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	Feeling: tired Listening To: Hartebeest by Yaelokre Eating: chicken tenders

Are You a Unicorn?

Though it hasn't always gone by that name, I have been in and out of the Alterhuman community since the early 00's.

I found whispers of it on werewolf webpages here and there--quizzes and lists and stuff like that. At the time, I thought it was just people playing pretend since I was brand new to the online roleplaying scene. My first real instance of hey-you-might-not-be-human-on-a-spiritual-level was when I was browsing some web pages about unicorns and how they were linked with Christianity (I was raised a back pew Baptist) and happened across information on this book:

Now, I had ALWAYS been an animal kid. Running around on all fours, always demanding to be an animal when we played house, never watching or reading anything unless it was about an animal or someone who turned INTO an animal. I only wanted to play animal-based video games and only drew animals. I disliked hunting but I would play hunting games to be in the woods with the deer. This is a trait that lasted WELL into adulthood. I'm still very animal-oriented in my interests, but I've broadened my tastes haha.

Anyway, the idea that I could remain a faithful Christian (something I was terrified about always) AND 'be a creature' at the same time without getting in trouble hit me like a line of coke. I RAN to Amazon and ordered Are You A Unicorn? I remember being so excited when it arrived and read it as fast as I could. Unfortunately, the book was...not very good. Poorly researched and full of blurry .jpegs of the same ten images I'd already seen on every unicorn webpage, the book didn't give me any of the answers I craved. It didn't give me the Special Permission to be an animal. Still, I knew Something Was Different about me.

This is the part where I tell you I am autistic. I didn't consider this until I was in my 30's even though looking back, it was reeeeally obvious. I have OCD and a lot of traits of OCD and autism overlap, but the thing about OCD is it's driven by fear and the autism behaviors come from a different place. Intense periods fixating on subjects, texture issues, extreme morality, needing to know the 'why' of tasks asked of me, dislike of loud noises, existing more in my head than in my body. Also, I was in a special class called "Enrichment" for most of elementary school and some middle school.

But for the time being, I pushed my Otherness aside. I actually looked down on people who said they were spiritually a wolf or whatever because I was upset I couldn't have that and how could they do that and be a Christian because EVERYONE was a Christian, right? Right?? Even my favorite cartoon characters?? Nobody I knew was going to Hell right? We'll put a pin in that.

Wolfy

I learned what a furry was in the early 00's. I found out there were things called furry weekends and furry cons and people dressed up as animals and did activities. Before I understood that furry was its own thing, I just called any anthro characters I saw "weres". Eventually I would find Goldenwolf's classic art explaining the difference.

_{(Art by Goldenwolf)}

I would spend hours looking through the fursuiting Livejournal community and checked it every day. Most importantly, there was something called "fursonas" which were an animal usually accompanied by a design you made that other people would then refer to you as. I had always drawn 'me as a wolf' but I didn't have a NAME to put to it or a community to be a part of until I found Furry. I was really into it until I realized that people Did Not Like furries. Then I started hiding it. I denounced it all. Then came back to it. A pattern that would define the next decade.

But I was a wolf. I knew I had sharp teeth and paws and ears that moved. I knew I was meant to run on all fours. Dreams where I could Run were always my favorite. I drew myself as a wolf and it was me in the realest way I could express—realer than if you'd cut me open and pulled out my insides. BUT it was just pretend. Just a daydream. Just me being "creative" with my imagination. But it was always so, so personal to me. Sacred.

The Fursona is sacred to me and it would become more important to me than I could ever imagine.

Otherkin on Tumblr dot Com

The word Otherkin hits tumblr in the mid 2010's. Homestuck is everywhere. People are fighting. It's mostly kids, but there are some adults mixed in there too. Everybody wants to be valid. There are therians and there are otherkin and there are weres. There are witches and fairies and everyone is bullying everyone. This time is very blurry for me but I remember looking on and thinking 'haha at least I'm not like THEM im a normal christian furry im so normal lmaoooo' i would make fun of otherkin with a friend of mine and seek out their stuff to point in laugh. Get a load of this guy!

