure fantastical fluff. People were basically encouraged to ignore the everyday things around them. Back pain wasn't because of backpacks or sleeping poorly... it was because they were growing wings! And people didn't *challenge* them on this.

It's been almost 15 years for me. I'm like Miniar. This is what I am. And this includes the human body I inhabit. I am shinoar, yes. But while an intrinsic part of me, I cannot let that rule my life otherwise I'm not *living*. It's like saying "once I was 5 years old, and important things happened to me then, so I'm going to continue acting as if I'm 5 years old."

I enjoy who and what I am, but I also enjoy my snakes (I spend a lot more time in reptile forums than I do otherkin ones), and reading (which I spend more time doing than being online), and I enjoy my job. Otherkin isn't exciting for me anymore. It's *comfortable*. I don't extol the virtues of my favorite blanket, but that doesn't mean I don't enjoy curling up underneath it.


I have no need to tolerate the 'mundane' aspects of my life... because those are some of the things I take the most joy in.

I'm alive. What could possibly be more exciting or important than *that*?

Ditto Shiari. Otherkin is me. I'm angel me *and* human me 24/7. Both are me and both are equally important. However, the only thing I can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt is the human part and I'm aware of that. A lot of 'kin I've seen across the years try to and want to entirely ignore the human part and just embrace the part that is belief and not something anyone can beyond a shadow of a doubt prove about themselves...which is why only focusing on the otherkin stuff ends up being so unhealthy. You've gotta focus on the human stuff because at the moment that's what we are, human. We have to survive in human society somehow. You've gotta find your happy mid-point where you are simply both.

Archer, once again, you are my hero. I agree with your thoughts.

Some of the older folks that have been in the therian community would agree with you that things have changed from when we first joined. Focus somewhere along the way switched from "hey this is cool, I need to learn more" to "I should reevaluate myself and continue to peruse the doubt because ultimately I could just be crazy". I don't know when it happened, but it certainly did.

I for one agree with the majority in that questioning yourself is very important on the otherkin journey. However, it's not the only thing individuals should be focusing on. Or else, as Arch pointed out, what's the point of us being on a forum that discusses it in the first place? We can all question our beliefs to death in private, and most of us do, but coming together in a community should also be about sharing those "weird" experiences.

Archer Wrote:I don't know about the rest of you, but when I first learned about the concept of otherkin, I didn't think "oh, this is interesting, but of course none of it is really relevant compared to exams and taxes and making sure my credit card is paid on time." I thought "WOW, all this weird shit in my head has actually been experienced by other people!" And I didn't think "I want to talk to those people so they can ground me and tell me to calm down and not believe every little idea that pops into my head," . . . I thought "WOW, some of those people can help me answer questions that hurt me to even think about, some of those people might not know what path I'm on but at least they can show me who to ask for directions!"

Exactly. So where are all the posts/essays about actually BEING otherkin? I'm guilty of it myself, but I have also written essays about what being wolf is like in a human body. (Not nearly as many essays as I've written on subjects for newbies, but a few short ones.)

Granted, I'm the odd person out in that I don't remember a lot from my childhood save the odd "I pretended to be an animal", but the feeling of not being human has been consciously with me since at least High School. And like others, I am a wolf in a human body, not human OR wolf depending on the situation. The instinctual urges of hunting, animal behaviors and the like are with me all the time and I have to deal with that oftentimes in a very non-animal environment. I guess for the most part I simply take it for granted. I go to work, I smell raw meat and it instantly makes my mouth water and transports me to killing a prey animal, I draft a letter at work, I go home, I hear something interesting on the wind that makes my phantom ears twitch, etc. But I'm me which is both human and wolf. *shrug*

And I think what Archer's trying to get at not that focus should mostly be on the human side: with rational thinking and intelligent debate being the foremost important thing, obviously those are key, but rather that focus can and sometimes should be placed on simply A. living with being other and B. enjoying being other. And while I realize most of us are focused mainly on the here and now, it should be just as acceptable to kick your shoes off once in awhile and say 'hey, I'm a ______-creature and I'm awesome, here's what's so awesome about being __________"

I agree with a lot of things being said here. <3 Lots of people in the community seem so worried about what other people think will think of them that they just... don't express themselves. They roll themselves in wool.

There's nothing wrong with being logical and I think it's important, but if we didn't want to discuss Otherkin stuff, we wouldn't have signed up for forums like this one.

I'm not the most sociable of people. Though I normally tend to avoid posting, I feel that this is important.

I haven't given up searching. I haven't given up trying to find out what I may be. I simply stopped posting about it. Even in the past, when I was far more open, I always felt self-conscious relaying my experiences. There were mountains of experiences that everyone else was having, themselves... why did mine matter, at all, in the grand picture? Who would want to read about me, when they have their own potential dilemma to deal with? Furthermore, when something comes along to discredit my previous words -- the very experiences that I had shared to the presumably good faith of the community -- what am I to do? To pull an example mentioned from within this thread, what do I do when I find out that the pains in my back wasn't from my wings growing, but from an over-sized backpack? At best, such events can be considered the unfortunate side-effects of wishful thinking; at worst, it is a betrayal of the trust placed in me to be truthful in my statements. I do not enjoy associating myself with the dangerous possibility for either... and so I wait an indefinite period of time for these unprovable experiences to be proven.


A brief recap, I developed a multiple system at the age of eleven and was genuinely fearful for both my sanity and of the society I feared would persecute me, given the chance. I didn't discover anything about otherkin things until... around age sixteen, or so? The span between was filled with the aforementioned fear coupled with moderate-severe depression. The only reason why I began to search at all, in fact, was because of the initial suffering from It's awakening. I was in pain. I was... deteriorating. When I found out about "otherkin", it was a huge breath of fresh air. It's largely why I was so talkative.

I stopped talking as much after realizing that language is simply inadequate to describe anything nearly as well as I wish without taking an exorbitant toll on the time of both myself and my target audience... and there'd still be gaps. The aforementioned desire to "not speak mistruth" also became more predominant, furthering my desire for seclusion. Even when I do speak, I consistently omit large pockets of information simply to refrain from coming off the wrong way (as whiny or wanting attention, typically).

In the end, though I stopped talking, I am still searching, searching, searching endlessly. I am optimistic in believing that such is the case for the other intelligent people you have met, Archer.

Quote:And I think what Archer's trying to get at not that focus should mostly be on the human side...

It struck me that I wish to provide my own analysis of Archer's post (though I do not mean to discredit anyone else's).

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These are otherkin forums. These are otherkin groups. And, yet, it seems as though the whole initial purpose of these gatherings -- to communicate and explore the idea of "Otherkin" -- has simply vanished with time. Rather than turn toward skepticism as a tool for greater understanding, it has become a tool for dismissal. "We're just humans" has grown from the once friendly reminder to a mantra tuned to suppression of the very part of us we had come here to explore.

It's wrong. This change -- it's wrong.
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To which I agree.