A New Bat in Town

Hi!

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My journey up until now:

1. Starting Solo

2. The Great Suppression

3. Better Late than Never

4. Randomized Therianthropy?

5. Falsified Feline

6. Going Batty!

7. The Epilogue

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1. Starting Solo

As long as I can remember, I've felt not entirely human. Well, just as human as my peers, but with distinctly non-human things about me that went beyond the norm. I would often get fussed at for it as a kid, because my mom was worried I'd isolate myself from my peers by acting too strangely. Eventually, I learned to keep it to myself, so by the time I became a teenager, I was all alone in my exploration.

I started keeping a diary in my preteens, not only of non-human experiences but of just about anything else I'd want my future self to know about my life as a kid. It was sort of like a time capsule. At that time, I suspected I was "part dog." With no knowledge of therianthropy, that was how I could best describe it at the time. I thought of dogs specifically because I had (and still have) a sensitive sense of smell and hearing. I also tended to pant as an additional way of dissipating heat in the summer, lapped up water from the drinking fountain, memorized people's scents in a group so I could find them if we got separated, felt pivoting ears and sometimes a tail, dug some holes in the backyard, and made odd sounds including barking when I was alone. I also really liked meat and liked listening to the neighborhood dogs barking at night. I know now that none of these are definitively dog-like, some not even non-human.

However, there were some other factors I was overlooking because I assumed it only worked out that way due to how much I liked bats. I'll explain all of that further down this post, but I'll briefly summarize for now:

• Using echolocation (yes, humans can do it too!)

• Flight is mentally integrated into the way I navigate

• Something weird with my arms and hands (I'd later find out it's wings)

• Intense desire to fly that manifests in my dreams every night and in many video games I play

• Tend to be more active at night

• Hang upside-down from everything, usually when relaxing with a book, game or just chilling

• Odd, high-pitched dog whistle sound I would make in my throat

I thought I might be "part bat" instead, but I brushed it off and continued journaling myself as a dog for the next few years. I wanted to know the truth, and letting myself be clouded by bias or favoritism wasn't going to help that.

Now I know I should have considered all possibilities.

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2. The Great Suppression

Fast forward to my late teens. It is clear that I should not show animalistic traits in front of my family, especially my mom. She had finally gotten it through to me that weird=bad=no friends=no connections=future ruined. I decided to ignore everything weird about me so that it would eventually go away, because it's all in my head, right? If I don't feed into it, if I don't nurture the idea that I could be "part animal," then it should fade away until it's no longer even a thing. Then I can live a nice, normal life with a good network of people, because I was also taught that I cannot thrive in the adult world alone. Therefore, I needed to sacrifice the selfish introspective things that don't contribute to society, like being non-human. This was a mindset that worked for a good few years, until...

When I was 18, my sister and I had already been mocking (amongst ourselves, not publicly) strange online communities and their identities. It was, intentionally or not, a way of keeping myself from exploring that weird stuff again, because look! All these weird people get made fun of. They're dumb and have silly ideas that don't do anything for the world. They want to be special little snowflakes because Daddy didn't give them enough attention. She brought to my attention the latest and greatest mockery of the internet: otherkin. I watched the rant she sent me, thinking "this couldn't be... could it?" I was ashamed of even considering it. I immediately dogged on them to her, as I was also dogging on myself. How dare I associate with them, how selfish, how entitled, how foolish, how spineless, what a special snowflake piece of Tumblr trash I felt like. Harsh, but it was because I had some self-esteem issues that I also ignored because my sister didn't get treated well by my mom when she admitted to having mental issues she needed help with. I didn't want to be labeled as the second crazy in the family, even though my issues were relatively minor.

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3. Better Late than Never

So for the next few years I obsessively watched those videos, trying to convince myself that I'm not like them by only looking at the worst of them. I also contacted the community a lot, looking for information. I still needed to know the truth, despite myself. Finally, I admitted to them my animalistic nature, and they said I could be... a therian? That's a term I hadn't heard before. They linked me to therian-guide.com, and I had a thorough read.

It was an eye-opening experience. Suddenly, a huge chunk of my life made sense. It had not only a name, but a whole community. It was liberating. It was early February 2017, and I was 21 years old when I had this awakening. I finally figured it out - it was therianthropy, and I was a therianthrope.

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4. Randomized Therianthropy?

That wasn't the end of my journey, though. Now that I knew I was a therian, there was the matter of figuring out my theriotype - well, I thought I was a dog originally, but then after I suppressed it, I got caught up in a mishap with a hypnotist and, long story short, got feline traits embedded in me. So am I a cat? I did some research for a few months and carried the housecat label, but it didn't quite fit me.

I wondered if I wasn't anything, just a generalized therian with no species. It made sense to me - I figured every therian comes into the community with a semi-randomized set of animal traits that may or may not match a certain species. Then we slap on the label that best fits us, giving others a quick idea of how our therianthropy specifically manifests. I still hold that theory, but...

