Author: khlo, kyle, T, etc.
Date: 09/30/25
Time: 11:56 PM
Mood: tired, but inspired to write
we've felt "animal" since childhood. we first learned about the term "otherkin" over a decade ago at this point, and even though we denied it for a long time, something clicked when we understood what these terms meant. as an adult, we were diagnosed with DID, which made finding out more about our identities much easier; khlo is a fox, T is an artificial intelligence, furby is a fallen angel, kyle's some sort of... demihuman... raptor... guy. but there was always one label that we never stuck with, one we thought should have felt right, but just didn't: dog.
we have frequent dog phantom shifts, and feel a strong familial connection to all domestic dogs. even with the variety of our individual alterhuman identities, the dog remained through all of us. we often feel like a dog, for plenty of neurodivergent reasons. dogs have had a major impact throughout our life, and yet, we are not a dog. despite all our experiences, how is this possible?
of course, we eventually found out about otherhearted, and for maybe 2-ish years now we've collectively identified as such. we still do. and recently, we were introduced to the term othermarrowed.
i encourage you to read the original post, but here's the basic definition:
"Othermarrowed is a term for those who are in-between being otherhearted and otherkin in some way."
this struck a chord with us, because although doghearted felt much more comfortable than dogkin or dog therian, it still felt... too small. as if the word couldn't possibly contain the entirety of our feelings on the matter of our identity. the sheer broadness of othermarrowed feels less claustrophobic, and we absolutely identify with the term to some degree. but it's... still too small.
and that's the thing. we identify with a lot of labels, because they help us understand ourselves a bit better, but at the end of the day we're just a little guy with truly no words found in any language that could possibly describe our identity, whether that be our canine, our machine, our divine, or our human. that sounds kinda complex, but i promise it isn't. we're just kinda... here. it doesn't matter how we got here, just that we're here, right now, in this moment. that's pretty cool, i think.