My Awakening as Starscream
It all started when I was around only 4 or 5 years old. I had found myself enthralled with the F-15 eagle fighter jets in the movie, Top Gun. Its not the average favorite film of kids my age at the time, especially for a "girl" in the 90s. If that movie was on the television, I was watching it. I could feel the jets, what it was like to be one, and felt on this something I couldn't describe other than that I was one. This is the moment of realization for me, when I first awakened to those thoughts and feelings, and from there they never ceased.
There are moments I remember quite well as a child. Swinging on a swing-set and closing my eyes, letting the winds wash over me and feeling as if I was flying. Or staring up at the clouds as I did so, watching a plane go by and imagining myself as one, up there creating cloud trails. I had only been on an actual plane once on a trip to Florida, afterwards my family avoiding them in fear. Yet I would eventually take a plane trip again later on, to which I rather enjoyed.
Since as long as I can remember I've also had a strange connection to vehicles. I always felt like they were alive. I gave them names, I spoke to them. They weren't just "cars" to me. It's something that has stuck with me through out my life. I had the deepest relationship with a car I would get much later, my first car, but I don't want to veer too off topic now. The bottom line is they were always people to me.
Fast forward to the year 2002, when I was around 8 years old, and the feelings became more narrowed. Transformers Armada had aired on cartoon network. I remember scrabbling downstairs early mornings to watch on the little gray box of a TV we had. It was then once again I felt the pull towards something.. something I was missing, a piece of myself that felt right. I never missed an episode, I was obsessed. I still had not quite figured out why at this point, I was too young to understand, but again, the feelings never stopped there. My favorite character was obvious to me from the start, though I tried to avoid that. I remember telling myself, "I can't like that one, cause he's the best". Its funny now I think how absolutely me it was to say.
I began collecting figures sometime after that. My first figure being a Heroes of Cybertron Starscream. My collection really built up from there, and without taking much notice was filling up mostly with decepticons, and a large proportion of Starscreams. It was.. unintentional, almost subconscious actually. Whether it was at the shop, or wherever, if there was a section of Transformers, I was immediately drawn to the red white and blue seeker.
Following that, the year 2007 rolls around. I am about 13 years old, and my connection to the Transformers and cybertronians is still strong. My friends and family refer to me often in connection to it. A commercial comes on and I hear, "___ your robots are on tv!" or a cool car rolls by, "look ___ its a transformer!" I've blanked out my human name for a few personal reasons. Anything in relation was usually brought to my attention. This is the year I became aware of the Otherkin community. I found during this time another moment when something clicked for me. Reading about these others experiences, what they described in feelings of homesickness, phantom sensations, and that overall description of not being human, I found myself. The thing that I had been feeling this whole time, put into words, and a community of other people who felt the same, I was ecstatic.
From then on I have been putting together my own thoughts and feelings, unraveling the past of who I was, and still currently feel I am. Discovery has truly never gone away since starting this journey. Everyday I still feel there is so much to learn of myself, so many things I don't know, and hope to someday find out. I remember questioning Soundwave at one point, casting aside all the years of jet feelings, as I still wanted to avoid Starscream at all costs. Something inside me didn't want to see or accept it. I.. don't know why, but coming to terms with it wasn't easy.
I couldn't deny the phantom shifts. Large jet wings on my back, thrusters on the heels of my feet, the feeling of hydraulics in my legs. Everything felt mechanically alive and it felt right. I wanted to feel my plating shift into place, to fold in on itself and allow me to take to the skies as I once did. I knew I was a jet from when I was very young, and this was why. I wasn't just a jet, I was Cybertronian. A bio-mechanical were-jet. A Transformer.
Knowing what I was and who I am gave me closure to the thing that had been itching in the back of my mind for my whole life thus far. Though knowing this was only half of it. The past of it also creeps up on me in ways I least expect. Memories of things I'd done, places I've been, those who I'd known, and things I'd come to hate. There are 2 sides of the coin when it comes to the past. The good, and the bad.
There was a time I was dating a guy. For some reason it pinged on me that our relationship was very familiar. I am not going to go into details of this 2 year back and forth adventure of breaking up, getting back together, and then breaking up for good another time.. but there was always something about him that reminded me of Skyfire. I couldn't unsee it. We were both in college together, studying the same course, and ended up partnered together for a project.. it all went off from there. Of course, it didn't work out, it very familiarly did not work out. It was never supposed to. It was one of those odd coincidences that I felt followed me from life to life, as I have a very strong feeling life does tend to repeat itself in ways.
Its hard to explain. I like to compare it to the movie: Cloud Atlas. How the story switches from era to era with the same people, but they are born into different lives, different roles, but they are repeating. I feel like when it comes to reincarnation we live the same story over and over through different obstacles. Things tend to often give that feeling of Deja Vu.
A year after that I met my current partner. I didn't tell them at first that I was Otherkin, as it was something private to me. I never imagined they would ever know, as I never told my previous partner. It wasn't something I talked about with people outside the community. Somehow it did come up though. There was something about our meeting that again had this ping of familiar-ness, that we already knew each other. And we did. I found Megatron. I don't want to say it was fate, but something caused our paths to cross again and there we were, together like old times.
In that moment I truly felt connected to myself, I knew who I was. It has not changed for me ever since the very beginning. My past is my present, and I can not change who I am. My awakening has been a lifelong event, but I'd say the moment I watched that "Top Gun" film was the day a whole world opened up to me.
-Zaphaera (aka Starscream the First)