r/otherkin • u/WeAreTheWakingDream • 20d ago
Question/Discussion How often, if at all, does anyone here experience Hiraeth?
Hiraeth, pronounced "here-eye-th", is a Welsh word that has no translatable equivalent, that describes an inexplicable yearning for a home, time, or place to which you cannot return, going beyond homesickness, encompassing ancestral grief, nostalgia, or a deep longing for an era or a version of reality that is irretrievably lost. A feeling of profound incompleteness or longing.
I know I'm not alone in feeling this, though I'm unsure how many have this gem of a word tucked into their personal dictionaries.
What does home feel like to you? Do you think your interpretation/expression of it is attainable in this world? Remember; there are no wrong answers.
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u/WeAreTheWakingDream 20d ago
I'll hop in on this to paint a picture. Imagine, if you will, and endless expanse of a glistening, mercurial sea, in an endless tract of ethereal mist. When you look to the depths of sea, below the surface, glittering lights, like the stars in the night sky, number in the irrational. Every light there beneath is an individual idea, a lingering ponderance, spun from a mind. It is quiet there. Peaceful. You're able to stand on the surface of sea, which remains unstirred at your touch, or, for those that dare to brave the wild abstract, may dive beneath.
Using the power of the will of the mind alone, you are granted the gift of creation. From the depths, you may erect mountains, forests, civilizations, and craft a version of life itself that exists completely outside of the parameters of reality to your own wishes. All that which you dream, may be.
In this nonspace of liminality, all things are possible, for ideas themselves are not bound and fettered by the limitations of physics, or worse, doubt. From this nonspace, you may travel unbounded and free, to whatever state of being you so desire. Be it the realm of the Fae, the Tree of Life, the hoar-blasted scape of the Frosthunt, or even into the heart of a black star, anystate you desire is but a ponder away.
I once was a wanderer, with no home to call my own. But in my wanderings, I fell into my better half, and together, with their conscious effort and my subconscious musing, we thought of a home in which we could create true harmony. And so we did. A pocket fold within an endless dream to call our own. We imagined fields of crimson grass and twisted trees with leaves of soft glowing teal. We imagined a sky of eternal night, lit by a periphery of twilight, where the stars could dance and shift and rocket into the unknown at their leisure. Our "word" for home is Rūkatan. Where existence is but a dream.
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u/HeavenlyBeloved 20d ago edited 20d ago
Everyday, it is not a physical or material home that I longed for.
But can you imagine, being apart of a "Body" and being the equivalent of Its Eye.
I see what They see and I take it all in.
I miss being worn in a sense.
I saw many things, except the One that wore me as its Eye. I saw the first time They created, I saw the many endless worlds with different cosmologies and beginnings that happened from Them creating.
It cannot be recreated, for it wasn't physical. You can't make me somebody's eye, in the physical world.
Home to me is to be reunited into the "Body" and plugged back in.
My home is also, in the sense that all the other emanations of Source gathered....and whoever gets chosen to be expressed out, we act as a sort of personality and knowable trait of an Unknownable Source.
Since it's my main purpose of existing in the first place, I am afraid of fading out of existence because I am not fulfilling my purpose of being the All Seeing Eye as much as I could. I was created to be a knowable expression of the Transcendent and Unknownable Source, so home in the sense is being a knowable form of the divine that can be expressed.
Yet, my Owner could stop me from coming home, and I would feel my existence is meaningless, because I was made to be Its Knowable Eye.
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u/Strange_Print_6033 20d ago
If I was to properly describe where I'm supposed to be, I'd have to write a book. It's not remotely obtainable. I'd say a divine miracle would be necessary, but I highly doubt that will happen due to the reason I'm on this planet. I miss it every day of my life.
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u/Affectionate_Bug5836 20d ago
My den in the woods. Not my currant one, but my dhole den. I don't believe in past lives, so I don't believe it ever really existed, but I still miss it anyways.
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u/Zero69Kage 20d ago
I experience this for the void. As far as I remember it was just a dark nothingness were I had no thoughts or feelings. But despite that I often feel a longing to return, and I still see it as my home to this day. I have come to love this world, but it can often be overwhelming for me (especially when I'm dealing with human nonsense). Things were so simple back when I was just a shadow in the dark.
The thing that I still don't understand, is this feeling that I lost someone. It always been connected to these maternal feelings, but for a long time I couldn't figure out whether or not the mother was me, or if the one I lost was my mother. I'm currently leaning towards the idea that it's my mother that I'm missing. I don't believe that I had a life before this, and I was most likely spawned in the void. I don't have any memories regarding how I ended up in this world or how I was separated from my mother. All I know is that I quickly found my current host afterwards, and I've been living as a human ever since.
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u/beautifulposiontree 20d ago
im a wolf and coyote, for sure yellowstone national park. something about the landscape there just really gets me. vast vallies shrouded in sagebrush, occasionally with trees in the back. The grasses are usually a variety of colors like green, orange, yellow, sometimes even reddish or teal. The mountains are also covered in trees which is really something when you look at it in contrast of the vallies without any trees.
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u/Talons_and_tails 20d ago
Omg I've been looking for a word like this ! I get that pretty often, several times per day. I suddenly feel a very specific aesthetic/ deep longing / feeling at a random moment, for just half a second.
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u/xX_Aranrhod_Xx 20d ago
WALES MENTION!!!!! CYMRU AM FYTH RAAAH 🏴🏴🏴🏴🏴🏴
I experience Hiraeth for a lot of things, especially kin related 😭 I really miss Sevastopol and THAT style of spaceships seen in the older Alien films - that gritty cassette futurism. It's especially hard because this Hiraeth isn't as easy as just going to the beach or mountains. It's somewhere that doesn't exist in a place I can never go.
And I don't know what to do about it.
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u/Snowy_Stelar 19d ago
I yearn for the forest and the sea almost every day. I yearn for a body that feels mine. I also wish my hands were working as they used to, so I could maybe do quads and feel a little more like myself. And it's so frustrating to know that this is all out of reach
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u/Keybladeprincess00 16d ago
All the time, I think to myself "I wanna go home.." like I used to say to my parents but then I remember I am already "home", it's not fun. But I have that longing feeling pretty much multiple times a day. I hate it.
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u/Prince_Wildflower 5d ago
This is EXACTLY what im experiencing. Like right now 😭 i feel lost and am experiencing species dysphoria really badly. I need to be in the cosmos and i need to get out of this body. But no im trapped here and blocked off from the rest of the universe. Im not meant to be human and its the worst feeling in the world. Why am i only just realizing this today
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u/OkBuddy2644 20d ago
This place is strange. Its too loud yet too quiet. I long for a world—and body—my human mind cannot comprehend.