Nim

(Mentions of NSWF stuff)

Hi everyone, it's been a while. I took a break from the community and social media for a month or so. This break has made it incredibly clear to me, that how I was focused on my alterhumanity and questioning my identity was actually really unhealthy. Since joining the community in April 2018, I haven't stopped questioning one thing or another and I was obsessed. I would think about it all day, write my thoughts down in my journal every day, and a lot of identities kept following one another in an endless loop. I was pushing humanity so far away, I saw myself as physically nonhuman too, and was always looking for what would finally click for me.
I've taken time off lots of times before, but this time was different because for the first time I found a way to get out of my head and just be and exist and experience. In my time off, I have been focused on other things, I started gaming again and I became more involved in BDSM. That last thing really helped me focus on something else for once, because it has also led to a lot of self realization and self reflection, just like alterhumanity does for me, but in such a different way. Instead of fantasizing it all in my head like I do with alterhumanity, I was able to just live in the moment. And doing that has given me a new sense of self. More real than before.
When I was young, I didn't really identify as anything, I was just a young kid. Then around age 9, I started to identify as an elf and this lasted until about age 20. I never told anyone about identifying as an elf, nor was it a major part of my life. It's just what I was, and I knew what kind of elf I was, daydreamed about my adventures, was interested in learning about other elves and got Elvish tattoos as a young adult. But then in my 20s, I started to feel like I had to "grow up" and pushed my identity away and forced a human self image onto myself. I looked at what was nice and positive about being human and suppressed feeling anything else. In my 20s, my health steadily declined until I was severely chronically ill. I got a lot of different medical diagnoses and eventually an autism diagnosis, which led me to an autism amino which led to a therian amino and me joining the community. I felt like I could finally truly be myself again, that I had found my community and I never felt as understood before.
It took me a moment to remember the full scope of my elven identity. Last year, I coined anteatype with the help of a friend, for my elf self. So many times I have gone back and looked at myself through elven eyes, but elf just isn't me anymore. I cannot find it within me. I cannot connect to it anymore. Something that I was without effort, without trying, is gone now. Sometimes I will try on the label again, because I just want things to be like they were when I was young, but maybe that is common for people with anteatypes, to feel some nostalgia.
When I joined the community though, I was so sure of being nonhuman. That if I looked and looked, I'd find it eventually. Well it has been 6,5 years now and I still don't feel certain about anything. Other alterhumans do see me as nonhuman, they see the elfae in me still, they see a unicorn, or the fox I have so often represented myself as. And I do believe I experience some nonhumanity, as animal-hearted and as a shapeshifter, but lately I have been feeling... human. And kinda being okay with that. Which is a big difference from when I was adamant I was fully and completely and always nonhuman. I have been considering that I am otherhuman instead of otherkin. It is still possible that I do find a kintype eventually, that I am an otherkin who partially identifies as human and partially as nonhuman, but for some reason it feels like all or nothing for me. Either I am human and learn to embrace it, or I am nonhuman. I guess that thinking is just too black and white, and truly, for now it doesn't matter. I am going to call myself simply alterhuman for a while and stop trying to force myself into a label. I am just going to let myself experience what I do, when I do, without making it into anything, and I am going to stop pushing my own humanity away so harshly.
I don't know how active I'll be from now on, maybe a little less as I don't want to become obsessed again. Seeing people with identities similar to those I have tried on, makes me doubt myself a lot of the time. I need some more time to feel confidence in my own journey and my own self and not be as affected by what other people write. I need to let go of the images I create about myself in my mind, these masks that I try on. Because each mask contains some truth and real experiences, but also some fantasies and make believe that I don't even realize I am doing. Yeah, I want to just exist and be and live, which I know is always highly recommended when trying to find your 'type, but has been a lot harder to actually do. I am actively trying not to question anymore, and for now, every time I do find myself going there again I will take a firm step back. So expect more breaks in the time to come.
Thanks for reading, hope you're well ♡

One of my identities is that of an eidolon, a summoned being that can be bound to a summoner. The first time I learned about eidolons was in Final Fantasy IX. I first played it when it came out in 2000 when I was 11 and it has been my favorite game ever since. The game starts with Dagger's 16th birthday, and when I was young I saw her as a big sister. Soon, I passed that age, and now at 35 my feelings about her have changed and grown. It is strange how I grow older while she remains the same in my eyes. As the years went by, I felt more and more like an eidolon and I consider being Dagger's eidolon specifically, a paratype of mine. I feel very close to her, and protective of her. I have always self inserted myself into Final Fantasy IX's story and it didn't take long for me to put myself as her main eidolon. A companion in animal form, and then a majestic version as my true form as an eidolon, with holy (light) as my attack element.
My relationship with her has changed a lot since first meeting her. My place in FFIX has changed. As I grow older, I expect to feel more and more like a wiser ancient being, to guide Dagger through her hardships where she once guided, and was an example for, me.

