So I was listening to music this evening and was overwhelmed with the urge to well...no only write this but to officially come out and be open about what I am, which is to say an OtherKin. I've struggled with this for a bit, partially because I don't like labels and partially because there was a time for a long time when this was not something I enjoyed being. However this...I needed to say this, and I needed to share this.

If anyone reads this and has questions about any of this or just wants to talk about it, please, please, please, please contact me. I'm here to help and discussing this stuff helps me too.

Finally, big shout out to  nightwox for editing this, making the icon, and generally being just one of the best people ever.




The oppressive heat of July had dissipated in a gentle storm that lasted only moments a few hours before. Fireflys danced underneath invisible thunderheads that obscured the stars that those insects resembled. The wind didn’t howl so much as gently caress the trees overhead and for once it felt as though the world was taking a much needed breath.


It was a moment of serenity that seemed to stretch on forever. Within a house underneath those rolling leaves an air conditioner let out a monotonous hum. Its sound was augmented by the soft piano escaping from a pair of speakers. Instead of dulling those tones it seemed to make them sound all the more immediate. All there was was that instant in that place with all other places and times cast aside in an all consuming moment.


I did not feel myself so much as know myself in that instance. It was a sense of being rather than a sense of having been if that made any sort of sense. Nothing I was for a moment mattered. Not how I looked or how I sounded or how I felt. My thoughts were not thoughts so much a flow of pure distilled deep will flowing forth and into my fingertips to type this This single moment of serenity.


It was a shifting thing, to feel myself as myself rather than to feel a longing to be myself. Its a hard thing to describe, this sort of deep intrinsic longing for the intangible. A sort of lingering pain that is both nostalgic and new at the same time. To know that you may never truly be you entirely. To know that the real you is beyond reach, beyond touch, beyond almost any physical expression of the five senses.


But its a happy thing too, to be like I am. To have experienced more than what I can immediately see and feel and taste and hear and smell around me. To have sense beyond what is reasonable, beyond what is expected, beyond what could be considered sane, beyond the mundane. I have for Over ten years now experienced moments like this where I can feel my physical body slipping away only to have it be replaced by something else. Something that’s both so much more than I am now and yet so much less than what I experience in the day to day.


I am an otherkin.


That is a loaded term with a lot weight and prompt behind it. To some it means that your soul, your very essence and fiber is intrinsically different from that of a human. That in the place of a mortal spark you have something that is different, other, hence the term.


Some take it and use it to justify their anger at the world we live in and the pain within it. That its validation for the alienation they feel when they look at the horrors that the people of this beautiful planet rage unto themselves. To look unto the works of man and turn away from them and use it to justify that they are better, and that they are different.


Others use it as a means to grow close to somewhat alien ideals to most within modern society. To be close to nature and to be true to your instincts and deep impulses. To live life unburdened by certain restraints that people tend to accept from society.


Still some kin use it to feel like they are more than human, more than mortal. A longing that burns deep within them to be something. Something beautiful. Something wonderful and powerful and more than they could be normally.



Most talk about a calling to it, a tide that pulls them closer and closer to the realization that they simply can not be. Not truly. That they are in some way incomplete and missing what they need to simply be themselves.


Yet...Mankind Is beautiful. And no matter how detached or separate or alienated or different that my fellow kin feel they are from the general population that reside upon this world I think its important to realize that were all people. That no matter how different we are from one another all of us from human, to furry, to kin, to anything that we all hope. That we all dream. That we all love. We all feel, and fear, and cry, and rage, and despair. That no matter how non human we may feel, that we all still have humanity. We are all people who go through life, not alone, but with everyone else even if we feel isolated and alienated.


I say this because In my experience I tend not to get along with otherkin. It tends to be difficult to speak with people who share the same condition that I do because there is an anger there. An anger for not being able to express ones self physically. To always walk as if you are in an unfeeling haze where everything seems fake. To have vivid memories of other places and times that you cant describe. To see something out of the blue and have it resonate so deeply that it brings you to your knees.


To be an otherkin is to lead a half life, one with brief moments of glorious insight unto the condition of your being only to realize that you are still within the body you have always had, at least in this life.


As I sit here and listen to piano underscored by the gentle hum of an airconditioner I can feel my body. I can feel two arms, and two legs. I can feel my small ears on the side of my head and my born gender. I can feel the light body hair that’s mildly sticking to the gray t--shirt which clings to my broad shoulders. I feel and I see a male human body and a part of me knows that its simply wrong whilst another part of me knows that its me.


Because I don’t just feel that you see. I can feel a weight upon my back that’s pleasant and comforting. One that If I focus I could swear resembles the sensation of a set of wings that I can shift and manipulate as if they had always been a part of me. I used to hate having these things, so much. Not because they would randomly ache with a deep pain as if my body felt they had been cut off but because...I did not care for the historical connotations of beings with wings. Because I felt unworthy to feel them. And yet, for much of my adult life they have rested upon my back and at times have felt more real than most of my body.


