#volpeonWrites
I think this is a good tag to use for my longer posts. I'm kicking it off with an overview about the big topic I mentioned in the pinned post: the desire to be an animal and what it means to me.
I always have a hard time writing about my personal development throughout my life. It was, and still is, a constant and never-ending process without clear boundaries, "awakenings" or grand realizations, but rather small changes which accumulate over time. It doesn't help that reflecting on your past also means reinterpreting it with your current mind and effectively changing it unintentionally.
As a child at around kindergarten age, I often imagined being a bird with as much detail as I could. It was just a normal memory for me — until I grew suspicious of why I wanted to be an animal so badly. Could it have been an early sign that my soul was that of an animal and I ended up in this body on accident? I held this belief for a while, inspired by all the fantasy novels I had been reading at that point. Then I learned about therianthropy and the meaning of those memories changed. Could it have been a shift? Oh damn, there were quite a few of these now that I'm thinking about it!
It's easy to color your understanding of yourself without even realizing. I had shifts because they were the common experience among therians. I talked about myself with language carefully chosen to evoke the idea that an external force made me feel this way, that I was "supposed to be" an animal rather than "wanted to be." I followed self-imposed rules and subconsciously acted to convince not just others but also myself of the validity of my experiences.
About 5 years ago, I started to see what I was doing and got rid of all the layers I had built around my identity. I decided to only look at the truth itself and not allow myself to get distracted by arbitrary ideas. I want to understand the world and myself with absolute clarity.
The truth is that some of my earliest memories are imaginations of being a bird, and later on other animals. I am drawn to the idea of possessing a non-human body and experiencing life as a different creature. I want to know what it feels like to have fur, a muzzle, paws, wings, to fly or to walk on digitigrade legs, to move around with a body with completely different proportions and senses and capabilities. I want to be perceived as a creature that isn't a human. I want it so badly.
Beyond that, there is no deeper meaning or purpose, and there doesn't need to be. This is the answer I have reached.
@areon@icy.wyvern.rip