Day Three
“You can’t write your way out of lycanthropy.” -E
It has been four years, almost five, since I have written a blog post.
The time sure does fly, doesn’t it?
It’s been 4 years since I started a blog. Half a decade.
It is going to be three presidencies.
It’s the end of my twenties. It’s the end of my time as a young adult. It’s the end of an era in America. It’s the establishment of a career. It’s the decade I met Liz, who I love beyond measure and will continue to love for the rest of my life. It’s running map-reduce on all the names I have. It’s the end of a chapter of my life that has fundamentally changed who I am and how I perceive myself. It’s what, an entire fucking decade of surviving online harassment and stalking? It’s so many more things than that. It’s Postfurry. It’s Post-Self. It’s hitting the big red launch button on Windows 10 (Yes, there was an actual big red button that a bunch of Insiders pressed). It’s becoming a professional software engineer. It’s transitioning. It’s getting GRS. It’s getting my first story published. It’s friends and lovers and community and family, so much family, and it’s all the little moments in-between that are my favorite parts of this wonderfully wild journey called life.
And it’s Lycanthropy. For the first time in my life it’s having a label that feels right. It’s being able to self describe in a way that doesn’t feel like ticking the boxes on an IRS form. “Why yes, I do feel phantom limbs and mental shifts, but I do not experience dream shifts or astral shifts. Hmm. I would say that my form is decidedly non anthro, but that could just be a side effect of spending too much time around furries.”
But the therian community has gotten better. It’s not as elitist, it’s not as dominated by old white wolf dudes. It’s a different place now, stronger, kinder, better. I don’t know how it happened, but somewhere along the Internet, on the trip between Tumblr and Tiktok, therianthropy evolved into something new, it outgrew the communities it was shackled to, and it’s becoming something else entirely. A TikTok fad? Another arm of Extremely Online Trans Girl Culture? It’s too early to say. But folks having the theta-delta in their bio is new. Folks saying “I’m a therian” without even knowing of the baggage that term carries, is new. It’s 2024 soon to be 2025 and I had a conversation with someone where “On All Levels Except Physical I Am A Wolf” came up and the consensus was that regardless of your opinions on the wolf who said it, it’s actually a pretty rad statement. And honestly, like the greymuzzles who excitedly and enthusiastically chat with the therians who wandered into therian chats as soon as they turned 18, who came through alterhumanity or puppygirl twitter or (soon) tiktok therianthropy quadrobics videos and wound up Finding A Place, I too have become less bitter. I too, am less angry. Maybe it’s seeing a community grow. Maybe it’s growing myself. Maybe it’s a desperate desire to not become Frank Chalmers as I age. Who’s to say.
All I know is it’s 2025 and folks have theta deltas in their bios and Capitol Hill (No, not that one) has therian street art. This isn’t precisely the therian world that BinaryVixen was dreaming of, but it’s the one that we’ve all contributed to and, though there’s a lot of work to do, I’m proud of it. It’s the therian future we live in.
And…. It’s not a place I’m sure I belong anymore. Don’t get me wrong, I still identify as a therian. I still identify as alterhuman, or whatever new more Postfurry label will exist by the time you read this. I’m still a fox and I always will be. I can be nothing but. I am a Kitsune. That is the nature of my existence. Why ask questions, dear reader, when the answers will not help?
But for the first time in my life, I have a defining trait for the other, for my original self discovery. I have something more than a term that technically fits. I have a descriptor for a set of experiences that belong. I have the ability to connect with something I have been experiencing since I was a teenager in a way besides “really intense mental shift”. I have language to explain to my loved ones what I go through. I have terrible puns to make about the full moon and that time of month. I have an explanation for my experiences that does not involve a feeling of incredible isolation punctuated only twice in my life for the briefest of moments.
And I’m so scared of what that means. I’m so scared of this realization that something I took for granted is an experience. Something I thought was a product of too much omegendorph ADHD medication or Trauma, something I have known but lived in isolation with for years, is an experience that others have, that others experience. The reason I always felt like a different sort of wolf therian wasn’t just a result of also being a fox, it was because I was a lycanthrope, trying to fit in with wolves.
I love wolves, wolves are great, I’m a sort of wolf, if you think about it. But I’m also a person, a human. That’s a part of me. That’s a part of who I am. So is being a Monster. I’ve always felt like a Monster. And I love being human. I worked hard for this body. I sculpted it, I transformed it, I did that. It is mine and I love it even as I hate it, because it’s not me and it never will be. So much of what makes me is not here, so much of who I am is not with me. I am of two minds, I am of two minds!
And that duality is important to me, as important to me as a wolf as it is as a fox to shift in and out, to weave illusions, to dance gracefully and run off into the night snickering. I got away with it! I got away with it! Humans worship Inari-Okami. Humans pass on Her stories and prayers. Humans staff Her shrines and train the next generation of priests. And yes, in the modern day, so too do a number of incredibly devoted nonhumans. And of course, how silly would it be of me to establish a binary, to view humanity as the default disguise of a Kitsune? I know several other foxes for whom the very suggestion alone should cost me a tail! And they’re not wrong!
But for me personally, I am tied to humanity, as both a fox and a lycanthrope. I am inbetween. I am both. I am neither. I am dancing in synchronicity with myself. I am having my “Oh” moment. I am bursting at the seams to enter a new era, even if the future is scary. I have found a place where I belong. I feel at home with myself. Who I thought I always was is exactly who I am. Despite it all, it’s still you.
So yeah. I’m a lycanthrope. That’s me.
