ranthimi:

I really hope people are aware that the point of questioning is not to disprove or eliminate your first hunch or idea about yourself and your Otherness. It can absolutely be correct, it could just as easily be incorrect or partially true. You can suspect yourself to be one thing and have that be the case, or be mistaken about the origins, or your ideas on your origin may be somewhat correct but the specifics of what you are don’t match what you initially thought.

The point of questioning is to go through other options and, by doing so, you learn more about yourself and your preconceived notions about your identity. Questioning is not the process of “proving” you’re otherkind/adjacent, it’s not a means of eliminating thoughts of the spiritual or more “unusual” origins. It’s the process of looking at yourself and your thoughts and analyzing them and their effect on you.

It’s why I try to put emphasis on it being okay to be wrong about what you are, or your origins, or the nature of your feelings and connections. A realization is a realization and we often learn more about ourselves through our failures and mistakes. It doesn’t make you a “poser” or a “wannabe” to discover that you were wrong about your identity, it means you took the time to think about yourself and your experiences and their impact on your life.

It also doesn’t necessarily mean that if you confirm your initial hunches after a process of questioning that you’re just faking or are ensuring confirmation bias. If you’ve actually put in the work and the thought and gone through other options, you’re just as legitimate as someone who found out what they are through one of the other options they considered during the process. And if this repeats itself? That’s fine. It’s better than lying to yourself and everyone else just to keep up appearances. Identity is complex and often requires rethinking with new context.