Otherkin Adult - Tumblr Posts

Growing up alterhuman is isolating, even when you have friends who pretend to be animals with you. Because that's all it is to them: pretending.

I'm someone who has felt some level of nonhuman for a huge chunk of their life; much like other kids, I would 'pretend' to be an animal or mythical creature. However, there was always an underlying sense of reality when I would 'pretend' to be a wolf, a leopard, a tiger, a mermaid, or even an ordinary housecat. As I grew, the feeling lingered, and at around 12 or 13 I discovered the otherkin community through cringe compilations.

I immediately felt a kinship to the community and couldn't understand what was so cringe about them. I found myself looking into the community, and I 'came out' as a vampire at 13. It was treated simultaneously as just a phase and something worrying. I started wearing tails at 14 everywhere I went, as I had developed two wolf forms. I stopped doing anything like this around the time when quarantine started.

I am now an adult, 19 years of age, and still nonhuman. I came into understanding of my polymorph identity at 17, and have stuck with it while gathering forms that I also consider to be kintypes; I consider myself to be canine therian despite not identifying as a dog all the time, for example. I still identify as a vampire. It is still isolating.

It is isolating because I know there are people who will see me and say, 'aren't you too old to play pretend like that?' as if I chose to have a lingering sense of nonhumanity from childhood. As if I chose this unshakable disconnect from humanity. As if I am playing pretend. I wish it were that simple, a game of play pretend. But no, this is a part of my identity, and I feel so othered sometimes because ""normal"" adults don't do this. I am a freak adult just as I was a freak child. But I also feel at peace, because I have this part of me and I have community. I know there are adults out there like me. 'Normalcy' isn't some superior state of being and being a 'freak' ain't all that bad.

So yeah, I guess where I'm trying to go with this is that otherkin adults aren't immature for their identities. We deserve to be taken as seriously as the adults who identify as human. We deserve to exist without ridicule, much like otherkin kids deserve the same.