I keep seeing little kin memes around tumblr and deviantART, and while I've never had the urge to fill one out myself, I've often seen "draw your kinself" as one of the prompts so I thought I'd give mine a go. I'm not entirely sure this is accurate, but it's the best I can do for now. Up until now, the only mention I've ever made of my kin is the one word I have of it in my bio, but here's all this.

I don't know how to describe my identity. I mostly formed this creature out of three sort of kin-related feelings I have: phantom limbs, familiarity, and nostalgia of/for things I've not experienced as a human.
For the phantom limbs, I don't feel them often. It's a little like breathing in that I notice them and pay attention to them when I think about it, but otherwise I'm not actively feeling them. Basically I feel arm things (????) on my elbows and protrusions of some sort on my head. These don't really lend themselves to me feeling with a particular creature or thing, which leads me to the next kin feeling I get...

...which is when I see, hear, or experience things that I feel remind me of myself in some manner. Creatures that luminesce in some manner give me this feeling, as do things with elegant, serpentine forms or things with many eyes. Deep, dark, blue colors make me feel this way as well, and in general, I also really feel for fictional creatures of the lovecraftan variety, though more in aesthetic than anything else. This fuels my love for aliens being portrayed in a fantastical manner, such as the way they are in Bloodborne...speaking of which, Ebrietas specifically gives me this feeling as well (I'm not fictionkin with her, but I feel familiar with her general aesthetic).

The feeling that plays the biggest role for me is when I feel a sort of nostalgia for an environment or home I've never actually seen. There's so many things that give me this feeling; the moon, glass jars, the smell of dried indigo, the "infinity" thing you can do with mirrors, and slow, eerie xylophone tunes are just a few (the last of which is why I sometimes draw myself as a creepy doll). Rocky cliffsides with dark stones that oversee vast oceans, the void of open water, tiny lights in an otherwise dark space...I could go on for hours about all of the things that remind me of what is supposed to be home. They make me wonder where my soul, or maybe just these feelings, come from; somewhere with a white moon like ours, where it's cold and icy. Maybe beneath the glaciers in some far-off place, where the ocean is unexplored. Huge, towering crystals of clear ice, or maybe quartz, forming a cave. I'm rambling.


Time to defend myself from people who think otherkin are somehow lower than the rest of humanity!!
I've spoken to my therapist about these feelings at length. She believes that spirituality in any form is a healthy coping mechanism of dealing with my other mental illnesses. These feelings are separate from those I feel as a human; I'm still bi, I'm still transmasc something, I know I'm made of flesh and that flesh is fallible.

...So, as a closing note on these Kin Feels™, I'm just going to add that I really enjoy this piece and that I feel like it's the strongest composition I've done for myself in a really long time.