I can feel a set of ears ontop of my head, twitching to the beautiful music emerging form my speakers as I type this. With every click I can almost sense them making small twitches. Sometimes when the wind blows I can feel it against them. At other times I have trouble sleeping because no matter how I lay my ears hate the pillow or my wings hate how there pushed against something.


And then there’s all these tails which are a newer companion though no less constant than my wings. There was a time where I only felt one. Where I was a young kid who thought he was turning into a wolf if you can believe it. I'd skip schoool and head out into the woods to practice howling when I realized that I could feel a tail behind me. I could feel my body clad with thick fur and there would be moments where I could see it, a deep dark brown. I'd have days where I couldn't walk on two legs, and days where I would internalize screams as I felt my body try to become the form I felt.



Now I have ten tails. Generally they don’t give me much trouble though there are times where I can feel each one in vivid painful detail as if my body is crying out their absence. Sometimes these days I feel as few as seven, and sometimes I feel as many as twelve. Most of the time the count hovers around nine or ten, and I honestly dont think I deserve a single one. Kitsunes have a lot of connotations relating to power and to tails and to anyone who knows me knows that I don't like that sort of thing.


I sometimes tell people who are curious that being a furry is somewhat of a choice. That you get to pick and make a fursona...or multiple ones. That you can choose to be who and what you desire to be whether its what you feel you should be deep down or simply what you happen to be attracted to at the moment. Being an otherkin meanwhile isn’t a choice. Its..a calling. No matter how much you try to deny it, it comes for you. It finds a way to make its presence known. I started feeling all of this, started experiencing this back when I was in middle school before going into high school. I had no idea what an otherkin was at the time or a furry or...any of this stuff. My love of transformations came later and mostly emerged as a sort of venting process. I used to write out first person changes as I experienced them and if you look in my past entries you may find an example or two.


Sometimes these changes are a rush and other times they are so very painful. There was a time where I would change into countless things over the course of a day and this lasted for a few years. Imagine sitting in class and suddenly seeing feeling your body hair grow thicker. A wave of warmth washing over your arms and legs and chest and face and back. So fast that you can barely register it and all there is is pure heat. And then your hands start to ache and although you can see your normal digits you’ve always had you can feel the pads bubbling up from underneath your flesh. You can feel your feet straining against your shoes as they grow and twist beneath you. And perhaps for a moment you can see it, see yourself as you really truly are before it all fades, leaving only an echo.


I can't explain why I experience what I experience. And for a long time I hated it in a way. I loathed feeling so isolated and alienated from everyone I knew. This was a secret I kept to myself, a painful one that almost forced me to fail my eleventh year in high school as well as cost me a job. I've had many moments where these changes externalize beyond me and I can see other people experiencing them or at times the world itself shifts in front of me to resemble somewhere else. I've seen forests appear inside of buildings and lakes emerge from the middle of fields. I've seen a woman change before my eyes in the span of a breath going from a human to some sort of blue finned creature and back again. As soon as she did she turned and stared at me before walking off. I can't explain it, and I can't explain this, I just know that its real enough to me even if it makes me feel utterly insane every second.


I feel myself, as myself now. As both a human and as a winged kitsune. I know that may sound silly to be something rather than to want to be something, but this isn't really something I can help experiencing.


That said, help is important to me. Although I can't explain why I am like this, or why others are like this I have found I have a skill for helping other folks get through otherkin related problems as well as general strangeness. Its possible that the only skill I have is a penchant for conversation and making people feel at ease combined with a knack for good advice. Its possible, anything is possible, and there are days where I think it's truly likely. Yet for the ten or so years I’ve been like this I’ve tried my best to help others who undergo similar ordeals.




Sometimes its just providing comfort and keeping people grounded to both sides of the coin. To their human and other selves. At other times its helping people feel as though they truly should feel by reaching out and doing all I can to help them experience. Despite all the pain and feelings of insanity that I sometimes have to endure I don’t think Id give this up. Even if what I experience is some strange form of psychosis that’s shared with others I do know that the help I’ve provided to so many is real. Is that its valid. At least, that’s what I tell myself.


The truth is I’ve come to a point where I like being like this. I love being able to sit at my computer and listen to piano whilst my ears twitch atop my head. I adore walking outside and spreading my wings to feel the sunlight grace upon them. I love it when I run my hand over my arm and feel fur, not flesh. And I love it when that hand has pads the roughly rub against my flesh. I welcome the chaotic changes I sometimes go through to give me inspiration to write. And although it can hurt more than anything else I savor all the pain that comes with this.


I tell people I draw breath to help, guide, and protect people.


And that’s true. I do. But I’m not an otherkin to do that. I used to think being like this wasn’t a choice. Maybe it is. And if it is then I choose to be like this. I choose to be in between the real world and a dream. To be trapped in some sort of strange and crazy purgatory. I choose to be more than I am physically even it it makes me feel like less.


I am an otherkin. And I choose to enjoy it.


I choose to embrace it.





-D