Memory and Nonhumanity

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saw my psych today, refilled my cpap machine odds and ends on the phone... whew! my psych was - well, psyched, i guess, when i told her i finally got a new chair, and i got to show her pictures i'd taken and also art i'd drawn... i also talked a bit to her about my dad's and mom's religious backgrounds (dad is vaguely pagan, mom was wiccan). i brought it up because she was saying how i seem to be very attuned to animals & it made me really think.

earlier today, i was looking through old photos with my dad. he wanted to get some sorted out to give to my sister (who will probably digitize them later). he handed me a random album - "it's when we were at disneyland!", he said, but it had pictures from other time periods, too.

what stood out to me is the first photo i saw - a picture of me, probably somewhere between 8 and 10 years old, wearing a dog collar. (my sister, too, probably to match...?)

and i cannot emphasize enough that i've always been this way. i think i just lacked the word for it for a long time. and i dont mean to say i didn't know the word therian or otherkin until "recently" - i learned about it at 14 years old, i think. but that said, my nonhumanity is kind of emblematic of me. my friends associate me with that sort of thing, too.

as a kid, i'd wear a collar - until a yard duty came by to tell me it could mean "something else", and i was like, huh? haha. as a teen, i wore a fox tail to school for half of a school year, since i was already being bullied enough, why not express myself more? what were they gonna do, bully me some more? hahahaha. (it became "in style" the next year or two after i'd stopped, and yes, i certainly am still salty about it years later, thank you!!!!!

i remember i spent quite a few sleepless nights reading furry writing on my dinky ipod touch. i stayed up to read through tsa.transform.to's list of animal tf fic. (i havent admitted this anywhere before, and i figure few people read this section... haha!) i'd bingeread wikifur articles about old MUDs and MUCKs and furry cons long gone.

i think identifying as a furry was a sort of stepping stone for me. certainly i knew there was some distinction between furry and "what i was", but i didn't really know. (and it tends to be a venn diagram sometimes, where people can be both, or one, or the other.) i used to read a lot about p-shifting and m-shifting at 16, and would desperately try to change things with my mind (haha!) to prove that i was some sort of werewolf.

then there was a period where i realized that it was "cringe" to identify as therian or otherkin... like, not that i paid it much mind, or agreed. but i didn't want to be bullied for it any more than i was already! so i "toned it down" for a long time. i am older and now i am not nearly as public about "i am kinning xyz!!" now. never was against "doubles" or whatever, for what it's worth. alternate universes and all that.

i recently saw a group barring people who kin "for fun" from applying. so i guess that makes me wonder, what is the defining trait of doing it for fun? is it a deathly serious affair? can i not be having fun with it? is it possible for people to still be figuring it out or exploring the idea of being nonhuman? i dunno. i would ask directly but i don't particularly want to ask a total stranger or group of strangers to rationalize their rules to me.

anyway, dont remember where i was going with all that... i guess just that ive always known i was "a little different", and it manifested in a lot of ways, and that includes being a dogthing. "dogthing" is as close as i can really figure it, anyway. it's right up there on the shelf with being transgender and a gay person and chronically ill and such.