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The power and light comes from within. But it never hurts to brighten up on the outside.*
Enchantments, spells, wishes, prayers, and potions can only do so much. Wistful dreaming is stronger than you think. Be you. Enchant you. Enhance you. Paint you.
You are science, you are art, you are magic, you are wild, you are the universe searching for the purpose of its own existence.
On Facebook, I meet many people in their late teens and early twenties who desperately want to be not-human on the inside, or even the outside. Desperation that had nothing to do with feeling otherkin, but rather had everything to do with possible mental illness. Shapeshifters, skinwalkers, werecreatures, faeries, elves, vampires, wizards, aliens, mythical monsters, enhanced superhumans, mutants, genetic science experiments.
I remember feeling like that, for a while, at least playfully, the way people feel like otherkin. It faded quickly. I grew up and out. I acknowledged that such entities did not exist in this pure hard reality. I channeled that wishing and wistfulness into fiction. I created characters who reflected my subconscious, characters with psychic and supernatural powers beyond human and science.
When I developed various neurological disabilities, I created coping mechanisms with names and faces and personalities. But I never once forgot that my creations were nothing more than my creations. I never tried to pretend that they were dissociative facets of me. I never announced that my fictional creations were outward symptoms of true medical disorders.
But I encountered people who deliberately twisted real medical conditions to fit their own fantasies, and I recoiled in pity. There are several psychiatric, psychological, and mental illnesses that exist and require special treatment, and for these young people to falsely display symptoms in order to gain sympathetic and sycophantic attention makes me wonder just how mentally unstable they really are in their own ways.
And now I realize that I cannot help those who want to believe so badly in those fantasies that they become truly delusional. I realize that all I can do is step away from them. They will grow away from it, or they won't. They will learn and mature, or they will fall into themselves too deeply, and that may be the worst part, something I cannot help with.
There are ways to access the worlds outside this one. However, most people really are not that special, no matter how much they want to be. The best they can do is focus all that energy, ego, id, and personal power into living through this world, this life, until they are satisfied, mature, and ready enough to accept everything the universe is trying to show them, even if it isn't what they expected or wanted.
I have the power to be me. I have the power to do the things I am supposed to do. Everything else is why I am a fantasy writer.
*I've been playing with makeup all day. Josie Maran, Bare Minerals, Raesin Images. Tracing the lines of my own face over and over until I can view and turn every perceived flaw is a bonus.
Enchantments, spells, wishes, prayers, and potions can only do so much. Wistful dreaming is stronger than you think. Be you. Enchant you. Enhance you. Paint you.
You are science, you are art, you are magic, you are wild, you are the universe searching for the purpose of its own existence.
On Facebook, I meet many people in their late teens and early twenties who desperately want to be not-human on the inside, or even the outside. Desperation that had nothing to do with feeling otherkin, but rather had everything to do with possible mental illness. Shapeshifters, skinwalkers, werecreatures, faeries, elves, vampires, wizards, aliens, mythical monsters, enhanced superhumans, mutants, genetic science experiments.
I remember feeling like that, for a while, at least playfully, the way people feel like otherkin. It faded quickly. I grew up and out. I acknowledged that such entities did not exist in this pure hard reality. I channeled that wishing and wistfulness into fiction. I created characters who reflected my subconscious, characters with psychic and supernatural powers beyond human and science.
When I developed various neurological disabilities, I created coping mechanisms with names and faces and personalities. But I never once forgot that my creations were nothing more than my creations. I never tried to pretend that they were dissociative facets of me. I never announced that my fictional creations were outward symptoms of true medical disorders.
But I encountered people who deliberately twisted real medical conditions to fit their own fantasies, and I recoiled in pity. There are several psychiatric, psychological, and mental illnesses that exist and require special treatment, and for these young people to falsely display symptoms in order to gain sympathetic and sycophantic attention makes me wonder just how mentally unstable they really are in their own ways.
And now I realize that I cannot help those who want to believe so badly in those fantasies that they become truly delusional. I realize that all I can do is step away from them. They will grow away from it, or they won't. They will learn and mature, or they will fall into themselves too deeply, and that may be the worst part, something I cannot help with.
There are ways to access the worlds outside this one. However, most people really are not that special, no matter how much they want to be. The best they can do is focus all that energy, ego, id, and personal power into living through this world, this life, until they are satisfied, mature, and ready enough to accept everything the universe is trying to show them, even if it isn't what they expected or wanted.
I have the power to be me. I have the power to do the things I am supposed to do. Everything else is why I am a fantasy writer.
*I've been playing with makeup all day. Josie Maran, Bare Minerals, Raesin Images. Tracing the lines of my own face over and over until I can view and turn every perceived flaw is a bonus.
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