Otherkin/Non-Human 30 Day Challenge - Day 3
3. How old were you when you realized you were not human? What made you realize it?
I was young. Probably six or seven. Before I was introduced to much “fantasy”-type literature, at any rate.
When I was very young, my home was in the trees, in the woods, chasing streams, making my bed among mosses. I loved the outdoors. There was something magical about it, something that drew me on an instinctive level. I would watch leaves burn and scry through the smoke and flames (though I didn’t know what’s what I was doing at the time). I would carve spears and arrows from saplings (and got quite a nasty cut on my hand once doing so, for getting into kitchen knives I shouldn’t have been playing with in the first place). I muddled leaves and berries into potions and conjured things out of dirt. My world was elaborate and consistent. I knew I was not human, though I couldn’t quite figure out what I was.
I always thought I might have been a sprite, or a dryad, or some sort of fae. (At the time, all these were classified as “fairies” in my brain, which was more or less what I thought I was.) When I got older and was introduced to fantasy literature, I realised—that was it. That was what I was. I was Elven.
I know it’s somewhat of a stereotypical otherkinny thing to say, at least in terms of various media introductions, but it’s true. Watching Lord of the Rings was like coming home for me. And here’s the odd thing about it—I’m not much of a LotR fan. I like the movies, sure. Don’t much care for the books—never could even finish them. But that world, and what I saw there, that was what got me, right through the heart. That was what I was and where I belonged.
I think if possible, I’ve known about my cougar identity even longer, because it’s so natural for small children to play at being animals. I’ve always felt catlike—though not altogether like a housecat and not altogether like a big cat. It’s natural for me to hiss and roar at things. It’s natural for me to prowl. I growl and flex my fingers as if they have claws. Sometimes, I know I can feel claws there, just as I know I can feel ears and a tail. There are things I can attribute to being Elven and things I can attribute to being feline, and there are always days when one is stronger than the other, but that makes sense, being a shifter. There are days when I want nothing more than to be able to go vegetarian. There are days when I want nothing more than to rip into a bloody steak.
It’s been a constantly evolving thing, my identity. I’ve moved away from the LotR idea of Elves and towards something a little older, but ultimately the same idea. (Tolkien was a scholar very much interested in Norse mythology, after all.) When I was younger, I thought I might have been a tiger, but I came back to the idea of being something a little…closer to home, a little less wild, and not as large; when I started thinking of myself as a cougar shifter, things made more sense. I suspect my identity will continue to evolve, but I feel like I’m at a point where that evolution will be more of a honing than a changing.
I guess I’ve known, more or less, all of my life that I wasn’t human. It just took me a while to figure out what I was.
Crossing Many Rainbows
