Vyt's story

3/11/17

Vyt: A Timeline
Note: This goes through times of my life where I had misconceptions about otherkin/therians, and had thoughts or beliefs that could be hurtful or mean.

Childhood: I am a werewolf. (And a witch and a vampire and an alien and...). When visiting nature preserves, howl. Because.

Seventh Grade: Family gets a dog! Mimic every sound and bit of body language. Try to perfect barking.

High school: A friend introduces me to TwoKinds and Strays. I really like them. I know I'd be a wolf keidran, and a lupian. Does this make me a furry. Am I a furry? Of course not. ..Maybe?

Also High School: Discover the otherkin tag. Toy with the possibility of being dragon kin. But wanting to eat rocks? Who decided that was a dragon thing? Maybe something else? None of these seem quite right. And what's with the aesthetic and shopping posts? Does it really make a difference to have dog-themed chapstick? A lot of these people are really young. What if they change their minds in a year or so? It doesn't seem safe (reliable) to identify like this. Some of the behaviors seem unhealthy or dangerous, not functional for human lives. And godkin? Asking people to worship you seems narcissistic at best and dangerous at worst. I don't feel like I want to be a part of this community.

College: God I want to be a werewolf/canine so badly. I need werwolf stories, realistic ones without alpha hierarchies. Read Wilde Life. Read How to be a Werewolf. It helps scratch the internal itch but I need more. Yell 'dog!' whenever I see one. Occasionally feel ears and tail but dismiss as active imagination. Lurk in the otherkin tag again. Reject it again.

Last summer: Join Furvilla. Lurk in the otherkin groups. Still seems like mostly teenagers, and I wouldn't trust teenage me. I feel like if I identify as otherkin, I'll be indulging in a fantasy, attaching an identity to perfectly human imagination and behaviors. I don't want to look back in a few years and think "well that was ridiculous and foolish of me."

A few months ago: Make a personal deck of oracle cards, animal themed. Look up pictures of dogs. Feel a lightning bolt strike at the image of a red australian shepherd, and subsequent images of red border collies. Return to the otherkin tag. Feel conflicted and ambivalent. Reject it but wonder why I can't let it go. why do I keep returning to this silly idea? Why won't it go away?

A few days ago: Finding myself lurking, yet again in the otherkin tags. Reading essays. Trying to find adults with serious lives that still identify as therian. trying to find proof that I can be a human adult and a therian at the same time. Tired of the constant cycle of returning to (lurking in, never joining) otherkin spaces and leaving them again. I need to settle this once and for all. Join Werelist. Join this forum. Find people who ask serious questions and will honestly say things like 'that's a perfectly human behavior'. Find people my age. Find people who put into words the way I feel, the way I would like to identify as therian, if I were to. Realize that I can identify as therian without it being a delusional fantasy, without it interfering with my life. It makes it so much easier to say "Yes, I'm a dog person", without the layers of worry, fear, ambivalence.

Now: Hello, I am a dog therian.