But years pass and I forget. Was that crazy or what?

I make friends with a fellow adult who shares that he is a transgender man and a therian. A rat. I think, but you're an adult with a job and a house! How can you think that? There is only God and Man and Woman. But no, he is chill and mature and simply includes his animalness as a PART of his identity. The identity can be made of so many parts. Gender being only one of them. I think about this. I think back to the Unicorn. I, the adult, read The Field Guide.

I start to cry. The broken piece of me from my childhood comes back and it still fits so perfectly.

At the same time, another friend I meet, another adult, practices Daemonism. I think, what? People out here creating self soothing tulpas? In SOCIETY??? What on earth! But they are kind to me and simply explain their way of life. I read the literature (and see the people infighting) but I try it. The Daemon I "see" is a female doe named Iyuih. I look at the cross and I sweat.

How can I be a transgender therian and still get into Heaven?

Deer World

It happens on a cusp. I start finally outgrowing my Wolfy fursona. The design is being used for a fully separate character I plan on writing and publishing books about. I can't be in those books. Nobody can know that was me. I have to be come something else.

At the same time, my older sister dies in my house.

I create Crownless, the deer. She becomes the new me. It starts slow.

Peep that short haircut. For the first time since childhood I had short hair. I felt Different. I was Stealth Boy. Stealth Deer. Even to myself. I could draw goofy comics of "Wolfy" in her anthro form and more serious stuff could be about my deer. For a very brief time, internally, Wolfy and Crownless interacted.

One of the last pictures of Wolfy-as-me I drew. I fully became Crownless. Crownless was who I was as an adult, though an inexperienced one. I used Crownless to explore my gender. I identified with the deciduous nature of deer antlers and the way they change throughout the year. My reasoning was "you can't tell what sex a deer is at a distance during winter" and I was going through one hell of a winter.

Three years later, my dad dies in the very same room in my house. Months later, my step mom moves out without talking to me about it first. I am alone in the house. For years. I sink deep into this deer identity.

I become: an asshole. I become pretentious with my deer interest. Deer needed to be Just So or they were WRONG and it proved they didn't LIKE DEER the way I LIKED DEER. I was the best DEER LIKER!!! It was very stupid but I think it needed to happen. I needed to wear myself out on something pointless.

At this time, I think I have the whole gender thing figured out, that I am a man now and I ought to act like one. But something is weird and off and different and I can't figure it out. The deer's body doesn't fit and I can't stretch out. I buy books about deer I buy books about deer I buy books about deer. Everybody knows I am a deer everybody sens me deer in the mail and deer pictures in my DMs and are thinking of me and so kind. But I cannot feel the tail I'm supposed to have, the teeth I know I have. I stretch and stretch and something breaks.

2020 and the Mind Prison

I discover my sexuality in my mid thirties. I discover my true gender: genderfluid. Nonbinary. Fits like a glove in that it isn't a glove that fits! Took long enough. Up until then, I had been identifying as asexual and transmasc. The Ace community was very kind to me and I think fondly of them. The queer community around me is my home. But I had to admit that I had kinks and fetishes and needed an outlet for them. I experimented with petplay but it got so muddy in my mind. How could I be a guy who was a deer pretending to be a dog??? THAT'S TOO MANY LAYERS. At least that's what I thought then.

I rejected any and all imagery of deer. Of Crownless. Of myself. I threw myself into this fursonaless void for a little while and spiraled until I came out the other end as a pink digital dog.

