Post by freelanceangel on Jul 21, 2008 19:57:17 GMT -5
Greetings to everyone on these fine boards. I hope y'all are having a fine morning/day/eve and that the sun is neither too harsh nor too weak. It's always best to start with the introductions and then proceed from there. My name is Marie, and due to my relationship with a pair of furries that I positively adore, I've been a little more...open-minded to the idea of other-souled people.
I should probably clarify before I sound like a complete ass. ^_^ I was raised by a Jehovah's Witness, and fought that rather restrictive upbringing with my adoration of all things fantastical and literature. I ran through the pine trees my father grew and pretended to be an elf. I rode our Nordic Track into an early grave, riding along to Indiana Jones movies. I nearly killed myself a number of times trying to fly off of the tall rock wall bordering our proprety, the house, tall trees... anything I could climb. I spent my whole life longing for flight- but only with my own wings- and gazing at the sky, wondering what it'd be like to dive through a cloud.
I found paganism in high school, thanks to my then-best friend, Kris. She realized I was desperately unhappy trying to be a Jehovah's Witness for my mother's satisfaction and showed me a path that I took to as if I'd been born for it. (Then again, who's to say I wasn't? ^_~) Although Kris and I did not remain close for more than a year and a half, she taught me many things that I am still grateful for.
In mesh with my own exceptionally elastic sense of disbelief are the ideas that I found during my research into paganism. I've always been a very avid reader of mythology and folklore, and when I first heard about 'otherkin,' I was both curious and snide. I admit that I scoffed at the idea of someone claiming to be a tenth-generation elven queen. I had known far too many people in high school who had lied in similar manners to believe anyone I found on the Internet.
When I met my ex-boyfriend, I was convinced that my longing for wings, my desperate thought of "I want to go home" whenever something was painful, and my fervrent belief in mythical creatures long considered dead were all traces of a little girl who wouldn't grow up. He laughed at me when I said I believed in dragons and although he was pagan himself, he didn't accept the same level of possibility that I did.
Meeting Fenshae, my thylacine best friend, was such a blessing. I met her about a year before my ex and I broke up, and we spent what time was available talking about anything and everything. (She was the first person who didn't make me feel guilty about my love of role-playing games.) When my ex and I split, she was there to befriend and soothe me. It was Fenshae who explained the difference between furries and Therians. She showed me the distinctions between fetish furries and Therian-like furries, and we both compared our belief/disbelief in all things magical.
Getting together with my fiance, Neko, was another glorious occurrence. Instead of berating me for being stupid for my belief in the otherworldly, Neko encouraged me. He complimented me on my hope, listened to all of my ideas and called me his angel from the first. It was Neko, actually, who first ventured the idea of me being angelkin in any reliable way. The first this was mentioned directly was when I related something my ex's little brother and mother had said. My ex came from a very pagan household, and one of the things commonly accepted in the family was that all of the members had individual guardians- either spirit or angel, it was never entirely clarified- and that those guardians were very important. Ian, the little brother, looked at me not long after we met for the first time and remarked to his mother Raven that I looked like Alice, his guardian angel. Raven had looked at me again and then blinked, clearly astonished, and agreed with him. Oddly enough, after my relationship with the whole family began, no one ever saw Alice again. I, however, played my part as peacemaker and helper to Raven and for the boys.
I related this to Neko while we were waiting for Ian to get some of his belongings out of his mother's house. It had been a *very* tense couple of weeks- around Christmas, many people get tense anyway, but there'd been some roommate and financial difficulties that didn't help- and Neko looked at me as we sat in my car, waiting for over an hour, and said "He didn't need her anymore. You were there."
There it was, out in the open, for the first time ever. It was Neko who called me an angel, his angel and who said that my wide back and remarkably broad shoulders- for a girl, they're massive; thank the gods I have wide hips to balance them out- would be perfect to carry wings. I guess it was Neko's belief that let me approach the idea of being an otherkin.
