Went outside and basked in the sun for hours. Towel on the grass to protect skin from scratches. Baked in the sunlight before moving to the cool shade to relax. Refreshing breeze lightly blowing through my hair, feeling it ruffling my fur. Leaning back and looking to the sky, lolling my head around to watch clouds. Paws lazing on my chest and stomach, or hands resting behind my neck. Flexing to feel my claws. Touching the earth and curling up in it where it’s safe. Being amongst steady family of blood and of choice. Subtlest hints of marten’s toothy grin on my face the whole time. Closing my eyes and breathing in the scent of sun-warmed plants, and pollen, and hot soil. Everything I need at my fingertips; water, sustenance, family, safety, nature, creativity, rest. Lucky and thoughtful. All deserve. You are deserving. We’ll find.
Duuuuude I need to be climbing a tree right now so bad. Scittering up it, pausing on branches, surveying the world from above, leaping between neighboring trees, finding tree hollows, clambering into nests that aren’t mine.
Disability, otherheartedness, environmentalism, and movement.
I don’t feel a need to do quads to connect with my kithtype, as martens can shift between plantigrade and digitigrade stances with ease. But it’s easier to reassure myself that other alterhumans can relate to the ache of not being able to do quads (my solidarity with all of them) than it is to think about how much disability limits the way I express the other aspects of my otherheartedness. Sure, it affects my everything, but this isn’t meant to be a vent of disability in my life, more so an exploration of how it specifically mixes with being alterhuman.
I crave movement. Running, climbing, swimming, ducking & weaving, digging & burrowing. I want to connect with the world around me in deeper & more tangible ways than imagination can bring me. I want to help my environment grow, be an active participant in the preservation and documentation of life itself. I want my hands to touch the earth as human claws and marten hands, and help close wounds. I think of myself as intrinsically human, even as I am marten, because I love being a species that can love so much, and take that love and care for the world around me. Not as a “Shepard”, a wiser man above it all, like some religions have perpetuated into Western culture, but instead as an equal part in it all, a community member, doing my part in maintaining the land we all live on. And humans can take on so many positive roles, just as we can take on so many negative ones. We just have to choose to do so. I want to choose to do so.
As a human, part of my mind is inclined to be marten, or mustelid, or animal. Being human made me alterhuman. That’s not true for all (or even most) alterhumans, but a joy for me of being human is to have a mind capable of such complex connections and understanding. I am otherhearted because humans have such range.
I’ve said before “if I was truly a Pine Marten, I’d wish to be human so I could make art.” But the fact is, I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t know art. I wouldn’t miss it. I wouldn’t miss having human hands to create and gesture and help others. I’d only know what I know, and what I’d know would be animal. It’s a good world. I wish every one who wishes for it can reach it. But being otherhearted, so deeply tied to humanity, I don’t want to choose blissful oblivion, even if the reward is bliss in existing as the animal part of myself. The difference between my experience and others is just that one difference; “part of myself” where for others it is the “whole of themselves”. I could never judge someone for it. I intrinsically understand why the complete lack of connection to humanity is appealing, because other people aren’t human. They’re animals. An animal doesn’t want to be human. But I am human, and I am shot through with marten, and some marten is peeking out the sides, and sometimes the face that’s mine to wear is marten too. But the way I love flows through a human mind and a human body and surrounds humanity so tightly. I wouldn’t want to untangle it all, to have one part human and one part “other”. To throw away one piece would be to abandon the whole.
I can’t do the work I love right now. The work of service to the world around me, the conservation, the labor. The work that makes me feel marten, that makes me feel human, that makes me feel earthen and content and fulfilled, but I can build my strength every day with that love as the goal. Rebuilding the human vessel that is so sick and that I so joyfully live in, with hopes one day its catastrophic damage can become as insignificant as a sore limb; still limping, still compensating with other means, but upright & capable. Able to limp my way to the things I miss. Able to climb, even if badly, able to swim, even if shortly, able to run, even if slowly. Let me rebuild myself until I can touch the earth again with less consequences. Let me grow strong enough and healthy enough to mirror the love that the earth & nature & humanity have shown me so I can echo it back into all of it. Let me exist in the joyful fluidity, the in-betweens of human and animal and advocate and participant and benefactor and beneficiary.
Let me become a worker on the branch of the natural systems that tie us together. Let me make it better for you, and for me, and for futures we prepare for. Let me rest, repair, and then embody. Let me aspire to the unremarkable aspects of growth and change. I want to be a part of it. I will try. And then I will try again.
I’m an Otherheart & Copingpaw, my kithtype being the European/Eurasian Pine Marten (Martes Martes).
- I enjoy art, environmentalism, water/ponds/marshes/rivers/ocean, mustelids, and hopepunk
- I mostly follow people with similar interests, and I like interacting with people (reblogs, PMs, askbox) but due to chronic fatigue I’m not frequently active
- I’ll likely be posting my experiences related to my kithtype under #my posts, or just liking/reblogging posts
I’m the kind of person who does little to no research on who I like/reblog/follow and am new around here, so if I reblog from an asshole please let me know. If I truly randomly block you it’s probably because you reposted something with eyestrain that wasn’t tagged.
Otherhearted means different things to different people, but what does it mean to me? I talk a bit about it abstractly here, but explaining it helps me understand myself, so I’ll make it clearer.
European Pine Martens are always the creature “most like me” in a world of animals that I can learn about, respect, and find interesting. I fluctuate between identifying with them on a level where they’re just one of my main interests, verses when they are a patch on the quilt that is the essence of who I am. Sometimes they just feel like an animal I like, other times it’s like seeing a reflection of the face I’ve been missing, even though I already have a human face and body I’m connected to.
I experience species dysphoria in both directions.
As a human who’s connection to humanity is a core part of my identity (even more so than most non-alterhumans I meet), there are times when imagining myself as anything other than human is distressing and dysphoric. One way this manifests is the discomfort being mistaken for a therian (whose identity is often related to the absence of human identity, whereas mine is in addition to human identity). Another common experience is being post-expression of my marten aspects, still doing the things that affirm me or bring me joy in those moments (like wearing gear, imagining myself in my habitat, and visualizing moving in my marten form) when my marten-ness fluxuates back to being casual instead of encompassing, and those activities become uncomfortable when mere minutes before they were euphoric.
In the opposite direction, when I am more marten and stuck as human, I experience the feelings of “where is my tail, why aren’t my teeth pointier, why are my legs shaped weird, where are my paws, why can’t I climb, why can’t I run, why am I tall, where is my environment, where are my species”.
I get human euphoria all the time. Again, not something most humans would say, but true for me. Being a primate, being part of human history, learning about human culture, being in a human body, making art, being part of a community, and meeting other humans are all common sources of euphoria for me.
For European Pine Marten euphoria, I have a wide array to choose from. Physical euphoria from long hypermotion tail (not to wag but to swish), brown fur & hair with black tips (darker on paws/hands/arms/legs/tail and snout), sharp canine teeth, sharp clear-white claws/fingernails, standing with ‘trex arms’, standing upright. For emotional euphoria, being outside, being in or near shallow rivers and ponds, chasing small critters like fish or birds or mice, climbing trees, wedging myself into tight spaces, exploring hollow stumps, being in a bird nest, being around pine trees & pine cones & pine needles & pine needle detritus, being around other species native to my habitat (including alterhumans of those species), being recognized as a fellow mustelid by fellow mustelid alterhumans.
Otherhearted:
- European/Eurasian Pine Marten (Martes Martes)
Copingpaw & Otherpaw:
For fun, creatures I connect with, or animals I just enjoy
