Hi! I wanted to ask what it means to be ghostkin, because I really think that I may be ghostkin, but I feel i don't know enough information about what it means to be kin. Could you maybe explain it to me? Thank you for your time! I love your blog c:
What does it mean to be kin? I define it simply as “a person who identifies as non-human at some times and to whatever extent”. There are a lot of different experiences clumped under this one umbrella:
Some people feel sincerely, innately that they ought to have been born as and in fact ARE a in all but form. They usually don’t know why and acknowledge it’s absurd, and yet the certainty remains.
Some people use it as a coping strategy for mental illness, either deliberately (they choose to do it) or they develop it by accident. Ghostkin with depersonalistion, dissociation or derealisation symptoms are fairly common, eg. Some people use otherkin terms to describe their experience with DID.
Some people experience it as part of their spirituality: A way of working with a deity, or an animal spirit. A form of shapeshifting. A form of reincarnation. A belief in multiple, parallel worlds. A form of tulpamancy/thoughtform creation. Sometimes it’s a RPG or story character who got out of hand.
And other things I’ve forgotten. My point is, there are overlaps between the otherkin experience with all sorts of things.
So that’s my answer to “what it means to be kin”. You identify as not-a-human at least some of the time - for whatever reason - and that’s a feeling you like enough to want to embrace as part of you.
(Some kin are stricter than others on the “rules” to count as “properly kin”; some sensibly, some in a fashion I find needlessly judgemental and cruel. I define ghostkin very, very widely, because that debate is not worth my time. Other people know themselves and their experiences better than I do, and it’s not for me to say who Is and Isn’t “really kin”.
So you may want to ask this question of others, as not everyone shares my everybodywelcome approach. Frankly, I even welcome in people who think being a ghost sounds like fun or are “making it all up for attention”, as anti-ghostkin people say. Nothing wrong with wanting to be creative, playful, and invite beautiful happy things into your life.)
What about what it means to be ghostkin?
I advise you just test-drive it. Spend a week thinking “I’m a ghostkin!”, and see what happens. Do you feel happier? More complete? If so, keep with it; if not, try something else. When I started looking at otherkin tumblr, I dived in Just For Fun because It Looked Awesome, and soon discovered some very sincere and important things to me. I initially followed rainkin, voidkin,spacekin,glitchkin and ghost, and tried them all out. They’re all similar, all expressing a sort of empty nebulousness; and ghost was the one that stuck. I have, I guess, a “camp” approach to being a ghost. The classic camp where you take frivolous things very seriously, and treat serious ones with fun. There are definitely days where I’m just mucking about with it, but the days it hits and it’s all of who I am.
And how do you work out if you’re a ghost? There are so many different definitions of ghost. Mine is about the screen-flicker at the end of a reel of film, the music of the Haunted Ballroom, lostness, and a loss of care. Yours will be different.
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