What is all of this extensive blather to mean? Only this- I wish to examine the idea, the possibility and the hope that I'm not just dealing with a sense of disassociation with my environment through self-deception. I have always taken care of my friends, encouraged them, argued them out of self-destructive behaviour and let them go when our paths diverged. Maybe I'm an angelkin. Maybe not. It's a question I'd like to answer, and I hope I can find some help here.
I should probably clarify before I sound like a complete ass. ^_^ I was raised by a Jehovah's Witness, and fought that rather restrictive upbringing with my adoration of all things fantastical and literature. I ran through the pine trees my father grew and pretended to be an elf. I rode our Nordic Track into an early grave, riding along to Indiana Jones movies. I nearly killed myself a number of times trying to fly off of the tall rock wall bordering our proprety, the house, tall trees... anything I could climb. I spent my whole life longing for flight- but only with my own wings- and gazing at the sky, wondering what it'd be like to dive through a cloud.
I found paganism in high school, thanks to my then-best friend, Kris. She realized I was desperately unhappy trying to be a Jehovah's Witness for my mother's satisfaction and showed me a path that I took to as if I'd been born for it. (Then again, who's to say I wasn't? ^_~) Although Kris and I did not remain close for more than a year and a half, she taught me many things that I am still grateful for.
In mesh with my own exceptionally elastic sense of disbelief are the ideas that I found during my research into paganism. I've always been a very avid reader of mythology and folklore, and when I first heard about 'otherkin,' I was both curious and snide. I admit that I scoffed at the idea of someone claiming to be a tenth-generation elven queen. I had known far too many people in high school who had lied in similar manners to believe anyone I found on the Internet.
When I met my ex-boyfriend, I was convinced that my longing for wings, my desperate thought of "I want to go home" whenever something was painful, and my fervrent belief in mythical creatures long considered dead were all traces of a little girl who wouldn't grow up. He laughed at me when I said I believed in dragons and although he was pagan himself, he didn't accept the same level of possibility that I did.
Meeting Fenshae, my thylacine best friend, was such a blessing. I met her about a year before my ex and I broke up, and we spent what time was available talking about anything and everything. (She was the first person who didn't make me feel guilty about my love of role-playing games.) When my ex and I split, she was there to befriend and soothe me. It was Fenshae who explained the difference between furries and Therians. She showed me the distinctions between fetish furries and Therian-like furries, and we both compared our belief/disbelief in all things magical.
Getting together with my fiance, Neko, was another glorious occurrence. Instead of berating me for being stupid for my belief in the otherworldly, Neko encouraged me. He complimented me on my hope, listened to all of my ideas and called me his angel from the first. It was Neko, actually, who first ventured the idea of me being angelkin in any reliable way. The first this was mentioned directly was when I related something my ex's little brother and mother had said. My ex came from a very pagan household, and one of the things commonly accepted in the family was that all of the members had individual guardians- either spirit or angel, it was never entirely clarified- and that those guardians were very important. Ian, the little brother, looked at me not long after we met for the first time and remarked to his mother Raven that I looked like Alice, his guardian angel. Raven had looked at me again and then blinked, clearly astonished, and agreed with him. Oddly enough, after my relationship with the whole family began, no one ever saw Alice again. I, however, played my part as peacemaker and helper to Raven and for the boys.
I related this to Neko while we were waiting for Ian to get some of his belongings out of his mother's house. It had been a *very* tense couple of weeks- around Christmas, many people get tense anyway, but there'd been some roommate and financial difficulties that didn't help- and Neko looked at me as we sat in my car, waiting for over an hour, and said "He didn't need her anymore. You were there."
There it was, out in the open, for the first time ever. It was Neko who called me an angel, his angel and who said that my wide back and remarkably broad shoulders- for a girl, they're massive; thank the gods I have wide hips to balance them out- would be perfect to carry wings. I guess it was Neko's belief that let me approach the idea of being an otherkin.
What is all of this extensive blather to mean? Only this- I wish to examine the idea, the possibility and the hope that I'm not just dealing with a sense of disassociation with my environment through self-deception. I have always taken care of my friends, encouraged them, argued them out of self-destructive behaviour and let them go when our paths diverged. Maybe I'm an angelkin. Maybe not. It's a question I'd like to answer, and I hope I can find some help here.