I listen to FFIX music every day, and think about her and all my friends from Gaia with a smile. Their Gaia is my hearthome, a place I long for and am always happy to visit.

I have been questioning some things about my identity lately. I am not ready yet to talk about my kintype, but I have been thinking about my abilities regardless of kintype and I wanted to share that.
When it comes to my connection to stars, I have identified as one on and off, but I feel strongly like I have star magic powers. This includes different kinds of (star)light magic, such as conjuring light, healing with light and attacking with (star)light magic by for example raining down stars, and it includes magic from the constellations. I can draw power from different constellations, resulting in different attacks, defense, or making me stronger or more agile and other boosts and more that I have yet to figure out exactly.
Another thing I have been focusing on are my dream abilities. I believe that as my kintype, I am a dreamwalker and dreamweaver. As a dreamwalker I can enter people's dreams or the dreaming world that I usually call the Dream. As a dreamweaver, I have multiple dream manipulation abilities. Within the Dream, I have the following abilities as a dreamweaver; shapeshifting, intangibility (including flight and underwater breathing), control of the weather, control over all the elements, resurrection, invisibility, and more abilities depending on what I need. I can also know what is going to happen next in the Dream. These are all abilities I have in my dreams now, but as my kintype they are much more reliable.
I have felt insecure about having dream abilities as my kintype before, worrying that I only have a connection to dreams but not actual powers connected to it. I realized though, that as I have these abilities in a lesser capacity even now, I don't have to question myself. In the past I have thought these abilities I have in dreams are the abilities I would have as my kintype. I miss having all these abilities in wake life very much. It is only recently when I thought about it and dissected it, that it makes more sense to me that I am a dreamweaver, and that as my kintype I still only have most of my abilities in the Dream only.
I feel very excited about this discovery and very content. It makes a lot of sense to me and I feel quite proud of my abilties. Dreams mean the world to me, they have helped me to keep going and as my life as a severely chronically ill and disabled person has become very small, my dreams expand my horizon. My connection to the stars makes me feel less alone, and drawing from the constellations as my kintype feels like reconnecting to old friends.
That is what I wanted to share, thank you for reading.

One of the stories my parents would tell me about my brother and me (both autistic) is when we were both toddlers. When they would put my brother in the garden on a blanket, he'd go to the sides and touch the sand and dirt and with a repulsed face go to the middle of the blanket. He probably didn't like the texture of it. When they did the same with me as a toddler, I grabbed handfuls of dirt and started eating it.
As a child, I was obsessed with animals and followed them anywhere. Also, my mother often lost me in crowds and busy places, where I would find small spaces to hide away in. These things now feel very fae to me, so I wanted to mention them even if it is a bit of a sidetrack.
When I was young and lived with my parents, we went on vacation multiple times a year. We would go camping all over Europe and we'd be in the most beautiful nature, going on long hikes every day. It has been over a decade since I have been able to go on such a vacation. I haven't even been able to leave my apartment in a big city for the last month.

And that is what I wanted to talk about. I feel like I was such a fae child. I felt SO connected to nature and animals. When I started to identify as an elf, it was as a woodelf, a nature elf. But as my health worsened, my time in nature stopped, and the connection I feel now feels fake. Like something only left in my mind and heart, and not something I actively participate in anymore.
I have been thinking about this a lot. If what and who I am in my imagination is enough. If my connection to nature is real, if I can't pursue it if I don't actually do anything for it. To be honest, most of my life is imagination now. As I lie here, locked in my apartment, locked in this broken body. Day after day is the same, a struggle to get through. My imagination is what keeps me going. My dreams at night and the adventures I go on, my magical abilties, and social interactions I have in them are what keeps me going.

Is this enough to be fae? As my connection to the moon and stars and dreams is so much stronger now than my connection to the earth's nature.

