Alterhumanity - are you alterhuman? how does this affect your life and identity?
[PT: Alterhumanity - are you alterhuman? how does this affect your life and identity? End PT.]
I am alterhuman. The entire system is, actually. We’re physically nonhuman, in that we are a canine holothere. Not all of us identify as dogs, just as alters in a bodily human system might not all identify as human. I however do identify as a canine, more specifically a german shepherd.
I call my humanoid appearance an avatar, and this bleeds over to the body as well. I am a dog, fully and completely, but it’s conveyed through this form instead of literally looking like a german shepherd. Instead of detaching me from the body, I find it makes me and the body detach from everything else. I feel this humanoid body is very distinctly different from other humans, not quite the same, although it appears as such.
I do lots of things in this body to make myself feel closer to my doghood. I’ve started referring to my hands as my paws, my face as my muzzle. I bounce my leg or swing it to imitate a wagging tail. I grumble and huff when I’m tired or irritated, and I love to have my hair pet by friends and family who are willing to do so. I often wish for a romantic partner who could also be my handler or a caretaker, in order to feel more perceived and treated like a dog. I don’t even know what a handler-dog relationship would look like— if all they did was give me scooby snacks after a doctor’s visit or scratched me behind the ears, I’d be pretty happy.
I came into this world from another one as someone who is not human. Yeah, I’m alterhuman. I am a vampire and a fae, an unholy mix that has left me both scarred and better than ever. The body I’m in now is familiar to me, for more reasons than one, but I feel oftentimes I am missing something, some part of me, literally and metaphorically. I used to have innards that were body horror incarnate— strange organs with esoteric, magical functions, eyes and teeth and bones and flesh in strange shapes, in sinews and branches and rippling waves. I had multiple sets of veins, and with them multiple kinds of fluid powering me. Teal blood, something glittering and gold, and a cold milky white liquid hiding the furthest inside. I also no longer have my magic, which made my appearance and the world around me contort in frightening or delightful ways.
I spend a great deal of time in the sunshine, in nature, and around wildlife, in order to feel closer to what I once was. Being what people today call a psyvamp, or a psychic vampire, I feel drained when I’m not around people. I need to join conversations, have their attention, and even at times their admiration in order to function like a normal person. When I am fueled by these things, it brings back feelings of what it was like in my old body, my right body. It’s euphoric.
Being no longer human and having spent time as a creature away from the gender binary, I still feel separate from it. I identify as a nonbinary woman, feel as if I only scrape the tips of my fingers against womanhood when I try to reach for it. When I hold my womanhood, it’s in the haze of nonbinity (am I using that right?), reaching blindly through a thicket to hold the womanhood that is blossoming on its innermost branches.
Tags: @radiomogai ; @dragonpride17
