One cannot just “stop” being kin, or stop being a kintype, anymore than they can stop being themselves
If someone is able to “drop” a kintype, [...] then it likely was not an actual kintype in the first place.
All three of these are rough quotes from a post from 2016 by fictionkin-official. Even so, these three bits of text are one of the most commonly agreed upon and supported comments in the community at large. Though the terms can change, drop to lost to get rid of. Often the main point is:
You cannot get rid of a kintype, if you did, it wasn’t actually a kintype. After all your kintype is your identity.
The whole point of this post to be clear, is to say the opposite. That it is possible to loose a kintype. It’s just not likely, and if it is lost, that doesn’t necessarily mean it wasn’t a kintype and that it might not still effect you in some way.
The short, no reading vague mentions of trauma below, sum up is: Identity is something that changes as people go throughout their lives and big events can make a major difference. If kintypes are identity, doesn’t that mean it can change just as much as identity can? And it’s doesn’t mean, necessarily, you were wrong in the past. It just means you’re a different person now.
Usually with this blog I don’t talk about my other identities. I make a huge point on it. Though I will be changing that slightly just for this. I am someone who has lost three kintypes and yes I am certain it is lost not ‘I was just wrong’.
As it’s always been stated kintypes are apart of your identity. It’s apart of who you are and as that it often hurts if you try to remove them or suppress them. That’s a very common bit of information and I agree. I experienced it quite heavily with them at the time. The thing is, people’s identities, do change, over time. Especially when heavy events occur. From trauma, to just stress in general, things happen in people’s lives that change them at base of who they are. It changes their identity.
If kintypes are apart of that identity, and identity can change. Then that is to say kintypes could be lost, or them change into new identities along with your new self-hood.
Many people don’t change heavily. They change in small amounts but you can still see who they used to be. It’s very common. Media even talks about that a lot. But for those who change drastically, why couldn’t that mean their kintypes might vanish or change drastically as well without it meaning they were wrong before or not real.
That’s the thing that makes me want to write this. The insistence of if a kintype goes away or changes, is that it was wrong in the first place. It wasn’t ‘real’. It was real. It was right, when you were the person you used to be. You just aren’t that same person anymore, so why would a kintype stay the same at all times?
If someone’s identity can change, and kintypes are apart of identity. Why can’t they change or go away? Either they are apart of identity and can fluctuate just like identity can or they aren’t identity and something else.
As I said I lost three kintypes. Two of them got lost from a single heavily traumatizing event. It changed me drastically from the person I was before. People who knew me well couldn’t see the same person, and I didn’t feel like it either. I’ve recently in the last month finally got past that trauma and been doing a lot better, but I’m no where similar to how I was before it. I’ve tried to rekindle myself with those types because I’ve been so insistently told that they can’t go away or I was wrong, yet I knew in those moments I was right, and I know now they aren’t here anymore. They aren’t apart of me. They are apart of what I used to be. When I think of me before the event, I feel them a bit again. When I go back to me now, I don’t. It’s like a past life you don’t identify with anymore, but it’s this same life divided by a heavy event.
The third type I lost was also from trauma but this one wasn’t one single event, it was two years of accidentally trauma. I don’t blame anyone, but coming from it, the identity was so interlocked, getting from the trauma, took it with it. It was a symbol of two years of living under false pretense, false knowledge, a false sense of self. Freeing myself that, working to slowly rebuild myself, it didn’t stay with me. It’s not wrong or false what I felt in the past. I mean a lot of stuff was false at the time, but it was a huge part of everything. And it’s gone. The effect it had living with it, still stays with me, but that’s not me anymore. I’m not that person.
Kintypes are a hugely personal thing. They are identity, as so many point out. If identity can flux and change and be effected by life. Why can’t kintypes also, without the instant throwing the past experiences with them away as not actually having happened at all? That still was your kintype. There’s a major difference between being wrong and not using it anymore and it was right and just isn’t now.
It’s all apart of the journey of understanding yourself, and that self is always changing, just sometimes it’s so drastic it’s like starting from scratch with only hints of what you already knew.
