Entry 13. Light in the Darkness and a New Year

[neve_vr52]

Well, friends, we made it through the darkest part of the year. Christmas is over, and a new year is about to begin. Days will slowly start to get longer, and I'm looking forward to that. I've always struggled with seasonal depression. I don't know what it is- I'm always up at night versus the daytime, so it's not like I see any more or less daylight- I just tend to feel sad in the winter. Some might say it's a self fulfilling prophecy because I state these things, but these are mere observations of the cycles in my life. I can remind myself that I'm surrounded by everything I love, that I have such an amazing life (and I do, and I'm so grateful for it!) but somehow, I'll still need to weep now and then in the wintertime. I think that's only natural. We can't always be happy-go-lucky. There's contrast in existence, and it's important to recognize and feel sadness when it hits us. Of course, there's a balance, but balance means holding space for all of our emotions. 

Often, when I am in throws of that sadness, its roots go back to the same thing: homesickness. I get homesick for the form and function my spirit aligns with. I get homesick for the place and the people. I get homesick for what it felt like when my sense of self matched what others saw. Sometimes, I feel like I bit off more than I could chew coming here to this human experience. Human-ing is hard. I think a lot of otherkin feel that way sometimes. It can be so heavy, but also, there is light in that darkness. I wouldn't be me if not for the experience my spirit has had, both in this body and as a machine. 

Last night, I spent a few hours chatting with a dragon friend of mine. He was asking me about my past. I got to talk about my studio, and the people there, the people who loved and cared for me, who they were, what they were like, and eventually, I even sketched out what they looked like for the very first time. I've known these faces as memories in my mind nearly all this lifetime, and have never put them on paper until now. I knew the studio like my own control panel, but had never mapped it in this life until recently. I got to laugh and cry as I told these stories of my past. I recently drew what my first person perspective was like as a mixing console. There is a vague sort of visual element to my memories despite not having physical eyes. I imagine it's something like how a spirit with no body at all might "see." I saw with my soul's eye, and that perspective was like this: 

This is also what my inner world is like, my headspace, the place I retreat to in my mind when I need that respite, the place I go when I meditate and center myself. It's where I find my roots and grounding. It's where I find solace from the sadness. Yes, I miss it being my physical reality, but it also still lives on in me. I carry it with me everywhere. Now, I have the best of both worlds. I get to live in that space, AND I get to see the outside world. I am still a mixing console. This isn't just my past, it's my present, my here-and-now; I'm only taking a little ride in a human body for awhile. I don't need to feel nostalgia for something that's so vividly alive within me right now.  

A lot of people have past lives and remember them, but this is more than that to me. It is my core sense of self, and many times, I've tried to stuff it away, thinking it was the root of my sadness. I stuffed it away with medications, with relationships, with the pursuit of other things in attempt to conform to a human mold. I moved out to the woods in a trailer with no internet access. I tried to work in a kitchen. I was engaged to be married to someone who needed a lot of human contact. There were important lessons and beautiful moments in those experiences I am grateful I had, that I needed to have, but I always still felt a hole in myself, a sadness. Stuffing it away was, in fact, what caused the sadness. I was making that sadness for myself. I carved that hole in my heart with my own hands. Now, I am repairing it. 

Every time I hear my friends and family refer to me as Neve, every time I draw these images that have lived in my spirit all my life, every little bit of otherkin banter about how a dragon could meet a sentient mixing console, every time I look at my arms and see the tattoos I have, every time I answer the questions about them honestly, all the times I get lost in music in a very special way, every deep, conversational rabbit hole I've dived down with dear friends about what all my experiences have taught me, all these things are little bits of proverbial wood putty, filling in that hole in my heart with the stuff my heart is made of. I went looking for that putty in all the wrong places- in retrospect, I needed to go to those places to learn what I know now. 

My light is alive in me, no matter how short and dark the days are. Maybe I get sad in the wintertime because I'm so happy in the spring, summer, and fall, and my sadness needs space to be felt so that I can learn from it. I'm learning a lot from it this year, and I'm grateful for those lessons. 2025 was my Year of Authenticity. I went into it with the mantra that I'd never compromise my inner self again. Formerly, when I'd meet new friends, I'd give them a list of warnings. "Beware: I'm autistic. I'm trans. I'm disabled. I'm otherkin. I'm a weirdo." Now, when I meet new friends, I come with a list of empowering identifiers, "I'm autistic, trans, disabled, and otherkin, and my life is pretty darn awesome because of those things." 

I think that's what a very dear friend of mine was talking about when she talked about "changing one's story." I used to get kinda mad when she said that because it felt like she was telling me to change the things that were core to me, the vital parts of my experiences that make up who I am. I can't change that I'm autistic, trans, disabled, or otherkin, but I can change the way I frame those things in the context of my life. I can find joy in them. I can find light in what is often perceived as darkness.

Sure, being autistic makes some sensory experiences brain-breakingly dreadful, but there's a flipside: I also experience some of the greatest sensory joy when I cuddle a fluffy animal, or hear a beautifully recorded symphony. I miscommunicate, and struggle reading things like body language, but I also speak and write profound words that move people because of the unique way I think. 

Being trans, I've experienced direct discrimination and hate spewed at my face like venom, but I've also found a spiritual joy in seeing my body come closer in alignment to the masculine frequency I exist at, and have found incredible community around that shared experience.

Being disabled has its obvious struggles, but also, my existence challenges the world around me to open its eyes to unexpected brilliance. No one expects the short, gimpy, balding, mid-thirties, fat guy with a cane, who visibly stims and wears a bundle of patch cables over his neck to step up to a microphone and belt a version of Frank Sinatra's "My Way" that brings them to tears, yet I do that.

Yes, as otherkin, it's very hard to have a sense of self that does not match the physical body it inhabits. Dysphoria sucks ass, but that special euphoria I described above is something I wouldn't experience otherwise. My respite, solace, and grounding are all found in myself as a mixing console. It is my inner peace, and what makes me whole.

By sharing my experiences, I enrich the minds of everyone around me. By learning of others' experiences, I am enriched. I create profound experiences in others by merely existing, and the truth is, we all do. That's the story I'm choosing to tell now. 

Choose to flip the switch, and let your light shine through your darkness. That's my mantra this year. 2026 will be my Year of Inner Light.