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The time has come for me to say goodbye to the furry fandom, a personal decision that has been a long time coming. I feel these past several years have been equivalent to trying to save a failing relationship and it’s been an uphill battle for me to justify the taxing emotional investment. I will do my best to keep this post short but as these things tend to go I know I will probably leave many questions unanswered.

I joined this community in late 2007 as a misguided, ill-informed, and sexually confused outcast. I immediately made some very poor choices regarding the company I kept, the things I believed, and the situations I allowed myself to get caught up in. This is not who I am, nor is it what I wish to be remembered for. Throughout the years that followed I have grown as a person and the man I am today is not the wayward boy I was 12+ years ago. This has been a very difficult life lesson for me to show and I’ve realized the best way for me to demonstrate it is to make peace with matters and move on.

I will always cherish the genuine moments I had with people from this fandom. Many of you brought me up during periods where I felt I was at the end of everything. I hold no grudges, but I do have innumerable regrets. I allowed my head to be filled with nonsense and I am thankful that those who truly cared about my well being stepped in to intervene. Over the years I learned the errors of my ways through the help of close friends and therapists; a community so heavily sexualized was the last possible place I should have been when I was at my most emotionally susceptible, impressionable, and vulnerable.

I look back at my time and work within the fandom, especially my early days, with immense shame. The anxiety associated with these feelings continue to haunt me to this day. Being young and confused doesn’t absolve me of the things I said and did. The stories I wrote were a mistake. Involving myself with Herpy was a mistake. Listening to the opinions of people who were okay with these things was a mistake.  I became entrenched in a bad community and got in way over my head. I didn’t know what to do to get out and I was too afraid to talk about it. I didn’t have the courage or the nerve to say “no”. The feedback loop of misplaced encouragement from the fandom hooked me real bad and gestures such as being invited out to conventions due to my perceived popularity only served to bury me deeper and prevent me from seeing the mistakes I was making. “I’m sorry” doesn’t even begin to tackle the tip of the iceberg regarding how I feel but it’s a good place to start. I do not stand by or for any of these things and I haven’t for just shy of a decade (as of 2019).

Our journeys deviate here. It has taken me many false starts and years of encouragement with the help of friends and family to reach this point but I am finally ready to reclaim my life and continue from where I derailed all those years ago. Before I lost sight of myself I was an entertainer. I performed on stage. I sang. I danced. I am ready to take these things back as the hobbies and pastimes that truly defined me as who I am. I do not have any interest in participating in fandom matters anymore, and I do not wish to be roped back into them. My only request is that you respect this decision.

Please allow me to have the life that I very nearly lost.

Thank you.

– Kon