well let's get down to it
I'm pretty new to the notion of regarding myself as a collection or system of entities, rather than as a simple "I"
it was my first #otherkin experience, the dragonflight experience that I have talked about a bit here already and elsewhere, that started me down this road, and even then it took some time
the dragonflight experience in 2016 forced me to start really thinking about who I was, inside
here was this _extremely_ compelling spiritual experience of swimming and flight, I certainly wasn't going to reject it as mere delirium
I was in love with a dragon at the time so, well, I jumped to the obvious conclusion that I was a dragon too, that I was otherkin
but what did that mean for the unicorn?
@kara
A lot of otherkin don't join the dots here. So, "really" I'm an (X). Now I appear to be human. How did that happen? Was I any other shape inbetween those two?
My personal mythos is hella complex to make sense of this. I don't pretend it's any thing other than a useful, working fiction. But it *is* useful. It helps keep me "sane", whatever that is.
@shadowfirebird well said. that's about where I am, I guess: this is personal mythology, and once I accepted as such it became a lot easier to grapple with
@kara @shadowfirebird
Anyone without a personal mythology is the poorer for that IMO.
Of course you can have one and not know it…
after all I had come to feel, by that time, like I was a poor fit in the furry horsie set
most of the other equine furs I knew were folks who had some actual experience with horses. a lot of 'em tended to be right-wing :/
I'd chosen the unicorn as a personal symbol years before I knew what "furry" was. there were a number of reasons, some of which didn't really apply any more (e.g. I was no longer a virgin >_>)
@kara I honestly don't think a lot of equine furs are right wing, I've met many who are left leaning, just gotta know where to look I guess?
so, all I had to do was change my fursona to dragon, because I was "really" a dragon now, and that would be the end of it right?
except...it wasn't, really
old Mono had become like a very comfortable suit, I...well, I *liked* Mono
more importantly, it was impossible to square "at heart I'm a unicorn classics professor" with "at heart I'm a dragon with the world's worst ADHD who hoards shiny things"
and I couldn't make the dragon, when I could elicit xem, simply be professorial, it didn't fit
@kara We get so precious about the consistency of our multiples that we have to have an entire creation myth they fit in with.
We think that's part of how we distinguish actual personality features from what we'd just like them to be.
If their interface with the big picture is clean, we're seeing what's real.
If the interface is raggedy and inconsistent, we're projecting imaginary things.
@kara Though this is more likely obsessive compulsive behaviour on our part than any -real- necessity.
there were occasions when it seemed like the dragonself was closest to the surface
talking to other otherkin people, even just electronically, was a catalyst for bringing xer out (though really it was still "him", back then), and physical proximity was even better
and the revealed personality was *nothing* like anything that made sense for the unicorn persona
indeed, the draconic self, most fully present, was _inarticulate_, unable to communicate with words
oh, heck, I'm wandering off the point, lost the thread
work was more disruptive than I anticipated
anyway back to this
so, it didn't seem like the Monophylos unicorn identity had gone away or changed, really...the draconic personality had emerged suddenly, but as a separate entity
Mono was still there, in the back of my mind
he embodied qualities that I still valued
eloquence, learning, a passion for justice, a longing for doing the right and proper things
really I have to credit @Ulfra_Wolfe and her close friends for giving me tools that enabled me to start making sense of myself, and a place to do it, through conversation
because Vedia, with her love of role play and role-playing games and building characters, gave me a new perspective
one with room in it for more than just "I"
she even said, in some chat I've mostly forgotten everything else about, however long ago, that she felt Monophylos would come back
@kara Just -love- how you expressed this. So utterly exact.
That emergent other blossoming in the newly found sunshine and soaking up passing spring showers of word-rain, mapping and remapping the 3-manifolds from other timelines, until that "got it" moment and the words tumble out, tripping over each other in the excitement of once again being here. The glorious happiness, even as the fog again obscures those other lives, because the lucidity of "now" is such a fragile, beautiful thing.
@sophieactual thank you >^~^<
It's interesting realizing that kind of stuff. I mean, I learned about multiplicity right after I split because my friend was just coming out to trusted folks as multiple so that helped.
@JainaEgo that's good ^^
I thought so too but recently I may have merged without every trying to do so and now I feel lonely. Go figure! Currently waiting it out to see if we separate again.
Otherkin stuff is weird for me because my own stuff is just something going on and I naturally tend to assume everybody else is just being silly (probably because for me it just causes suffering but others seem to find joy in it)
in my earlier furry phase (roughly late 2004 to mid 2016), even though I had a unicorn fursona whose personality was different from my everyday personality (this was Monoceros Forth, later Monophylos Fortikos, or just "Mono") I didn't think of myself as having more than one persona
honestly I had no clear idea of who or what Mono was, in relation to me. I suppose I regarded him as a kind of idealization, or maybe as an actor's role