The Pink Dog stands for so much. It is still sacred to me, the fursona, the self. I am told that Crash is the closest to 'me' that I've gotten. That when they look at them, they see me. It's important that they're pink. Growing up, I always prided myself on "showing restraint" in my character designs. I was a dog but not a SPARKLE DOG I was a deer BUT NOT A UNICORN (I saw so many deer becoming unicorns it was honestly funny ilu unicorn deer live your lives you're beautiful and I envied you so so hard). I had like this whole dramatic story in my head about a deer that became a unicorn but only SPIRITUALLY because I could never physically achieve what MY unicorn would be (aka top surgery).

The Mind Prison was where I lived. And I was not alone. As much as I wanted to strip Crownless away and forget those long years of my life I spent deep in mourning and learning to function as an adult on my own, she was still there. He was still there. I was still there.

My misery was leaking onto this fresh new fursona who was supposed to be all about The Future, moving on, getting better, being better, and healing. But I couldn't deny who I'd been. I brought Crownless back but this time as a foil to Crash. A place for me to put all my hard feelings. This lasted about a year, me having them side by side. But then they fell in love.

I have never experienced anything like this. Crash and Crownless. Me and Me. Together, entwined, in love, sucking AND fucking. My body and my brain are two different things, but neither of them are me. I'm just in here. We're just in here. Hate it here. But we persist.

Hell's Not Real

About a year ago I was sitting in the drive-thru line at the bank and feeling Some Kind of Way. The song Dear God by XTC came on. It was the perfect storm and something just...snapped. I haven't talked about my faith much in this yet because now is the time for it.

As stated above, I was raised fire and brimstone Baptist. It was miserable. I hated every second of it. I was terrified of God and what he would do to me when I finally died if I forgot to ask for forgiveness of X or Y sin. After all, he can take back you being saved. He can do that. He's God. And if he does then you were never saved in the first place. You didn't believe and repent hard enough so it's your fault. It's always your fault. You're worthless, your dirt! That was what The Bible taught me. The American Deep South is a fucking tar pit. You either join the cult, leave, or get killed eventually.

What you let your government do to other people, they will eventually do to you.

I had a short stint in my youth where I stopped believing in God. I was like 13 and full of hate and rage but then got to have my redemption when I came to Christ. I bettered myself, right? I was now better than other people, right? That was what the church taught me.

But having online friends of differing faiths allowed me to ask questions. You don't ask questions in Baptist church. You just believe because that's what you were put here to do. Never mind the wars, the cancer, the plague, the cycle of abuse. I was told never to marry outside my denomination because my husband was surely going to Hell if he wasn't Baptist. It's all in God's plan and we aren't supposed to understand it. And why would God let little kids that are murdered go to heaven but not once they reach some nebulous age where they are capable of understanding God's grace? We are pushed to go into countries who are starving and give them water and food but only if they sing Jesus Loves Me with us. Why not hide God's name so no one knows about him so everyone can be excused and go to heaven? God knows what will happen yet gives us free will? Does he know that if he creates this person they will go to hell? What was the purpose? For them to feature as a side character in a faithful person's story? Is he so wealthy in resources and so bankrupt in morals that he can make human garbage forever and ever until Hell fills up? And then what? He throws the devil in a lake of fire? And then what of the damned? The world was supposed to end so many times. It will never end. Everyone in the South is sick.

MADNESS. LEG-CHEWING MADNESS IN THE TRAP. IN THE TRAP I AM IN THE TRAP WE ARE ALL IN THE TRAP!!!

Anyway, I was expelled from heaven.

Duality

Crash and Crownless are both me and they are both each other and they are in love. We live in this body and try to survive day by day, taking meds, eating vegetables, and going on stupid little walks. I have a girlfriend and a good job and a house that belongs to me even though it's falling apart.

Alterhuman

A coyote friend, a therian, leads me into virtual reality one night and I follow. I hear there are adult therians and otherkin who will talk to me about their experiences. They are there. There are foxes and snakes and birds and cats and so so so many dogs.

I pay twenty US dollars for an avatar base and my coyote friend paints my colors onto it. I put it on and load up VRC. I look in the mirror and see myself.