The instability in identity continues. I think I have more identity flickers than I realized at first, and now I am trying to figure them out and how to set them apart from my shapeshifting identity. The feeling of being elfae, and physically fae has faded again. I am not sure in how far I see my body as physically nonhuman, but when I try to see it as nothing but human, having all this pain and things wrong with it, that just doesn't feel good. So for now I try to focus on something else.
My foxness is all encompassing again. I see all my other shapeshifted forms through a fox's eyes. Rabbit? Just the mask of a rabbit and the face of a fox underneath. I have also been referring to myself as a fox a lot while talking with a friend and it feels extremely euphoric. It seems like maybe what I am is a vulpine nonhuman, and the exact identity rotates between a few, like identity flickers. I still hope one of these identities becomes more prominent and more stable, so I can have it as a kintype while the others float around it in different gradations.
Dogs and leporids, I have put on hearted. I take their forms often as a shapeshifter, and I do have some therianthropic experiences for them, but in the end I just don't see myself AS them. I wish I was a leporid though, I find them so interesting and magical. For dogs, yes I do still experience everything that can lead to using the therian label, but I have come to the conclusion for myself that just because the therian label could apply, doesn't mean it does. I see myself surrounded by dogs, see myself as their close family, and feel incredibly lucky to have them in my life, but I am a fox next to them. Even when I take the form of a dog, I am not myself a true dog. Though it makes me happy to identify as them sometimes, to feel so close to them, at the moment I feel content with them being an identity flicker.
And so, I am back to being a fox only, but with many different labels within that. I am still completely open to being polykin, unlike previously when I would put other identities on non-kin labels, just so I would have only the one 'type. This time changing labels is of my own choice, of what fits nicely for me, instead of me forcing things away.
There is a side to my foxness I am focusing on right now. One that is similar to how I have identified before, but with new labels. I am taking some time to figure it out, think about it, see what noemata come up. I want to first see how well this identity holds up before I share more about it. Time will tell which of my fox identities are kintypes, which are flickers and which are paratypes. I am happy to be on this journey though.

Cameo shifts, is the term in our community when you shift into something you do not identify as. When you get a new phantom shift of wings, or a sudden urge to howl like a wolf, but you know you do not identify as something with wings or a wolf, this is a cameo shift. Journaling can help, to see if such shifts keep reoccurring and if perhaps you do identify as something that seemed a cameo shift at first. If you get a shift that doesn't feel like an existing identity of yours, consider the possibility that it is a cameo shift.
Identity flickers are similar to cameo shifts, but you do identify as it briefly. These flickers can often be reoccurring. This means that when you get a shift and it isn't of your 'type, it still doesn't necessarily mean it is a new undiscovered 'type, but possibly an identity that you feel temporarily.
Experience taking is when you consume media of something and it makes you have cameos or identity flickers. For me, I am normally a fantasy creature, but when I consume sci-fi media I will strongly feel like I am a cyborg or ai, often as a cyborg kitsune. This identity is an identity flicker, brought on by experience taking.
I often see people having a shift once and asking for help to find out what 'type it is. I hope this will remind people that not everything has to be a 'type, and that introspection and time will help tell if it is, but having cameo shifts, identity flickers or to experience take are all valid explanations.

I am trying to not let my emotions dictate my identity so much, one way or the other. A surprise kitsune in a show I was watching yesterday brought on an all encompassing fox spirit shift, to the point where I questioned once again if that wasn't what I truly am and ONLY am. I tried to just ride the wave and ignore my feelings for a bit until it all calmed down in the evening and I had space for my other 'types again.
I have switched some labels around -- again. I wonder if this is what it will always be like, but it feels like I am at least circling around the same things now. Something magic, something fox, something dog and something leporid. These are the things I have been for years now, whatever I labeled them as at any given time. I guess I just have too much free time on my hands to try and find the perfect labels, and try on which ones I feel happiest with.
I also had some thoughts yesterday about how voluntary my identities are. I don't choose my experiences, but I can choose how I interpret and label those. I could call myself a shapeshifter only and leave it at that if I wanted to. I could probably use the anymic label if I wanted to. Later today there will be a panel on that topic during the Therian Convergence, which I am really looking forward to and I wonder if it will change the way I have been labeling myself.

What made me start identifying as physically nonhuman? It started with a fae kintype, an identity I haven't had all my life but discovered when I joined the community. I don't really remember when exactly that identity became physical, it happened gradually and I didn't write about it as I usually do, in my journal, and I didn't note down the date the switch in my mind happened either, because it was such a smooth transition. The reason for me though, is my health. I am autistic, chronically ill and disabled and am not the only one identifying as fae because of it. There is a history there.
Did it take long to accept? I guess not, one day I just realized "oh I identify as physically fae now" and that was it. It became a fact, something simple that made sense to me, not something to agonize over, nor did I ever really dive deep into these feelings. It is not that I am happy to identify like this per se. I don't really have strong feelings about it, except for that it is helping me deal with my health situation.
It happened quite recently for me, in the last few years. Starting with identifying as faekin, and then even when that identity (noemata of it) faded in the way I had it, the physical identity remained. I didn't call myself faekin anymore, but in my mind I thought "but my body is fae though". That thought remained, and now I am questioning if I want to still use faekin for this identity even if it is different from how I experienced it at first.
I have been quite private about this identity so far, but if you have more questions, I think I'd be willing to answer them!

