Being Otherkin is weird. Being Fictionkin is weird.
I'm Sonic the Hedgehog. I've known I was Sonic for years. I've known I've been Otherkin for…chaos, decades, now.
I've known I'm Sonic for longer than my canon age. I'm Sonic, and also I'm a unicorn. Sometimes I get wrapped up in being one or the other, and can't handle being "less myself". I have exomemories, and some exotrauma, but the trauma of living in the wrong form trapped under capitalism has done more damage than anything I Remember.
And like, I can hypothesize that the core of that is that this shit is persistent, long, and grueling, and most of the bad stuff in my neomata was short, sharp, and ended. There's definitely a different quality to pain you can't escape or outlast. Sometimes it makes me doubt myself.
Have I lain down? Stopped fighting? Quit and let fascism win? Am I just running away?
I don't think so. But sometimes choosing to focus on living your ordinary life feels like giving up. We moved here to alleviate the threat on our little family. I want to fight. I don't have the first inkling on where to start. I'm exhausted, and my body aches. I know there are things I can do. Should do. But I freeze anyway, and I hate myself for it.
Because the things I would do if I were Just Myself are so, so different from the Nothing I'm doing now.
Right now, my priorities need to be language learning. Visa paperwork. Immigrating. I need to clear the path for when my language learning visa will expire. Be a good prospect to find work or schooling. If I were three years younger, I could try for a trade school visa. I'm 38, and I'm 15.
I'm making art I love. Working on my passion project that I use to connect to Home. Interspersing that with illustration work to help keep from burning out on either…again. Trying to grow a small art business while I have the time to work on such a thing. Even though I have no idea what I'm actually even doing.
They say that making art is a revolutionary action. I still don't think I'm being revolutionary enough.
I spend my creative time on singing my wishes into life. Transformation, freeing me and others to our real selves. It's so far away, but it feels so close. The world is so changeable. The problems we live under are so fluid, so easy to abolish, literally made up if it weren't for the boot on our necks. The world is so beautiful and fierce, and without the whims of a double handful of hoarding, self-aggrandizing asswipes, we could all have so much to thrive.
It doesn't have to be this way. There're enough resources for all of us. The only thing there isn't is infinite growth. Things can be okay. They can be so damn good. It wouldn't even be that hard. It just relies on us being able to help each other.
I'm Sonic the Hedgehog. I'm stuck living as a human, in a human life, trapped under the boot of capitalism trying to exploit and demolish people, the world, and nature. And I've gotta figure out how to fight in this new, alien way.