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5. Falsified Feline

About a year into being in the therian community, it was becoming apparent that the housecat theriotype wasn't cutting it. I had been constantly looking into other species of course, making no real progress at all. Someone told me that they just go with their gut, because it's probably right. I didn't want to abandon my research, but I did want to try this idea, so I looked back at what animals I've had hunches for so far: dog, cat, and bat. All of the seemingly canine traits could actually be applied to many different animals, and I realized that the feline traits were not only artificially put in, but isolated to roleplay and as a cute thing for my boyfriend. I didn't purr or meow or curl up on things without that situational context.

So that left the bat. I didn't want to consider them, but I had no other leads, so I started researching them and comparing the experiences I had already tracked.

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6. Going Batty!

Fast forward almost a year. So far I'd figured out that most things that I thought were canine or feline, could also apply to bats. In addition, I had more obviously bat-like traits, as I'll now follow up on that bullet list and explain in more detail.

I feel the wings very frequently. They come as a combination of elongated fingers, urges to flap, tendencies to fold my arms in at my sides, and the naked feeling when none of this provides any cover or air resistance. Nearly all my dreams for as long as I can remember involve me flying with my arms and hands. Sometimes I feel a tail, but it's not as prominent.

When I was left home alone growing up, I would turn off all the lights in the house and either wrap myself up in a blanket or hang upside down from the couch. When navigating, I would use my eyes and ears by making some kind of noise and listening to how it fills the room. I've never been able to discern more than the basics (walls and size of the room), but it felt more comfortable for me because I knew other people couldn't navigate the space otherwise, not without shuffling about with their arms outstretched. This is similar to how bats' unusual way of navigating through the darkness minimizes competition, detection and chances of becoming a meal for a larger predator.

The best moment was when my dad brought home an inverting table from his chiropractor. You clamp your ankles onto the table and ease back until you're hanging upside down, then stay there for a few moments and slowly come back up before too much blood rushes to your head. It's intended to use gravity to extend the spine, and while that aspect certainly felt good, I found it to be more than that. I didn't know what therianthropy even was, and while I felt non-human for sure, I thought I was dog-like despite having actually been much more bat-like as I look back on it. So even though bats had not crossed my mind at the time, I absolutely loved the inverting table. I stayed there, hanging and only coming up to prevent dizziness, long after the good feeling of extending the spine had passed. I might have stayed there for half an hour or more. It felt good, it felt natural. I ended up using it even more than my dad (though he always got first priority of course)!

When I go to bed, my blanket becomes like my wings if my head is also lying at the head of the bed. I keep my feet and sometimes my whole legs out, just based on my preference that night. This is similar to how microbats are covered by their wings with the exception of the feet (some don't wrap themselves at all, but that's beside the point), and megabats covered except for the legs at times while hanging. If my head is at the foot of the bed, then I'm now right by the stand fan, so I cover my whole head and open up a breathing hole the fan pushes air into. It's like my own little nook, a dark corner or cave. While these in particular could easily be human things, it's when all of these come together with the more obviously bat-like signs that it became more clear.

So now that those are explained, I can get back to the story.

I denied myself from researching bats for far too long because they have always been one of my favorite animals. Surely my research would be skewed in their favor if I looked into them. Now I'm beginning to think I had it backwards: I love bats so much because they're just like me.

Things were falling into place left and right, and I couldn't deny it anymore. My boyfriend I'd known was afraid of bats, but he knew I loved them, so all year long we had been working together to help him overcome this fear. Toward the end of October 2018, I went to see some real bats - to observe them directly and test if that "this is me, this is in some regard an essence of my being" would persist in-person. Yes, no doubt I was bat therian now.

So about a week later, I braved up and told him. He understood where I was coming from, and that keeping him in the dark during my questioning was the best course of action. He wasn't completely in love with bats still, but the training we had done and the realization that his girlfriend was a bat made it easier for him to empathize.

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7. The Epilogue

Today, I am doing just fine. I have learned to accept myself as a therian, and I'm working on fully accepting myself as a bat therian. It's strange to have to take feelings into account when finding the truth, but when it comes to psychology and therianthropy, the subjective side of things form a vital piece in the puzzle just as research does. My next puzzle to solve is finding specifically what bat I am, if any! So far I suspect a microbat because of echolocation, and one in a mountainous region because of the places I've seen in pictures and been to myself, none have the same connection as the mountains, despite living in a flat region.

Hey all,

In agreement with Madison, I've copied this post over because I believe it would be valuable for new people, discovering their therianthropy, to see the experience of someone else in the same situation.

The original thread is here:
https://forums.therian-guide.com/Thread-A-New-Bat-in-Town

I think this intro is an excellent example of what it's like to not know you're a therian, but when you find out about it, it just clicks. This is similar to how I felt when I first discovered therianthropy myself.

LP,
Dusty