werewolf thoughts
I’m saying this as an affirmation to myself, not a correction of anyone’s presumed interpretation of my identity: I am not an anthro wolf. I am not a wolf therian. I am not a furry or a pup. I am not manifesting my trauma into a spirit form. I am not inhabiting a wolf body in my dreams.
werewolf thoughts
These are all fine and wonderful things to be and do. I celebrate them and I learn and grow and am enriched by exposure to people who integrate these things into their lives. But I am not represented among these things.
I am a werewolf.
I am a creature that lives on a spectrum with a constrained axis. There is the side that looks like a human. There is the side that looks like a monstrous amalgam of human and wolf. I live on that spectrum and love every increment of it.
werewolf thoughts
To myself I say: it is okay to love this.
It is okay to enjoy the majesty and playfulness inherent in the lupine expressions of others, and to feel little or none of it in myself.
I don’t know everything about what I am, but I do not feel majestic or wise or unselfconsciously playful. I feel like a monster that is content to be a monster. Content to love and protect its own, and to be mostly unseen by others.
werewolf thoughts
Even now I feel the human urge to tie these feelings to gender or autism. Those connections could rightly be made. I will probably continue talking about those connections as I have been for years. But right now, the same part of me that rejects “she” in favour of “it” also rejects any attempt to soften or intellectualize this part of myself.
I just am what I am. A werewolf.