I have seen more people talk about their fluidity in alterhumanity lately. How some of us have had 'types that we do not longer identify as, but unlike how the community in the past has pushed that you are your 'type from birth and for forever, we are embracing that an identity just isn't us anymore. We are saying; no I wasn't wrong about this, it didn't turn out to be something different than I thought I was -- I just don't identify this way anymore, where I once did.

For this reason, I tried to coin the term anteatype, with help of a friend and a tumblr poll to ask the community what kind of term they liked. The meaning of the word anteatype, I described as follows; "A type that used to be very important to you, or that you identified as for a long time, but no longer identify as."
I have since been using this label for my own elven identity, but not without analyzing this identity from time to time. The connection to this old identity of mine is still so strong sometimes, that I question if I am not an elf still. I do wonder if it is true that if I was once an elf, so fully and as such an important part of my self identity, wouldn't I remain an elf always? I would self reflect and journal, even got another noema at one point, but the conclusion remains for me that I am not an elf anymore. I tried to be an elf, because when I identified as one from around age 9 to 20, I was closeted and not in the community. I was an elf all alone, in secret, hiding my true self from everybody. It felt like, this was my time to fully embrace being an elf, be open about it, heal my younger self. Write about being an elf, talk to other alterhumans and elves about being an elf, it felt like this was my time to shine. But I can't. What was there before, the identity of elf that was such a big and important secret part of me, just wasn't there anymore.

And I wondered why. I wondered how that could be, and within the community, I didn't really find answers. I didn't see anyone else talking about losing an identity, except for those who left the community, and some would say those hadn't been nonhuman to begin with. I did however find out I wasn't alone in my experience, friends and mutuals I talked to had past identities too, and now I see fluidity in 'types and identity being talked about more often. Maybe that is because it is a topic close to my heart and a big part of my own identity, so perhaps I focus on such topics to the point of noticing them more.

During my 6 years in the community, I have tried on many labels and 'types and have been very fluid. I felt like I had no choice but to start calling myself a shapeshifter at one point, simply because of my many forms. It was very difficult for me to accept, because I desperately wanted to be only one thing and that thing be static. I have found a great sense of community among other shapeshifters and polymorphs though. Still, my labels switch around multiple times a month, as I try to find the best ones for my experiences. I guess that is just how my brain works, I want it all neatly categorized and put into boxes. Coming up with the term anteatype helped me with that. I have been remembering other identities I had as a child, gaining fox spirit and phoenix spirit as two more anteatypes. I didn't consider having more anteatypes at first. As focused on being one thing as I was, I applied the same to my past. That I was only the one thing for a decade rather than experiencing more in that time, but I am starting to remember more and more of my childhood alterhumanity and it has helping me accept my alterhumanity now. I have had these fluid and multiple experiences my entire life, it is part of me, and instead of embracing being an elf, I can embrace that part of me.

That is all I can think of for now. Thank you for reading, and please do share your experiences with anteatypes or fluidity if you have them! Opening up about these topics, shows others they're not alone, and hopefully helps our community grow to more acceptance.

Okay, so I know I am most likely a dog cambitherian and to stop questioning between hearted and therian, but I still can't help myself. My experiences as a Golden Retriever, I wonder if they're enough. I know I get to call myself a Golden therian if I want to, but I can't help but feel like I would be imposing on a community I don't belong in. I just don't act like a dog, don't have much dog behavior, and so I tell myself dog-hearted makes more sense. But then there is that feeling of dogs being family, and that I SHOULD be one of them, I should be a dog. I should be able to communicate with dogs as a dog, but I just push this away. Especially my maternal instincts as a dog are very strong, where it is almost non existing for humans. I feel like I still have more to think about, as if I haven't been going in circles with this.

I am mostly focused on my dreamself nonhuman identity right now. I decided to drop the star angel otherkin label, and instead look to my dreams and their noemata. My abilities, powers, my wererat form, my magic. I have considered that in this identity, I used to be human, but then magic changed me. Tapping into chaos magic has corrupted me to the point where my body has become mostly void. I gained a wererat form thanks to a god. Becoming this nonhuman being without a specific label. I am connected to dreams, and a shapeshifter.
Looking at my dreams this way, has given me a distinction between fantasy and actual noemata. Lately, when I have been imagining my true self, I have been more aware of what is just fun ideas and is actually true for me. For some reason certain dreams stick out, the things I find out in them about myself are my truth. I still enjoy fantasizing, and I write some of it down in case it turns out to mean something to me down the line, but at the moment it feels freeing to let go of so many noemata that I came up with on what now feels like a whim. I am letting those go, behind me, with a clean slate except for the noemata from my dreams.